Manneke BudimanRelated papers
Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World (Taylor & Francis 2017).pdf
Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World , 2017
The book contains essays on current issues in arts and humanities in which peoples and cultures compete as well as collaborate in globalizing the world while maintaining their uniqueness as viewed from cross- and interdisciplinary perspectives. The book covers areas such as literature, cultural studies, archaeology, philosophy, history, language studies, information and literacy studies, and area studies. Asia and the Pacific are the particular regions that the conference focuses on as they have become new centers of knowledge production in arts and humanities and, in the future, seem to be able to grow significantly as a major contributor of culture, science and arts to the globalized world. The book will help shed light on what arts and humanities scholars in Asia and the Pacific have done in terms of research and knowledge development, as well as the new frontiers of research that have been explored and opening up, which can connect the two regions with the rest of the globe.
Editorial cartoons and the visualization of corruption at the beginning of the New Order (1968–1974): Case study of Indonesia Raya daily
Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World, 2017
This study aims to discuss the visualization of corruption through editorial cartoons by examining a case study of Indonesia Raya newspaper in the early years of the New Order during the period of 1968–1974. In the course of its history, Indonesia Raya became one of the newspapers that posted the existence of corruption cases through its editorial cartoons. This article argues that criticism of corruption cases can be traced not only in text, but also in satirical images which are sometimes sarcastic and playful. This research identifies the dynamic development of Indonesia Raya newspaper’s editorial cartoons in enabling the visualization of corruption cases during the early years of the New Order until the Malari event in 1974 which ended the history of the newspaper. Using a historical method, this paper attempts to present the study of visual history to record an event in the history of the country.
A Response to Social, Economic and Political Conditions During the Soekarno Government Period; Cempakadilaga Manuscript of Mama Sempur
International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, 2020
This article discusses the Cempakadilaga manuscript, the work of KH Tubagus Ahmad Bakri (1839-1975), famous ulama who is known as Mama Sempur in Purwakarta, West Java. In reality, the manuscript was completed in 1959. However, the objective of study in this article is the published text, with Mama Sempur’s approval, in 1962. The manuscript, which was written using the Sundanese Pegon script (Sundanese), contains five articles and one faidah.In it, Mama Sempur explained the importance of farming, running an illegitimate business, the obligation to maintain good relations between people, the obligation to serve the government even though it is unjust, and how it is better to prevent harm over bringing benefit. In the faidah, Mama Sempur invited the society to return to the Shafi’i school. The results showed that the Cempakadilaga manuscript was presented as a response to the Indonesian social, economic and political conditions, especially in the late 1950s to the 1960s. At present, Indonesia experiences deterioration in various aspects of life.
Clearing a Space, edited by Keith Foulcher and Tony Day
Clearing a Space: Postcolonial readings of modern Indonesian literature, 2002
Feminisms and Contemporary Art in Indonesia
2017
While Indonesian contemporary art is currently on the rise on the international art scene, there hasn't yet been an in-depth study of the works of Indonesian women artists and the feminist strategies they employ within the art world. This book fills that gap, presenting the first comprehensive study of feminisms and contemporary art in Indonesia; using feminist readings to analyse the works of Indonesian women artists historically and today; illuminating the sociocultural contexts in which they have worked; and offering a nuanced understanding of local feminisms in the nation.
Unity and diversity: National identity and multiculturalism in Indonesia
University of Otago, 2020
Uttaraśabda in Java and Bali
2018
The aim of this research is to provide access to less well-known Javanese literary text, Uttaraśabda, which can be categorised as a tutur (utterance) text. It contains dialogues on religious speculation, which is also valuable for the study of religions in Indonesia. To make the text readable, textual editions should be arranged. However, the previously-necessary step taken is to explain the cultural background of all material evidence. It also stands as a consequence on the textual analysis. Uttaraśabda is documented in fifteen copied manuscripts: eight from Java and seven from Bali. If it is assumed that a manuscript is as an equal textual variant, then careful observation of each manuscript can be expected to give explanation on cultural-background peculiarities. Particularly, there are two manuscript groups from different cultural loci: Java and Bali; therefore, this research will apply a philological approach based on textology. The approach will provide comprehension about textual problems and the history of textual development. Thus, the understanding on the reception process to a tutur text, at least in two different cultural loci, can be dug up. Hence, this research wishes to contribute generally in the study of tutur which so far still has been polarised only on Balinese or Javanese traditions.
The Language Characteristic and Its Acculturation from Chinese Speakers in Losari, Cirebon Regency, West Java: The Acculturation of Chinese with Javanese Culture
KnE Social Sciences
Application of The Concept of Critical Toponymies to Street Name Changes in Bandung, Yogyakarta, and Surabaya [Konsep Toponimi Kritis dalam Pergantian Nama-nama Jalan di Kota Bandung, Yogyakarta, dan Surabaya]
Paradigma Jurnal Kajian Budaya, 2021
From 2017 to 2019, a number of street names were changed in Yogyakarta, Bandung and Surabaya City by each Provincial Government for the purpose of celebrating the reconciliation between the Sundanese (West Java) and the Javanese (Central Java, East Java, and Yogyakarta) after years of dispute due to the infamous Bubat Tragedy which occurred in the 14th century. Some existing street names in Yogyakarta and Surabaya were changed to those associated with Sundanese history, such as Jalan Padjadjaran and Jalan Siliwangi, while some existing street names in Bandung were changed to those associated with Javanese history, such as Jalan Majapahit and Jalan Hayam Wuruk. The author explores this phenomenon using the concept of critical toponymies and examines the connections between naming, place-making, and power underlying such policy. This study found that, although the changes were made with good intentions, in some cases this was actually opposed by several factions within the local community because those changes could obliterate the historical significance and collective memory represented by the previous names. From theoretical perspective, this paper also discussed the successful and unsuccessful changes of street names, as well as their relevance to the current context. In other words, our findings can be taken into consideration in future policy-making process. [Dari 2017 hingga 2019, telah dilakukan penggantian sejumlah nama jalan di Kota Yogyakarta, Bandung, dan Surabaya oleh pemerintah provinsi dengan tujuan untuk merayakan tuntasnya konflik yang timbul antara orang Sunda dan orang Jawa setelah peristiwa Perang Bubat pada abad ke-14. Sejumlah nama jalan di Yogyakarta dan Surabaya diubah menjadi Jalan Padjadjaran dan Jalan Siliwangi yang berciri Sunda, sedangkan nama sejumlah nama jalan di Bandung diubah menjadi Jalan Majapahit dan Jalan Hayam Wuruk yang berciri Jawa. Selanjutnya, penulis menganalisis fenomena itu menggunakan konsep critical toponymies (toponimi kritis) dan mengkaji hubungan antara ikhtiar penamaan (naming), penciptaan tempat (place making), dan unsur kuasa (power) yang melatarinya. Penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa, meskipun penggantian nama itu dilakukan dengan itikad baik, pada sebagian kasus, kebijakan ini justru ditentang oleh sebagian masyarakat karena pengubahan dapat menghilangkan nilai sejarah dan memori kolektif yang terkandung di dalamnya. Dari segi teoretis, makalah ini juga mendiskusikan keberhasilan dan ketidakberhasilan pengubahan nama jalan serta kaitannya dengan konteks aktual sehingga dapat menjadi bahan pertimbangan di dalam proses pembuatan kebijakan di masa depan.]
Mother Divine Pushkalavati three lotuses adorn her crown wears necklace
Meluhha Indus Script grapheme -- tāmarasa 'red lotus' Rebus: tāmra 'copper’ This Mother Goddess (Baroque Lady) was found from the site of Sardheri Charsadda, Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Pushkalavati was first capital of ancient Gandhara). This term was used for first time by Sir Mortimer Wheeler. In 1936, this site was excavated by Simon Corbieu, curator of Brussels Museum. She wears an elaborated headdress, ear pendants, necklaces, eyes like coffee bean, prominent nose, aplique decoration. These figurine (Baroque Lady) abundantly were reported from number of sites like Sardheri, Shaikhan Dheri, Sulai Dheri and Balahisar Dheri in district Charsadda. In Guimet Museum Paris. Courtesy of Muhammad Ashraf Khan. Harappan standing 'mother goddess' figurines, British Museum. Photo by Sharada Srinivasan. https://shorturl.at/GSnTg पेंढें [pēṇḍhēṃ] पेंडकें [ pēṇḍakēṃ ] n Weaver’s term. A cord-loop or metal ring (as attached to the गुलडा of the बैली and to certain other fixtures). पेंडें [ pēṇḍēṃ ] n (पेड) A necklace composed of strings of pearls. 2 A loop or ring. Rebus: पेढी (Gujaráthí word.) A shop (Marathi) Alternative: koṭiyum [koṭ, koṭī neck] a wooden circle put round the neck of ananimal(Gujarati) Rebus: ācāri koṭṭya‘forge, kammārasāle’ (Tulu)
CULTURAL DYNAMICS IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD
KUSNO2017_Book.indb i
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ASIA-PACIFIC RESEARCH IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AND
HUMANITIES, DEPOK, INDONESIA, NOVEMBER 7–9, 2016, TOPICS IN ARTS AND
HUMANITIES
Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized
World
Editors
Melani Budianta
English Studies Program, Literature Department, Faculty of Humanities,
Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
Manneke Budiman
Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
Abidin Kusno
Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada
Mikihiro Moriyama
Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of Foreign Studies, Nanzan University, Nagoya, Japan
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, UK
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damage to the property or persons as a result of operation or use of this publication and/or
the information contained herein.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.tandfebooks.com, has been made
available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Published by: CRC Press/Balkema
Schipholweg 107C, 2316 XC Leiden, The Netherlands
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www.crcpress.com – www.taylorandfrancis.com
ISBN: 978-1-138-62664-5 (Hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-22534-0 (eBook)
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Table of contents
Organizing committee
xiii
Social norms, social movements, and ethics
Foreword by Manneke Budiman
3
Social conflict resolution and the need for a system of ethics
A. Seran
7
Editorial cartoons and the visualization of corruption at the beginning
of the New Order (1968–1974): Case study of Indonesia Raya daily
A.M. Padiatra & A. Setiawan
The 19th-century Undang-Undang Ternate: Structure and power analysis
P.F. Limbong & T. Pudjiastuti
KPK and the commitment of the Indonesian government to eradicate
corruption (2004–2014)
H.R. Mufti & B. Kanumayoso
Autonomy and historicity of an individual as a moral agent
J.P. Kamuri & H.S. Pratama
15
23
29
37
Redefining ethics and morals in colonial space: Creation of leisure in the colonies
in Van Zeggelen (1911)
C.T. Suprihatin
43
Moral consciousness in Kresna Duta’s characters: An analysis through moral theory
of Lawrence Kohlberg and the discourse ethics of Jürgen Habermas
M.W. Nurrochsyam & E.K. Ekosiwi
51
Transposition of epistemology to hermeneutics: Richard Rorty’s philosophy
of edification
F. Hadinata & A.Y. Lubis
59
Leader’s attitude towards terrorism: A critical discourse analysis
of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad’s diplomatic letters
B.E. Pranoto & U. Yuwono
65
Stimulus of request in Japanese and its relation to wakimae as a cultural context:
A discourse analysis on culture in conversation
Filia, N.J. Malik & U. Yuwono
75
Toraja people’s involvement in Qahhar Mudzakkar’s DI/TII movement
R.D. Kabubu & Abdurakhman
83
Digital art and its uniqueness without aura
A.I. Badry & A.Y. Lubis
89
v
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Accelerating Quentin Meillassoux with Antonio Negri: On the deadlock
of speculative realist ontology
H.Y. Polimpung & A.Y. Lubis
97
Historical aspects of Babad Sepehi
Y. Irawan & K.H. Saputra
105
Disturbance of local democratization: Riot in Tuban election 2006
M. Sodikin & Abdurakhman
113
The concept of homo ecologicus spiritual-ethical (an ethical reflection
on the ecological humanism concept of Henryk Skolimowski)
F. Fios & G. Arivia
119
Applications of spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus in the local indigenous context
of Indonesia (a case study in the Oenbit village, East Nusa Tenggara province)
F. Fios & G. Arivia
125
Music’s critical function to social conditions
K. Andjani & A.Y. Lubis
133
No-self: Reflections on ethics and identity
J. Jiwanda & A.Y. Lubis
139
Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi: The struggle for identity and role in the Indonesian
National Movement (1923–1941)
Siswantari
Freedom of expression at the Jakarta Art Centre during Soeharto’s New Order
S.N. Kusumastuti
145
153
The eco-spiritual ethics of Balinese Hindus challenged: The case of the
reclamation of Benoa Bay
I.N. Suwidjana, G. Arivia, G. Dwikartika & R. Lustanto
161
Vergangenheitbewältigung/coming to terms with the past: Demystifying Hitler
and the Nazi regime in German comics
L. Kurnia
167
The legacy of Soeharto’s New Order: Power sustainability through control
of information media
F. Gani
173
Public reason and the rise of populism in post-reformation Indonesia
G.C. Acikgenc & H.S. Pratama
181
Construction of grief in obituary texts in German (2012–2015)
S.P. Suganda
187
The political as the ontological primacy: On Ernesto Laclau’s thoughts
D. Hutagalung & A.Y. Lubis
195
Roles and contributions of participants in broadcast talk
M.K. Wardhani & B. Kushartanti
203
Representing nation/homeland, gender, and religion
Foreword by Melani Budianta
213
Beyond the collections: Identity construction at the National Museum of Indonesia
M.K. Rizqika
217
vi
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Formation of Javanese Malay identities in Malay Peninsula between the
19th and 20th centuries
L. Sunarti
The representation of national identity in the film Tanah Surga Katanya
L.S. Limanta & L. Kurnia
225
231
Building national identity in the border areas: The critical success factors analysis
in the management of community radio in Sintang, West Kalimantan
L.H. Kurnia
239
Heimat for three generations of immigrants in Germany: An analysis
of Turkish–German films
M.R. Widhiasti & M. Budianta
247
Representation of India as the root of identity in the film adaptation of
The Namesake
R.A. Setyaningrum & D. Hapsarani
253
Contested representation of Dutch Americans in Washington Irving’s
A History of New York
M. Baga & M. Budianta
259
Indonesian novels’ phenomenon of mingling and competing with cultural exposure
I.G.A.A.M. Triadnyani
265
Funding politics in European film festivals and its impacts on the development
of Indonesian cinema
R. Ihwanny & M. Budiman
271
tradition: The representation
The Lunar New Year and Guanggunjie
of China in the Lentera broadcast by China Radio International
R.P.S. Hadi & M. Budiman
279
Mandarin education and contemporary Chinese-Indonesian identity repositioning:
Between recinicization and cosmopolitanism
Q.Q. Luli & M. Budiman
285
Appropriating South Korean popular culture: I-pop and K-drama
remakes in Indonesia
S.M.G. Tambunan
291
Positive body image activism in collective (@effyourbeautystandards) and personal
(@yourstruelymelly) Instagram accounts: Challenging American idealized beauty
construction
D.M. Wuri & S.M.G. Tambunan
297
Problematizing sexualized female images and Donald Trumps’ immigration stance
in video games: An analysis of Let’s Play videos on YouTube
S. Angjaya & S.M.G. Tambunan
303
Constructing an imagined community of fandom and articulating gender identity:
A case study on Indonesian female football fans’ participation in social media
N. Azizi & S.M.G. Tambunan
311
Martha Nussbaum’s central capabilities read violence against women in Indonesia
H.P. Sari
317
Afghan women’s repression by patriarchy in My Forbidden Face by Latifa
H.N. Agustina & C.T. Suprihatin
325
vii
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Memory of the female protagonist in relation to gender oppression in Catherine Lim’s
The Teardrop Story Woman
J.D. Sukham & D. Hapsarani
331
Women and corruption in Okky Madasari’s 86 and Anggie D. Widowati’s Laras:
A feminist study
A. Akun & M. Budiman
337
Contesting representations in the gendered space of politics: Hillary Clinton’s
representations in Living History, A Woman in Charge, and Her Way
D. Hapsarani & M. Budianta
345
Construction of woman in the Sundanese magazine Manglè (1958–2013):
A corpus-based study of metalinguistic signs
S. Yuliawati & R.S. Hidayat
353
Metaphors of women in the Sundanese magazine Manglè (1958–2013):
A corpus-based approach
A. Alkautsar & T. Suhardijanto
361
The collocation and grammatical behaviour of two nouns denoting women in
Sundanese: A corpus-based analysis of language and gender relationship
P.G. Bagasworo & T. Suhardijanto
371
The role of women in Javanese literature: A case study of Serat Gandakusuma
SJ 194 NR 324 and SW 5 SB 47
W.P. Sudarmadji & A. Prasetiyo
381
Posuo, space and women: Buton community’s customary tradition and its preservation
I. Ibrahim & M. Budiman
389
Cosmopolitan female Muslim travellers in Berjalan di Atas Cahaya
S. Hodijah & C.T. Suprihatin
397
The mosque as a space for Minangkabau women
H.F. Agus & M. Budianta
405
The realisation of metaphorical speech act in a religious themed text: Pragmatics
analysis on a popular religious self-help book
S. Altiria & A. Muta’ali
413
Imagery characters and ideology of Islamic fundamentalism: Adaptation of the
novel Les Étoiles de Sidi Moumen and the film Les Chevaux de Dieu
D. Jinanto & J. Tjahjani
423
School-centric Islamic education in Indonesia: A deconstructive analysis
of Muhammad Abed Al-Jabiri
N.S. Wibowo & Naupal
431
Developing English teaching materials based on Content-Based Instruction (CBI)
approach for the Islamic management and banking students at IAIN Imam Bonjol Padang
Elismawati & Mukhaiyar
437
The main ideas of Muhammad Mursi’s speech at the 67th United Nations
General Assembly: A critical discourse analysis
D. Lu’lu & A.T. Wastono
445
An ontology of violence based on moral teachings: A case study of Salafi Wahabi
radicalism and the story of Kresna Duta (Ambassador Kresna)
Naupal
451
viii
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The story of caliph Abu Bakr, Umar, Usman, and Ali to the battle of Hasan
and Husain in Karbala: Islamic epics from Ambon
D. Kramadibrata
Islamic discourse in German online mass media: Intra-migrant Muslim perspective
on refugee issues. Shift in the position of three Muslim individuals: Feridun Zaimoglu,
Necla Kelek, and Navid Kermani
L. Liyanti
Abuya Dimyathi: A charismatic mursyid of tarekat Syadziliyah during
the New Order regime (1977–1982)
J. Syarif & Y. Machmudi
457
465
473
Regional identity and cultural heritage
Foreword by Mikihiro Moriyama
481
Wawacan Samun: Between the convention and the creation of Wawacan
M. Holil & T. Pudjiastuti
485
Piwulang teachings in Serat Darmasaloka
S. Rohman & D. Kramadibrata
491
Old Papuan manuscripts: A general review
T. Pudjiastuti
497
Articulation and contestation of cultural identities in Riau Province:
The case of ‘Mandau Regency’
S. Basuki & M. Budiman
503
Utilization of the Senjang tradition as cultural identity of the people
in Musi Banyuasin, South Sumatra
A. Ardiansyah & T. Christomy
509
Colophon in the Hikayat Pandawa manuscript
M. Buduroh & T. Pudjiastuti
517
Bismaprawa: An Old Javanese text from the Merapi-Merbabu tradition derived
from Adiparwa
A. Kriswanto & D. Puspitorini
Uttaraśabda in Java and Bali
A. Kurniawan & D. Puspitorini
523
531
Loloda in the world of Mollucas: The decline of the political entity in Loloda from
Kolano to Sangaji
A. Rahman
539
Votive tablets in Buddhist religious rituals in the Nusantara archipelago
from the 7th–10th centuries AD
A. Indradjaja & W.R. Wahyudi
545
Tracing religious life in the ancient Bali period: An epigraphical study
N.K.P.A. Laksmi & W.R. Wahyudi
553
Ancient water system and reservoir at the Muarajambi archaeological site
C.M. Arkhi & W.R. Wahyudi
559
Association of Borobudur Temple with the surrounding Buddhist temples
N.A. Izza & A.A. Munandar
567
ix
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Forms and types of Borobudur’s stupas
A. Revianur
577
Variety of distinct style scripts in inscriptions found in Mandalas of the late
Majapahit era: An overview of the paleography to mark religious dynamics
N. Susanti
585
Religious communities in the late Majapahit period at Pasrujambe site, Lumajang
A. Rahayu & N. Susanti
593
Particles pwa and ta in the Old Javanese language
D. Puspitorini
601
The role of Man
․․dalas in the old Javanese religious community
in Tantu Panggělaran
T.I. Setyani & T. Pudjiastuti
609
Signatures in Hikayat Sultan Taburat’s manuscripts: The existence of scribes
in the 19th century
R.A. Suharjo & T. Pudjiastuti
617
Management of cultural heritage sites: A case study of Perkampungan Adat
Nagari Sijunjung
F. Amril
623
Nusantara philosophy: The study of meanings based on Indonesia’s local wisdom
in East Java and East Nusa Tenggara
L. Tjahjandari, T.I. Setyani & L.H. Kurnia
631
Silpin’s artistic freedom in the creation of Tathagata statues on the Rupadhatu
level at Borobudur
G. Mentari & A.A. Munandar
637
Spatial narrative in a traditional Sundanese village
T. Christomy
Symbolic meaning of the Śrāddha ritual in the Merapi-Merbabu
Putru Kalĕpasan text
I.M. Suparta & T. Pudjiastuti
Ancient religious artworks in Central Java (8th–10th century AD)
A.A. Munandar
645
653
661
Global economy, urbanization and social change
Foreword by Abidin Kusno
669
A toponymy based study on waterway trade in the ancient Mataram era
(9th–11th century AD)
G.A. Khakam & N.S. Tedjowasono
673
Development of Mandar’s maritime trade in the early twentieth century
A.R. Hamid
681
The golden age of the East Indonesian economy during the NIT era (1946–1950)
L. Evita & Abdurakhman
687
Food culture and land use in ancient times
Taqyuddin & N. Susanti
695
x
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The Treaty of 1855: Early American shipping, commerce, and diplomacy
in the Indonesian archipelago (1784–1855)
Y.B. Tangkilisan
709
Individual unit of analysis in the debate on the methodology of economics
as a social science
H.S. Pratama
717
Colonialism and segregation: An analysis of colonial policies in the Strait
of Malacca 1795–1825
T.R. Fadeli
725
The impact of economic modernization on the lifestyle of the Palembang society
in 1900–1930
N.J. Utama & L. Sunarti
733
The impact of modernization on the economy for fishermen in Makassar City
P. Rifal & L. Sunarti
741
Colonial modernity, Indonesian nationalism, and urban governance:
The making of a colonial city, Surabaya (ca. 1890–1942)
A. Achdian
749
Efforts to overcome the problems of food demand in South Sulawesi
in the Guided Democracy period (1959–1965)
A.A.A. Mulya & M. Iskandar
755
A study on how Uber seizes the transportation space in Jakarta
D.T. Gunarwati & L. Kurnia
761
Commuter line e-ticketing system and the disciplining of urban citizens
A. Sandipungkas & L. Kurnia
769
The dynamics of production and consumption in Islamic housing
J.D. Shanty & M. Budianta
775
Typical French linguistic process on Facebook
F.G. Junus & M. Laksman-Huntley
785
Indonesian-English code-switching on social media
M. Aulia & M. Laksman-Huntley
791
Use of English hedges by 12 learners in academic writing: A case study of pragmatics
Y. Widiawati & F.X. Rahyono
797
“You are what you eat ... and post”: An analysis of culinary innovation and
cultural branding in Panggang Ucok’s Instagram account
S.M.G. Tambunan & M.R. Widhiasti
805
The use of cohesive devices in deaf and hearing children’s writing
Novietri & B. Kushartanti
811
Acoustical analysis of pitch contour in autism spectrum disorder
L. Roosman, T.W.R. Ningsih, F.X. Rahyono, M. Aziza & Ayesa
819
Characteristics of word duration in children with autism spectrum disorder
T.W.R. Ningsih, F.X. Rahyono & Ayesa
827
Experimental approach of perception toward autism spectrum disorder intonation
F.X. Rahyono, T.W.R. Ningsih, Ayesa & M. Aziza
835
xi
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Conflicts of interest among Indonesian university libraries in developing intellectual capital
Laksmi & L. Wijayanti
843
Changes in the virtual reference services at Bina Nusantara University to meet
users’ information needs
M. Septiana & T.A. Susetyo-Salim
851
Students’ information behavior and the use of library reference service at Surya
International School, Jakarta
R.R. Romadon & T.A. Susetyo-Salim
857
Transformation from conventional to virtual library reference services at Surya
International School, Jakarta
D.P. Prabowo & T.A. Susetyo-Salim
865
Empowering students with information literacy education as one of the library
reference service functions at Surya International School, Jakarta
E. Cahyani & T.A. Susetyo-Salim
873
Reconstructing Joko Widodo’s national education ideology: A critical
discourse analysis on the policies in Indonesia
R.M.P. Silalahi, N.J. Malik & E. Mulyajati
881
Nationalism and neoliberalism in education: A critical discourse analysis
of presidential speeches in Indonesia’s reform era
R.M.P. Silalahi, N.J. Malik & U. Yuwono
891
Values of neoliberalism in education: A comparative study of Indonesian presidential
speeches in the New Order and Reform Era
R.M.P. Silalahi, U. Yuwono & Y.J. Aminda
899
Meeting the challenges of global competition: Preserving and revitalizing the cultural
heritage of Bagansiapiapi
A.A. Harapan & L. Mariani
907
Preserving and maintaining traditional culture through interior design: A case study
of Torajan elements in a local restaurant
P. Salim
913
The toponymy of the ancient port city of Gresik in the northern coastal area of Java
Z. Muhatta & N. Soesanti
921
Author index
929
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Organizing committee
STEERING COMMITTEE
Rosari Saleh (Vice Rector of Research and Innovation, Universitas Indonesia)
Topo Santoso (Dean Faculty of Law, Universitas Indonesia)
Ari Kuncoro (Dean Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Indonesia)
Adrianus L.G. Waworuntu (Dean Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia)
Arie Setiabudi Soesilo (Dean Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Indonesia)
INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD
Peter Newcombe (University of Queensland, Australia)
Fred Piercy (Virginia Tech University, Australia)
Frieda Mangunsong Siahaan (Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia)
James Bartle (University of New South Wales, Australia)
Elvia Sunityo Shauki (University of South Australia, Australia)
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Manneke Budiman
Isbandi Rukminto Adi
Beta Yulianita Gitaharie
Surastini Fitriasih
Sri Hartati R Suradijono
Elizabeth Kristi Poerwandari
CONFERENCE DIRECTOR
Tjut Rifameutia Umar Ali
CONFERENCE VICE-DIRECTOR
Turro Wongkaren
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Dewi Maulina (Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia)
Intan Wardhani (Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia)
Elok D. Malay (Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia)
Josephine Rosa Marieta (Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia)
Teraya Paramehta (Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia)
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Nila Ayu Utami (Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia)
Priskila Pratita Penasthika (Faculty of Law, Universitas Indonesia)
Efriyani Djuwita (Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia)
Destri Widaya (Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Indonesia)
WORKSHOP COMMITTEE
Corina D.S. Riantoputra (Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia)
Fithra Faisal Hastiadi (Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Indonesia)
Mirra Noormilla (Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia)
TREASURERS
Robby Oka Yuwansa (Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia)
Nurul Husnah (Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Indonesia)
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Social norms, social movements, and ethics
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Foreword by Manneke Budiman
Morality, ethics, and individuality are the main ideas of this section. Despite the diversity
of topics and focuses, the authors in general make their individual attempts at making sense
of how norms begin from individual explorations of life, and at one point, ideas start getting viral, almost epidemiological, like today’s memes that quickly and widely circulate social
media, and become parts of the collective or cultural property of a people. Social movements
play an instrumental role in the inculcating of new ideas into norms, but also in revolutionizing them—replacing the old ones with the new ones. Different authors in this section
approach these issues from philosophical, political, and historical perspectives, offering a
large and complex picture of how culture—at the levels of ideas, social behavior and institutions, as well as individual creative endeavor—evolves.
The question of ethics complicates things further. Ethics is a dimension that keeps coming
back as ideas crystalized into norms, behavior gets institutionalized, and individual expressions canonized into arts. The personal does not entirely get erased by or disappear into the
collective in the process of the birth of a culture. Instead, it persists, and ethics is part of the
personal realm that always disrupts the collective, cultural process through self-interrogating
processes which take place while changes are happening at the social and political levels.
From Norms to Movements
If norms are often described as established and sometimes even rigid, ethics is always understood as much more dynamic and less black and white. Hence the impression that the relationship between the two tends to be uneasy. This is where morals come into play. If norms
are a set of rules that makes up a morals system that guides a society through its slippery
journey between what is right and what is wrong, ethics works in a parallel manner, despite its
less charted trajectory. Perhaps it is the rigidity, the cold hard aspect of morality that ethics
tries to penetrate in order to bring back humanity into moral principles. Many totalitarian
and dictatorial regimes throughout history are known to strongly uphold moral principles
that they believed to be unquestionable. However, what is lacking in these regimes relying on
‘hard power’ to rule is exactly the humanistic touch, of which ethics is the most fundamental
and constitutive component.
This is why social conflict that occurs in society can only be addressed first and foremost
through ethical means above all else, as an author suggests. Only a society possessing a system of ethics, which is as strong as its system of morals, is equipped with an adequate means
for conflict resolution. Equally true, in a society where corrupt behavior is rampant, which
threatens to dismantle the social pillars of that society one by one until it collapses, ethics can
come out as the savior if institutions that are supposed to be at the forefront in fighting the
evil elements in society are less evil than the rest.
In the Indonesian context, one author writes about the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and how committed it is to save the corruption-ridden nation despite hostility
and opposition from those who have profited from corrupt practices for long. When the
regime in power is not only authoritarian but also corrupt, thus not allowing any judiciary
institution to be strong enough to fight corrupt behavior of the state apparatuses, the media
is portrayed to be the only alternative left to do the job. Cartoons and caricatures replace the
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role of the paralyzed judicial agencies in disclosing corrupt practices of the state through
visual representations, at the risk of being silenced.
This brings us to the issue of freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is basically
understood as the kind of freedom that can only be effectively articulated when it is informed
by ethical principles, although it does not have to be always in line with the mainstream moral
system. When such freedom is not set up upon any ethical foundation, the result is hate
speech, bigotry, and demagoguery. The effect of the social destruction can be long-term, as
demonstrated by an author writing on the difficulty in exorcising the ghost of the past Nazi
era in Germany.
Again, however, in society ruled by a corrupt dictatorial regime, when both the moral and
ethical systems are almost systematically shut down, individual expressions may take over the
rehabilitating role, as stated by an author on the expressions of artistic voices during the New
Order Indonesia. Arts—be they music, literature, or even digital art—may serve as an ‘antibody’ that helps the society fight against the dark power. But what is the role of agency in all
these affairs? If behind all these are individuals with autonomous minds who can maintain
a critical distance from the social madness of their society, what are the factors that allow
individuality and agency to be activated? To answer these questions, authors in this section
are even set to dig further into the analysis of characters in ancient literature and manuscripts
as well as historical texts by testing how far modern western ideas on morality and human
consciousness can satisfactorily explain traditional and local cosmologies.
Self, Identity, and Context
Some of the authors in this section seem to believe that self is the keyword toward understanding human agency. Self is understood as both an autonomous and historical subject.
The formation of the sense of self is shaped by its independent quality but also by its own
positioning in history. In other words, there is no such thing as fully autonomous self, and
that it is always located in specific space and time. This is especially true if an individual is to
be viewed as a moral agent, which implies its location in society rather than a mere discourse
on an abstract, conceptual level. Some authors even go further by speculating the possibility
of “no-self ” when identity is assigned to an individual, considering that identity is always
situated between what one would like to be and what society expects one to be.
In some of the articles, authors perceive human agency in intersections with its sociocultural and ecological responsibilities as inseparable from ethics. Some of the authors examine these concepts through case studies conducted in East Nusa Tenggara and Bali, where
local beliefs and adat are still faithfully observed. Thus, there are efforts made to contextualize
esoteric concepts into various local cultural settings, aiming at finding how they materialize
in the everyday practice, or even are used as part of the strategy to protect the environment
from ecological threats caused by development programs. This is where we can see how ideas
get translated into social action in the form of movements, as illustrated by one article on the
anti-reclamation movement in Bali.
Some other authors look at social movement from the perspective of history, going back to
the colonial period in Indonesia. The question of human agency becomes even more urgent
when situated in the colonial context as freedom is severely limited and control of the colonial
power interferes deeply into the everyday life of the people in the colony. Authors investigate
how rules and laws, policies and practices, are designed to strengthen the colonial authority
over the colony, but we can also see how the colonized respond to the administrative arrangements that are meant to subjugate them. This dynamic relation between the colonizer and
the colonized becomes the focus of some of the articles in this section, such as the ones on
the colonial intervention in the law-making process in Ternate, the mobilization of resistance
through organizational tactics in Batavia, and the inculcation of colonial ideology among
European settlers in the colony through leisure and domestic household practices.
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Colonial Ghost and Postcolonial Problematics
However, problematizations of coloniality and decolonization of the mind do not stop at the
success of gaining independence from colonial power. Authors also offer critical examinations on how ideology and practices from the colonial past continue to haunt, and sometimes
even dictate, the post-colonial politics in the former colony. The binarism between “us” and
“them” that was very effective and successful in mobilizing people in the colony to defeat the
colonial power has transformed into a mentality that can also threaten the unity of the new
nation-state, especially when used to achieve different political agendas by various political
groups.
Newly institutionalized democratic practices such as decentralization, general election, and
public participation can open up new avenues toward a more stable and democratic society,
but they can also become sources of political tensions as both the good and rogue elements
of the nation try to use them for their own purposes, as illustrated by articles on populism in
the reform era after the collapse of the New Order, and the local riots that occurred following the
2006 election in Tuban area, or the armed rebellion of the islamist militias in Sulawesi in the
1950s, not long after the declaration of Indonesia’s independence from the Dutch.
Shortly after independence, the sense of national identity was in crisis, different ideological
camps turned against one another. Different ideological camps that had united themselves
to fight the Dutch during the revolutionary period wanted to go their separate ways, as the
dream for a common future was crumbling. The masses were mobilized along religious and
ideological lines, and movements were formed partly because of these differences, but also
partly because there were widespread discontents with the central government. Similar type
of dissatisfaction among the masses also occurred near the end of the New Order era, as the
government failed to provide basic staple food to the people, and corruption was rampant.
This period was the heyday of the emergence of various social movements along gender, religious, class, and professions. This explains why after the reform era, populist strategies served
as an effective political means for political mobilization, as one article suggests.
Among academicians in the humanities and arts, political discourses become a popular
subject of enquiries. They get interested in critically looking at what lies beneath political
propaganda, campaigns, speeches and rhetoric of the political elite and public figures. Studies on pragmatics and semiotics with regards to texts such as everyday conversations, diplomatic letters, and mass media material, from caricatures to obituaries. Contemporary global
issues like terrorism and environment have also become some of the most pressing concerns
for scholarly studies, as reflected in some of the articles.
The section presents a wide range of topics that intersect with one another in very intricate yet intriguing manners, showing the richness and complexity of the studies of human
being in its personal and social contexts across history. It helps to understand how culture
evolves, as well as how people respond to socio-cultural changes that take place in their life.
The key elements that tie all the articles that seem to be loosely related to one another are
consciousness, morality, ethics, and agency in the sense of how they together give birth to
social norms and social movements that spur change in the first place. Together with the
other three sections on separate issues, all of the authors in this section attempt at offering
a multidisciplinary take on problems related to human action and behavior that have been a
subject of interest in humanities research and writings.
Manneke Budiman
Universitas Indonesia
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Social conflict resolution and the need for a system of ethics
A. Seran
Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Social conflicts may arise from a plethora of reasons that encompass political, economic, cultural and religious factors. Social antagonism in modern life, particularly the
notion of enabling citizens to take control of their lives and free themselves from the structures
which dominate and constrain them, has long become an interesting topic to discuss. Concerning this issue, a system of ethics is needed to empower emancipation rather than to suppress
and disrespect diverse cultures. This essay, which aims to promote mutual recognition, draws
on a critical interpretation of Indonesian historical epochs to respond to the call for Indonesian political renewal. Using Honneth’s young Hegelian concept of recognition through love,
respect, and esteem, a system of ethics can be re-established as a moral grammar for social
conflict resolution. As Indonesia’s national ideology, Pancasila (the five principles) upholds the
same values as those found in Honneth’s young Hegelian concept of social recognition, such as
love for the family, respect for civil society, and solidarity of the nation. Thus, a system of ethics for political renewal can be re-established as a moral grammar for resolving social conflicts.
1
INTRODUCTION
Social conflicts occur due to an unwillingness to accept views, beliefs, and behaviours that
differ from our own. Such conflicts may also arise in political settings where authoritarian
rulers tend to dislike criticism coming from the public or in economic affairs where superiors display an unwillingness to follow the state’s regulations on issues like corporate social
responsibility. Disrespect is violence when it is used to condemn. In connection with that,
justice becomes the only way to test what is right or wrong. Therefore, a system of ethics is needed. Social conflicts take form in unwillingness such as disrespect and intolerance.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) addressed the state of nature as the war of all against all
(bellum omnium contra omnes). The rise of civitas was thus expected to end social conflicts
through social contracts. Hobbes’ argument was that the absence of civitas was due to chaos,
namely the fear of death. The Greek city-state became the mirror image for Hobbes to end
the state of nature through a community of men that has decided to be governed properly in
a continuing control by a supreme ruler (Hobbes, 1994).
J. Locke (1632–1683), J.J. Rousseau (1712–1778), and I. Kant (1724–1804) developed Hobbes’ initial concept of social contract in their own social theories. Locke focused on the claim
that freedom was socially constructed, therefore no claim on innate reason could be rationally accepted (Coplestone, vol. v., 1994). Rousseau was concerned about general will since
it limited individual freedom in actual conditions. In a similar vein, Kant declared practical
reason as the production of moral choices or decisions in accordance with the law which
proceeds from itself (Coplestone, vol.vi., 1994).
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was influenced by both the empiricist theory
of social contract and the Kantian subjective theory of morality. However, he offered a new
understanding of history and morality. His theory of history was concerned with the realization of moral choices in accordance with the law of the state. To this extent, the use of
Pancasila as the basis of natural ethical life fits Hegel’s initial theory of moral substance,
in which primary relations such as love, respect, and esteem in the family are well thought-out.
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The three basic forms of primary relations as mentioned in Schweiger’s “Recognition and
Social Exclusion”, namely love (personal relationship), rights (cognitive respect), and solidarity (social esteem), are required in developing and sustaining self-confidence, self-respect, and
self-esteem within intersubjective relations of the everyday life of the people (2013).
This essay will be based on Axel Honneth’s left Hegelian interpretation of Hegel’s revolutionary thinking regarding the centrality of recognition in Realphilosophie which was Hegel’s early
work (1801–1807) on philosophy that referred to an understanding of ethical substance and the
practice of the primary relations of love, respect, and esteem among family members. Hegel’s
concerns were about the normative content and practical orientation of reason and freedom
in everyday life and world experience. From this perspective, Pancasila can be compared to
Hegel’s Realphilosophie, whose normative content such as love, respect, and esteem serves as
the ground rules for lawmakers and the norms in the actual experience of people’s ethical life.
Pancasila is the Sanskrit word used by Sukarno to name the five principles of the Indonesian
state philosophy in a speech delivered before the Investigating Committee for Preparatory
Work for Indonesian Independence (BPUPKI) on 1st June 1945. The five principles are
nationalism, humanitarianism, democracy, social welfare, and pluralistic monotheism. These
modern concepts set so nonchalantly in a medieval frame were explicitly identified with an
indigenous peasant concept of gotong royong, which literally means the collective bearing of
burdens and figuratively means the piety of all for the interests of all (Geertz, 1973).
1.1
Hegel’s Realphilosophie
Hegel developed his concepts of reason and freedom throughout two periods. The one developed in the earlier period in Jena (1801–1807) was his philosophical concern for the natural life
world, which he named Realphilosophie. Meanwhile, this essay sees the later period as the old
Hegelian period, in which his philosophical works focused on objective ethical life as the perfect
realization of natural ethical life in the form of the absolute power of the state. His later works
consist of Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) or Phenomenology of Spirit, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1817) or Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences,
and Rechtphilosophie (1821) or the Philosophy of Right. From this point of view, one can see the
distinction between the young Hegelianism and the old Hegelianism, where the young Hegelianism focused on understanding of natural ethical life as an ethical substance of the Spirit and
objective ethical life as the subject which is the Spirit as the rational alone is real. Therefore, in his
later works, what is truly rational is the idea of the state as the sole arbiter of law.
The right Hegelians are considered as the safeguards of Hegel’s orthodoxy and conservatism about the absolute power of the monarch. Unlike the right Hegelians, Honneth takes the
left Hegelian position to focus on Hegel’s idea about history as a purpose of and a promise
for the greater good of social relations in years to come. For the sake of clarification and
distinction, it is better to describe the right Hegelianism as a characterization of the old
Hegel, while the left is used to refer to the young Hegel. Hence, the young or left Hegelianism
proceeds to present radical critiques on Hegel’s mature works on religion and the political
system. The argument is as follows. World history has not reached its end yet. Therefore, the
fulfilment of an objective and absolute ethical life in form of a constitutional state is still in
the making. In present constitutional states, social relations still becomes a way of forming
love, respect, and esteem as they are not reflected in positive laws to serve social relations in
a constitutional state. According to Honneth, critical social theories must begin by Hegel’s
initial concepts of the deed of history that live in families’ real experience of primary relations of love, respect, and esteem. Only by taking the natural ethical substance of the family,
critical social theories can do justice to the everyday life of the people and be applicable to
the development of the life of the state in modern conditions.
1.2
Phenomenology of spirit
The Phenomenology of Spirit is well known as Hegel’s opus magnum in the philosophical
discourse of the historical development of civitas from its natural stage of particular ethical
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life to the state as the objective and full realization of a society into a constitutional state
considered as the universal and absolute ethical life. The following quotation shows how
Hegel developed his theory of natural ethical life into a theory of objective ethical life. In this
quotation Hegel has shown the development of the Spirit in its substance in natural ethical
life into its actuality as the subject of the ethical life. This development followed the logical
division of the Spirit within historical epochs.
The mind passes from being to not-being and from not-being back to being, it can
rest in neither, and each disappears, as it were, in its opposite. Their truth is thus
this movement of the immediate disappearing of the one into the other. And this
movement from being to not-being and from not-being to being is becoming. In
other words, the concept of the Absolute as being is the concept of the Absolute as
becoming, as a process of self-development (Coplestone, vol. v., 1994).
The Spirit is the notion of the Absolute in Hegel’s dialectic. It does not refer to any transcendent deity which in the Aristotelian sense refers to the state (polis). The spirit is the totality, the whole reality which is the state as the Absolute ethical life that all-embraces families
as particular forms of ethical life (Coplestone, vol. v., 1994). Families become a civil society
under the rule of the state as the absolute actuality of a living civitas. From this point, one
can understand why Hegel gave high value to the insight of historical epochs rather than writings about historical facts. For Hegel, history is the Spirit that develops (from a natural state
of families into a state of civility) into its wholeness (Hegel, 2001) as shown below.
Once the Spirit reaches its maturity, a constitutional state emerges to mediate and control
the continuing process of being the whole reality at the highest stage. This is the dialectic
process from (thesis, antithesis, and synthesis) being a child to being a mature Spirit. In the
highest stage, the Spirit integrates and unites all elements into one whole entity without eliminating or reducing either poles.
From this dialectic process, one can see that in Hegel’s formulation of the highest stage in
the dialectic process, the Spirit is fully conscious of itself as the converging point that unites
ethical substance and ethical life. If we apply this to the relationship between the normative
content and practical orientation of a theory of the relationship between morality and law,
we see how much Kant’s theory of morality influences Hegel’s Philosophy of Rights. However, for Kant, the legitimacy of law is based on individual freedom, whereas Hegel places it
on the sole arbiter of the state. Hegel tries to be consistent in his logic of development from
natural ethical life to objective ethical life by giving priority to the Subject which now takes
Table 1.
Mediation in division and development of world history.
Division and
development of
world history
Table 2.
Childhood spirit
Adolescent spirit
Manhood spirit
Mature spirit
Subjectivity
Unmediated
Subjectivity
Unstablemediation
Substantiality
Substantiality
Subjectivity
Mediated by
political
despotism
Substantiality
Subjectivity
Mediated by a
constitutional
state
Substantiality
Division and development in ethical life.
Division and
development
in ethical life
The family
Civil society
The state
Marriage
Family capital
The system of needs
Administration of
justice
Police and
corporation
Constitutional law
Sovereignty and
foreign states
International law
Education of children
and dissolution
of the family
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the form of state as the absolute and universal power of law-making beyond particular ethical life of individuals as members in families and civil society. This is shown below:
The state becomes the concrete unity of the objective will that cannot be achieved by both
family and civil society. Only through the state can both the substantial order (the family)
and the public life (civil society) be realized as an objective and universal will.
Hegel developed his dialectic process in phenomenology in his philosophy of rights by
distinguishing the German words Recht and Gesetz. Recht refers to a good or just society,
whereas Gesetz refers to laws. Recht probes into the inner meaning of law, while Gesetz
is the description and compilation of laws as legal facts. This is to show that the movement of history from an abstract right (property-contract-wrong) to morality (purpose and
responsibility—intention and welfare—good and conscience) finally reaches the unity of
abstract right and morality as the perfect realization of the universality of ethical life (the
family—civil society—the state).
According to Hegel’s Philosophy of Rights (Par. 5), the state becomes the perfect actuality
of ethical life which subsumes the family and civil society. The immediate substantiality of
mind is love among family members (Par. 158), and it can be developed into a complex relation among members of a civil society (Par. 187). This is the reason Honneth’s left Hegelian
theory of recognition is based on its natural substance in the life of the family. The state as the
objective actuality of the system of needs (Par. 257) for all citizens must begin and reflect the
ethical substance in the family. In connection with this, the idea of Pancasila can be critically
reconstructed into a moral grammar to affirm that the primary relations in the family must
be considered as the structural rules and norms by the state in order to seek social conflict
resolution.
1.3
Ethics as a reconstructive science
Ethics is about moral principles that govern the behaviour of a person or community. According to Honneth, a system of ethics is to be rationally justified and socially acceptable only if
such a system is based on mutual recognition. Recognition begins in its primary expressions
of love, respect, and esteem in the family. Accordingly, the rule of law in a constitutional state
must be based on mutual recognition that has already been practiced in everyday life.
In his ethical theory about recognition as a sound basis, Honneth made use of Jürgen
Habermas’s theory of communicative action and GH Mead’s theory of symbolic interaction
(1985; Seran, 2014). Honneth’s aim is to integrate the normative content of morality in
Habermas’s theory of communicative action with Mead’s practical orientation of generalized
interest in communicative practice in order to convince people that social recognition can be
established to ground an ethical system in modern societies.
In defending his social theory of recognition as the structural rules and norms in modern
societies, Honneth criticized his predecessors who were the first generation of the Frankfurt
School in the Institute for Social Research (German: Institut für Sozialforschung), such as Max
Horkheimer and TW Adorno. By doing so, Honneth, as the third generation of the Frankfurt
School, uncovered in the writings of Horkheimer and Adorno the misinterpretation of resolving social pathologies merely by way of criticizing the normative content of the enlightenment project without giving an alternative in formulating practical orientation for critical social
theory to create an ethical system for actual redemption. The novelty of Honneth’s theory of
an ethical system is the reformulation of Hegel’s early concepts of the natural ethical life where
love, respect, and esteem in the everyday life of the people, in both families and civil society,
should be taken as a valid claim of social norms (Hegel’s Phenomenology, Par. 348).
The goal of Honneth’s theory of social recognition is to establish a social critical theory as
the moral grammar in reading and practicing social interaction and as the only way to resolve
social conflicts in modern societies. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of
Social Conflicts (1996) is Honneth’s opus magnum of social critical theory. Honneth states
in his book that the absence of recognition is expressed by disrespect that takes the form of
physical/psychological abuse, denial of rights or exclusion, denigration, or insult. It is for that
reason, which Honneth tried to reconstruct an ethical system to provide for intersubjective
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relations based on the value of mutual recognition. Hegel agrees that Hegel’s Realphilosophie
is more convincing as a critical theory to gain social integration rather than his Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Rights. This is because in these two books, Hegel seems to
abandon the primary relations of love, respect, and esteem in their natural stage of development. Hegel’s concept of natural ethical life must be developed into the structural rules and
norms for positive laws to work for a constitutional state.
The young Hegelians, such as K. Marx, G. Sorel, and J.P. Sartre, have developed the young
Hegelian theory of ethical life but they have failed in formulating a morality to guide social
struggle for recognition. They have reduced the problem of morality into an economic problem as shown by Marx’s Paris manuscripts in which intersubjective recognition was reduced
into a political analysis of capitalism, thus misunderstanding the young Hegelian concept of
the struggle for recognition. In Das Kapital, Marx also discussed confrontation as a collective
struggle for legal recognition of the workers against the legal neglect of their class specific
concerns. Marx failed to direct social conflicts into social integration (Honneth, 1996). The
Neo-Marxists of the first generation of the Frankfurt School also committed the same mistake in the Dialektik der Aufklärung (1944) by stressing only the normative content of social
pathologies without suggesting any practical orientation to resolve the problem (Adorno &
Horkheimer, 1979). Neo-Marxist critique expressed some kind of cultural pessimism and
surrendered to a negative language about Kant’s practical reasons (Agger, 1989). Adorno
and Horkheimer have not succeeded in making critical social theory the power of liberating
men into a new historical epoch (Kellner, 1989). The Eclipse of Reason (1947) by Horkheimer
and Negative Dialectic (1966) by Adorno were against the affirmative traits in both Kant’s
practical reason and Hegel’s dialectic process (Kellner, 1989). The second generation of the
Frankfurt School under the influence of Habermas paved the way to a new understanding
of critical social theory in which Honneth, in formulating new critical social theory, takes a
stand that integrates Kant’s theory of individual freedom and the young Hegelian theory of
recognition. The idea of individual freedom and social recognition should be complimentary
to each other in order to be used in establishing a new ethical system.
Honneth’s theory of moral grammar inspires cogent analyses of recognition to draw a
system of ethics to work for modern societies seeking social conflict resolutions and social
integration (Honneth, 1985). Honneth considers his critical social theory to build a system of
ethics based on primary relations of everyday life experience. Recognition is now developed
beyond its initial conception of the term in Hegel’s Realphilosophy, especially in its development against disrespect that now takes various forms of humiliation, intolerance, selfishness,
and exclusiveness in modern societies (Honneth, 2007). Recognition must be built into the
heart of the ethical system because in many cases the identity formation of the individual
becomes vulnerable to various forms of social disrespect. Drawing on Hegel’s Realphilosophie,
Honneth argues that the three forms of social recognition in the natural state of ethical life
cannot be ignored in building an ethical system. Emotional concern and support in intimate
relationships of love and friendship, the equal respect accorded to right-bearing individuals,
and the social esteem grant individuals the abilities to achieve love, respect, and esteem, in
which “disrespect” of physical or psychological abuse, denial of rights or exclusion, and denigration or insult can be overcome (Flynn, 2008).
1.4
Pancasila as a moral grammar
History comes to us through philosophical insights rather than historical data. From this point
of view, the emergence of Pancasila can be understood by looking at a history of Indonesian
that is comprised of Hindu and Buddhist civilizations from India, the coming of Islam, the
Portuguese, the Dutch traders, and the Japanese occupation. The emergence of nationalism
in 1908 symbolized by Budi Utomo was followed by the youth movement in 1928 and finally
culminated in a struggle for an Indonesian ideology in the Investigating Committee for Preparatory Work for Indonesian Independence from March to June 1945 (Bahar, et al., 1995).
Full recognition of Pancasila as the state philosophy was established on 18th August 1945,
one day after the declaration of Indonesian independence on 17th August 1945.
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Today, social conflicts challenge our understanding of the normative content of Pancasila
and its practical orientation to resolve social conflicts. In a daily report on 30th September
2013, Republika, which is a national newspaper, reported that Indonesia had 183 disadvantaged regions, 143 of which were conflict-prone areas. According to Suprayoga Hadi, the
Deputy Minister for the Development of Special Regions, many of these areas were located
in Eastern Indonesia. According to the report, the roots of conflicts are economic, sociocultural, religious and political issues. The reporter observed that there is a link between
disadvantaged regions and conflict. Therefore, the development has to be rebooted, and this
time conflict prevention efforts should involve not only local governments but also the local
people. An organizing program for community empowerment must be encouraged to improve
people’s living standards. The Indonesian government and the European Union have organised a national workshop for the sustainable development of peace in social conflict areas,
including conflict-affected groups, non-governmental organizations and several decisionmakers at all levels of public administration (Republika News, 2008). Pancasila presents its
historicity like a route map, in which basic values of primary relations in the family have naturally caused great concern to make social relations based on love, respect, and esteem. These
values must be reflected in the objective ethical life of the state when positive law-making is
designed to develop social integration, not only among Indonesians but also with its immediate neighbours such as Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, and
the Philippines. The region’s peace and stability could also be threatened, because of what
is happening in Indonesia. In addition, the prospects of surmounting the present difficulties
will benefit the region that is closely monitoring the developments in Indonesia.
2
CONCLUSION
Even if recent conflicts of interests were justly adjudicated, a society would remain
normatively deficient if its members are systematically denied the recognition they deserve
concerning their basic values.
REFERENCES
Adorno T. & Horkheimer, M. (1979) Dialectic of Enlightenment. Verso edition. (John Cumming, Trans.).
(Original work published in 1944).
Adorno, T.W. (1973) Negative Dialectic. (E.B. Ashton, Trans.). London & New York, Routledge.
(Original work published in 1966).
Agger, B. (1989) On happiness and the damage life. In: Neill, J. O. (ed.) On critical theory. Lanham &
London, University Press of America.
Al Marsudi, S. (2004) Pancasila dan UUD’45 dalam Paradigma Reformasi (Pancasila and the 1045 Constitution in the Reform Paradigm). Jakarta: Raja Grasindo Persada.
Bahar, S., et al. (1995) Risalah Sidang Badan Penyelidik Usaha-usaha Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia
and Panitia Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia (Meeting of the Investigating Board in the efforts to
prepare for Indonesian Independence and the preparation of Indonesian Independence committee).
Jakarta, Sekretarian Negara.
Baynes, K. (1993) The critique of power: Reflective stages in a critical social theory; Schweiger,
Gottdfried. (2013). “Recognition and Social Exclusion” in Ethical Perspectives: A Quarterly Review,
20, 535.
Coplestone, F. (1994) A History of Philosophy, (Vol. 5). Image Books.
Coplestone, F. (1994) A History of Philosophy, (Vol. 6). Image Books.
Flynn, J. (2008) The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory by Axel Honneth. Cambridge UK, Polity.
Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Habermas, J. (1985) The Theory of Communicative Action: Life-world and System, a Critique of
Functionalist Reason (Thomas MacCarth, Trans.). (Vol. 2). Boston, Beacon Press. (Original work
published 1981).
Hegel, GFW. (n.d). Phenomenology of Spirit, par. 177; par. 348.
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Hegel, GWF. (1942) Rechtphilosophie [Philosophy of Rights] (T.M. Knox,Trans.) Oxford, The Clarendon Press.
Hegel, GWF. (2001) The Philosophy of History, with prefaces by Charles Hegel and the translator
J. Sibree, MA. Ontario, Batoche Books.
Hobbes, T. (1994) Leviathan. London, Everyman.
Honneth, A. (1949) Kampf und Anerkennung [The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of
Social Conflicts] (Joel Anderson, Trans.). Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Polity Press.
Honneth, A. (1985) The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory (Kenneth Baynes,
Trans.). Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press. (Original work published 1993).
Honneth, A. (2007) Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit [Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical
Theory]. Polity Press. (Original work published 2000).
Horkheimer, M. (1947) The Eclipse of Reason. New York, Oxford University Press.
Kant, I. (1964) Groundwork of Metaphysic of Morals, (H.J. Platon, Trans.). New York, Harper
Torchbooks.
Kellner, D. (1989) Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Ramage, D.E. (1995) Politics in Indonesia. London and New York, Routledge.
Review of Disrespect in International Philosophical Quarterly 48:1. http://www.republika.co.id/…
al-politics/12/05/08/m3pkhx*.
Seran, A. (2014) Civil society: A study of jürgen habermas’s theory of deliberate democracy.
Communicare: Journal of Communication Studies, 20, 76–83.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Editorial cartoons and the visualization of corruption at
the beginning of the New Order (1968–1974): Case study
of Indonesia Raya daily
A.M. Padiatra & A. Setiawan
Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This study aims to discuss the visualization of corruption through editorial
cartoons by examining a case study of Indonesia Raya newspaper in the early years of the New
Order during the period of 1968–1974. In the course of its history, Indonesia Raya became one
of the newspapers that posted the existence of corruption cases through its editorial cartoons.
This article argues that criticism of corruption cases can be traced not only in text, but also in
satirical images which are sometimes sarcastic and playful. This research identifies the dynamic
development of Indonesia Raya newspaper’s editorial cartoons in enabling the visualization of
corruption cases during the early years of the New Order until the Malari event in 1974 which
ended the history of the newspaper. Using a historical method, this paper attempts to present
the study of visual history to record an event in the history of the country.
1
INTRODUCTION
In the press, cartoons and caricatures are tools used to influence public opinion apart from columns of editorials and news articles. The behavior of groups of individuals can be described
through the use of cartoons and caricatures. Through cartoons, readers are invited into a more
relaxed atmosphere. Although the messages in the cartoons are as serious as news articles in
the newspaper, they are more easily digested and understood. Thus, cartoons are a life message
that contains a lot of verbal descriptions (Sumadiria, 2006). Anderson (2006) describes cartoons as an attempt to realize collective consciousness without having to go through bureaucratic and political institutions. This understanding in itself reflects the function of cartoons
as a means of delivering alternative information to editorials and news articles.
In the course of Indonesia’s history, cartoons or caricatures have long been used by the
press as a media for criticism. Several newspapers, such as Harian Rakjat, Fikiran Ra’jat,
Djawa Baroe, Merdeka, and Suara Karya published editorial cartoons in their newspapers
(Suwirta, 1996). As a piece of editorial in image form, cartoons can also reflect the policies of
the editorial staff. However, as a means of information that serves the function of social criticism and supervision (social control) through humor and satire, the role of editorial cartoons
certainly cannot be separated from local social, political, or economic conditions, including
information relating to corruption (Padiatra, 2015).
This paper describes how Indonesia Raya newspaper, a national newspaper in the early
period of the New Order, responded to corrupted officials or institutions through visualization in editorial cartoons published in the newspaper. This was possible because the New
Order initially worked under the slogan of “freedom of press” after being bridled for a long
time by the Old Order administration under Sukarno regime. According to Hill (2011),
this situation supported the freedom and flexibility of the media in the early days of the
New Order. This atmosphere was then realized by the press through a series of criticisms of
various policies implemented by the government. After the riots on 15th January 1974, or
better known by the name of Peristiwa Malari, massive media bans were imposed.
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There are some works on the visual history of editorial cartoons and caricatures in
newspapers, including the dissertation work of Sunarto from the Faculty of Arts and Design
of Institut Teknologi Bandung (FSRD ITB) (2005) entitled Metafora Visual Kartun Editorial pada Surat Kabar Jakarta 1950–1957 (Visual Metaphors of Editorial Cartoons in
Newspapers in Jakarta 1950–1957) and the published work of Sunarto (2013) entitled Perang
Karikatur: Mengangkat dan Menjatuhkan Soekarno Tinjauan Sejarah 1959–1967. In general,
these works focus more on the visual aspects of historical art and examine the symbols and
icons of the cartoons in several newspapers in a certain period. It is then evident that the
two works do not focus on the historiography of a particular newspaper or the media as the
source materials.
This research analyzes editorial cartoons using historical methodology (Kuntowijoyo,
1995) and approaches editorial cartoons of Indonesia Raya newspaper as a narrative writing
material whose validity and accuracy can be examined and interpreted. This way the editorial
cartoons could be reconstructed into a narrative history. Sobur (2003) identifies five elements
to focus on in the analysis of a cartoon. The five elements (context, content, targets, techniques, and messages) are covered by historical methodology in order to connect the editorial
cartoons with the social situation at that time.
1.1 Indonesia Raya and corruption: Visualization at the beginning of the new order 1968–1974
Indonesia Raya or IR was published as a newspaper in Jakarta for the first time on 29th
December 1949, or two days after the recognition of Indonesian sovereignty by the
Netherlands on 27th December 1949 (Haryanto, 1995). At that time, Indonesia Raya emerged
as one of the newspapers owned by the Republicans alongside Rosihan Anwar’s newspaper
Pedoman and BM Diah’s newspaper Merdeka (Hill, 2006). These newspapers resurfaced after
the reign of the Old Order ended.
Under the leadership figure of Mochtar Lubis, Indonesia Raya pretty much played some
roles in the Indonesian history through its reports on corruption cases that occurred in the
early years of the New Order (1968–1974). Hill (2011) classifies Indonesia Raya newspaper as
part of a group of radical press during the New Order administration, along with Pedoman
and Nusantara as well as the newspapers run by university student groups such as Harian
KAMI and Mahasiswa Indonesia.
According to some observers, Indonesia Raya can be categorized as a muckraking paper,
which is a newspaper that focuses on methods of investigating political or economic scandals.
On the other hand, some readers of this newspaper also considered it as a “jihad newspaper”
because of the way it delivered news, which often leveled criticism in an open, sharp, and
direct manner through simple and popular language without using many terms to iteratively
refine meaning making it reach a broad scale of people (Atmakusumah, 1992). According to
Alfian (1973), this attitude positioned Indonesia Raya as an anomaly in a culture of Indonesian society where the expressions of criticism are considered more important than the
content, as well as the concern whether such criticism still adheres to the code of conduct. It
also subsequently led to the banning of the newspaper under Mochtar Lubis’ leadership by
the authorities on 21st January 1974 after the events of Malari 1974 took place.
During its second period after its rebirth, Indonesia Raya (1968–1974) covered corruption
cases that were visualized and showed dynamic fluctuations, both in the number of cases and in
the intensity of the narrative. In this period, Indonesia Raya highlighted more corruption cases
in government institutions, such as Bulog, Pertamina, and Customs. This is different from the
first period (1949–1959) when Indonesia Raya focused more on individual corruption cases,
such as the case of privilege license granted by then Minister of Economy Iskaq Tjokroadisurjo
in order to raise funds for Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI), and the embezzlement committed
by then Minister of Foreign Affairs Ruslan Abdulgani (Atmakusumah, 2016).
Based on the research conducted by the authors on Indonesia Raya over the period
from 1968 to 1974, there were around 121 editorial cartoons. They were identified as editorial cartoons that highlighted the phenomenon of corruption in the early years of the New
Order administration. Based on these results, the authors made tabulation and finally chose
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54 works of editorial cartoons that are considered to represent each year in the period to be
visualized and discussed in depth. The following table was made in order to illustrate this point:
1.2
1968–1969: Indonesia Raya’s rebirth
In 1968, Indonesia Raya was re-established. Although the euphoria over the freedom of the
press was felt in the New Order’s early days, this did not necessarily take effect immediately
and boost the quantity of editorial cartoons depicting the theme of corruption in Indonesia
Raya newspaper. It focused more on the reappearance of Indonesia Raya at the end of the
month near the turn of the year, namely on 30th October, 1968. This made the news reporting
on corruption cases not reach its peak. However, in the early months of its activity, Indonesia
Raya already began to speak about the phenomenon of corruption that had been ongoing
in Indonesia at that time. It was recorded in the editorial cartoon on 27th November, 1968,
which was also the first Indonesia Raya editorial cartoon published in the second period.
This editorial cartoon depicts a group of people labeled as Koruptor (Corruptors – ed.) in
bold letters who are mocking a person next to them seated pensively with the label Djudjur
(Honest – ed.) inscribed underneath him by yelling DIA TIDAK NORMAL! (He is not
normal! – ed). This can be interpreted as a witty satire on the culture of corruption in pursuing wealth and career that was a common phenomenon at that time.
Visualization through editorial cartoons was consistently continued until 1969 when a
visualization of editorial cartoons related to the problem of corruption increased significantly.
This should be explored because other than that year there was only one other year where
Indonesia Raya published editorial cartoons on corruption throughout the year. However,
according to Abar (1995) this was mainly due to two things, namely the pervasiveness of
Table 1. Indonesia Raya editorial cartoons related to corruption cases in
the second period.
Editorial cartoons of Indonesia Raya
which highlighted corruption
Amount
Percentage
(%)
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
Total
8
34
44
9
23
2
1
121
6.6
28.1
36.4
7.4
19.0
1.7
0.8
100
Source: Indonesia Raya 1968–1974.
Figure 1. Editorial cartoon of IR 27th November 1968.
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Figure 2.
Editorial cartoon of IR 13th February 1969.
corruption activities in state bureaucracy and increased demands for the government to be
more careful and serious in combating corruption as well as prosecuting those responsible.
One example that represents the visualization of Indonesia Raya on corruption that year is the
editorial cartoon on Hajj fund corruption:
In the visualization, three people are carrying suitcases with the writings: tjalon hadji (Prospective Pilgrim – ed.) and reading an announcement on the wall: Pemberangkatan ditunda
sampai waktu jang tidak ditentukan (Departure delayed until further notice – ed.), while there
is someone putting a pile of money into a car. The cartoon itself is a satire on the failures of
administering Hajj which was considered by Indonesia Raya to be a result of the corruption
that occurred during the implementation.
1.3 1970: The peak of visualization
In 1970, the number of corruption cases being covered by Indonesia Raya newspaper reached
a peak, and the authors found 45 editorial cartoons related to corruption. The culmination
point itself was triggered by several things, such as rampant actions and protests held by
college students who were protesting the inflation level and the increasingly difficult life. It
is then coupled with the increase of fuel price (NARI, 1970) and the uncovering of a massive corruption scandal that implicated government institutions (Padiatra, 2015). It was then
represented through the following cartoons:
In the IR editorial cartoon published on 9th February 1970, Commission IV is visualized
as a person who brings a gun to fight against huge corruptors, symbolized only by a large
shoe, and in the right corner there is TPK which is noticeably carrying a small pistol. There
are small people who are depicted as welcoming, saying selamat bekerja bung! (Good luck on
your work, man! – ed.). In the other graphic with a theme of Alon-alon Asal Kelakon (Slow
but sure – ed.) dated 17th July 1970, a law enforcement figure is seen racing in a chariot
armed with machete chasing after criminals who are driving a sports car. This was an allusion
to the implementation of the existing laws in Indonesia, which according to Indonesia Raya
was very slow in combating corruption cases in Indonesia.
The number of corruption-related cartoons then dropped dramatically in 1971 when
news about corruption were less numerous than in the previous year. This in itself occurred
because the mass media at the time focused more on the first elections held at the beginning
of the New Order, which were considered important because it became the starting point
of strengthening the political legitimacy of the New Order government in the parliament
(IPMI, 1971). However, this does not mean that there were no corruption cases at all in 1971,
as depicted in one of the examples presented in the following visualization:
From the IR editorial cartoon dated 23rd December, 1971, one can see clearly how a large
woman who looks similar to Mrs. Tien Soeharto is taking money from a piggy bank labeled
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Figure 3. Editorial cartoon of IR 9th February 1970.
Figure 4. Editorial cartoon of IR 17th July 1970.
Figure 5. Editorial cartoon of IR 23rd December 1971.
potensi swasta untuk pembangunan (private sector potentials for development – ed.). This is
a satire visualization by Indonesia Raya on the use of off-budget funds and private funds for
the construction of TMII projects undertaken by the first lady.
1.4
1972–1973: Harsher against corruption
1972 was a period where the number of corruption cases reported by Indonesia Raya increased
after the end of the elections and the rise of the price of rice and other basic commodities.
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Figure 6. Editorial cartoon of IR 17th October 1972.
Figure 7. Editorial cartoon of IR 7th May 1973.
It made Indonesia Raya started directing the spotlight back onto the activities of financial
malpractice committed by government agencies, mainly the role of Go Swie Kie who was a
financier for the State Logistics Agency (Bulog). The following description is one example of
the visualization of editorial cartoons which was published in Indonesia Raya:
The editorial cartoon of IR dated 17th October 1972 clearly shows the figure of Bulog
chief Achmad Tirtosudiro giving food to a fat person bearing the name of Go Swie Kie. This
is an allusion by Indonesia Raya on Achmad Tirtosudiro who had a special relationship with
the financier Go Swie Kie a.k.a. Dasuki Angkosubroto, particularly in the distribution of
rice and wheat for their personal gains.
In 1973, editorial cartoons on corruption cases in Indonesia Raya were not as numerous
as in the previous years, but they were more sarcastic and harsher in their descriptions. This
was because Indonesia Raya focused more on the uncovering of the corruption cases that were
related to foreign investment which emerged at that time. In line with public opinion on development strategy and foreign capital, particularly from Japan, foreign investments were considered
linked to elements of manipulation and foreign interests. However, that does not mean Indonesia
Raya did not preach that there were new corruption cases at that time, as shown below:
The editorial cartoon above shows a picture of a giant as a symbol used by Indonesia Raya
to depict a Bea Cukai (Customs – ed.) official who is strangling a person using forceps. This
is a sarcastic editorial cartoon of Indonesia Raya against corruption committed by some
officials of Bea Cukai at the port of Tanjung Priok.
1.5
1974: Malari and the end of IR history
1974 is the culmination year where Indonesia Raya harshly criticized the rampant phenomenon
of foreign capital in Indonesia. Visualization of editorial cartoon was published regarding the
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Figure 8. Editorial cartoon of IR 11th January 1974.
arrival of the Japanese Prime Minister (PM) Kakuei Tanaka, who was regarded as a manifestation of Japan’s return to power in Indonesia. This critical stance and criticism made the newspaper to be banned permanently on 21st January 1974, a few days after the disastrous events of
the fifteenth of January also known as Peristiwa Malari.
The picture shows Tanaka saying Indonesia Nippong sama-sama ne! (Indonesia and Japan
together! – ed.) to another figure who is visualized as an Indonesian. However, behind Tanaka
there is a shadow with the words Jenderal Tojo, PM Jepang di jaman perang Asia Timur Raya
(General Toyo, Japanese PM during the Great East Asian War). The visualization was a manifestation of criticism by Indonesia Raya through editorial cartoon of the arrival of Tanaka,
who was thought to aim at re-establishing Japan’s power in Indonesia that would lead to exploitation similar to the one during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia during the World War II.
2
CONCLUSION
As one of the critical newspapers published during its second period (1968–1974), Indonesia
Raya made editorial cartoons an expression of resistance to the phenomenon of corruption
that prevailed at the time. This can be observed through visualization of editorial cartoons
between 1968 and 1974, which had dynamic fluctuations from year to year, but were consistently harsher, which then became a factor that caused the newspaper to be banned.
This consequence is understandable, considering the historical context during the early years
of establishment of the New Order, when the government viewed the press as a partner in power
and a tool to delegitimize the influence of the controlled democracy regime. As irregularities and
cases of corruption committed by the regime occurred, the relationship was soon over. Nevertheless, the attitude of a free and critical press was still allowed. It explained why a percentage of
visualization of editorial cartoons in Indonesia Raya against corruption focused more towards
various institutions or work-related activities by the government, especially the institutions related
to public interests, such as Bulog and Pertamina which were strongly associated with the financial
resources of the country at the time. This also made Indonesia Raya’s editorial cartoons afterwards took the role as an opposition to the corruption that existed at that time.
This happened because the New Order regime still needed legitimization by the press at
that time as an ethical government, while completing the process of political power consolidation. After the consolidation process had been in its advanced stage, the attitude and
treatment of the authorities towards the press changed drastically. This led up to the events
of Malari 1974, where Indonesia Raya was permanently banned and eventually ended the
history of freedom of the press at that time.
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Based on narrative visualization, editorial cartoons, as a form of event reflection from
time to time in visual form, are worthy to serve as a referral source and, coupled with other
contemporary sources, are made in order to be a part of history for the next generation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This article would not be completed without the help and inspiration from various parties,
such as Agus Setiawan who contributed in supervising the writing of this article, Andi Rachman who contributed to the writing of scientific procedures, and Atmakusumah as a senior
journalist who ultimately encouraged the author to take the theme of the press and corruption.
REFERENCES
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Anderson, B.R.O’G. (2006) Language and power: Exploring Political Culture of Indonesia. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
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PenerbitKompas.
Haryanto, I. (1995) Pembredelan Pers di Indonesia: Kasus Koran Indonesia Raya (Press Banning in Indonesia: the Case of Indonesia Raya Newspaper). Jakarta, LSPP.
Hill, D.T. (2011) Jurnalisme dan Politik di Indonesia: Biografi Kritis Mochtar Lubis 1922–2004 (sebagai
pemimpin redaksi dan pengarang) (Journalism and Politics in Indonesia: Critical Biography of Mochtar
Lubis 1922–2004 (as an editor-in-chief and author). Jakarta, Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia.
Hill, D.T. (2011) Pers di Masa Orde Baru (Press in New Order Era). Jakarta, Yayasan Pustaka Obor
Indonesia in collaboration with LSPP.
Ikatan Pers Mahasiswa Indonesia. (1972) Sari Berita dan Pendapat Pemilihan Umum 1971 (News Flash
and Opinions on the General Election 1971). Jakarta, Lembaga Pendidikan dan Konsultasi Pers.
Indonesia Raya 11th January 1974.
Indonesia Raya 13th February 1969.
Indonesia Raya 17th October 1972.
Indonesia Raya 23rd December 1971.
Indonesia Raya 27th November 1968.
Indonesia Raya 7th May 1973.
Indonesia Raya 9th February, 17th July 1970.
Khazanah National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia, Decision of the President of the Republic of
Indonesia Number 1 of Year 1970 on the rise in price of Crude Oil.
Kuntowijoyo. (1995) Metodologi Sejarah (Methodology of History). Yogyakarta, Bentang.
Mr Atmakusumah (77 Years) is the former Managing Editor of the Indonesia Raya. Interviews were conducted on 9th January 2016 at the residence of Atmakusumah in Complex PWI, Griya Journalists Jl.
Kantor Berita J-143, Cipinang Muara, Jakarta, from 01:33 pm to 04:45 pm West Indonesia Time and on
February 27, 2016 at the residence of Atmakusumah at 04:30 pm until 07:30 pm West Indonesia Time.
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1970–1974 (Introduction to Malari: Situation, Protests, and Riots in the Early New Order Era 1970–
1074). Jurnal Criksetra 4 (8), 103–119.
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Sumadiria, H. (2006) Jurnalistik Indonesia menulis Berita dan Feature Panduan Praktis Jurnalis Profesional (Practical Indonesian Journalistic Professional Guide to Write News and Features Articles).
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Sunarto, P. (2005) Metafora Visual Kartun Editorial pada Surat Kabar Jakarta 1950–1957 (Visual Metaphors
in Jakarta Newspapers Editorial Cartoons in 1950–1957). ITB Bandung. (Unpublished dissertation).
Sunarto, W. (2013) Perang Karikatur: Mengangkat dan Menjatuhkan Soekarno Tinjauan Sejarah
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Suwirta, A. (1996) Karikatur dan Kritik Sosial pada Masa Reformasi Indonesia, 1945–1947 (Caricatures and Social Criticism in Indonesian Reformation Period, 1945–1947). In: Kongres Nasional
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The 19th-century Undang-Undang Ternate: Structure and
power analysis
P.F. Limbong & T. Pudjiastuti
Department of Literature Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Research on Undang-Undang Ternate manuscripts has not yet been conducted despite their bad condition. If this condition is not addressed soon, Indonesia will
lose some of its national cultural inheritance involving ideas about law and power. This
fact constitutes the background for the research on Undang-Undang Ternate manuscripts.
In addition, studies on the manuscripts can provide information on the structure and the
application of power relation in a specific area and period, and therefore they are important. The research uses a philological method for creating an inventory of the manuscripts,
describing them, and selecting the manuscripts to be edited and reviewed, in order to collect,
understand, interpret, and analyze the data. The results will contribute to the studies of legal
manuscripts in Eastern Indonesia and of Ternate history.
1
INTRODUCTION
A legal manuscript written in the old Malay language is the type of writing commonly found
in most regions of the Indonesian archipelago. Any region with a structured government has
its own legal manuscripts. They are necessary for regulating relationships between people
living in a given region.
The old Malay laws have two forms, namely written and verbal, with the latter being passed
down through oral traditions by word of mouth and later documented during the colonial
era (Ikram, 2002, p.11). As customary laws were previously passed down through oral traditions, legal manuscripts now serve as a valuable reference thanks to their documentation
and preservation in writing. Laws can have different orientations based on the society’s need
for regulating relationships between people of high or low social status and from different
origins. The laws created by a king or the people within his circle will be different from the
“grass roots” laws (Ikram, 2002, p. 12).
Among various Malay laws Undang-Undang Ternate (UUT) is worth studying. The manuscripts are part of the crate collections of the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia
(Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia or PNRI). These crate manuscripts were first cataloged in the library in 1998 (Behrend, 1998). To date, only a few studies have been conducted
on the subject of crate manuscripts due to limited information and access to the collections.
However, they provide lots of important information about the Malay world.
The UUT manuscripts used in this study are laws written in the 19th century in the region
of Ternate (Maluku Utara, Indonesia). The study deals with King Tambuku’s coronation
and agreement between Tambuku, Ternate, and the Netherlands. Tambuku is located in the
eastern coast of Sulawesi that was under the rule of Ternate; however, because of the intervention of the Netherlands in Ternate, Tambuku took over the governance.
The structure of the UUT manuscripts differs from that of typical Malay legal manuscripts.
In general, most of the old Malay legal manuscripts are similar in structure. They normally
open with the mention of Allah and praises to Allah and Rasulullah. In the content, ethics
and moral rules are set forth by referring to the Islamic laws. In UUT, the structure is different. They open with the information about the parties involved in the laws and the purpose of
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writing such laws. The content discusses articles of agreements between the Dutch colonial
government, Ternate, and Tambuku. For that reason, the following question has to be raised:
why the structure of UUT is different from that of other Malay laws? One of the assumptions
of why this happened is because of the intervention of the Netherlands.
The purpose of this study was to prove the difference in structure between UUT and other
Malay laws. For this purpose, two steps were necessary. The first step was to work on the
text edition of UUT. The next step involved the analysis of text by means of a language
approach. The research method used for the text edition of UUT was philology; however, in
order to prove that the Netherlands influenced the UUT, the text was analyzed by using a
discourse approach.
Research on UUT manuscripts is important not only because of the lack of studies on
legal manuscripts in Eastern Indonesia, but also in order to distribute information and to
improve the knowledge of the academic society and the public about the value of the manuscripts found in various other areas in Indonesia.
1.1
Ternate legal manuscript
The UUT manuscript discussed in this study is part of the crate collections of the National
Library of the Republic of Indonesia, with code no. 113 (8/20). The manuscript is 35 × 19 cm
in size, written in the Jawi alphabet, and contains 22 pages of writing. Each page is divided
into two columns, with the left-hand side written using the Jawi alphabet and the right-hand
side written using the Latin alphabet in Dutch language. The manuscript has Ternate Resident and royal stamps on its first and last pages. It was written in 1884.
The manuscript consists of an opening, the content (13 articles), an anointment letter
(surattentukan), and an addendum letter. It contains an agreement between the King of Tambuku (Kaicil Laopeke), the Governor General of Dutch East Indies (Daniel Francois van
Braam Morris), and the Sultan of Ternate (Amiruddin Iskandar Munawarul Sadiq). In addition, the manuscript includes articles governing the agreement and consequences if Tambuku
is in breach of the agreement.
1.2
Structure of and power in Undang-Undang Ternate
The structure of the UUT manuscript consists of opening, content, closing, and appendices. In
line with Piaget’s (1995) definition of structure, these elements are interconnected. A structure
relies on integrity and totality woven by a set of elements. From this statement, we can conclude
that every element is connected to and has a function within the framework of structure.
1.2.1 Opening of the text
The UUT manuscript begins with an exordium. The exordium serves as an opening unit
that precedes, opens, and introduces the text (Soeratno, 1991a, p. 93). In UUT, it provides
information about all the parties of this legal text in detail and the purpose of the text. It is
evident in the following passage:
Bahwa paduka Sri Yang Maha Mulia/As-Sultan Tajul Mahsul Bi’inayatillah/Alhanan
Sirajul Mulki Amiruddin/Iskandar Munawarul Sadiq/wahuwaminaladilin/Syah
Putera Ayanhar,/yang memegang perintah atas/tahta kerajaan Ternate,/Suda(h)lah
bermufakat dengan/ayahanda sri paduka/tuan yang terhormat mulia/Daniel Francois
Van/Braam Morris. Resident/yang terhiasi dengan/bintang peperangan militer/Wiliam
surdeke/empat, yang memegang perintah/yang ketinggian atas tahkta kerajaan/alam
Maluku istana baldan Ternate/serta takluknya ke dalam kota Oranye/dari nama tuan
government Wilanda pada/menerima baik oleh Laopeke Kapiten/Gouf Tambuku Kaicil Laopeke/akan naik kedudukan tempat/derajat yang ketinggian nama paduka/syah
raja memerintah negeri Tambuku/serta pesisir-pesisir di bawah keperintaan/Tambuku
dengan memegang suatu qaul/wa’ad perjanjian serta/dengan sekalian bobato-bobato
dan//anak kaicil-kaicil dan pegawai-pegawai serta penjawat-penjawat/ (UUT:, 1-- 2).
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The above exordium shows that according to the text, the Sultan of Ternate had an agreement with the Resident of Ternate. The agreement deals with the anointment of a new king
and the making of a new agreement that bound the King of Tambuku and his heads of government (bobato), princes (anak kaicil), employees, and royal officials, all of whom were part
of the power structure in the Kingdom of Tambuku.
This agreement was built on an analogy of a relationship between a father (Dutch colonial
government) and a child (Ternate). The analogy confirmed the Dutch colonial government’s
domination over the local kingdom’s affairs. The power domination in this father–child relationship was the Dutch colonial government’s strategy to maintain its rule. According to
Andaya (2015, p. 242), they began using this strategy when the ruling sultan at the time did
not follow the rules set by the VOC.
1.2.2 Content of the text
The discourse in the UUT manuscript’s content illustrates the power relations between the
Dutch colonial government, Ternate, and Tambuku. Giddens (2009, p.153) argued that when
a certain party holds power “over” the others, it is called domination. Power is something
legitimized metaphysically by a country to allow its agencies to demand from its entire people
to obey them. However, according to Foucault (2000, p. 144), power arises from relations
among various forces and is absolute. Power is a strategy. This strategy prevails everywhere
and carries with it systems, rules, structures, and regulations.
The power strategy observed in the UUT text, as Foucault (2000, p.144) stated, works
through normalization and regulations, punishment, and public discipline instead of oppression and repression. It is evident in the text’s content that listed articles setting forth the
Tambuku agreement, which bounds its heads of government, princes, employees, and royal
officials. The agreement covered political, legal, and economic aspects.
From the political aspect, the content of the agreement in UUT forced Tambuku to pledge
its loyalty to the Dutch colonial government and Ternate. Under the laws, Tambuku’s political rights to engage in cooperation and diplomacy with other parties were restricted by the
Dutch colonial government and Ternate. It is evident in the following passage:
Article 2:
tiada boleh/mufakat pada siapa juga[h] yang/bermusu(h) kepada tuan Government/Wilanda
dan Ternate baik jenis kulit putih atau orang hitam./(UUT:3).
Article 3:
tiada/boleh Raja Tambuku perintah/senjata meriam/dan senapan serta/obat pasang dan peluru/
itu atas perintah utusan/Jawa (UUT: 4).
Article 7:
Tiada boleh/membawa sesuatu pekerjaan/keperintaan negeri Tambuku dengan/pesisiran,
melainkan/dengan pengetahuan utusan/dari oleh Sri Paduka Sultan/Ternate (UUT: 8).
In the text, the Dutch colonial government and Ternate used their power to intervene in
the succession system. Tambuku’s succession system was considered inefficient. Before the
agreement, royal officials would go from coast to coast in search of candidates for king. The
Dutch colonial government and Ternate discontinued this tradition. Following the agreement, Tambuku had to present a candidate before the Sultan of Ternate. The candidate was
then verified by the sultan and nominated to the Governor of Dutch East Indies. If approved
by the governor, the candidate would be anointed king. It meant that Tambuku had no
authority to appoint its own king. Such authority was held by Ternate and the Dutch colonial
government, which also had the final say. It is evident in the following passage:
Article 8:
Oleh Paduka Syah Raja Tambuku/dengan sekalian bobato-bobato dan/anak kaicil mengaku
jikalau/kedatangan ajal pulang keasalnya/oleh raja Tambuku, yaitu tiada boleh/sekali-kali
bobato Tambuku memili(h)/ataumengangkat pergantian dengan suka hati/sendiri melainkan//
membawa anak kaicil, siapa/yang boleh bergantikan itu datang/kepada Sri Paduka Sultan/
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Ternate akan ditilik kepadanya/baharulah memohon dan/bermufakat kepada tuan yang/memerintah ke dalam kota[h] Oranye dari nama/tuan Government Wilanda (UUT:8–9).
When developing the laws, the Dutch colonial government was also concerned with the
economic aspect. They imposed trade restrictions and required Tambuku to pay tribute.
They also regulated the sales of weapons. This arrangement also applied to tribute. Although
tribute was paid to Ternate, the Dutch colonial government laid down the rules. Furthermore, Tambuku no longer had the authority to set the tariff on its trade with the coastal
areas within its territory. In addition to tariffs, trade bureaucracy was also a part of this
arrangement. It is evident in the following passage:
Article 2:
tiada boleh/belim meriam dan senapan/dan peluru atau ubah pasang/dari orang-orang dagang
(UUT: 3).
Article 6:
Tiada boleh sekali-kali//berutang kepada orang dagang siapa/juga atau menjual/beli rakyat
dibuat akan hamba/ (UUT]:6–7)
Article 9:
Oleh Paduka Syah Raja Tambuku/dengan sekalian bobato-bobato dan/anak kaicil-kaicil mengaku menurut/adat kebiasaan orang-orang Tambuku/akan membuat kasian/kepada oleh Sri
Paduka Sultan//Ternate pad atiap-tiap tahun,/yaitu tujuh pedang, tujuh tombak/tujuh tongkat
besi,/dua kodi kain sarung/biru, dan kapal kodi,/kain sembah, enam kayu, dua pikul/lilin[g],
serta satu budak/tetapi kasian budak/itu tiada boleh lagi./Maka digantikan dengan dua/kodi
kain sarung biru/buatan Tambuku./Dan di negeri Poso empunya/kasian tiga kodi/kain sarung
itu pun masuk/kepada sri paduka sultan/(UUT:9–11).
The legal aspect in the UUT represented the Dutch colonial government’s intervention as a
response to an ethical policy introduced at the end of the 19th century. The policy abolished
the arbitrary regulations on opium use and the slavery system (Ricklefts, 2008). It was first
adopted in 1884 and included in UUT. Before this intervention, the Tambuku government
referred to the Islamic law as its legal system. The basis for this was the people of Tambuku
were Muslims. The Islamic law was adopted to regulate their day-to-day life. However, the
Dutch colonial government removed this law that was perceived as being potentially harmful
to its interests. It is evident in the following passage:
Article 1:
melarangkan/pula seperti menyabung [h]ayam/dan memain tuak serta/isap madat atau lainlain pekerjaan/yang tiad apatut, yaitu tiada boleh melainkan/diberi suatu hukuman kepadanya,/
tetapi jangan membuat salah pada/itu orang dengan ilat atau menaruh/duduk di dalam pasungan//
sehingga mati, yaitu tiada boleh sekali-kali/melainkan ditimbang itu kesalahan dipatutkan
dengan huku-/mannya jangan terlalu keberatan sekira-kira jua/mengikut sebagaimana tersebut/
di dalam kitab melainkan tiada boleh/menaruh hukuman qisas dan rajam/atau ziladah adanya/
(UUT: 2–3).
Article 9
...budak/itu tiada boleh lagi./Maka digantikan dengan dua/kodi kain sarung biru/buatan
Tambuku/(UUT:9).
1.2.3 Closing of the text
The domination of the Dutch colonial government is also prominent in the manuscript’s closing.
In this part, they purposely added parties who were not mentioned previously, namely the kings
(sangaji) of areas within Tambuku’s territory. These kings swore to admit the existence of this
agreement. By signing the agreement, they acknowledged, recognized, and were bound by it.
Involving the kings of coastal areas signified the power relations between the Dutch colonial government, Ternate, and Tambuku, in which the first two exercised their power over the
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third. Ternate involved the parties to acknowledge this agreement as a precautionary measure in anticipation of Tambuku’s violation of the agreement by using a third party.
1.2.4 Appendices of the manuscripts
The UUT manuscript has two appendices: anointment letter and addendum letter. The
anointment letter described the crowning of Captain Gouf Laopeke as the King of Tambuku.
The letter was validated by writing in Dutch language and marked with a Ternate Resident
stamp at the bottom. The letter also contained information that it was written by the clerk of
algemeene secretarie. Furthermore, the text mentioned that the agreement was made based
on the recommendation of the Dutch colonial government. It is evident in the following
passage:
Itu surat-surat perjanjian/terkunci antara kita/punya penganjur-penganjur Government/
Hindia Nederland. Kita/akan turut dengan/setiawan terlebih dari/ini /(UUT:17).
In addition to the anointment letter, the appendices also include an addendum letter. It
contains 19 paragraphs confirming the King of Tambuku’s covenant to abide by the articles
of the agreement in UUT. The Kingdom of the Tambuku’s royal stamp is placed at the bottom. Next to it, there is a passage written in Dutch language. The placement of the royal
stamp indicated that the King of Tambuku was under the Resident of Dutch colonial government and the Kingdom of Ternate. Gallop (1992, p.13) made a similar observation:
In the case of a royal official letter, the (royal) stamp was placed on the right-hand side of
the content of the letter, parallel to the first line of the praises. The employee stamp was also
positioned on the right-hand side, but parallel to the praises at the end of the letter, whereas
the commoner stamp was found at the bottom of the letter.
Based on the above passage, Tambuku was positioned as a commoner because it was a
protectorate of Ternate, as well as of the Dutch Colony at the time of the agreement and
thereafter.
2
CONCLUSION
The structure of UUT was influenced by the Netherlands because of its interest in strengthening its power in Ternate and Tambuku.
The control was evident in the structure of the UUT manuscript. The exordium clearly
illustrated the relations between Ternate and the Dutch East Indies. The content embodied
the subject of the agreement, namely political, legal, and economic aspects. The articles indicated the domination of the Dutch colonial government over Ternate and Tambuku. This
domination was successfully identified as the intervention of the Dutch colonial government
by way of changing the succession system, regulating Ternate and Tambuku’s diplomatic
affairs, changing Tambuku’s legal system that they considered harmful, and regulating the
sales of weapons. The placement of the royal stamp in the addendum letter also showed
that Tambuku was under the Resident of Dutch colonial government and the Kingdom of
Ternate.
From the above structure, we can clearly see the influence of the Dutch colonial government on the production of UUT. Its involvement in the writing process was part of its power
strategy of normalization and regulation. In this text, instead of maintaining physical control, the Dutch colonial government exercised its power by using a discourse as a medium of
control, regulation, and discipline.
REFERENCES
Andaya, L.Y. (2015) Dunia Maluku: Indonesia Timur pada Zaman Modern Awal (The World of Maluku:
Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modern Era). Yogyakarta, Penerbit Ombak.
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Behrend, T. (1998) Katalog Induk Naskah-Naskah Nusantara Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia (Main Catalogue of Manuscripts from the Indonesian Archipelago of the National Library of the
Republic of Indonesia). Jakarta, Yayasan Obor Indonesia dan Ecole Francaise D’ Extreme Orient.
Foucault, M. (2000) Seks dan Kekuasaan (History of Sexuality). Translation. S.H. Rahayu. Jakarta,
Gramedia.
Gallop, A.T. (1992) Surat Emas Budaya Tulis di Indonesia (The Golden Letter of the Written Tradition
in Indonesia). London, British Library.
Giddens, A. (2009) Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, structure, and contradiction in social
analysis. Translation. Dariyatna. Yograyakarta, PustakaPelajar.
Ikram, A. (2002) Karya Sastra Undang-Undang Dari Kerajaan Wolio (Literary Work of Law of the
Wolio Kingdom). Paper for Simposium Internasional Pernaskahan Nusantara VI, 12th–14th August,
Bandung.
Piaget, J. (1995) Strukturalisme (Structuralism). Translation. Herrmoyo. Jakarta, Yayasan Obor
Indonesia.
Soeratno, S.C. (1991) Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain: Analisis Resepsi (The Tale of Iskandar Zulkarnain:
Reception Analysis). Jakarta, Balai Pustaka.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
KPK and the commitment of the Indonesian government
to eradicate corruption (2004–2014)
H.R. Mufti & B. Kanumayoso
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Corruption in Indonesia is systematic and therefore anticorruption movements are of utmost importance. To do so, the Indonesian government has established the
Commission for Corruption Eradication, known as KPK, which is a special institution that is
responsible for eradicating corruption in Indonesia. However, this commission cannot work
alone as the government’s commitment and support to eradicate corruption in the country
is also important. The law enforcement and the bureaucracy reform are still insufficient to
fight against corruption. In this study, we apply a historical method consisting of four stages:
heuristic, criticism, interpretation, and historiography.
1
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the problem of corruption in Indonesia has become a national topic that has
been discussed much, in both print and electronic media. According to Fukuyama, corruption is an act where the elite enters politics just to gain profits or resources and enrich themselves and their families at the expense of others (2016, pp. 1–2). Corruption in Indonesia
has been very systematic and detrimental to the society, leading to difficulty for the people to
obtain justice and prosperity. Because corruption has such a systemic impact on the society,
corrupt behavior must be systematically eradicated.
The issues of corruption and the attempts to eradicate it are not new in Indonesia. The
first effort to eradicate corruption in Indonesia was undertaken in 1957 during the period
of President Sukarno (1945–1966). On 9 April 1957, the Chief of Army Staff issued a regulation on anticorruption policy No. Prt/PM/06/1957, which was signed by the chief military leader Major General A.H. Nasution. Then, under President Suharto’s administration
(1966–1998), the responsibility to eradicate corruption was entrusted to the Corruption
Eradication Team (TPK), which was assisted by the Commission of Four established in
1970. Later, during the administration of President B.J. Habibie, several other institutions
were established, including the Commission of State Property Investigation and Administration (KPKPN), the Commission for Business Competition Supervision (KPPU), and the
Ombudsman Commission. These institutions were expected to prevent corrupt practices to
support the bureaucracy reform movement initiated in 1998. However, they were deemed
ineffective and therefore under the administration of President Abdurrahman Wahid, a Joint
Team of Corruption Eradication (TGPTPK) was founded.
In its effort to eliminate corruption, the Indonesian government launched a bureaucracy
reform aimed to institute a professional and clean government with integrity and free from
corruption, collusion, and nepotism (KKN). The anticorruption measures are also reinforced
by the State Audit Board of the Republic of Indonesia (BPK), a government body that is
responsible for auditing and overseeing the accountability of state apparatus expenditures.
Any findings by the BPK auditors would be reported to the law enforcement institutions for
further processing.
According to Alatas, the strategy to eliminate corruption must be based on power (1987,
p. 18). However, the effort to eradicate corruption often faces difficulties when dealing with
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high authorities. Often, when government officers are involved in corruption cases, the government needs to intervene. In fact, the success of a government is assessed from not only the
physical development index but also the human development index, including the corruption
perception index.
Based on the above statement, the author tries to analyze this issue by conducting a historical study on KPK and the measures on eradicating corruption that were undertaken by
KPK during the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) in Indonesia from 2004 to 2014. This paper is the result of the research that used a historical method
consisting of four approaches: heuristic, criticism, interpretation, and historiography.
In the heuristic stage, the author collected primary data through interviews, newspapers,
and contemporary magazines. In addition, there are several secondary sources, such as journal articles and supporting books, which were used to study the posed problems. Several
journal articles were also used as references, including “Korupsi Ditinjau dari Segi Sejarah”
(Historical Overview on Corruption) by Susanto Zuhdi (2009); “Pemberantasan Korupsi di
Indonesia: Sebuah Upaya Reformasi Birokrasi” (Corruption Eradication in Indonesia: A
Bureaucratic Reform) by Sri Suwitri (2007); “Peranan Penegakan Hukum di Indonesia dalam
Pemberantasan Korupsi” (The Role of Law Enforcement in Corruption Eradication in Indonesia) by Puji Wulandari Kuncorowati (2005); and “Hypercorruption dan Strategi Pemberantasan Korupsi” (Hypercorruption and Corruption Eradication Strategy) by Iwan Gardono
Sujatmiko (2002). However, almost all of these journal articles discuss corruption from the
law enforcement aspect, and no article discusses this issue specifically from the historical perspective, except for the article by Susanto Zuhdi. This study differs from the one written by
Susanto Zuhdi in that it focuses more on the efforts of corruption eradication.
This study uses the structuration theory of Anthony Giddens. According to Giddens, the
pattern of action and social practices form a structure, and in turn, the structure conditions
the pattern of actions or social practices of individuals or groups (2010, pp. 26–27). This
condition continues so that there is a dialectical relationship between the structure and the
action. Based on Giddens’ thought, it is understood that corruption is the result of a social
interaction that has been formed or patterned, structured, and dialectically connected to the
action that has been going on for a long time. It is not easy to break a patterned structure
that has been long practiced. Therefore, KPK as an anticorruption agent needs a strong commitment from the chief executive, in this case, the commitment from President SBY, as the
highest authority in the government of the Republic of Indonesia at that time.
1.1
Eradication of corruption during SBY’s administration
Based on the 1998 mandate, the Indonesian government has pledged to seriously eradicate
corruption. This was reinforced by the issuance of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR)
Decree No. XI of 1998 on clean government that is free from corruption, collusion, and nepotism. In addition, on 29 December 2003, Indonesia established a special anticorruption institution under the mandate of Act No. 30 of 2002. KPK is an independent state body, which means
that this commission is not under the authority of either the President or the Parliament. Unlike
the earlier corruption eradication institutions, KPK has the authority to conduct inquiries,
investigations, prosecutions, and prevention (author’s interview, 2015). In the process of inquiry
and investigation, KPK has the authority to use wiretapping without acquiring permission from
the President or the Parliament. While handling corruption cases, KPK cannot dismiss a case or
issue a Warrant of Investigation Revocation (SP3) (Danang Widijoko, 2015, p. 115).
SBY was the sixth president of the Republic of Indonesia, who was inaugurated on 20
October 2004 (Rickleft, 2005, p. 683). At the beginning of SBY’s administration, Indonesia
was facing many problems in various fields, such as ideology, politics, defense and security,
and economic, social, and cultural issues. One of the important issues that must be resolved
is the issue of corruption that has led to a systemic impact on the people’s lives. Based on
the results of the study by Transparency International (TI), Indonesia was ranked 133 out
of the 145 countries for corruption (www.ti.or.id). This means that Indonesia, among other
countries, is perceived as extremely vulnerable to corruption.
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The commitment from the state leader to eradicate corruption is considered important
in the leadership of a country. The anticorruption commitment was declared by SBY in his
presidential election campaign in 2004 (Tempo, 19 September 2004). It was possible that the
anticorruption movement was also used as a campaign gimmick to gain sympathy from voters to choose their presidential candidates. Once SBY was elected, it was his duty to carry
out the reform agenda to establish a clean government free from corruption, collusion, and
nepotism (KKN). According to the President, law enforcement is the main key in the effort to
eradicate corruption (Pikiran Rakyat, 21 October 2004). However, it is common knowledge
that the law enforcement institutions in Indonesia, such as the police and the state prosecutors, are presumed by the public as corrupt because their trust toward these legal institutions
is very low. The establishment of KPK in Indonesia has given a new hope to the people to
eradicate corruption more effectively.
1.2 Performance of KPK in eradicating corruption (2004–2009)
The government was committed to supporting and collaborating with KPK to eliminate
corruption. Basically, KPK was formed to intensify more effective and efficient exertion by
other legal institutions, such as the police and state prosecutors, in eradicating corruption
(Suara Indonesia, 12 November 2008). However, in fact, most people have lost their confidence toward these law enforcement institutions except for KPK. This assumption is reasonable given the number of corruption cases in Indonesia involving law enforcers.
The first KPK case led by Taufiqurrahman Ruki (2003–2007) was to handle the highprofile corruption case in the procurement of local government helicopters that involved the
Governor of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, Abdullah Puteh, on 7 December 2004 (Kompas,
8 December 2004). In this graft case, the state was estimated to suffer a loss worth 50 billion
rupiahs from corruption. KPK’s action was considered as a new breakthrough in the history
of corruption eradication in Indonesia, because the Commission was able to bring to trial
high-profile corruption cases worth more than 1 billion rupiahs.
According to Amien Sunaryadi, during the period of 2004–2007, KPK managed to handle
five high-profile corruption cases and more than 10 small corruption cases. Several highprofile corruption cases involved law enforcers and bureaucrats from the government, such
as Abdullah Puteh (the Governor of NAD), Mulyana W. Kusuma (a member of KPU),
Nazaruddin Syamsudin (KPU), Harini Wiyoso (a member of MA), and Rokhmin Dahuri
(the Minister of Marine and Fisheries) (author’s interview, 2016).
In 2007, KPK was headed by Antasari Azhar (2007–2009), and during his tenure, he handled the bribery case of the Bank Indonesia Liquidity Funds (BLBI) that involved the state
prosecutor Urip Tri Gunawan (2008). This graft case managed to bring to court the corrupt
state prosecutor Urip who was alleged to cause an estimated loss of 28 trillion rupiahs of
state funds from the BLBI case.
In addition, some other major corruption cases that were successfully handled by Antasari
Azhar included the case of the Governor of Bank Indonesia, the bribery case of parliament
members, Al Amin Nur Nasution (2008) and Jusuf Feisal (2008), the graft case involving a
member of the judicial commission, Irawadi Joenus (2007), and the bribery case involving a
parliament member, Bulyan Royan (2008). These corruption cases have caused a loss of state
funds up to trillions of rupiahs.
From Table 1, we can observe that KPK has advantages over other institutions in terms of
investigation techniques. When compared with other law enforcement officers, KPK is supported by qualified human resources capable of carrying out its mission in revealing all corruption cases in Indonesia. With these privileges, KPK has emerged as an institution much
aspired by the Indonesian society. Therefore, KPK has always become the media spotlight
in every execution of its duty, from exposing the cases of bribery under the Red Handed
Operation (OTT) to the time of the search. Being successful with such achievements, KPK
managed to regain public trust.
Until 2008, the government had been satisfied with the performance of KPK that helped
the government to enforce the law, especially in eliminating the practice of acquiring illicit
31
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Table 1.
Investigation authority executed by different institutions (Amien Sunaryadi, 2016).
Investigation techniques
Check documents
Check accounting (financial
accounting)
Analysis of bank accounts and
transactions
Tracking the flow of money
Analysis of structured financial
data
Computer forensics including
digital data analysis
Building forensic and other
forensic
Surveillance
Electronic surveillance
Undercover operation
Informant management
Consignment interception
People communication
interception
Analysis of communication
traffic
Analysis of intelligent
information
Searching the place and
confiscating belongings
Searching people
Capturing and handcuffing
people
Reconstruction of events
Summoning and examining
people
Cooperative witness
Defensive witness
Suspect
Total
%
Police
Crime
Invest
Unit 1
Police
Crime Special
Invest Crime
Unit 2 Unit
BPK BPKP KPK OJK
Big
Four Ideal
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Y
X
Y
X
Y
X
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
X
X
X
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
X
X
X
X
X
X
Y
X
Y
X
Y
X
X
X
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
X
X
X
X
Y
X
Y
Y
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
X
X
X
X
Y
X
X
Y
Y
X
X
X
X
Y
X
Y
Y
Y
Y
X
X
X
Y
X
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
X
X
X
X
Y
Y
X
X
X
X
Y
Y
Y
X
X
X
X
Y
X
X
Y
Y
Y
Y
16
73%
X
Y
Y
5
23%
X
Y
Y
4
18%
Y
Y
Y
6
27%
Y
Y
Y
6
27%
Y
Y
Y
19
86%
Y
X
X
3
14%
Y
Y
Y
11
50%
Y
Y
Y
22
funds from corruption. People became optimistic that corruption eradication would run well
during SBY’s administration. Moreover, SBY was considered quick in responding to the corruption cases involving government officials. Those who were arrested by KPK and were
found guilty for corruption had to be immediately removed from their office, such as the
case of the former Governor of Aceh, Abdullah Puteh, and the state prosecutor, Urip Tri
Gunawan.
Toward the end of 2009, people were surprised because KPK had the audacity to name
Aulia Pohan as a suspect in a corruption case involving funds from Bank Indonesia. He
was convicted for approving the disbursement of 100 billion rupiahs from the Indonesian
Banking Development Foundation (YPPI) in a meeting of the Board of Governors of Bank
Indonesia in relation to the BLBI case (BBC Indonesia.com, 27 November 2008). This of
course tarnished the image of President SBY as an anticorruption figure, as Aulia Pohan
is the father-in-law of SBY’s son. Therefore, in response to this specific corruption case,
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SBY’s administration had to be very careful. SBY promised that he would not intervene in
the case. The corruption case that involved Aulia Pohan occurred close to the presidential
election campaign period. At that time, SBY was running for president for his second term
in 2010–2014. However, probably not many people were aware that Aulia Pohan during his
imprisonment often received remission from the government until his final release on parole
on 18 August 2010 (see Kompasiana, 9 September 2011).
Not long after arresting Aulia Pohan, the Chairman of KPK, Antasari Azhar was accused
of being involved in the murder of the Director of Putra Rajawali Banjaran (a private trading company), Nasrudin Zulkarnain. As a result, Antasari was dismissed from his position
as the Chairman of KPK on 11 October 2009 under the Presidential Decree No. 78/P 2009
and was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Before he was named as a suspect, KPK under the
leadership of Antasari had been handling the investigation of two high-profile corruption
cases, namely the Bank Century scandal and the corruption case of General Election Commission Information Technology (IT KPU) that involved some figures close to the President
(Rakyat Merdeka, 7 May 2011).
After Antasari Azhar’s discharge as the Chairman of KPK, President SBY appointed
Tumpak Panggabean Hatorangan (2009–2010) as the Acting Chairman of KPK on 21 September 2009, as stipulated in the Perpu No. 4 of 2009. In Tumpak’s tenure, several other
corruption cases were successfully disclosed, for example, the corruption cases of the procurement of sewing machines and the cattle import involving the former Social Affairs Minister Bachtiar Chamsyah and the corruption case of the procurement of fire trucks that
involved the Governor of Riau Islands (Kepulauan Riau), Ismet Abdullah, as a suspect.
However, some major cases, such as the case of Bank Century and the BLBI case, were suddenly discontinued and no longer heard by the public.
When the debate of the Antasari Azhar case was not even finished yet, KPK had to deal
with a conflict between KPK and the police. Chandra M. Hamzah and Bibit Samad Riyanto,
the two Deputy Chairmen of KPK were arrested on 29 October 2009 by the police for allegedly accepting bribes. Before the incident, rumors were circulating that KPK had evidence of
wiretapped records on the Bank Century case between Susno Duadji, who was then the head
of the criminal investigation unit of the Police Headquarters, and Budi Santoso, one of the
high-worth customers of Bank Century (Fahrojih, 2016, p. 16). This caused Susno Duadji
to have a suspect status. However, shortly afterward, the National Police Headquarters set
Chandra and Bibit as suspects for allegedly accepting bribe from a man named Ari Muladi
related to Integrated Radio Communication System bribery case at the Department of Forestry (Kompas, 6 November 2009).
The public was very concerned about this case. Their concern was manifested in urging
President SBY to intervene directly to solve the dispute between KPK and the National
Police. However, the response from the President seemed very slow. For almost 2 months
after the case had emerged, the President did not take any concrete action to resolve the dispute. President SBY seemed to be deliberately allowing this because he was upset with KPK
for arresting Aulia Pohan who was his close relative. In fact, before the legal proceedings
against Bibit and Chandra began, President SBY made a controversial statement 2 weeks
before the presidential election:
“Terkait KPK, saya wanti-wanti benar. Power must not go unchecked. KPK ini
sudah power holder yang luar biasa. Pertanggungjawabannya hanya kepada Allah.
Hati-hati”. (tvone.co.id, 2009)
“Regarding KPK, I warn you to be careful. Power must not go unchecked. KPK
is an extraordinary power holder. They are only accountable to God. Be careful”.
(tvone.co.id, 2009)
The President’s statement was delivered when he visited the office of Kompas, a leading
national newspaper. The President considered that the authority of KPK to bug telephones
for surveillance purposes had been misused and that this could lead to irresponsible outcome.
After a few days, due to public pressure, which was quite high at that time, the Attorney General issued a letter of revocation of the case (SKP3) for Chandra and Bibit.
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Until now, the public has suspected that the cases involving Antasari Azhar, Chandra, and
Bibit were just a designed criminalization against them since KPK had prosecuted the close
relatives of the President for corruption. These cases apparently were just based on fabricated
evidences, and the case of Chandra-Bibit received public defense. With the criminalization of
the KPK leaders, KPK’s performance in eradicating corruption began to decline.
1.3
Performance of KPK in eradicating corruption (2010–2014)
If compared with the early period of SBY’s administration, KPK’s effort to eradicate corruption in this second period encountered many obstacles. The commitment of SBY’s administration that had promised to support the eradication of corruption began to raise doubts,
especially after the arrest of SBY’s relative involved in a corruption case. SBY was inaugurated as president for the second time on 20 October 2010, for the period of 2009–2014.
On 20 December 2010, KPK had new leadership because of the fit and proper test process
to replace Antasari Azhar and Busyro Muqoddas (2010–2011). During the period of Busyro’s leadership, not many cases were revealed because his tenure was relatively short. Busyro
was replaced by Abraham Samad, who was officially inaugurated on 16 December 2011.
When Abraham Samad (2011–2015) led KPK, there were several major corruption cases
that were successfully brought to trial, including the corruption case of the Hambalang
Athlete Compound, the SKK Migas Gratuities, Imports of Beef Gratuities, and the local
elections of Lebak District in Banten. The perpetrators included were Andi Malarangeng,
Muhammad Nazaruddin, Angelina Sondakh, Anas Urbaningrum, Ratu Atut Chosiyah, Akil
Mochtar, Lutfi Hasan Ishaq, Ahmad Fathanah, and Rudi Rubiandini. Coincidentally, Andi
Malarangeng, Muhammad Nazaruddin, Angelina Sondakh, Jero Wacik, and Anas Urbaningrum were the high officials of the Democratic Party, the party that supported the President
as one of the Board of Trustees. This led to the decline of its electability in the public eye.
Another big corruption case that was successfully disclosed by KPK was the case of the
SIM (driver’s license) simulator that dragged generals and senior police officers. This led to
more conflict between KPK and the police. Because of this conflict, the police withdrew 20
police investigators from KPK on 14 September 2012 (Kompas, 15 September 2012). In fact,
on 5 October 2012, one of the KPK investigators, Novel Baswedan, was arrested at the KPK
office for using excessive force against several suspected thieves of swiftlet nests in Bengkulu
in 2004 (Kompas, 6th October 2012). At the same time, Novel was investigating the corruption case involving the SIM Simulator that involved high-ranked police officers like Djoko
Susilo. This incident reignited the dispute between KPK and the National Police. This again
invited the public to urge the President to intervene. Instead of being reactive, the President
remained reserved on the pretext of not wanting to intervene. It seemed that as if the President has given his approval to the unilateral actions carried out by the police.
Under public pressure, on 8 October 2012, the President declared that the SIM simulator
corruption case was to be handled by KPK, while the police handled other cases that were
not directly related. The President stated that the arrest of Novel Baswedan was not considered appropriate in terms of time and means (Kompas, 8 October 2012). The President’s
speech had concluded the polemic between KPK and the National Police.
2
CONCLUSION
According to the structuration theory of Giddens, structure and agency are a duality, which
means that the agents and structures compromise each other and cannot be separated in
the social system (2010, p. 40). In the initial period, KPK as an anticorruption agency was
considered successful in enforcing the law against corruption under the structure of SBY’s
administration. The government was satisfied with the performance of KPK and pledged to
support this performance. However, the President’s commitment to eradicate corruption was
increasingly questioned. This was because many Democrat cadres who had supported SBY
were involved in major corruption cases. In addition, the granting of remission to corruptors
34
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such as Aulia Pohan also raised doubts on the government’s commitment to eradicating
corruption.
Although SBY’s administration did not appear to intervene with KPK’s effort to eradicate
corruption, the granting of remission to corruptors may have created an image to the public
that the government of SBY did not fully support KPK. In fact, people had an impression
that the government was responsible for weakening KPK’s action because of its reluctance to
support KPK. This led to the decline in KPK’s performance, and therefore KPK had to be
selective to avoid cases that involved the center of power which might threaten the existence
of KPK.
The collaboration between KPK and the government was based on a dual relationship
of mutual compromise in eradicating corruption. Each side could not work independently
because both parties were interrelated. Therefore, a strong commitment from both sides was
essential to eradicate corruption.
REFERENCES
Amien Sunaryadi. (Personal communication, 3rd March 2016).
Alatas, H. (1987) Korupsi: Sifat, Sebab, dan Fungsi (Corruption: Characters, Causes, and Functions).
Jakarta, LP3ES.
BBCIndonesia.com, 27th November 2008, retrieved on 1st June 2016.
Chandra Martha Hamzah. (Personal communication, 16th April 2015).
Fahrojih, I. (2016) Hukum Acara Pidana Korupsi (Corruption Criminal Procedural Law). Malang,
Setara Press.
Fukuyama, F. (2016) What is Corruption? Gov.UK, Prime Ministers Office.
Giddens, A. (2010) Teori Strukturasi (Structuration Theory).Yogyakarta, Pustaka Pelajar.
Kompas, 8th December 2004. Library Collection of KPK RI.
Kompas, 6th November 2009. Library Collection of KPK RI.
Kompas, 15th September 2012. Library Collection of KPK RI.
Kompas, 6th October 2012. Library Collection of KPK RI.
Kompas, 8th October 2012. Library Collection of KPK RI.
Kompasiana, 9th September 2011. Library Collection of KPK RI.
Pikiran Rakyat, 21st October 2004. Library Collection of KPK RI.
Rakyat Merdeka, 7th May 2011. Library Collection of KPK RI.
Ricklefs, M.C. (2005) Sejarah Indonesia Modern: 1200–2004 (The History of Modern Indonesia: 1200–
2004). Jakarta, Serambi.
Suara Indonesia, 12th November 2008. Library Collection of KPK RI.
Sujatmiko, I.G. (2002) Hypercorruption dan Strategi Pemberantasan Korupsi (Hypercorruption and
Corruption Eradication Strategy). Jurnal Kriminologi Indonesia (Journal of Indonesian Criminology), 2(1), Jakarta, Universitas Indonesia.
Suwitri, S. (2007) Pemberantasan Korupsi di Indonesia: Sebuah Upaya Reformasi Birokrasi (Corruption Eradication in Indonesia: A Bureaucratic Reform). Jurnal Ilmu Administrasi dan Kebijakan Publik (Journal of Administration and Public Policy), 4(1), Semarang, Universitas Diponegoro.
Tempo, 19th September 2004. Library Collection of KPK RI.
Widiyoko, D. (2013) Oligarki dan Korupsi Politik Indonesia (Political Oligarchy and Corruption in Indonesia). Malang, Intrans Publishing.
Zuhdi, S. (2009) Korupsi Ditinjau dari Segi Sejarah (Historical Overview on Corruption). Masyarakat
Indonesia, Majalah Ilmu-ilmu Sosial di Indonesia (Indonesian Society, a Journal of Social Sciences in
Indonesia), XXXV(1), Jakarta, LIPI.
www.ti.or.id, retrieved on 1st June 2016.
35
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 36
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Autonomy and historicity of an individual as a moral agent
J.P. Kamuri & H.S. Pratama
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Morality is a universal and distinctive human feature. Compared to other
living creatures, morality emphasizes human’s uniqueness that it leads to describe human as
a morality agent. Humans make judgments based on rationality to justify what morally right
or wrong actions are. This paper elaborates the perennial debate about morality, the source
of the values that humans are rooted for finding their moral orientation. The first part will
reiterate Alasdair MacIntyre and communitarianism thinker’s arguments that moral judgments come from collective values shared in a community. Rational moral agent means an
individual who is bound to historicity of one’s tradition. Hence, morality is particular and
subjective. The second part of this paper will present Kantian point of views to examine
whether a historical moral agent has autonomy that is derived from a priori, universal principles. At the end of this paper, I will show that the concept of autonomy and historicity of
moral agents are not mutually exclusive.
1
INTRODUCTION
The debate regarding morality has become a complicated problem in the contemporary
society. The root of the problem is the idea of morality itself in relation to the position of the
individual as moral agent. Despite being philosophical in character, the debate certainly has a
practical urgency, especially, when a heterogeneous society is always in a situation of tension.
By doing so, a review of the philosophy of morality and the moral agents may have practical
implications directly or indirectly.
Humans are born in a world filled with various ideas about morality. It is important then
to decide which idea will guide our moral judgment to show the reason behind our moral
actions. Philosophers think about this kind of situation by looking for the nature of the
right or wrong and good or bad actions. They attempt to discover the idea that can be used
as a moral standard to help us reason about our moral judgements. These ideas have been
always an intellectual debate in the morality discourse i.e. deontology and utilitarian ethics.
The former approach argues that to decide what is moral, we need to check the reason why
one takes an action with a set of duties. In other words, morality for Kant was not just about
what you do, but about why you do it. The decision has to be based on a reason that tells you
what your duty is, regardless of how you happen to feel. Meanwhile, the latter approach,
or also known as consequentialist or teleological ethics, measures one’s ethics based on the
goal of his action and the following consequences (Bertens, 2007, p. 254). Utilitarianism
also challenges the radical understanding of egoism that argues being moral is to do the
best thing for yourself. Utilitarianism believes that doing a moral action is one that brings
harmless consequences for every subject that is involved in one particular situation (Rachles,
2004, pp. 146–147, 169). Unlike the traditional views about morality that focuses on objective, universal moral standards, relativism highlights that moral norms are relative to certain
places (Magnis-Suseno, 1989, p. 109). Based on anthropological, ethnological, historical,
and ethnological findings, there is cultural relativism that puts norms in a community as the
moral standard (Magnis-Suseno, 1989, p. 109). Cultural relativism has a significant effect on
communitarianism thinkers. They both argue that the source of morality is shared values in a
37
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community (Magnis-Suseno, 2005, p. 198). It is an anti-thesis to the objective-moral principle
that introduces the concept of autonomy.
The tension between traditional views (deontology and utilitarianism) and communitarianism has been discussed in multiple academic writings. In Morality, Reasons, and Sentiments
(2011), Eric Vogelstein criticizes the traditional concepts of morality that associates it with
reason per se. He offers intuition and sentiments as an alternative account to go beyond the
canonical attitudes towards beliefs and desires. In Internalization and moral demands (2012),
William Sin rejects the argumentation stating that the moral agent’s consciousness about his
duties is obtained from his adaptation to moral theory through an internal psychological
development. He refutes the communitarian’s view about external factors in the community
that determines moral agent’s consciousness about his duties. This paper will try to find an
intersection point between the traditional/liberal view and communitarianism. I argue that
morality is a rational account that involves both rational reasoning and historicity of an
individual as a moral agent. One’s rationality does not solely depend on moral disposition
that becomes the metaphysical ground of moral obligations (Robinson, 2011). In “The Ethical Subject/Agent as Rational Individual but also as So Much More! (2011), Jacquelyn A. K.
Kegley has made a description about the intersection by presenting a complexity in moral
decision making that involves various factors such as reasons, emotions, and experiential
dimensions of ordinary living and acting. This paper will use Alasdair MacIntyre’s concept about communitarianism and Immanuel Kant’s principle on moral agent’s autonomy to
show that there is an intersection point to bridge the two.
1.1
Locating a moral agent in a social setting
Cultures shape the way we reason about our moral judgments. It is an undetachable part
to gain understanding about our rationality in making moral judgments (1988, p. 367). It is
called historicity to describe the influence of other members in a society to a moral agent.
Rationality in this paper refers to the responsibility of a moral agent towards his rational
argumentations in demonstrating the rightness/wrongness of his moral decision. The values
in a society also shape the way a moral agent perceives and interprets reality and results a
subjective-cultural dimension (worldview). Sire, Wilkens, and Sanford define ‘worldview’ as
below:
“A commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart (the central defining element of the human person) that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or
inconsistently) about basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation
on which we live and move and have our being” (2009, p. 15)
This excerpt provides a conceptual framework to understand the reality. It affects the interpretation of a moral agent toward himself and the situation he is facing. A worldview works
to orient a moral agent to certain judgments and actions. It is not a fully-formed system,
but it is formed gradually through several cultural aspects such as narratives. In order to
sustain human’s existence, families, religious leaders, tribal chiefs construct narratives based
on the authoritative tradition and shared beliefs existing in a society. The established rules
in a tradition determine the status, role, and responsibility of each member in the society
(MacIntyre, 1984, p. 122). The role of a narrative can be compared to the role of the Bible
in the Christian community, the Quran in the Muslim community, and the mythology in the
early traditions. Each narrative describes the ideal version of a human, regulates the action
of an individual, and makes it as a universal standard to measure the value of a human being.
The important figures in the society socialize the values in the narratives to internalize them
in the mind of the members. It is rationality that enables us to understand the guidance told
in the narratives. These internalized values build one’s worldview and provide an interpretative framework that affects his moral judgments and actions. It shows that it is impossible to
understand the reality without the existing worldviews in a community. Internalized values
in communities and rationality have impacts on one’s moral judgments and actions. Take an
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example from the way of living of protestant church members. In the Martin Luther reformation, the protestant church believes that the Bible identifies man as God’s picture, who
lives in the world for God. This concept eliminates the sacred-secular dichotomy that worldly
business such as trade is now considered as sacred. This narrative becomes an impactful conceptual framework for Protestant members in all aspects of his/her life. Weber observes and
elaborates this shift in his book The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism.
Not only do the internalized values shape a moral agent’s worldview, but key life experiences are also meaningful aspects that make one relates to his/her social setting. This element
is called ‘practice’ by Alasdair MacIntyre- a cooperative activity that actualizes the internal
values to achieve the shared virtue (1984, p. 187). A meaningful activity is defined by the
traditional description of social acts that assumes a shared goal and a standard of excellence through a set of formal and informal rules. This shows the quality of a participant and
gives meaning to their social life (Magnis-Suseno, 2000, p. 201). Experiences are meaningful
because one is able to fulfill the quality and achieve the goal set by the tradition. He also gains
self-fulfillment and respects the other individual who does the same thing. This relationship
builds the ground for group solidarity and sustains the values in a culture. A moral agent gets
his key life experiences by positioning himself in a tradition and living it together with the
other members. This kind of experience gives one a sense of self-identity and a bigger, higher
goal in life. It encourages a moral agent’s rationality to internalize the values, so it shapes his
conceptual framework in perceiving reality and becomes his moral standard in taking actions
and making judgments. Hence, MacIntyre writes: “every action is the bearer and expression
of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts […] all morality is always to some degree
tied to the socially local and particular” (1984, p. 61, 126). There is no neutral-atomistic moral
agent without rooting to certain cultures. This statement raises the next question about the
rational status of moral actions and judgments that is situated in a social setting. MacIntyre
rejects the arguments that tradition is wisdom without reflection. He shows the rationality in
tradition from the conflict between traditions that unfold (1988, pp. 353–356). These crises
emerge when values from various traditions are not compatible with each other. New traditions sometimes question the established ones and the ability to respond to the doubt that
determines the future of the targeted, old tradition. On the contrary, when it lacks the ability
to tackle this kind of challenge, it will be evaluated, reformulated, and even rejected at its
extreme point. This rejection will bring a change in a society and cause a change in people’s
worldview. It will also change the conceptual framework in perceiving reality and reasoning
in moral judgments and actions. The changes and dynamics between crises in discourse values assume the existence of rationality in tradition.
1.2
The autonomy of a moral agent
Historicity of a moral agent cannot be ignored as the social setting plays a significant role
in shaping one’s conceptual framework used to make a moral judgment. Rationality itself
is not a passive instrument to understand and internalize values in a particular tradition.
It enables a moral agent to analyze and criticize the established values and reconsider their
obligatory principles. The internalized values that shape the worldview do not eliminate the
moral agent’s ability to reason. Hence, the autonomy and the historicity of an individual are
actually not mutually exclusive. Immanual Kant explains that morality is a priori. Its rationality does not depend on his/her aims or his/her feelings of sympathy or external opinion
from the tradition (Kant, 2002, pp. 13–14). Rationality also relates to legality (Tjahjadi, 1991,
p. 47). On top of that, it is the goodwill that moves a moral agent to do morally right actions
and doing so because it is a duty. Kant himself is not antinomy (2002, p. 13). He rejects
the tendency of conformity of one’s actions to the shared norms without considering any
other relevant reasons. By contrast, MacIntyre and communitarian theorists believe that a
moral agent’s rationality depends on cultures, traditions, and structures in certain society.
We can take a look at how a small group of Christians in West Sumba faces the dilemma in
actualizing the principal of “to respect the elderly”. In the context of the traditional Sumba
community, it means to maintain communication with the dead ancestors. By contrast, the
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 39
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Christian community does not conform to this cultural expression. An individual who faces
this conflict does not blindly follow this ritual but also reason to consider what the right thing
to do is. There lies an assumption about one’s autonomy as a moral agent. His act comes
from his own awareness about law and his duties (Magnis-Suseno, 1997, p. 150). It indicates
the one’s rational ability to mediate reasoning and willingness in choosing whether he will do
the duties. Thus, his actions are not merely determined by the internalized values of traditions as he acts based on individual duties, not the communal ones.
The next question to address is about the necessary condition that enables a moral agent
to have willingness in doing rational acts. According to Kant (1991, pp. 201–204), there are
natural elements that are involved in moral reasoning, such as moral feeling, love of man,
respect, and conscience. Moral feeling is a subjective consideration based on pleasure and
displeasure categories in making a decision to act. Love of man is defined as an unselfish
benevolent towards men that relates to the duty to do goodness to others. Respect is about
consciousness to consistently do a morally right action. These ideas assume that human has
natural capacity to think and determine his duties. This paper will elaborate two accounts of
them. First is reason to consider and decide what duties to do. Kant writes “it is clear that
all moral concepts have their seat and origin fully a priori in reason, […] everything in nature
works in accordance with laws. Only a rational being has the faculty to act in accordance with
the representation of laws, i.e., in accordance with principles, or a will” (2002, pp. 28–29). The
significant role of moral reasoning lies on the need to provide moral responsibility. However,
it does not imply that one is obliged to show that his actions are morally right before he acts.
A moral agent can do moral, good things spontaneously based on his conscience. The moral
responsibility serves to explain the reasoning behind one’s action when other parties question
his justification. (1989, pp. 67–68). This is only possible and meaningful when moral reasoning is included. Not only providing moral responsibility, the ratio also plays a significant role
in dealing with moral disputes in the society. For instance, in the case of abortion, the pros
and cons groups propose their own reasoning to support what they believe. The ratio serves
to accommodate a collective attempt to decide what the duty is and what is not to a moral
agent. Ratio does not decide what the right and wrong positions are but facilitates the process
of moral reasoning. Ratio is an instrument to consider, analyze, and criticize the internalized
values and also other alternative values that might be contrasted to each other. The ratio does
not result in human’s goodness because the internal cognitive mechanism is flawed (Kahneman, 2013, p. xvi). However, the ratio is still a useful tool to help us discover our duties as
a moral agent. Ratio plays its role in both tradition’s values internalization and rethinking
about those values in a particular situation to discover his duties. In such circumstance, his
conformity to the tradition is not determined externally (heteronome), but his own ratio
can offer the moral responsibility upon the internalized values. In conclusion, the process of
value internalization is not only psychologically subjective, but also rationally objective. Kant
emphasizes that “pure reason is practical of itself alone, and it gives (to man) a universal law,
which we call moral law” (1983, p. 32).
Besides the ratio, conscience enables a moral agent to have autonomy. Kant defines conscience as a “practical reason holding a man’s duty before him for his acquittal or condemnation in every case that comes under a law” (1991, p. 202). Conscience has two types of
functions: prospective and introspective. Prospective function works by giving judgment to
avoid and/or encourage a moral agent to do his duties. Meanwhile, introspective functions
operate by complimenting and/or denouncing an act that is considered contradictory with
one’s duties. These functions are also internalized through the shared values in the society
and performed spontaneously in a concrete situation. Kahneman observes that our intuitive
ability in identifying problems and solutions are oftentimes correct. This quick decisionmaking relates to familiar aspects cultivated by the shared values when one is facing moral
problems in a new situation. Value internalization enables conscience to make spontaneous
decisions in real circumstances. It is an imminent, internal capacity in humans, and it is a
transcendent element that goes beyond natural tendency of a moral agent, so it can offer
critique to tradition and preserve the autonomy of a moral agent to realize and understand
his duties and let him act according to his moral reasoning.
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2
CONCLUSION
A moral agent is formed by one’s worldview providing an interpretative framework. This
worldview may change gradually through the internalization of shared values and be strengthened by key life experiences. Tradition is an integral part of a human’s life in terms of making
his moral decision. It forms one’s self-identity and his life goals. Then the ratio also plays a
siginificant role in conflicting traditions by providing moral reasoning and moral responsibility in each action taken. The ratio goes beyond tradition, and it serves to analyze, criticize, and also rethink the internalized values in a tradition. The ratio does not yield human’s
goodness, but it helps a moral agent to discover and commit to his duties. Conscience operates intuitively through prospective and introspective functions, voicing out the internalized
values as a moral agent’s duties. The role of ratio and conscience demonstrates that a moral
agent has his own autonomy, and at the same time is tied to historicity.
REFERENCES
Bertens, K. (2007) Etika (Ethics). Jakarta, Penerbit PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Kahneman, D. (2013) Thinking, Fast, and Slow. Translated by Zia Anshor. Jakarta, Penerbit PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama and Kompas Gramedia.
Kant, I. (1983) Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Lewis White Beck. Indianapolis, BobbsMeril Educational Publishing.
Kant, I. (1991) The Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Mary Gregor. Cambridge, New York, Port
Chester, Melbourne, Sydney, Cambridge University Press.
Kant, I. (2002) Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Edited and translated by Allen W. Wood.
New Haven and London, Yale University Press.
Kegley, J.A.K. (2011) The Ethical Subject/Agent as Rational Individual but Also as So Much More! The
Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 25, 116–129.
MacIntyre, A. (1984) After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre
Dame Press.
MacIntyre, A. (1988) Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre
Dame Press.
Magnis-Suseno, F. (1989) Etika Dasar: Masalah-masalah Pokok Filsafat Moral (Basic Ethics: The Main
Problems of Moral Philosophy). Yogyakarta, Penerbit Kanisius.
Magnis-Suseno, F. (1997) 13 Tokoh Etika: Sejak Zaman Yunani Sampai Abad ke-19 (13 Characters in
Ethics: From the Greek Up to the 19th Century). Yogyakarta Penerbit Kanisius.
Magnis-Suseno, F. (2000) 12 Tokoh Etika Abad ke-20 (12 Characters of Ethics of the 20th Century).
Yogyakarta, Penerbit Kanisius.
Magnis-Suseno, F. (2005). Pijar-Pijar Filsafat: Dari Gatholoco ke Filsafat Perempuan, dari Adam Muller
ke Postmodernisme (Sparks of Philosophy: From Gatholoco to Female Philosophy, from Adam Muller
to Postmodernism.). Yogyakarta, Penerbit Kanisius.
Rachels, J. (2004) Filsafat moral (Moral philosophy). Translated by A. Sudiarja. Yogyakarta, Penerbit
Kanisus.
Robinson, L. (2011) Moral principles as moral dispositions. Philosophical Studies: An International
Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, 156, 289–309.
Sin, W. (2012) Internalization and moral demands. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for
Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, 157, 163–175.
Tjahjadi, S.P.L. (1991) Hukum Moral: Ajaran Immanuel Kant tentang Etika dan Imperatif Kategoris
(Moral Law: Immanuel Kant’s Doctrine and Categorical Imperatives). Yogyakarta and Jakarta,
PenerbitKanisiusdan BPK. Gunung Mulia.
Vogelstein, E. (2011) Morality, Reasons, and Sentiments. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal
for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, 155, 421–432.
Wilkens, S. & Sanford, M.L. (2009) Hidden Worldviews: Eight Cultural Stories that Shape Our Lives.
Downers Grove, Illinois, IVP Academic.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Redefining ethics and morals in colonial space: Creation
of leisure in the colonies in Van Zeggelen (1911)
C.T. Suprihatin
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This essay discusses the effort to create comfort and defend the colonies
by European women living in the colony. Convenience was a key element in the colonial
discourse in the Netherlands, represented by the concept of HBB, huisje-boompje-beestje,
a discourse that was inseparable from the women’s life. Marie van Zeggelen’s masterpiece,
Indrukken van een zwervelinge. De Hollandse vrouw in Indië (1911), written during the
era of Ethical Policy, was intensely discussed in the Netherlands and the colonies. In this
paper Van Zeggelen’s works are assessed to show how deep the concepts of ethics and morals
were present in the creation of comfort in the Indies. Critiques of colonial representation by
Meijer (2005) and Huigen (1996) are combined with an analysis of the three elements of the
ideology huisje-boompje-beestje in the Indies. In the intersection of cultures through various
contact zones (Pratt, 1991, 2002) the construction of colonial space that reflects the attitudes
of women writers on contemporary issues is examined. In the space of colonial patriarchy,
Van Zeggelen was strongly motivated to look at the colonial space in order to reveal the
existing ethical and moral values of life in the colony, yet she hardly ever commented on the
concubinage practice which also existed there.
1
INTRODUCTION
Marie van Zeggelen (1870–1957) was not considered a great writer in the Dutch Indies
Literature (Nieuwenhuys, 1999). Her work was mainly known in the period after World War I.
Looking at the themes of her work in the realm of colonial literature, she was positioned as
an “Ethical” writer as she often worked on the ideas of Ethical Policy.
Ethical Policy was initiated by Van Deventer (1857–1915). This policy brought thoughts
that highlighted the moral responsibility of the Dutch colonial government toward the indigenous population. Ethical Policy, which officially became the political policy of the Dutch
colonial government in 1901, had three major agenda, namely irrigation, immigration, and
education. In practice, this policy was intertwined with the expansion of the Dutch power in
the Dutch East Indies between 1894 and 1918 in the name of liberation from the oppression
of the local leaders. Many military campaigns were undertaken to expand the powers in the
colonies in areas which had not been conquered (Touwen, 2000, pp. 73–74). Ethical Policy
required the colonial government to set up an investment in order to improve education for
the indigenous population and build more infrastructures. All the “good acts” also involved
Dutch and Eurasian women in the area. The policy to Europeanize the colony was considered
to be one of the ways to create a better Dutch East Indies state according to the teachings
of Christianity. Praxis which was not in line with the teachings of Christianity would be
criticized and condemned.
In the effort of Europeanization, the Dutch and Indo (half-Dutch and half indigeneous)
women got a real role. They were considered as the front liners in an effort to secure the
culture and to create racial purity in the colonies. The women were expected to create an
atmosphere which was considered as typically Dutch in their place of residence so as to
make the husbands feel welcome and comfortable at home. Thus, the men would not have
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the desire to seek comfort outside the home and become exposed to things that could make
their “Dutchness” fade.
In this paper, the comfort of a “home” of the colonies is observed according to the Dutch
expression huisje-boompje-beestje (house-plants in the garden-pets). For Dutch people, the
three elements were representatives of things that could bring a balance in life, provide a
grip, and at the end make people feel comfortable and happy. The effort to bring Hollandse
gezelligheid (Dutch pleasant atmosphere) in the Indies allegedly would reduce the possibility
of Dutch men to be influenced by local aspects which could cause a process of verindisching
(producing a mixed-race) and racial mixing. By preventing both of these from happening
in the Indies, the distinct line that separated the invaders (the white-skinned) from the local
population (the brown-skinned) was well-kept so that the colony, as a colonial project, would
be maintained.
The empowerment of Dutch Indies women could not be separated from political interests.
Dutch colonial discourse put women who came into the Indies as nobler and more dignified than other women in the colonies. Dutch women were represented as “strong” (Schama
2004), and they lived their lives based on moral values. With all the strength they had, these
women were expected to be role models, and they give an example of living a dignified life
in the Indies. How did Marie van Zeggelen express the aspects of keeping the moral and
upholding the ethics while creating a comfortable space in the colony in Indrukken van een
zwervelinge. De Hollandsche vrouw in Indie (1911)?
2
METHOD
This paper describes the relationship between thoughts on ethics and morals with comfort
creation in the Indies. Meijer’s (2005) and Huigen’s (1996) Colonial Representation Criticism
is combined with the meaning of the three elements in the huisje-boompje-beestje ideology
in the Indies. In the intersection of culture in various contact zones (Pratt, 1991, 2002), this
paper also examines the construction of colonial space that reflects Van Zeggelen’s attitudes
and views on relevant issues.
3
3.1
RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
Representation of Sulawesi as a wild charming space
In a study of Dutch colonial literature, Meijer (2005, p.124) highlighted the functions of texts
in Dutch Indies literature both as a mirror and as self-image of the Netherlands as occupiers.
The self-image was formed in a “space,” which in colonial studies is important as it formed
historische tijd (literal time events). The space that became the background of the events
reinforced the status of the Dutch Indies as a place “owned” by the Netherlands, and as the
media for the Dutch in bringing civilization and culture to the people in the colony (Wurth
and Rigney, 2006, pp. 363–367).
The overseas colonies were generally presented according to the colonial space discourse
image i.e. a territory which was vast, wild, untouched by the hands of the cultured, yet having amazingly beautiful panorama. The Van Zeggelen texts also did not deny that there was
an opportunity to collect wealth in the Indies. The bourgeois ideology was present in this
context. By taking the benefit of the colony, it was believed that the future life—both in the
Indies and in the Netherlands—would be much better. The spacious colony which became
the place for people to make a living was also in need of helping hands to keep it as part of
the Netherlands, and the women contributed to keep the Indies a Dutch colony. Women were
involved and their empowerment began at home, the area closest to their existence.
Unfortunately, this empowerment was not followed by an improvement in the women’s
position as they still remained second-class citizens: (...) de Hollandsche vrouw in Indie, dan zij
de hulp, de steun, de inspireerende kracht van den man die hier zijn brood verdient, die wellicht
alleen naar Indië gegaan is ‘om dubbeltjes’ zeker, maar onder wien de Koloniën onze ‘Koloniën’
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niet zouden zijn (Van Zeggelen, 1911, p. 11). In the colonial space the presence of men in
the Indies was legitimized, which reflected the colonial discourse related to “guarding” the
colonies. The contribution of women in terms of guarding the colony was only limited to
“helping and supporting” the men who had sacrificed themselves by leaving the Netherlands
and settling in the Indies. The aspiration to work and to guard the Indies mainly came from
the men.
The existence of colonial space as a place to earn a fortune tied the Dutch to their jobs and
the space they occupied. The Indies was a place to make money,which they eventually saved
up so that they could “live” in the Netherlands (Van Zeggelen, 1911, pp. 16–17). Colonial
space was also presented as a potentially huge place to change people’s life. The Indies was
represented as regions that potentially made people arrogant, materialistic, and only care
about the benefits gained there. All changes that (perhaps) happened in the Indies could be
interpreted as an uncertainty. This fear might have come from the impact of the existence in
the colonies which was not in line with the Calvinist doctrine that had become the foundation of the Dutch people’s life. Being materialistic was a threat because the Calvinist doctrine
encouraged people to live soberheid, simply, and rationally.
By observing the representation of colonial space, it can be summarized that the texts
studied offered a description portraying things that tend to follow the colonial discourse.
In perceiving and observing the representation of space in the text, we can still find a view
that placed the Indies as “the extension of the Dutch space” and positioned the Indies as
“the backyard”. By considering the Indies as an extension of the Netherlands, there was a
presumption that the place could be treated so that it would be similar to the front part. Of
course, the Netherlands, as the “owner” of the underdeveloped space, felt entitled to make
the backyard a comfortable space. In this case, the feeling of claiming the Indies as an extension of the Dutch space had been fully internalized.
Related to the construction of the colonial space, the Dutch women in the colony were
described as undergoing change. From the perspective of gender, the depiction of how the
women lost their beauty and experienced extraordinary physical fatigue was described (Van
Zeggelen, 1911, pp. 12–15). At the same time, the wild colonial space also provided exceptional rewards. The new space made women independent and courageous. There was a shift
in the image of women. The criterion of “beauty” as the ideal feminine marker was abandoned, replaced by “courage”, a trait that was usually attached to the male.
A shift in the image, negotiation, and adaptation gave women the option to choose the
right strategy in defending themselves and doing the tasks at hand. The changes experienced
by migrant women in the colonial space were also linked to their role as mothers. Among the
women who became powerful and courageous in the Indies, the majority were mothers who
had to part with their young children. The limited access to education in the colonies forced
parents to send their children to continue their schooling in the Netherlands for a long time.
These women were “forced” to control their feelings, and face two choices, namely to survive
in the Indies accompanying their husbands or to follow their children to the Netherlands.
Women who decided to stay in the Indies to accompany their husbands who were in charge
of “guarding” the colonies were considered “courageous” because they managed to suppress
their desire to return to the Netherlands and rule out their role as mothers. Instead of maintaining their role as mothers, which was also part of the moral life model, most women chose
to stay in the Indies to be with their husbands.
The option which was also revealed in Indrukken van zwervelinge shows that it was not easy
to maintain their image as a role model. They really made great sacrifices to maintain and
fulfill the responsibility from the Dutch government to take care of their husbands and at the
same time play their role as mothers. This women’s empowerment was not fully achieved due
to the labeling that courageous women were only those who could survive in the Indies and
be loyal to their husbands while ruling out their role as mothers. This text does not discuss
those who chose to leave the Indies to assist their children in order to keep the colonies in
the future.
Women’s empowerment in the Indies cannot be said to be fully successful. The women
were expected to take care of the Indies, starting from “supervising” their husbands and
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becoming the role model of a moral life for other women in the Indies, and also becoming a
good mother to their children. Again, colonial space was chosen to explain their inability in
fulfilling their duties.
3.2
The intersection of culture and the creation of comfortable space in the colony
The intersection of cultures appeared in a variety of contact zones in the Indies. According
to Pratt (1991, pp. 33–40), as a meeting space, the contact zones of the colonial space reconciled the occupiers and the occupied. Observing the parties that intersected, it was found that
some imbalances happened in that encounter because of the existence of power relations.
Inequality as a result of the differences characterized a contact zone.
The meeting between European women in a social space was not always portrayed as
pleasurable. The majority of European women did not enjoy the encounter which was
described as the intersection of culture that was unpleasant, boring, and shallow (Van
Zeggelen, 1911, p. 12). Based on the observation of the European contact zones in the
text, it can be concluded that the interaction in the public or domestic domain built in
the context of formal and informal atmosphere was full of power relations. Success in the
Indies, characterized by abundant wealth or high position, had become the symbol of power
ownership.
What happens in a contact zone is not always predictable, so there is always a need for a
safe house (Pratt 1991). The need of a safe house is filled with efforts to create comfortable
space according to the expression huisje-boompje-beestje (HBB). HBB which reflects the limitations of women as interaction participants in the domestic realm, in this case, refers to three
things: house, garden, and sometimes included taking care of pets. The presence of women in
the Indies required them to make a new space as thuisbasis, new living space. In the colonies,
they were confronted with a (new) world that was wild, vast, and far from the Netherlands,
and were faced with completely different types of people, and the new type of household in
the colonial perspective was often associated with concubines. Presenting its comfort could
reduce the feeling of heimwee, the feeling of homesickness, which could make them survive
the Indies.
The residential space was built with various contrasts and frequently brought about an
imaginary space, the Netherlands, which was regarded as a reference of the convenience of a
huis, or home. By taking a huis there as an example, the women in the Indies created a thuis
in the colonial space. The meaning of the word huis was often paired with or exchanged by
the word thuis; both meanings are the distinctions of cultural construction. Thuisvoelen is
derived from the word thuis. This word describes the feelings associated with presence in a
house. According to Rykwert (1991) in Birdwell-Pheasant & Lawrence-Zúñiga (1999, p. 6),
huis implies physical structure, while thuis defines a person’s place of origin and the place
where he can always come back, a concept of a place that implies emotional bonding of its
inhabitants.
Although the Indies was often portrayed as a place that was inappropriate for European
women who were fond of art (Van Zeggelen 1911, p. 12) or an area that often trapped women
in a boring routine (Van Zeggelen, 1911, pp. 134–135), at the same time there was also an
explanation that the colony was simple, but it offered safety, comfort, warmth, and a good
place to rest. The comfort in the wild region did not refer to a magnificent, large, or solid
place. Being united with the colonial space was associated with the desire to have a simple
dream home. HBB in Van Zeggelen’s texts was understood as something that is mediocre, not
excessive, but still captured the essence of which is to be gained, namely comfort. Simplicity
was also intertwined with the principle of reasonable living as recommended for the Calvinists.
Comfort, offered by the modest dwelling with all the limitations of a colony, did not preclude
the text from bringing the imaginary space atmosphere of the Netherlands as a model.
Despite the deficiencies existing in the remote areas of the colonies, which limited the
effort to create an atmosphere of the Netherlands, it managed to bring comfort. ‘Small luxury’ in the colonies, such as lamps and small pipe organs, representing the ‘civilized’ Dutch
life could be seen in a simple house in remote Sulawesi (Van Zeggelen, 1911, p. 132). In the
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text, the two things that could provide comfort for the soul—light bulbs to ‘enjoy’ the nights
in the tropics and the pipe organ to play the works of Johann Sebastian Bach—suggest how
food for the soul was more important than other primary needs in living in the colonies. If
comfort for the soul could be created, the wildness of the Indies would not be an obstacle for
the Dutch women to feel like being home, Daar staat mijn huis, mijn rustplaats, daar is mijn
eigen omgeving na zes jaar zwervens (Van Zeggellen, 1911, p. 119). The house located on a hill
with a beautiful panoramic view, surrounded by gardens full of flowers blooming became
a safe place for a Dutch woman (Van Zeggelen, 1911, p. 133). The hope to gain peace was
reflected in the name chosen for the house on the hill, Vrede-best, safe place (...) en door den
schemerenden tuin, waar de Bloemen kleurloos pronken, gaan wij onze Woning binnen, onze
veilige haven, ons Vrede-best (Van Zeggelen, 1911, p. 122).
The depiction of boompje was still based on the colonist’s perspective. The existence of
trees was more to reinforce the discourse of the wildness of the colony. Depictions associated
with “natural beauty” were always followed by the imperfection of the plants (Van Zeggelen,
1911, pp. 25–26). The Indies was symbolically presented as a charming area, but behind its
beauty there was a hidden threat. Taking care of a tuin (garden) in colonial space was also
a full-time job because it was very wide and wild. The soil of the colonies had the power to
grow plants fast, yet at the same time it could also “destroy”: the blazing sun of the colonies
destroyed various types of typical Dutch plants. The text also confirmed the miraculous
touch of Europe in colonial space, and things threatened to perish could survive because of
the care of the Europeans who were able to meet the aesthetic function: orchids and ferns
were depicted showing gratitude for being treated by the good hands of the Europeans (Van
Zeggelen, 1911, p. 36).
Dutch women were expected to be able to maintain their existence when confronted with
the situation outside the centre of the colony which was very limited in everything. Although
nature was not completely on the side of the female settlers, superiority was still present.
Their position as European ethnic immigrants placed them as the “initiator” of their effort
to conquer nature. However, they did not always get their hands dirty at the time they were
negotiating with nature. There was always the indigenous population that helped, even though
they were forced to, the majority group which became the executor of all effort to conquer
nature. In Van Zeggelen’s text, three indigenous women from Javanese ethnicity assisted in
the HBB creation in Sulawesi. Negotiations for creating HBB were also done by the hands of
these indigenous women.
The concept of beestje in the Netherlands referred to the variety of pets that had an emotional relationship with their owners. Owning a comfortable house, with boompje as an aesthetic complement, then beestje was considered to be the ultimate compliment to get the feeling
of thuisvoelen (homey) in the space occupied. As this text belongs to the category of colonial
texts, the presence of a variety of animals was closely related to the historical and social aspects
that supported the story. Pets like dogs complemented the effort to create HBB in the colonial
space. In the Indies, the animal was represented as a friend as well as a guard. Tommy, a pony,
and Moppie, a dog, became the “guardians of Dutch women” in colonial space (Van Zeggelen,
1911, p. 217). The emotional bond between the women and their pets was uttered to justify their
superiority as a role model in the colonial space, the success of “taming” Moppie and making
the dog “good” implied the superiority of the Dutch women’s groups.
The pets did not always appear as “animals,” because a view that positioned the natives
behaving like animals was also found. Of the various focalizations against native people, a
description that refers to the tendency to put them as an object, a part of a wild colonial
space, was obtained.
4
CONCLUSION
Being in the wild colonial space that did not offer comfort, in the periphery which prioritized
men, made women create their own comfort in the colonial space to be able to carry out their
duties, to be a role model and a model for other female occupants in the Indies. By giving
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an example of a moral life, Dutch women were indirectly empowered and expected to give
their contribution in maintaining the Indies. The changes of the Indies which were indirectly
associated with the increasing presence of European women in the Netherlands had become
an important issue in the early twentieth century.
Criticism of the colonial system was caught while looking at the rotation policy applied
to the military members in the region (Van Zeggelen, 1911, pp. 65–66). In Indrukken van
Zwevelinge, all acts done by the Dutch were clearly the behavior expected by Ethical Policy
actors. The text justified the Dutch presence in the colony (in Bone, Sulawesi) to “help” seeking the right of freedom of indigenous people. Military expeditions undertaken to conquer
territories in the Indies were ‘justified’; they were even viewed as noble acts because they
aimed to improve the life of the indigenous population, as well as to free them from oppression. This justification confirmed the presence of the West, which in turn would “civilize”
the wild region through the praxis of Western moral life. Their presence in newly conquered
territory was considered reasonable confirming the view that remote regions were isolated
and left-behind so they needed some help to catch up.
A striking difference between Java as the center of the colony and the regions outside
it strengthened the idea of the Ethical Policy. The task of the occupier was underlined: to
bring welfare to the indigenous population, by providing facilities to make the local residents
able to catch up with them, to fix the infrastructure, to provide education for the natives, so
that the Bugis people’s perspective that put the “State of Java” as “land van beschaving” (the
civilized country) could be corrected (Van Zeggelen, 1911, pp. 107–108). Exposure on the
“left-behind” areas and the positioning of Java as the center of the colony could also be interpreted as a recommendation to advance the regions outside Java. The existence of Dutch
women in Sulawesi essentially portrayed women living in a remote area who were more ideal
and more ethical than those living in the centre of the colony. Siding with the inhabited space
was reflected through the natural scrutiny and interaction built with nature. The hard work
in seeking HBB in the inhabited colonial space was the most obvious attitude toward Ethical
Policy.
By observing Indrukken van zwervelinge, with a narrator who also acts as the focalizer
in the text, it was really astonishing to find the fact that the text does not mention anything
about concubinage and also does not explain enough about the double moral problems. This
text focuses more on matters concerning the preservation of existence in a wild and uncivilized colonial space, and more likely to reveal ‘women power’ in addressing the colonial space
especially in facing the most basic things in life, such as fulfilling their needs. This ego documentary genre does not leave space to examine the real problem that appeared during that
time, namely the issue of concubinage and double morals. The view about the other woman
in the colony is stated, but it does not highlight the presence of the other woman as the ‘competitor’ in the household.
Being in the colonial space, the focalizer in Van Zeggelen’s text did not live in freedom. Tied
down by social position, some criticisms of contemporary issues were known widely, or even
disappeared. There was a great support for the Ethical Policy and the presence of European
women who were regarded as a model of moral life in the Indies. On the other hand, there
was also a criticism voiced through an observation of the situation in the island outside the
center of the colony. Unfortunately, awareness of gender is not adequately represented in the
text. Although Van Zeggelen managed to present the dynamic colonial space, the portrayal
of women existing in that space remained static.
By careful observation of various colonial spaces, the following descriptions were obtained.
Colonial space is represented as a vast, wild, new space, and has great potential to “injure and
destroy” the newcomers. Factors that had risks for damage were found in all aspects related
to nature: flora, fauna, and humans. The wild colonial space fortunately (still) could be conquered, as long as the Western people were involved in it. The justification of Dutch existence
in the East Indies was disclosed. The peripheral region and the indigenous people needed the
presence of the Netherlands in facing nature. This was also in line with the political objectives
of the Ethical Policy: the Netherlands had a noble obligation for the welfare of the Indies.
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REFERENCES
Alexander, C. (2002) The garden as occasional domestic space. Sign, 27, 857–871.
Birdwell-Pheasant, D. & Lawrence-Zúñiga, D. (1999) House Life, Space, Place, and Family in Europe.
London and New York, Berg.
Huigen, S. (1996) De weg naar Monotama. Nederlandstalige representaties van geografische, historische
en sociale werkelijkheid in Zuid Africa. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press.
Meijer, M. (2005) In tekst gevat. Inleiding tot een kritiek van representatie. Amsterdam, Amsterdam
University Press. Second Printing.
Nieuwenhuys. R. (1978) Oost Indische spiegel. Wat Nederlandse schrijvers en dichters over Indonesië
hebben geschreven vanaf de eerste jaren de Compagnie tot heden. Amsterdam, E.M. Querido. Third
Printing.
Pratt, M.L. (1991) The arts of contact zone. Profession, 91, 33–40.
Pratt, M.L. (2002) Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing & Transculture. London & New York, Routledge.
Second Printing.
Schama, S. (2004) The embarrassment of riches. An interpretation of Dutch culture in the golden age.
London, Harper Perennial. First Printing Published 1987.
Touwen, J. (2000) Paternalisme en protest: ethische politiek en nationalisme in Nederlands-Indië,
1900–1942. Nederlands-Indië, van handelskolonie tot imperium. Leidschrift 15:3.
Van Zeggelen, M. (1911) Indrukken van een zwervelinge: de Hollandse vrouw in Indië. Amsterdam,
Scheltema & Holkema.
Wurth, B.K. & Rigney, A. (2006) Het leven van teksten. Een inleiding tot de literatuurwetenschap.
Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Pr.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Moral consciousness in Kresna Duta’s characters: An analysis
through moral theory of Lawrence Kohlberg and the discourse
ethics of Jürgen Habermas
M.W. Nurrochsyam & E.K. Ekosiwi
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Puppet shadow shows frequently tell a story of characters facing choices of
dilemmatic moral problems. Dilemmatic moral problems in Lakon Kresna Duta are related
to the power conflict between two families of the Pandawas and the Kurawas which started
the great war of Baratayuda. This research analyses the moral consciousness stages in the
character of Kresna Duta, through the moral development theory of Lawrence Kohlberg
(1927–1987) in the context of Habermas Discourse Ethics (b.1929). The first aim of this article
is to identify the moral consciousness stages according to Lawrence Kohlberg, as shown by
the characters of the lakon (play) when facing dilemmatic moral problems. The second aim
of this article is to analyse the dilemmatic moral problems using the issue scoring, a scoring
system used by Kohlberg to identify the way of thinking, which is of formal and structural
moral consideration. Thirdly, this research analyses discourse ethics as the procedure to
overcome justice issues in the Kresna Duta’s lakon. The result shows that in Lakon Kresna
Duta, the characters have high moral consciousness, a post-conventional one, based on the
fifth and sixth stages of the moral consciousness theory, and that ethical discourse can be
applied as a way of solving dilemmatic moral problems.
1
INTRODUCTION
In daily life, people are often faced by dilemmatic moral choices. It is in such situations that
a person is tested to pick either moral choices or immoral choices. Wayang (the traditional
Javanese puppet show) can be a moral reference that provides examples of choices of
proper moral attitude. Dilemmatic moral choices in the play of Kresna Duta come from the
conflict between the families of two brothers, the Kurawas and the Pandawas. The great war
Baratayuda happens when the efforts of a dialogue initiated by Kresna as an Emissary of the
Pandawas to regain the rights of the Pandawas to govern the kingdom held by Duryudana
fail to come to a realization. The war forces each wayang figure to make personal decisions.
Based on these wayang figures’ personal decisions, we can learn the level of moral awareness
of each of them.
This research is important for several reasons: First, from the aspect of philosophical
thinking, ethics as critical and rational science studying human behavior does not stop developing, but it develops in dialogue and in encountering new thinking. This research relates the
Western thinking and Eastern thinking, to enrich the research of ethical science. On one hand,
the validity of the procedure of ethical discourse which is the product of Western thinking is
tested epistemologically by Eastern thinking in the play of Kresna Duta. On the other hand,
the Eastern ethics is justified epistemologically through the perspective of Western thinking.
In the wayang puppet show, we can identify the principles of ethical discourse such as the
rational consideration based on conscience formulated by Habermas as a universal principle
(U principle) and discourse principle (D principle) explicitly shown through the dialogues in
the acts of the wayang puppet show.
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Secondly, from the academic aspect, this research becomes important because it gives a
rational base to puppet shows as autocton philosophy, which is the philosophy of the native
people. Zoetmulder has long studied and given the rational base and philosophical system in Indonesia. Firmly, he explains that the autocton philosophy really exists, so it is not
right for people to ignore its existence if they plan to teach this philosophy in the university (Zoetmulder, 1940). He, furthermore, adds that philosophical thinking in Indonesia has
never been recapitulated into a system by any philosopher, which is in contrast with India
(Zoetmulder, 1940).
Thirdly, this research adds practical and emancipative aspects to the way of managing civil
life in Indonesia in a good and equitable way. At the moment, there is a tendency of monologue solution on morals within the groups’ beliefs and interests in the Indonesian pluralistic
society. As a result, we can see a lot of unrest in the society, such as terrorism, separatism,
religious conflict, tribal conflict, and other conflicts threatening our national unity. Through
ethical discourse, the example of just solutions given in the wayang puppet shows can become
an inspiration to solve the problems in the Indonesia pluralistic society.
Some studies related to this research include one research by Franz Magnis-Suseno in
his book “Javanese Ethics, a Philosophical Analysis of Wisdom of Javanese Way of Life”.
In his summary, he states if we view the most important characteristics of ethics based on
the developmental stages of moral awareness by Kohlberg, the Javanese people will likely
be categorized to be in the third stage of the development, namely the conventional stage
(Magnis-Suseno, 1996). In Javanese Ethics, although relations in groups, relations with persons, or other types of relations are widely described, non-personal or abstract relations and
the universal human perspective do not receive much emphasis. Magnis-Suseno only places
the moral position of the Javanese people in the context of moral theory by Kohlberg, but the
moral position of the wayang puppet figures popular among the majority of Javanese people
is not described in his book.
Previous studies related to the wayang puppet include a thesis titled “The Concept of Justice in Wayang”. This writing is a critical analysis of the four stories, namely Kresna Gugah,
Rama Gandrung, Pandawa Dadu, and Begawan Kilatbuwana. The thesis includes three specialties in the concept of justice in Wayang, namely karmic justice, uncomplimentary justice,
and justice by the hand of God (Nurrochsyam, 2007).
The thesis is related to the consensus written by Khatibul Umam Wiranu titled “Historical Concensus of Indonesian Politics: Philosophical Study”. This writing is based on the
discussion of the philosophical understanding of Jürgen Habermas to see the philosophical validity of the political history momentum which is often claimed as the consensus of
Indonesian politics. The finding of this research shows that the consensus during the New
Order regime clearly only accommodated the power interests of the New Order regime.
Meanwhile, the consensus of Sumpah Pemuda (Youth Pledge) and Pancasila as the Indonesian National Principles as seen from the communication paradigm was placed as a
part of the political communication and became a public space where every participant
in the public political arena could have the same fair consensus. Furthermore, the New
Order regime treated its communication partners as autonomous partners capable of taking responsibility and did not treat them as tools used for purposes beyond themselves
(Wiranu, 2010).
Previous studies have never focused specifically on the study of moral awareness in wayang
puppet shows, especially at the stage of moral awareness of each figure of the wayang puppet
show and in the justice problems in the acts of a wayang puppet show from the perspective
of the ethical discourse theory by Jürgen Habermas. Therefore, we can conclude that this
research is the first of its kind.
Based on the above explanation we can formulate the research questions as follows: First,
how are the stages of moral awareness of wayang figures in the play of Kresna Duta according to Lawrence Kohlberg when these figures are faced by dilemmatic moral situations? Second, how is ethical discourse implemented as a procedure to solve the justice problems in
the play of Kresna Duta? To answer these questions, this research uses a critical reflective
method to analyse the play of Kresna Duta presented by Ki Nartosabdo.
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2
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Moral awareness, for Habermas, is related to the stages of moral development. He adapts the
empirical approach by Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987), an expert in moral education, in the
stages of moral development. According to Kohlberg, there are three levels of moral development, namely pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional levels. Each level has two
stages, so in total there are six stages of moral awareness development. The first stage is called
the “punishment and obedience orientation”. In this stage, the result of physical causes of an
action determines the good and the bad, regardless of the human meaning and values of the
consequences. The second stage is the “relative-instrumental” stage where the correct action is a
means or a tool to satisfy one’s needs and the needs of others. The third stage is the “orientation
of interpersonal agreement or good-kid orientation”. This stage explains that good behavior is
a pleasing behavior, and it helps other people and is agreed by others. The fourth stage is the
“law and order orientation”. This stage asserts that someone has good behavior when doing
his/her own obligation, respecting the authority, and keeping the existing social order as he/she
sees these in him/herself. The fifth stage is the “legal social contract orientation” that asserts that
good behavior is formulated in the format of rightness and public individual measurement which
has been tested critically and has been agreed on by the whole community. The sixth stage is the
highest stage that could be achieved by humans. It is called the “universal ethical principal orientation” (Kohlberg, 1995). In this stage, consideration or moral awareness is guided by universal
ethical principles. This stage leads people to act not by egocentric and individual perspectives or
by adapting themselves to their environment, but based on the universal moral principles.
2.1
The stages of moral awareness in the play of Kresna Duta
The following describes the stages of moral awareness of each wayang figure in facing the
dilemmatic problem of the brotherhood war between the Kurawa and the Pandawa. This
writing presents some prominent figures, namely Kresna, Karna, Salya, and Duryudana.
2.1.1 Kresna
In this story, Kresna acts as the emissary of the Pandawa who has a duty to negotiate with
the Kurawa to acquire the Pandawa’s right to govern the kingdom that has been held by
Duryudana. As an avatar of the god Vishnu, Kresna actually could predict that the preordination of war was unavoidable. However, to carry out his duty as an emissary, Kresna
decided to come for the negotiation to fulfill his responsibility.
Although he was on the side of the Pandawas, Kresna had a motive not to side with any of
the party at war. His position was neutral in the mission. His justice attitude was shown in the
act of the story taking place in Hastina where the negotiation with Duryudana took place.
The decision to refuse or return the right of having Hastina was left to Duryudana. Kresna
did not put any effort to influence or force his standpoint that if Duryudana did not return
Hastina to the Pandawa, Kurawa would experience downfall.
His just attitude was also shown in the later phase of the negotiation in Hastina when
Duryudana threatened to kill him and Kresna then performed the triwikrama ritual. With his
sacred ability, Kresna actually could destroy Duryudana and the other Kurawas easily but he
chose not to do that. Kresna showed that he did not have a motive to support the legitimate
party. Instead, he put himself in the middle.
Kresna’s behavior showed moral awareness in the fifth stage which is the legal social contract
orientation. The base of his attitude as the emissary of the Pandawa is the fact that Duryudana
had broken the agreement he made himself. When the Pandawas lost the dice game, according to
the agreement, the Pandawas’ rights to Hastina would be returned after completing their exile in
the forest for 12 years. Although the Pandawa had undergone the punishment well, Duryudana
denied the agreement he made himself. Because Duryudana denied the agreement, Kresna was
pleased to be the emissary of the Pandawas, although he knew that war was unavoidable.
Kresna’s behavior also showed the sixth stage of moral awareness, the highest awareness
in the awareness structure presented by Kohlberg, namely the universal moral principle
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orientation. The role of Kresna as avatar of Vishnu to the world is to maintain justice. Justice
has to be maintained, while arbitrariness has to be destroyed. Duryudana is the king of arbitrariness and greed, and that is the reason why the god Vishnu was present through Kresna
to destroy Duryudana and the other Kurawas.
2.1.2 Karna
Karna’s position in the conflict between the Kurawas and the Pandawas is a real dilemma.
Karna is the oldest child of Kunti, which means that Karna is the biological brother of
the Pandawas. He chose to be on the Kurawas’ side because spiritually he believed that by
defending the Kurawas he could eliminate evil. Karna always resisted every time there was
an effort to reconcile the Kurawas and the Pandawas. His orientation to defend the Kurawas
was shown in the act when Karna was having a dialogue with Kunti before the war. Karna
said that his reason to defend the Kurawas was to repay the good deeds of Duryudana, even
though in his heart he was actually on the side of the Pandawas. Karna believed that defending the Kurawas did not mean supporting the Kurawas. However, by taking the side of the
Kurawas, Karna was actually helping the way of Karma, so the war of Baratayuda could
immediately take place. In the end, evil could be destroyed.
Karna’s attitude showed the awareness of the fifth stage which is “legal social contract
orientation”. Karna had always defended the Kurawas well and righteously. There are two
reasons why he defended the Kurawas. First, Karna wanted to keep his promise to Duryudana that he would always be loyal to him in any condition. The dispute between Duryudana
and the Pandawas did not reduce Karna’s loyalty to Duryudana. The promise of loyalty by
Karna to Duryudana was fulfilled in any condition. Second, Karna knew that Duryudana’s
side which was evil would be destroyed in the Baratayuda War, and this is the reason why he
had always tried to impede any effort by anyone who tried to prevent the Baratayuda War
from happening.
Karna’s behavior also showed the moral awareness of the sixth stage, namely the “universal ethical principle orientation”. There are two universal moral principles owned by Karna;
the first one is that injustice has to be destroyed immediately, and secondly, everyone has to
have the attitude of reciprocation. By defending Duryudana with all of his might, he made
sure that the Baratayuda War happened because the war was supposed to destroy the arbitrariness of Duryudana and the other Kurawas. Karna’s behavior showed the universal moral
stage which is the principle of reciprocation. The principle of returning favours or reciprocation is a universal principle by which everyone desires to return the favour to the people who
have helped them and given them assistance.
2.1.3 Salya
In the conflict between the Kurawa and the Pandawa, Salya is on the Kurawas’ side. Salya’s
position is very dilemmatic. On one hand, Duryudana is his son-in-law, but on the other
hand, Salya has nephews on the Pandawas’ side; Nakula and Sadewa. In this fight, Salya
knows that Duryudana is on the wrong side while the Pandawas are on the right side. Salya
faces the dilemmatic choice to support Duryudana or to support Pandawa. In this case, he
decided to support Duryudana.
His attitude to support Duryudana does not mean that he follows Duryudana’s command
without any reservation, but Salya realizes that his attitude is wrong because it means that
he is supporting the wrong and greedy side. His support of the Kurawas is not based on the
goal to fulfill his own needs. Salya does not have any materialistic intentions by supporting
Duryudana as he actually has his own kingdom, the Mandaraka.
Salya tends to be in the third stage of moral awareness, the “interpersonal agreement orientation or good-kid orientation”. He takes Duryudana’s side not for the purpose of pleasing
Duryudana, but because his daughter, Banowati, is the wife of Duryudana. Salya is likely
to be at stage four of moral awareness, law, and order orientation, as shown in his attitude
when supporting the Kurawas just for the sake of carrying out his own obligations, respecting
Duryudana’s authority and keeping the existing social order present in himself. His attitude
can be understood because his daughter Banowati is married to Duryudana.
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2.1.4 Duryudana
In the conflict between the Kurawas and the Pandawas, Duryudana is the perpetrator of
arbitrariness and greed. He is considered egotistical, and he has a thirst for power. His principles are very harsh, and he does not want to return the rights of the Pandawas, meaning that
Duryudana also violates the agreement he has made.
His attitude represents that he is on the moral awareness stage of “punishment and obedience orientation”. Duryudana only obeys the authority of his lust of anger without considering the human values. His egotistical attitude is shown in the scene of negotiation in Hastina.
Duryudana dares to cheat his own mother with his dishonest statement. He says that he will
return the rights of the Pandawas, while his mother is around. However, when his mother
is not around, he reverses his decision by saying that he will never return the rights of the
Pandawas over the Hastina Kingdom. His egotistical behavior is also shown during the negotiation with Kresna. Duryudana has no intention at all to return the rights of the Pandawas
over Hastina. He even tried to kill Kresna who is the emissary of the Pandawas.
Duryudana’s attitude also shows that he is in the moral awareness stage of “relative-instrumental orientation”. Duryudana does not consider any positive values, but he only considers
his lust and personal satisfaction. All advice from his wise men, elders, Hastina functionaries, and his siblings and relatives is all denied. His behavior is very arrogant and supercilious
which violates the norms and appropriateness of a king.
Duryudana does not show the moral awareness stage of “conventional level” which means
that he only considers his own group. Duryudana does not want to compromise with his
close comrades, such as Bisma, Widura, and Salya, and even his teacher Dorna. Duryudana
does not even realize that his attitude is not supported by a lot of people. Duryudana also
does not show the moral awareness stage of “law and order orientation” which focuses on the
importance of prioritizing the interests of the country and people. Although war clearly has
brought disaster and ruined to his country, he still only prioritizes on his anger.
Duryudana’s attitude is far from the moral awareness stage of “legal social contract orientation”. He does not make any mature consideration based on his heart. His decision not
to return the rights of the Pandawas is not based on a rational consideration accepted by the
people. Duryudana’s attitude is also far from the moral awareness stage of “universal moral
principles”. In fact, he is the violator of the universal moral principles.
2.2
Ethical discourse in the play of Kresna Duta
Habermas does not just accept the Kohlberg’s initiative, but he also criticizes the content of
Kohlberg’s theory. According to him, the sixth stage is a “monologue”, so it needs a further
stage that is higher and contains the characteristic of a discourse. Habermas calls it Ethical
Discourse, a procedure that questions “what is just?” Ethical discourse is not an ethical base
that can give answers that are ready to be used to the question of moral presented. It is, however, a way to make sure the return of moral norms that are the questions (Magnis-Suseno,
2004). Ethical discourse wants to answer the question “what is just?” because justice has universal characteristics. In ethical discourse, it does not stop only at the implementation of the
universal norms, but justice has to be justified in the rational discourse among participants
by inter-understanding how to achieve consensus.
According to Habermas, there are two principles in ethical discourse. The first principle is
the universality (U) that says, “All affected can accept the consequences and the side effect; its
general observance can be anticipated for the satisfaction of everyone’s interest” (Habermas,
2007). This principle states that the moral consideration that someone wants will only run
correctly if it is also wanted by other people. The second principle is the discourse principle
(D) that says, “Only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the
approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse” (Habermas,
2007). Ethical discourse does not stop at the universal stage (U), but the universal truth then
is discoursed to achieve consensus and mutual understanding. In this manner, only the norms
with truth that have been verified through practical discourse in which all relevant parties are
involved can be ascertained.
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In the play of Kresna Duta, the problem of universal morals seems like the problem of
rights. The principle indicates that every right should be returned to the owner of the rights.
It is not fair if the rights are not returned to the owner of the said rights. The problem of
rights is the problem of justice, and this is the reason why ethical discourse in the play of
Kresna Duta is the discourse of justice.
There are some scenes that show discourse of rights, such as in the first meeting attended
by King Matsyapati from Wirata Kingdom, Putadewa, Arjuna, and Bima also King Kresna
to discuss the rights claim over the Hastina Kingdom, Indraprasta, and all of its colonies
under the possession of Duryudana.
This meeting discusses the appointment of a third emissary after the other first two emissaries, Kunti and Drupada, failed in their efforts to get the Pandawas’ rights back. In the
meeting, all attendees agreed to appoint Kresna as the third emissary as he was the most
suitable person to carry out the duty. By sending three emissaries to Hastina, it is proven that
the Pandawas had tried to prioritize peaceful efforts to solve the problem as a dialogue was
not done just once but several times following the procedural norm, ngawali (introduction),
nengahi (dialogue), and mungkasi (conclusion). Kresna was the last emissary sent to Hastina
by the Pandawas to claim their rights held by Duryudana. For the Pandawas, war was not the
best way to solve the problem. If a number of dialogues to solve a problem did not work, a
war was the worst possible solution to solve the problem of justice.
The discourse of justice appears during the meeting with Duryudana in Hastina’s palace attended by Bisma, Durna, Salya, Karna, Gendari, and Sengkuni. In the negotiation,
it is debated whether the rights of the Pandawas need to be returned or not. Each attendee
presents his thoughts. Bisma said the Pandawas’ rights needed to be returned, half of the
Hastina Kingdom and Indraprasta including all its colonies. Durna thought Hastina’s small
towns such as Gajahoya, Pangombakan, and so on needed to be given to the Pandawas, while
Hastina, the major kingdom, remained Duryudana’s. Sengkuni felt that the return of the
Hastina and Indraprasta Kingdoms should be through the way of war. Salya thought all of
the Pandawas’ rights had to be returned to them; all Hastina, Indraprasta, and their colonies,
while Duryudana would be given the Kingdom of Mandaraka, the throne of King Salya, the
father-in-law of Duryudana. Salya’s opinion was refuted by harshly and firmly by Karna. He
thought that the Pandawas’ rights did not need to be returned to the Pandawas. Salya and
Karna’s debate heated up, and a physical fight nearly happened. In the discourse, Gendari
also participated. She thought that Duryudana had to return all rights of the Pandawas,
including Hastina and Indraprasta and their colonies. Duryudana pretended that he agreed
with Gendari’s proposal, but when Gendari left the meeting, Duryudana denied his own
decision. Arrogantly, he said that the rights of the Pandawa would never be returned to them.
The discourse of justice then continued following the arrival of Kresna in Hastina’s palace.
In front of Kresna, with his arrogance, Duryudana said that the Pandawas’ rights would
never be returned, unless Pandawa agreed to engage in a war with the Kurawas. He also
insulted Kresna and threatened him physically. Nevertheless, all of the insults and threats
did not influence Kresna as he was the avatar of Vishnu, the god of justice. Kresna thought
that Duryudana was not his match. If he wanted to, he could defeat Duryudana and his
comrades in a second. However, he did not do such a thing. He realized that his duty was
to be the emissary of the Pandawas. With the failure of the third meeting or negotiation, a
great Baratayuda War was unavoidable. This section is an example of a failed discourse. All
participants failed to come to a consensus as each of them based their choices on their own
willingness and intentions.
3
CONCLUSION
Based on the discussion above, we can conclude that, firstly, the play of Kresna Duta shows
examples of stages of moral awareness of pre-conventional phase, conventional phase, and
post-conventional phase. The pre-conventional phase is reflected through Duryudana’s egotistical and hedonistic attitude and his intention to think only about his own party’s interest
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(the Kurawas). The conventional phase is shown through Salya’s attitude. Finally, the postconventional phase is shown through Karna and Kresna’s attitudes. The research of Franz
Magnis-Suseno on Javanese ethics indicates that the Javanese people are in the conventional
phase. However, in the wayang puppet shows all phases (pre-conventional, conventional, and
post-conventional) of moral awareness which are shown during the wayang puppet show are
liked by many of the population.
Secondly, the play of Kresna Duta presents examples of discourses of justice problems,
such as in the scene of the meeting in Wirata in which all attendees agreed to appoint Kresna
to be the emissary to claim the Pandawas’ rights over Hastina. In the play, there is also an
example of discourse in which the consensus was not reached when Duryudana refused to
return the rights of the Pandawas. Moreover, the play of Kresna Duta shows that efforts to
solve the justice problem should be optimum. War can only take place when such optimum
efforts cannot reach a consensus. Duryudana and the Kurawas chose the way of war as
Duryudana put his greed and lust more, while the Pandawas agreed to be engaged in a war
because discussing power sharing with the Kurawas did not lead to justice.
REFERENCES
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by John de Santo and Agus Cremers. Yogyakarta: Kanisius.
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ethics, a philosophical analysis on Javanese life wisdom). Jakarta, PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Magnis-Suseno, F. (2004) 75 Tahun Jürgen Habermas? (75 years of Jürgen Habermas?) Majalah Basis, 10.
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(Justice in Wayang [Critical Review on four wayang figures]). Jakarta, Program Pascasarjana Sekolah
Tinggi Filsafat Driyarkara.
Rasuanto, B. (2005). Keadilan Sosial Pandangan Deontologis Rawls dan Habermas Dua Teori Filsafat
Politik Modern (Social justice of the deontological perspective of Rawls and Hebermas’s two modern
philosophical-political theories). Jakarta, PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Wiranu, K.U. (2010). Sejarah Konsesus Politik Indonesia: Kajian Filosofis (Political Consensus History
of Indonesia: Philosophical review). Depok, Saung Buku.
Zoetmulder, P. (1940). Bukan Falsafah Sendiri, Judul Asli: Geen Eigen Wijsbegeerte (Not one’s own
philosophy: the original title: Geen Eigen Wijsbegeerte). Majalah Djawa Java Institute Deel XXI
No. 6, 49–54.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Transposition of epistemology to hermeneutics: Richard Rorty’s
philosophy of edification
F. Hadinata & A.Y. Lubis
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Rorty viewed hermeneutics as an alternative to epistemology. He defined
epistemology as a way to provide a foundation of knowledge. The epistemology-oriented
philosophy assumes that finding a foundation that sustains all propositions is possible. In this
context, epistemology is understood as something above culture, history, and all linguistics
frameworks. It is in contrast with hermeneutics, which functions as a mediator to promote
conversations, and in which disagreements between claims can be overcome without a pretence to universal claims. In this paper, I will argue that hermeneutics via Rorty’s perspectives
replaces transcendent and foundational objectives with what he described as a ‘Bildung’ or
edification. The concept of ‘Bildung’ refers to a situation of an interest in exploring all different propositions, which can become part of us. Rorty expressed an idea that re-describing the
world and ourselves is the most important thing we can do to face the problems of modernity. In this context, edification is a peripheral intention with a belief that we are able to make
the world more interesting by re-conceptualising the world than revealing the objective truth
about it.
1
INTRODUCTION
Rorty defined epistemology as an inquiry to provide a foundation of knowledge. Epistemology deals with disagreements. However, epistemology resolves the disagreements by
transcendent or foundational ideas, such as concepts of rationality and objectivity. In this
context, epistemology is understood as a realm above culture, history, and all linguistics
frameworks. It is in contrast with hermeneutics, which functions as a mediator to promote
conversations, where disagreements between claims can be overcome without a pretence to
universal-objective claims. In other words, settlement of disagreements by hermeneutics can
be expected without transcendent-associated pretensions or foundational ideas.
Settlement of disagreements is seen as expectations that we can understand each other,
take each vocabulary and use it to reconsider, and even revise our understanding related
to the world and ourselves (Rorty, 1979). Furthermore, for Rorty, the term hermeneutics is
not a new philosophical project that replaces epistemology. Rorty’s view on hermeneutics is
explained below:
“In the interpretation I shall be offering, “hermeneutics” is not the name for a discipline, nor for a method of achieving the sort of results which epistemology failed
to achieve, nor for a programme of research. On the contrary, hermeneutics is an
expression of hope that the cultural space left by the demise of epistemology will
not be filled… (Rorty, 1979).”
We can interpret that when Rorty referred hermeneutics as an alternative to epistemology, he
did not make an objective, such as a definitive foundation, whereas all discourses can be compared and we can reach a rational agreement. In a hermeneutical standpoint, Rorty argued
that a notion is a symptom of metaphysics addiction. Rorty emphasized an anti-foundational
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approach stating that there are no such epistemological foundations. Here, hermeneutics
does not offer a set of the terms to reach agreements. It is there just to let the conversations
take place. Here is how Rorty described it:
“Hermeneutics sees the relations between various discourses as those of strands in
a possible conversation, a conversation which presupposes no disciplinary matrix
which unites the speakers, but where the hope of agreement is never lost so long
as the conversation lasts. This hope is not a hope for the discovery of antecedently
existing common ground, but simply hope for agreement, or, at least, exciting and
fruitful disagreement (Rorty, 1979).”
In Rorty’s analysis, hermeneutics replaces transcendent and foundational objectives with
what he describes as Bildung or edification. The epistemology-oriented philosophy assumes
that we can and should find a foundation that sustains all propositions. On the other hand,
the concept of Bildung refers to a situation of an interest in exploring all different propositions, where it could become part of our vocabulary. In this context, Rorty expressed an idea
that “re-describing ourselves is the most important thing we can do (Rorty, 1979).”
Distinctions between epistemology as an inquiry into the foundations of science and
hermeneutics as a method in the Geisteswissenschaften (socio-cultural sciences) should not
be traditionally understood. Rorty viewed the distinctions of epistemology and hermeneutics as the distinctions between “normal science” and “abnormal science” in Kuhnian
terms. In such a context, normal science (natural science or social-culture science) is a situation where we agree to a set of norms related to the criteria of “good explanation” or
what it is to be considered as relevant contributions to scientific investigations. In contrast,
abnormal science is a situation when a scientific investigation is no longer or has not been
agreed in a set of specific norms. Thus, there are no pre-conceptions related to what should
be considered as relevant contributions to the scientific investigations. Therefore, in Rorty’s
view, epistemology is no more than an investigation carried out in a normal science. Here we
can see the advantages of hermeneutics in Rorty’s view, which allows us to understand the
contribution of abnormal sciences, when the investigation conducted does not fit the rules
of normal sciences.
I will demonstrate the importance of hermeneutics related to social and ethical issues in
Rorty’s idea. First, I will explain how Rorty interpreted Gadamer’s idea associated with the
concept of Bildung and the effective-historical consciousness. Second, I will explain how
the concept in a cultural space serves as the main bridge to realize what Rorty referred to as
hermeneutics-based social hope and solidarity.
1.1
The philosophy of edification as a Gadamerian culture
Rorty used the idea of Gadamer’s hermeneutics precisely. We can see how Rorty connected
the concept of Bildung and abnormal science to enable new descriptions in general and
develop the idea of “universal humanity” in a non-foundational sense. Gadamer defined
Bildung as “rising up to humanity through culture,” which is understandable from Herder’s
idea and “rising to the universal,” which is understandable from Hegel’s idea (Warnke, 2003).
Furthermore, Rorty also interpreted a conception of Gadamer’s idea called the effectivehistorical consciousness (wirkungsgenschichtliches Bewusstsein) in order to associate it with
the concept of Bildung. Both concepts allow what is formulated by Rorty as follows: “an
attitude interested not so much in what is out there in the world, or what happened in history,
as in what we can get out of nature and history for our own uses” (Rorty, 1979). However, we
can see that this is obviously contradictory to Gadamer’s idea which emphasises that “history
does not belong to us; we belong to it”. Gadamer expresses it as follows:
“Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we
understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society, and state in which
we live... That is why the prejudices of the individual far more than his judgments
constitute the historical reality of his being (Gadamer, 2004).”
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There is a moderate, yet obvious difference between Rorty’s idea and Gadamer’s. Rorty
focused on changes, while Gadamer emphasised on bonds within families, communities,
and countries. Then, the most relevant question is why Rorty insisted on taking the idea of
Gadamer’s hermeneutics. To answer this we must understand that Gadamer’s philosophical
hermeneutics is always in tension between objectivism and relativism. It is assumed that only
through that way we can feel “a meaningful sense of truth.”
In this context, the truth is not correspondence, but it is a “disclosure,” “an insight,” or
a “recognition” that is formed by our speculative ability to understand and articulate issues
in conversations with others. Therefore, we can see that Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is an effort to capture the social essence and languages. According to Richard Bernstein, “Gadamer’s entire project of philosophical hermeneutics can be read as an attempt to
recover what he takes to be the deepest and most pervasive theme in Western philosophy and
culture that the quintessence of our being is to be dialogical (Bernstein, 1986).”
Here, the conversation is not necessarily understood like Rorty’s idea. It is something
more fundamentally associated with the idea of who we are. However, we can provide a
critique that reduction of truth can only be understood through dialogues with others in
the light of tradition. As we know, understanding of a tradition also depends on what we
now know and we need some sort of distance critical to what we understand, where we do
not always refer to the tradition. Indeed, all practical wisdom may be referred to the norms
given in a tradition.
However, today’s problems (the problem of modernity) show much confusion and uncertainty associated with the universal norms, which should practically guide our life (Bernstein,
1983). Recognition of problems enables us to create a democratic society. We share the values
of openness and equality as the best facilities for “the ongoing conversation of humankind.”
In summary, political and social values should take precedence over epistemic values in order
to create a society or cultural community wherein the dialogues may lead to the “truth.” At
this point, we can see that Gadamer’s idea in today’s problems of perspective is compatible
with Rorty’s famous statement: “If you take care of freedom, truth takes care of itself (Rorty,
1999).”
We can see that Rorty used Gadamer’s hermeneutics in the context of dealing with “the
problem of modernity.” How can we understand this context? We must connect it with the
notion of Gadamer’s effective-historical consciousness. According to Warnke, Gadamer
used the notion of “effective-historical consciousness” in two ways. It refers to an awareness
or understanding that is produced or influenced by history. This idea involves Heidegger’s
idea about “throwness” to characterize the human situation (being-always-already) as a participant in a historical tradition. In other words, Gadamer understood that we grew up in the
tradition where every tradition has vocabularies, problems, practices, and understandings
related to modes of action (Warnke, 2003).
Therefore, our understanding related to all things (the world or ourselves as individuals
and members of a community) is always an understanding that takes place in a particular
language, and shaped by a particular history. It means that we are members of a particular
community at a particular time, so our efforts to understand the world and ourselves are
always based on the basic understanding that has been developed through experience and
historical traditions where we are. Consequently, when we would like to develop our awareness of the world, it means we are influenced or be influenced within the context described
earlier-we have already had a prejudice in a sense that we have focused on something, where
we would like to understand it. In this context, Gadamer referred to it as “horizon,” or “forestructure of understanding” in Heidegger’s term.
We are always situated in language practices and traditions that provide us with a frame
of references related to what we are trying to understand, whether an object in the empirical world, text, other languages or ourselves. Without the frame of reference, we do not
have expectation or anticipation of meaning. Therefore, we have no purposive reference to
process what we want to understand. Furthermore, for Gadamer, prejudice is a form of
“prejudgments” or projection of meaning that offers a temporary framework to understand
something.
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Such a reference framework allows us to project a meaning of something that we try to
understand on the basis of pre-assumptions arising from previous understanding. It can be
called as the hermeneutic circle, where it no longer has a function as a method associated with
the text in the sense of classical hermeneutics. It is more indicative about a condition of all
understanding; we understand something on the basis of assumptions that we have and we
make assumptions on the basis of the understanding that we have had.
Gadamer also used the notion of “effective-historical consciousness” as historically situated consciousness. It is understood that our awareness is produced and affected by history.
In this context, Gadamer emphasized the phrase of “effective history” does not depend on
our awareness of it. Therefore, our understanding is never fully transparent. It means that the
efforts to understand our history are an attempt to understand the history that has shaped
who we are. In other words, we are constituted by history.
Here, the “consciousness of effective history” means nothing, but a consciousness of which
our understanding was relatively associated with a particular vocabulary. It can be said that
our knowledge is a product of certain prejudices that even include epistemological theories
that become a foundation of our knowledge, but it also means we are able to remain open
to revise the prejudices we have. We can open the possibility in which we change the way of
thinking associated with the world or ourselves. At this point, Gadamer’s hermeneutics can
be used along with Rorty’s idea. Rorty claimed if we were aware of the “effective history”,
we would realize that our understanding is a certain understanding from the perspective of a
particular interpretation. Thus, we cannot be dogmatic when we relate to it or impose a claim
of objectivity on such an understanding.
2
CONCLUSION
In the context above, we can understand how Rorty used the notion of Gadamer’s Bildung.
The concept of Bildung is associated with refinement that leads to the universal or humanity,
which is not in the historical sense. It is because our knowledge is historically rooted, and our
conception is associated universally and with humanity. Therefore, the universe in the Gadamerian context is better understood as “the standpoint of possible others.” Furthermore,
it indicates if people are refined, they must have been moving away from themselves. Such
processes can be understood by referring, either practically or theoretically, to Hegel’s idea.
Practically, Bildung can be understood when people put themselves as objects, and they later
regain their consciousness as others. Theoretically, Bildung is a situation when people learn
to accept that there is something different in themselves and when they find a point of view
to understand it (Warnke, 2003).
Rorty used both ideas of “consciousness of effective history” and Bildung to demonstrate
the notion of awareness historically. It is an effort to think and act with the perspective of
others. Therefore, we can formulate the notion of Bildung from Rorty’s idea as a hermeneutic
effort to understand the contributions of abnormal sciences, in which a case approach is
needed in a particular framework of a reference. In this context, we see hermeneutics as a
mediator between discourses. However, Rorty stressed that hermeneutics is not just a mediator but a reactive idea to epistemology. However, there is no possible stable and final meaning
(Rorty, 1979).
Rorty rearranged our version of intellectual traditions while leaving us with options to
develop philosophy; do we choose a systematic esoteric and archaic philosophy or a temporary, pragmatic, and interactive philosophy of edification? In the systematic philosophy, epistemology is the centre built, associated with ideas of eternity, and designed to offer intrinsic
justified arguments. It can be seen from the works of Descartes, Locke, Kant, Russell, and
Husserl that imply objectivity and rationality. Rorty thought that the systematic philosophy
is useless or at least less useful than the philosophy of edification. Philosophers do not learn
from the differences in a contextual and cultural basis. Thus, they refuse to develop the ideas
about particularity and contingency. This differs from the philosophy of edification, which
refuses ratification and is suspicious to theories claimed to be able to penetrate the essence of
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reality. Edification is a peripheral intention with the belief that we are able to make the world
to be more interesting by doing the reconceptualization of it rather than revealing the objective truth about it. In this context, it can be said that the philosophy of edification is regarded
as ‘conversations of mankind’. It means that the philosophy of edification is a quest to find
a way of speaking about human life in a refreshing and refined manner.
Here, it must be emphasized that the philosophy of edification does not refuse the systematic philosophy, but it serves more directions to the kind of philosophy that is not dictatorial.
That is, the philosophy of edification is an effort to make the non-familiar terms understood
by our creation of terms that allows us to find new purposes, new vocabulary, and new disciplines. It provides the possibility of opening innovative ways due to the expansion of horizon
in our mind. The philosophy of edification allows us to see descriptions of others and guides
us to discover a new self. Therefore, the intellectual realm can be transformed by connecting it
hermeneutically with better philosophical discourses. In other words, the philosophy of edification relies on the acts of interpretation unconfined within the epistemological framework.
Here we can see the relationship between the philosophy of edification and hermeneutics as
an expression of hope that the cultural space left by. The loss of epistemology will not be
stocked by universal and permanent vocabularies.
REFERENCES
Bernstein, R. (1983) Beyond Objectivism and Relativism. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Bernstein, R. (1986) What is the difference that makes a difference? Gadamer, Habermas, and Rorty.
In: B. Wachterhauser, Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press.
Gadamer, H.-G.G. (2004) Truth and Method. New York, Continuum Publishing Company.
Rorty, R. (1979) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. New Jersey, Princeton University Press.
Rorty, R. (1999) Education as socialization and individualization. In: R. Rorty, Philosophy and Social
Hope. New York, Penguin.
Warnke, G. (2003) Rorty’s democratic hermeneutics. In: Guignon, C. & Hiley, D.R. Richard Rorty:
Contemporary Philosophy in Focus. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. pp. 105–123.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Leader’s attitude towards terrorism: A critical discourse analysis
of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad’s diplomatic letters
B.E. Pranoto & U. Yuwono
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Mahathir Mohamad is a Malaysian politician who was the fourth Prime
Minister of Malaysia. During his rule (1981–2003), he was always publicly critical of the foreign policy of the United States of America and other Western countries. This research examines patterns of representation of the word ‘terrorism’ in the corpus of Mahathir’s diplomatic
letters published to the public in 2007. Through this process, this research aims to reveal the
leader’s attitude on the issue of terrorism in the world. The data are 13 diplomatic letters
written in 1993–2003 to world leaders that consist of four topics. This research uses methods
from critical discourse analysis, systemic functional grammar, and corpus linguistics. The
results show Mahathir’s struggle to clarify discourses which discredit ‘Muslims’ and ‘Islam’.
He shows great attention to the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1995), and the military
invasion to Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), and attributes them as discriminatory acts
toward Muslims. Furthermore, by using the Sketch Engine analysis tool, the two words
that are mainly used to describe Mahathir Mohamad’s attitude toward terrorism are ‘fight’
and ‘against,’ and they mostly collocate with the word ‘terrorism.’ These findings explain
Mahathir’s position on the issue of terrorism, and his mission to end it.
1
INTRODUCTION
Terrorism is an international problem in today’s global community. However, terrorism
is not a new world problem. It became widespread again after the bombing of the World
Trade Centre on September 9, 2001 (Primakov, 2004). The American government labelled
the bombing of WTC as an act of terror to the country and named the actors terrorists,
yet many believe that this incident was in fact an inside job. The September 11 attacks has
led to a change in the United States’ foreign policy and was followed by military invasion
to the Middle East in 2003. Correspondingly, acts of terrorism also happened in Indonesia.
In 2002, a group of people bombed certain night clubs in Bali which caused hundreds
of casualties, mainly foreigners. Such brutality also happened in Serbia when the former
President Slobodan Milošević declared an ethnic cleansing campaign. The campaign was
set to cover the brutal actions of the military’s extermination of non-Serbian civilians that
took thousands of lives of mostly Muslim civilians. Furthermore, based on the research conducted by Barker et al. (2013) on the representation of the word ‘Muslim’ in the British Press
in 1998–2009, the word ‘Muslim’ mostly collocates with conflict and violence categories, such
as extremism, fanaticism, soldiers, and terrorists. Meanwhile, the ‘Muslim world’ and the
‘Muslim community’ emerged as two collocate pairs most frequently used and both emphasized their sameness and difference to the ‘West’. By this token, in the Western discourse,
terrorism has been pinned to the Muslim community.
These situations triggered international response, especially from leaders of Eastern
countries. The response was performed in many ways with diplomacy being the most soughtafter option. According to Roy (1991), diplomacy is a vital step in international relations
to achieve world peace. On this subject, one of the leaders from the Eastern countries who
persistently performed diplomatic efforts in regard to this world problem is Mahathir.
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Mahathir is the longest-serving Prime Minister of Malaysia. In the international world,
Mahathir is well-known as an antagonistic figure to the policies of Western countries. Thus,
this made the relations with the United States of America, Great Britain, Australia, and
other countries, more cumbersome. Mahathir is also known for his persistence as an international activist who fought for the equality and development of third world countries. He
was involved in supporting the anti-apartheid movement in Africa and the humanity conflict
in Bosnia. Mahathir’s position as described above serves as the background of this research.
In the diplomatic letters that he wrote, Mahathir showed a lot of attention to the Muslim communities in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He explicitly argued against the idea
of terrorism which was attributed to the Muslim community and pointed out the distress
experienced by Muslims as a result of the international policy designed by the West. On
this account, this research aims to draw a representation of Mahathir Mohamad’s attitude
toward the issue of terrorism from the diplomatic letters that he wrote.
2
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
The two theoretical spheres which are used in this research are as follows:
2.1
Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough)
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) sees the use of language as a form of social practice
(Fairclough, 1995). All social practices are related to specific historical contexts. Fairclough’s
CDA model consists of three inter-related processes of analysis that are manifested into three
dimensions of discourse. These three dimensions are the object of analysis, the production
or distribution of the object, and the socio-historical conditions that govern these processes.
Each dimension is analysed through text analysis, process analysis, and social analysis. Text
analysis uses a construed analysis on transitivity, thematic structure, and mood structure, as
modelled by Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) in systemic functional linguistics. The purpose
of text description is to discover the characteristics of linguistic features of an information
web. After the meta-functions were described, the relations among participants as stated in
the data were interpreted. Finally, the social contexts on how and why Mahathir showed a
certain attitude, as reflected from his ideas on terrorism, were explained.
2.2
Corpus linguistics
In this research, corpus linguistics is applied as the base of codification for lexicons and
lexical analysis of Mahathir towards the issue of terrorism, as well as data source for textual
analysis as the first dimension of discourse analysis. Concordance and quantification are
performed using the Sketch Engine software. According to Cheng (2012), corpus provides
better quality evidence on language analysis because it allows users to draw the regularity of
patterns based on their repetition in corpus. In the same vein, McEnery and Hardie (2012)
also explain that corpus linguistics allows the establishment of patterns of representations
on certain words in the data corpus. Corpus linguistics provides three main tools, namely the
frequency list, the keyword list, and collocation-concordance. The Sketch Engine generates
the list of keywords that contain the keyness of each keyword based on statistical significance
of the corpus. Then these quantitative data were analysed qualitatively.
3
DATA AND METHODS
The collection of diplomatic letters by Mahathir Mohamad (Prime Minister of Malaysia, 16th
July 1981—31st October 2003) entitled Dr Mahathir’s Selected Letters to Worlds Leaders which
was published in 2007 is used as the data source of this research. The four chapters that constitute the collection are terrorism, economic-diplomatic relations, globalization, and war-conflicts.
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In this research, the data are from the chapter on terrorism which consists of 13 letters to world
leaders. This specific chapter was chosen with regard to the coverage and importance of the
topic as discussed in each letter. In this chapter, the four issues Mahathir discussed are the Bosnia
conflict, the WTC Bomb, Islam-Terrorism, and the Military Invasions to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our overall methodology involves a combination of corpus-based approaches (Cheng,
2012), discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995), and systemic functional linguistics (Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2014). For the purpose of this research, the analysis focuses on the word ‘terrorism’ which is the main topic of the diplomatic letters written by Mahathir. This research
seeks to understand how Mahathir constructs his ideas on terrorism in the letters addressed to
leaders and the settlement of the issue. In doing so, our general research question is ‘What is
Mahathir Mohamad’s attitude of towards terrorism as constructed in his diplomatic letters?’
The first stage of the analysis involved the use of online corpus analysis interface of Sketch
Engine to extract the word ‘terrorism’ (Kilgarriff et al., 2004). Using Sketch Engine, the corpora
could be uploaded onto an online database and then grammatically tagged in such a way as to
derive the collocations. When the collocates were derived, the grammatical relationships between
collocates could then be identified (Barker et al., 2013). In the next stage, the theory of discourse
analysis by Fairclough (1995) assisted in breaking the data into micro propositions. These propositions were the starting point in defining the macro propositions of the text. Furthermore, systemic functional linguistics was employed to describe the textual functions of the data.
4
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1
Islam and terrorism
The issues discussed in Mahathir’s diplomatic letters mainly addressed the problems faced by
Muslim communities in certain parts of the world, e.g. Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Regarding the issues taking place in Bosnia and Herzegovina (6th April 1992–14th December 1995), he
illustrated the sufferings experienced by the (Muslim) Bosnians. He then urged the government
of France to take action and resolve the conflict. The request was made based on France’s strategic position in the European Union and the United Nations Security Council. He described
the problems faced by Bosnians through words that represent sadness and suffering.
Table 1 explains the situation which happened to Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Rhetorically speaking, Mahathir pointed out the brutal acts committed by Serbians through
military power. Furthermore, he also explained the pain felt by Bosnian Muslims. In the
first point, he mentioned the pain felt by the Muslims there, specifically “the senseless killing and suffering,” “bloodshed and suffering,” and “the slaughter of Muslims and Croats.”
He blatantly accused the Serbian military power as the party responsible for the ongoing
situation at that time. He mentioned “the brutal Serbian aggression,” “the arms embargo,”
“brutality of the Serbs” to explain the main involvement of Serbian military in the Bihac
tragedy. These two ideas were used to support the argument of terrorism linked to Muslims.
He attempted to tell both the leaders and the society that many Muslims in other parts of the
Table 1.
Words on Islam and terrorism.
No.
Texts
Data
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
....the senseless killing and suffering in Bosnia-Herzegovina....
....peaceful settlement of that shocking conflict.
....in particular the brutal Serbian aggression....
The Serbian onslaught had clearly violated....
....the United Nations stood indifferently in the Bihactragedy,....
The arms embargo on the victims, the Bosnians,....
....brutality of the Serbs nor be condemned to....
....to more bloodshed and suffering.
....in stopping the slaughter of Muslims and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
A/I/3/b18-b19
A/I/3/b21
A/II/1/b7-b8
A/II/2/b10
A/II/3/b13-b14
A/II/4/b10-b11
A/II/5/b25-b26
A/II/5/b26-b27
A/VIII/5/b9-b10
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world experienced suffering due to the cruelty committed by the government of this nation.
By this, his point was that “this is wrong to accuse Muslims as a party who promote terrorism, in fact Muslims is the party who suffer the most.”
With regard to the facts above, he also explained the response that would normally occur
when one is not under any kind of oppression. He stated that among the billions of Muslims
there must be a few who cannot contain their anger and are prepared to kill themselves to
exact retribution from their oppressors. This was his answer in response to the U.S. foreign
policy that held Arabs and Muslim responsible for the WTC plane crash. Regarding the
spreading of the Islamic teaching known as ‘jihad’, he argued that the ideas claiming for
jihad had nothing to do with religion. In his letter to Prince Charles, he explained that “the
so-called religious wars and jihads are not about religion, it’s about politics.” The purpose
was to tackle accusations stemming from the Western discourse that condemned Muslims as
the actors behind acts of terrorism. He clearly believed that it was wrong to blame religion,
because the war was truly about politics.
4.2
Keywords analysis
4.2.1 Semantic category and keywords
Table 2 shows the variety in the semantic category of the corpus data of Mahathir’s diplomatic letters. The highest frequency is the category of ‘Social Action, State, and Process.’
The words are ‘brutalised,’ ‘gunship,’ ‘revenged,’ ‘exterminating,’ ‘overthrowing,’ ‘depleting’
and ‘misinterpretation.’ These words explained the military invasions launched by the West
in the Middle East. Also, some of the words explained the cruelty committed by Serbians
to Bosnian Muslims. The category ‘Name and Grammatical Words’ explain the recipients
of the diplomatic letters, such as ‘Balladur’ and ‘Chirac,’ and the name of the person who
frequently came up under the topic of terrorism was ‘Osama.’ The category of ‘Body and
Individual’ explain the parties discussed in the letter, such as ‘Chechnya,’ ‘Israelis,’ ‘Malays,’
‘Afghans,’ ‘Bosnians,’ ‘Palestinians,’ and ‘Arabs.’
Table 2.
Semantic category of Mahathir Mohamad’s diplomatic letters.
Category
Total
type
S
Z
B
A
E
O
G
T
3
3
1
1
3
3
1
1
Social Action, State, & Process
Name & Grammatical Word
Body & Individual
General Terms & Abstract
Emotion
Object and Tools
Government
Time
Frequency
Keyness
Total
Mean
Total
Mean
127
126
54
28
10
5
4
2
42.33
42
54
28
3.33
1.67
4
2
6792.57
9246.4
4438.4
761.47
856.4
507.49
636.35
332.61
2264.19
3082
2219.2
761.47
285.47
169.16
636.35
332.61
Note: The table of semantic category is organized based on the number of keywords.
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Meanwhile, there are 19 keywords found in the corpus of Mahathir’s diplomatic letters,
compared to the British National Corpus tagged as CLAWS, which are ‘Muslims,’ ‘Herzegovina,’ ‘Terrorism,’ ‘Terrorists,’ ‘Israelis,’ ‘Malaysia,’ ‘Afghanistan,’ ‘Muslim,’ ‘Palestinians,’ ‘Arabs,’ ‘Terrorist,’ ‘Islam,’ ‘Religious,’ ‘Palestine,’ ‘Israeli,’ ‘Iraq,’ ‘Attacks,’ ‘War,’ and
‘Against.’ For the purpose of this research, the writer focuses on the word ‘terrorism’ and
‘terrorist.’ Based on the extraction by Sketch Engine, the word ‘terrorism’ came up 27 times
with a 688.0 keyness towards BNC as the reference corpus. On the other hand, the word
‘terrorist’ came up 27 times. After further extraction of the two keywords, they were found
mostly collocating with the words ‘against’ and ‘fight.’
As stated above, ‘against’ collocates 8 times and ‘fight’ collocates 5 times. These two words
show Mahathir’s attitude towards terrorism. His main attitudes are to be ‘against’ any acts of
terrorism and to ‘fight’ and end terrorism in the world.
4.2.2 Under systemic functional linguistics
The diplomatic letters of Mahathir vary in the lengths of sentences, paragraphs, and also
the number of words used. The statistical data of the letters are compiled in the table below.
Table 3 provides the calculation of the data of the research. The table shows the distribution of words, sentences, and paragraphs in each letter. In this research, the analysis is
arranged into three parts, which are based on Halliday’s and Matthiessen’s (2014) explanation on text functions.
4.2.3 Ideational function
Language allows its users to convey thoughts and experiences of any event around them
(Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014). Generally, ideational function is elaborated through transitivity by a clause as the unit of analysis. This function enables us to explain what language
does, how it is done, what is being felt, and what is the state of affairs (Wang, 2010). Based on
Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), the function is divided into six processes, which are material, mental, rational, behavioural, verbal, and existential (Table 4).
In material process, Mahathir mostly used words to describe acts of terror committed by
Serbians to Bosnian Muslims, and the U.S. to the Middle East. Some examples of the words
used are ‘allow,’ ‘challenged’ and ‘humiliated,’ ‘violated,’ ‘to punish,’ ‘stop,’ ‘advice,’ ‘tried,’
and ‘alienate.’ The data sample of the words above is shown below.
Table 3.
Statistic data of letters of terrorism.
Statistics
Item
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
Word (token)
Sentence
Paragraph
234
9
5
305
13
7
627
35
12
165
7
4
352
18
5
124
4
2
820
10
40
113
5
3
115
5
3
977
53
14
404
21
6
178
9
4
903
46
15
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Table 4.
Processes in diplomatic letters.
No.
letter
Total/
(%)
Material/
(%)
Mental/
(%)
Relational/
(%)
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
19
20
49
15
37
14
42
13
14
60
31
17
53
9 (47.37)
13 (65)
29 (59.17)
6 (40)
19 (51.35)
7 (50)
24 (57.14)
5 (38.46)
6 (42.86)
30 (50)
16 (51.61)
6 (35.29)
28 (52.83)
2 (10.53)
3 (15)
10 (20.41)
2 (13.33)
1 (2.70)
1 (7.14)
12 (28.58)
1 (7.69)
3 (21.43)
14 (23.33)
7 (22.58)
5 (29.41)
11 (20.75)
7 (36.84)
4 (20)
7 (14.29)
6 (40)
15 (40.54)
5 (35.72)
3 (7.14)
6 (46.16)
4 (28.57)
12 (20)
5 (16.13)
5 (29.41)
11 (20.75)
Verbal/
(%)
Existential/
(%)
1 (5.26)
3 (6.12)
1 (6.67)
2 (5.41)
1 (7.14)
3 (7.14)
1 (7.69)
1 (7.14)
4 (6.67)
3 (9.68)
1 (5.88)
3 (5.67)
The data above shows the use of material process to describe the act performed by the
Serbian army towards Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The material process is being
oppressed and killed, and the target is Muslims. This was a common type in the data, and
it serves to show Mahathir’s struggle to emphasize his perspective towards the current situation. Furthermore, he clearly pointed out which party was committing the wrong action.
Besides that, he also used material processes to describe the strategic solution to end terrorism throughout the world.
From the data above, he conveyed his argument on the widespread terrorism through the
idea of cause and effect. His argument was that terrorism is the effect of cruelty happening to
Muslims in many areas of the world. Thus such cruelty needs to be stopped in order to end
terrorism. The material process in the data above is marked by the word ‘stop.’ The targets are
‘Palestinians,’ ‘Chechens,’ ‘Iraq,’ ‘Sudan,’ ‘Iran,’ and ‘Libya,’ and the actors are ‘Israeli,’ ‘Russians,’ and ‘Anonymous party.’ In conclusion, the material process is used to show Mahathir’s
perspective toward the real situation happening to Muslims in the world and also to deliver
his idea on ending terrorism.
In the mental process, many words were used by Mahathir to describe his feelings and also
Malaysia’s regarding incidents, such as the WTC Bomb and the Bosnia conflict. Moreover, he
also used these words to describe the feelings of Muslims and Arabs. The words are shown below.
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Based on the analysis, there are four subjects (sensor) of sentences which indicates the
mental process. They are ‘I’ (Mahathir), ‘Malaysia,’ ‘Muslims,’ and ‘Arabs.’ Sensor ‘I’ was
frequently followed by ‘confident,’ ‘believe,’ ‘understand,’ ‘remember,’ and ‘agreed.’ The data
show Mahathir’s optimism toward resolving the problem at that time. For example, the words
‘believe’ and ‘confident’ were used to show his optimism that terrorism will eventually be
brought to an end. Meanwhile, the sensor ‘Malaysia’ was used to describe the response and
position of the government toward a particular issue. Mahathir claimed that the Malaysian
government, under his lead, shared the same perspective on the matter. As for the last sensor,
‘Arabs’ and ‘Muslims,’ they were the main subject matter discussed. Many words are used to
describe their feelings and situations as the effect of brutal acts done by many parties, for
example through the words ‘suffered,’ ‘angry,’ ‘bitter,’ and ‘anger.’
4.2.4 Interpersonal function
This function tends to approach language as a bridge that connects participants of discourse
(tenor). It allows the relations built by the speaker to be identified among others based on the
dictions and structure of a language (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014). In this respect, a language
is not merely a series of words and structural rules, but also about the users of the language. In
this research, there two main aspects discussed in this part, namely modality, and pronoun.
Based on the analysis, three types of modality were found showing different degrees of
politeness. The low degree of politeness is shown by the use of ‘may,’ ‘can,’ and ‘need to’ (e.g.
data A/X/9/b71-b72: I am sure we can solve these problems). The middle degree of politeness
is shown by the use of ‘would,’ ‘should,’ ‘have to,’ and ‘will’ (e.g. data A/X/7/b47: While you
should hunt down the terrorist). The high degree of politeness is shown by the use of ‘must’
(e.g. data: VII/10/b75: A world conference on terrorism must be held).
On the other hand, Mahathir also used pronouns in his diplomatic letters strategically in order
to show his position and Malaysia’s on the issues discussed. Moreover, he also made clear distinctions between his side and the terrorists’ side. Based on the analysis, there are four pronouns
that are most frequently used in his diplomatic letters, namely ‘I,’ ‘you,’ ‘we,’ and ‘they.’ The pronoun ‘I’ refers to Mahathir as the writer of the letters. Based on Mahathir’s statement, the letters
were personal letters. The use of the pronoun ‘I’ had many positives impacts. First, it established
a close relation with the recipient. Second, it showed Mahathir’s direct involvement in the issue
discussed in the letter. Third, it built a positive image for Mahathir as a figure concerned on
important issues. Meanwhile, the pronoun ‘you’ refers to the recipients of the letters.
Table 5.
Data on textual function.
Theme
No.
letter
Subject theme
(unmarked)
Adjunct
theme
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
Total
7
16
32
7
12
4
36
3
4
48
2
8
27
225
2
1
13
4
9
1
20
4
1
25
11
2
6
99
Fronted object
and complement
(marked)
Predicate
theme
1
1
6
1
1
1
2
1
2
2
2
18
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Texts on politics always show certain characteristics in the use of the pronouns ‘we’ and
‘they,’ and this research was no exception. Mahathir was able to point out the two sides of a
story through the use of these pronouns. The pronoun ‘we’ was used to draw on the ‘good’
side of a story, while the pronoun ‘They’ was used to draw on the ‘bad’ side of a story.
Moreover, the use of the pronoun ‘we’ included him and placed him in a positive light of the
discourse.
4.2.5 Textual function
Textual function perceives language as a mechanism that can make a text unified and coherent
and not merely a random list of sentences (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014). In this research,
the pattern of theme is the main discussion of the analysis.
Table 5 shows the ideas emphasized by Mahathir in his diplomatic letters by number. ‘Subject
Theme’ has the highest number compared to the other ‘Theme.’ For the purpose of this research,
only the most common ‘Theme’ is explained below. Based on the analysis, the most common
‘Theme’ found in this research is the personal pronoun. They are ‘I,’ ‘we,’ ‘they,’ and ‘you.’
5
CONCLUSION
Based on the analysis, ‘Mahathir’ was against terrorism. Such an attitude was shown by the
frequent collocation of the words ‘terrorism,’ ‘terrorist,’ ‘against,’ and ‘fight.’ Mahathir’s
attitude is divided into two parts, namely theoretical and practical. Theoretically, Mahathir
delivers his argument on acts of terrorism affiliated with Muslims, while practically he offers
a strategic measure that should be undertaken to resolve terrorism. On a theoretical level,
he clarified the accusation of Islam as terrorism based on the Islamic teaching of ‘jihad.’ In
his letters, he associated the word ‘Muslims’ with the words ‘brutalised,’ ‘killed,’ ‘oppressed,’
and ‘discriminated’ to show the real situation happening to Muslims. Then he claimed that
‘religious war’ and ‘jihad’ have nothing to do with Islam but with politics. Moreover, he also
expressed his disapproval towards the United States of America’s decision to carry out the
military invasions to the Middle East. He believed that the invasions would only worsen the
situation. On a practical level, he offered solutions to terrorism taken from his experience
dealing with the same issue in Malaysia during his reign. His argument was crystal clear and
that is the world should stop discrimination and oppression toward Muslims if terrorism is
to be ended. He believed that terrorism is a symptom, and the cause is discrimination and
oppression toward Muslims.
REFERENCES
9/11 Commission (2004) The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. [Online]
Available from: http://www.9-11commission.gov/ [Accessed 31st March 2016].
Alastair, F. (2004) The Collapse of Yugoslavia 1991–1999. Oxford, Osprey Publishing.
Baker, P. (2006) Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London, Continuum.
Barker, P., Gabrielatos, C., & McEnery, T. (2013) Sketching Muslims: A Corpus Driven Analysis of
Representations around the Word ‘Muslim’ in the British Press 1998–2009. Applied Linguistics,
34 (3), 255–278.
Cheng, W. (2012) Exploring Corpus Linguistics: Language in Action. London, Routledge.
Denzin, N.K., & Lincoln, Y.S. (1998) Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials. Thousands
Oaks, Sage Publications.
Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. New York, Longman.
Fairclough, N. (1997) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. New York, Addison
Wesley Longman Inc.
Fairclough, N. (2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. Oxon, Routledge.
Halliday, M.A.K. & Matthiessen, C. (2014) Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar. 4th edition.
Oxon, Routledge.
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Kilgarriff, A., Rychly, P., Smrz, P., & Tugwell, D. (2004) The Sketch Engine. Euralex 2004 Proceedings of
Euralex, EURALEX 2004. pp. 105–116.
Lindquist, H. (2009) Corpus Linguistics and the Description of English. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.
Litosseliti, L. (2010) Corpus methods in linguistics. London, Continuum.
McEnery, T & Hardie, A. (2012) Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press.
Mohamad, M. (2007) Dr Mahathir’s Selected Letters to World Leaders. Kuala Lumpur, Marshal Cavendish Malaysia.
Roy, S.L. (1991) Diplomasi. (Diplomacy) Jakarta, Rajawali Pers.
Wang, J. (2010) A Critical Discourse Analysis of Barack Obama’s Speeches. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 1 (3), 254–261.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Stimulus of request in Japanese and its relation to wakimae as a
cultural context: A discourse analysis on culture in conversation
Filia, N.J. Malik & U. Yuwono
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This paper examines the stimulus-response in Japanese conversation and how
it relates to Japanese culture. It focuses on how Japanese linguistic features in the stimulus
used in conversation requests correspond to a form of culture known as wakimae. Hence, the
understanding of wakimae surrounding the stimulus will bring the proper responses. Taking
a qualitative method, this research uses 30 video-taped Japanese talk shows as data. The
analysis covers the lexical, morphosyntactic, or prosodic features and the cultural context,
norms, or values used in the forms of request as the stimulus. The results reveal two types
of stimuli, specifically (i) syntactically finished utterances and (ii) syntactically unfinished
utterances. In syntactically finished utterances, there were five types of request patterns for
information, namely (i) Q-word type, (ii) declarative form, (iii) polar type with the question
particle ka marker, (iv) polar type with final particle ne marker and (v) tag-question type.
In syntactically unfinished utterances, there are four types of request patterns for information.
They are (i) unfinished utterances marked by the topic particle wa, (ii) unfinished utterances
marked by the nominative particle ga, (iii) unfinished utterances marked by the conjunctive
form, (iv) unfinished utterances marked by the quotative particle tte. These characteristics
of stimulus are not only ruled by the speaker’s intention but also by cultural values. These
cultural values become an important consideration for the speaker when choosing utterances,
both stimulus and response. Therefore, the notion of wakimae can explain the utterance
choice from the perspective of cultural context.
1
INTRODUCTION
In a communication event, there are elements of communication, namely the speaker, the
addressee, and the context. Communication shows exchanges of ideas realized through
stimulus-response. Stimulus in this research is limited to the idea which is expressed by the
speaker and requires a response in the form of utterances from the addressee in the speech
context. The characteristics of stimulus-response in a language are interesting to be studied
because stimulus-response is not only determined by what will be uttered, but also by the
value of the existing culture in the community of the speakers. Thus, it is the cultural context which is taken into consideration when choosing utterances. Here are some examples of
stimuli in Japanese.
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The stimulus expressed by YH is kore ga. Kore is a demonstrative pronoun which means
‘this’, while ga is a nominative particle which follows the subject. The stimulus is interpreted
by MR as a request to MR to provide an explanation to YH. The interesting thing is that
apparently YH felt that he did not need to finish his utterance because by saying kore ga YH
assumed that MR would already know the purpose of his utterance based on the context of
the situation. In the example of the stimulus expression in Japanese above, YH indirectly
conveyed his intention. This can also be observed from the quantity of YH’s utterance where
he only said kore ga. Since ga follows the subject, if the grammatical rule was followed, the
speaker should have continued his utterance like in (b) or (c).
The question is why the speaker did not finish his utterance. At first glance, YH’s unfinished utterance is caused by a cultural factor, namely the notion of wakimae. Wakimae is the
expected norm in the Japanese-speaking community. The members of the community behave
according to the expected norms, because they are watched by the other members. What is
the relationship between an unfinished utterance and wakimae? This paper will discuss this
relationship among other things.
Several studies have been carried out on stimulus-response, especially with regard to questionresponse. Stivers (2010) in a paper entitled “An Overview of the Question-response System in
American-English Conversation” questions the types of questions in natural and spontaneous
conversations. In addition, he also observed the social conduct of the speakers upon answering
questions and how the responses were formed. Levinson (2010) conducted a study on questionresponse in the Yélı̂ Dnye language which is a Papuan language spoken in Rossel Island. Based on
his observations, the findings met the universal expectation in which questions in Yélı̂ Dnye language can be categorized into polar questions and wh-questions. However, he found a number of
particularities, one of them in Yélı̂ Dnye language, in which the polar questions (yes-no questions)
did not have morphosyntactic and prosodic markers. Hayashi (2010) also conducted a study about
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a general overview of the question-response in Japanese. Like the previous two studies, Hayashi
started his observations from lexical, morphosyntactic, and prosodic properties. The data observed
were 350 question-response sequences from more than 10 video recordings of spontaneous conversational interactions. The results of the observations of lexical, morphosyntactic, and prosodic
properties are the classification of question-response types based on the logical semantic structure
as follows: (i) polar (yes/no) questions, (ii) content (WH) questions, (iii) alternative questions. Stivers (2010), Levinson (2010) and Hayashi (2010) conducted studies on the types of questions, but
they did not examine the structure of the stimulus and how it relates to the cultural values that
influence the stimulus. Therefore, in this research, the following research questions are proposed:
1. What is the structure of stimulus utterances in Japanese?
2. Which function of utterance triggers the structure of stimulus utterances in Japanese?
3. Which cultural aspect triggers the structure of stimulus utterance in Japanese?
The objective of this research is to find the structure and functions of stimulus utterances
in Japanese which are influenced by the cultural context known as wakimae. As previously
mentioned, it is assumed that the values held in the speaking community affect the expression
of stimulus. Therefore, this research also aims at demonstrating the cultural values held in the
speaking community through linguistic evidence.
2
RESEARCH THEORY AND METHODOLOGY
The term stimulus-response is closely associated with the study of psychology. This term is
also used in physics and is often associated with the concept of causality. In linguistics, the
term stimulus-response is described in verbal communication situations. The description of
language communication situations related to the stimulus-response effort is realized in the
efforts of the sender and receiver of a message. Bühler (1934, 1982) describes verbal communication in his Organon model. There are three functions of language spoken by the sender
of the message, i.e., symbol, symptom and signal. A symbol is a sign that refers to an object
and a state of event and constitutes the representative function. A symptom can be interpreted as an attempt by the sender through his thought and expression and constitutes the
expressive function, while a signal is a form of language conveyed to the receiver of a message
and to generate responses from the receiver of a message. Bühler terms the third function as
the appellative function. This research focuses on the appellative function.
In Japanese society, wakimae serves as the norm that must be upheld by the speakers. The
term wakimae can be considered equivalent to the term kearifan, which means wisdom in the
Indonesian language, or discernment in English. However, Hill disagreed with this English
translation of the term. According to him, the notion of wakimae has a richer meaning. A
person is considered polite when he or she adapts to the expected social norms. Apparently,
this works universally. However, the expectations of the members of the community towards
the enactment of the norm will vary from one community to another. Regarding wakimae, it is
not about the action which expresses the speaker’s act firmly (Ide, 1990). In other words, what
draws the attention of the speakers is not necessarily his personal intention, instead it is the
intention of the people or what is expected of him by the people. The reason behind the speakers’ obedience and compliance with wakimae is the public’s observation in which the eyes of the
people are on the speakers. This study examines the linguistic evidence which reflects wakimae.
The data used in this research are the conversations in the Asaichi talk show aired on NHK
TV in Japan. The reasons for selecting the Asaichi talk show as the corpus are as follows: (i) the
conversations are unscripted and unedited, so every participant is given the freedom to speak
after the host starts the conversation, or in other words, both the host and the guest have the
opportunity to ask questions, give opinions or explanatory information; (ii) the talk show has
three permanent and temporary hosts. The hosts take turns in the talk show, so that the researchers were able to observe the strategies of these hosts in providing stimuli to request information;
(iii) the topics of conversation vary and revolve around real daily problems faced by the people.
In classifying the data, this study uses the codification proposed by Stivers and Enfield
(2010). This codification is considered suitable as Stivers and Enfield (2010) made a stimulus77
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response coding scheme which focuses on question-response sequences. The title of this
research uses the term stimulus of request, and request here means request for information
needed by the speaker. Request for information may be in the form of a question; nevertheless, the question is not necessarily expressed in interrogative form. In this research, utterances, categorized as a stimulus of request for information, are the host’s questions at the
beginning and middle of the discussion of a topic and the shifting of topics.
3
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The results found two types of stimuli. They are (i) syntactically finished utterances and (ii)
syntactically unfinished utterances. In syntactically finished utterances, we find five types of
request pattern for information, namely (i) Q-word type, (ii) declarative form, (iii) polar type
with question particle ka marker, (iv) polar type with final particle ne marker and (v) tagquestion type. In syntactically unfinished utterances, there are four types of request pattern for
information. They are (i) unfinished utterances marked by the topic particle wa, (ii) unfinished
utterances marked by the nominative particle ga, (iii) unfinished utterances marked by the conjunctive form, (iv) unfinished utterances marked by the quotative particle tte. An example of
stimulus in a declarative form will be given below. Semantically, this utterance does not show
the function of requesting information. However, pragmatically, the illocutionary force of the
utterance shows the intention of the speaker is to ask the addressee to provide information.
The following data represent the stimulus of request for information in syntactically finished and unfinished utterances. Data (1) are classified as stimulus of request for information in syntactically unfinished utterances. The following data are a stimulus to request for
information in an unfinished utterance with the quotative marker tte.
1. {IY (host) asked HR (a reporter who covered cholesterol problems) regarding plaque in
blood vessels.}
Figure 2. Distribution of stimulus of request
in syntactically unfinished utterances.
Figure 1. Distribution of stimulus of request
in syntactically finished utterances.
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(AI20110302-1, Appendix 3, p. 4)
The utterance of IY as the host, purakku tte ‘which is called plaque,’ has the implicature of
request for information from HR as the guest. The reason why the host used an unfinished
utterance is because the host seemingly did not want to openly reveal his directive act. He
wanted to lighten the burden of the guest in responding to his request and at the same time
avoid the responsibility. If the speaker had used a finished utterance, he would have borne
the consequences of his utterance. However, when the speaker expressed it in an unfinished
utterance, by only selecting elements with high relevance to the context, the speaker allowed
the addressee to interpret his intention. HR immediately responded to IY’s utterance by
saying filler anoma. The filler anoma in (3) shows that HR took a moment to think before
giving an explanation about plaque. The question could be a challenge for the addressee, as it
requested the addressee to take immediate action in the form of an immediate answer while
the addressee would in fact need the time to think about the answer. If the addressee had not
recognized the intention of the speaker’s unfinished utterance, he could have confirmed the
meaning of the question to the speaker. In this case, the addressee would receive more time
which would give him the chance to prepare for the answer.
IY’s utterance in (3):
(E-3)
IY said, “What is called plaque…” to the addressee (HR).
(I-3)
IY asked HR to explain what is called plaque.
The utterance with the quotative particle tte in (3) can be perceived as ellipsis. Ellipsis is
motivated by economic and efficiency reasons (Crystal, 1997, p. 134). However, an ellipsis is
not only used to shorten an utterance. The speaker used an ellipsis by deleting the argument
of the utterance (predicate-annotation) in order to convey the focus, topicality or to “pack”
the message, as seen in (3) purakku tte “what is called plaque.” Ellipsis can also be seen in
an implicature, in which the utterance containing ellipsis in (3) implies both a request for
explanation from the addressee and the attitude of the speaker towards the position of the
addressee. Haugh (2008, p. 434) argued that utterances with ellipsis show politeness (teinei/
reigi) because the speaker considers tachiba (the place/position) of the addressee. Still according to Haugh (2008, p. 435), the notion of tachiba (the notion of someone’s ‘place’/position) in Japanese culture includes the position of a person and his group (uchi/group-based
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relationships of belonging, obligation (gimu), dependencies (amae), the notion of tachiba is
similar to the notion of the positive-negative face of Brown and Levinson (1987). However,
in the context of politeness in Japan, the notion of wakimae should be added to the notion of
Brown and Levinson’s face. In the notion of face, the politeness shown by the speaker is the
personal intention of the speaker, whereas in the notion of wakimae, the politeness shown by
the speaker represents the society’s expectations.
4
CONCLUSION
The stimulus of requesting information is expressed in syntactically finished and unfinished utterances. The stimulus of requesting information in a syntactically finished utterance is often found
in declarative and confirmatory forms. Both forms were used by the speakers in conveying the
intention of requesting information. There are quite a lot of declarative utterances because the
speakers did not want to be seen doing a directive act. Basically, a question negatively threatens
the face of the speaker, because it is classified as a directive act. By asking, the speaker interferes
with the freedom of the addressee, as the speaker requests the addressee to answer. Therefore,
to disguise the threat to the addressee’s face, the speaker uses a declarative form. If perceived
from the cultural value of wakimae, disguising the threat to the addressee’s face is part of society’s expectation. The speaker complies with wakimae which is the expectation of the community
because “the eyes of the people” are on him. “The eyes of the people” are represented by the
addressee. If we look at the link between the notion of face and the notion of wakimae, the
speaker is taking wakimae into account by trying to reduce the threat to the addressee’s face.
By using a confirmatory form in conveying the intention of requesting information, the
speaker tried to reduce the burden of the addressee. Requesting information using a confirmatory form with the particle marker ne or tag question shows ‘seeking an answer’ as a collective
activity. The speaker who asked the question also took part in answering the question. In other
words, there is active involvement of the speaker who asked the question while providing the
answer. It also indicates the attitude of the speaker which seeks harmony with the addressee.
The stimulus of requesting information in syntactically unfinished utterances are marked
with markers, such as the topic particle wa, the subject particle ga, the quotative particle, the
conjunctive form, and the conditional form. These utterances suggest pragmatic meanings
that among other things imply the speaker wants to assure the focus of the utterance, for
example in the data the speaker only uttered the subject and the subject or the topic particle
and the topic particle. With regard to politeness, these unfinished utterances show the speaker’s involvement to minimize the burden of the addressee by avoiding the use of a direct act.
However, the speaker can also be considered to avoid commitment by not uttering a finished
utterance. In other words, he does not take responsibility for his utterance. If the utterance
had been finished, he would have had to be responsible for the consequences.
Viewed from the notion of wakimae, unfinished utterances actually show the intention of
the speaker to cooperate with the addressee. This is slightly different from the fulfillment of
the maxim of quantity in Grice’s Cooperative Principles (1975). In the Japanese linguistic
evidence in this research, the unfinished utterances of the speakers are completed by the
addressees. In other words, a complete utterance is realized by the speaker and the addressee
in which they each contribute to complete the utterance. The beginning part of the utterance or the unfinished utterance is uttered by the speaker and the addressee and the second
speaker completes the utterance. The phenomenon of unfinished utterances can be explained
using the theory of relevance, which argues that the addressee understands the conversational implicature and chooses things that are relevant to the context of the conversation.
The greater the relevance and the more the contextual effects, the lesser the efforts required
to process the new information (Sperber and Wilson, 1995, p. 119).
In addition to showing cooperation, the stimulus of requesting information in unfinished
utterances indicates that the speaker considers the feelings of the addressee. Therefore, the
speaker avoids direct expression to convey intention. The avoidance of direct expression is
based on what is considered appropriate in wakimae. In wakimae, utterances that are appro80
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priate in the context are utterances in which “the speakers bury themselves” (Ide, 2006). Thus,
implied subjects and intentions are what is expected in the Japanese-speaking community.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to thank Universitas Indonesia as the financial sponsor for supporting us in
this research on the linguistics of cultural context.
REFERENCES
Austin, J.L. (1962) How to Do Things with Words. Oxford New York, Oxford University Press.
Bigge, M.L. (1955) A relativistic definition of stimulus-response. Journal of Educational Psychology.
46 (8), 457–464.
Birner, B.J. (2013) Introduction to Pragmatics. Singapore, Wiley-Blackwell Publication.
Brown, P. & Levinson S. (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. UK, Cambridge
University Press.
Brown, P. (2010) Questions and their responses in Tzeltal. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 2627–2648.
Bühler, K. (1984) Theory of Language: The Representational Function of Language. Philadelphia,
John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 33, 68.
Cicourel, A.V. (1987) On John R. Searle’s Intentionality. Journal of Pragmatics, 11 (5), 641–660.
Creswell, J.W. (2009) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. Thousand Oaks California, Sage Publication.
Cruse, A.D. (2004) Meaning in Language. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Cutting, J. (2002) Pragmatics and Discourse. London & New York, Routledge.
Davis, W.A. (1998) Implicature: Intention, Convention and Principle in the Failure of Gricean Theory.
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Eggins, S. & Slade, D. (2001) Analyzing Casual Conversation. London, Continuum.
Grice, P. (1975) Logic and Conversation. [William James Lectures]. Harvard University Press.
Hayasi, M. (2010) An overview of question-response system in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics, 42 (10),
2685–2702.
Sachiko, I. (2006) Wakimae no Goyoron (Pragmatics of Wakimae). Tokyo, Taishukan Shoten.
Stivers, T. (2010) An overview of the question-response system in American conversation. Journal of
Pragmatics 42 (10), 2772–2781.
Stivers, T., & Enfield, N.J., (2010) A Coding Scheme for Question-Response Sequences in Conversation.
Journal of Pragmatics, 42 (10), 2620–2626.
Thomas, J. (1995) Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics. London & New York,
Longman.
Mayumi, U. (2002) Discourse Politeness in Japanese Conversation. Tokyo, Hitsuzi Syobo.
Watts, R. (2003) Politeness. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Wilson, D. & Sperber, D. (1991) Inference and Implicature in Pragmatics. New York, Oxford University
Press.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Toraja people’s involvement in Qahhar Mudzakkar’s DI/TII
movement
R.D. Kabubu & Abdurakhman
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This article discusses the involvement of the Toraja people in Qahhar
Mudzakkar’s DI/TII movement during the period of 1953–1965. DI/TII used the Islamic
ideology as the basis of its resistance. Although Tana Toraja’s majority of people at that time
still adhered to the Aluk Todolo belief, the existence of DI/TII in Toraja did not lead to any
religious conflict as the Toraja people were also involved in the movement of DI/TII. Their
involvement was influenced by social and political conditions in Tana Toraja. This paper
uses a historical method, which consists of four stages, namely heuristics, criticism, interpretation, and historiography. The author uses a structuralist approach and the theory of
collective action from Charles Tilly. The dissolution of the Tongkonan Ada’ government was
the catalyst for the rebellion against the central government. These conditions made them
join Qahhar Mudzakkar’s DI/TII movement. Londong Allo, an aristocratic descendant of
Tana Toraja, led the movement. The involvement of the Toraja people in the DI/TII movement was followed by a collective movement against the central government. These collective
actions undertaken were the culmination of their disappointment.
1
INTRODUCTION
The DI/TII movement in South Sulawesi lasted for 12 years, from 1953 to 1965. This upheaval
originated from the people’s disappointment toward the central government policies. Disappointment arose because their aspirations to be integrated into the military were not met by
the government because of the professionalism of the army (Latif, 2000: 242). On 7th August
1953, Qahhar Mudzakkar proclaimed that South Sulawesi merged with the Islamic State
of Indonesia (NII), which was declared by Kartosuwiryo on 7th August 1949 (the ANRI
[National Archives] Sulawesi Provincial Government from 1950 to 1960, Reg. 324). Activities
of DI/TII led by Qahhar Mudzakkar threw South Sulawesi into disarray/turmoil. There were
killings, arsons, destruction of public facilities, and robberies (Gonggong, 1992: 4).
Tana Toraja, which is part of South Sulawesi, was affected by Qahar Mudzakkar’s DI/TII
movement. Tana Toraja has its own characteristics, ethnics, cultures, languages, and religions
compared to other regions in South Sulawesi. In the 1950s, the majority of the people of Tana
Toraja embraced the Todolo Aluk belief, the indigenous belief of the Torajans. However, most
people in South Sulawesi embraced Islam with cultures which are far different from those of the
Tana Toraja people. The involvement of the Tana Toraja people who still adhered to their ancestral beliefs is interesting to examine in the context of Qahhar Mudzakkar’s DI/TII movement.
Most studies on DI/TII have focused only on regions where people are predominantly
Moslems. There has never been an in-depth research on the area where non-Moslem
communities reside. Moreover, most people only understand DI/TII in Tana Toraja as a
religious conflict. However, this study presents other views related to the existence of DI/TII
in Tana Toraja. It is interesting to further study the involvement of the Toraja people in the
movement because of the differences in ideology. Why would anyone in Toraja support the
movement? If it is only seen from a religious perspective, it cannot be understood why they
supported DI/TII. However, there are more political and social factors affecting the Toraja
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people in joining the movement. Using the historical method, this paper aims to find how the
Toraja people were involved in the movement of DI/TII led by Qahhar Mudzakkar with a
structuralist approach to the theory of collective actions from Charles Tilly.
1.1
Social and political conditions of Tana Toraja
In 1953, the people of Tana Toraja had various beliefs and religions: Aluk Todolo around
50%, Christian 40%, Muslim 7%, Catholic 2.5%, and 0.5% other beliefs (ANRI Tana Toraja
1901–1959, Reg. 926B). Aluk Todolo recognises four Tana (caste): Tana’ Bulaan (high nobility),
Tana ‘Bassi (lesser nobility), Tana’ Karurung (free people), and Tana ‘Kua-Kua (servant/slave)
(Tangdilintin, 1975: 150). Tana has nothing to do with money or wealth, so no matter how rich
a person from any low class is, their wealth can never promote/raise their caste (Jong, 2013: 184).
The patron-client relations in Tana Toraja society were very strong. The noble men became
the rulers in each region. The life of the servant/slave was very dependent on the noble men and
their lives were never free from the shackles of debts inherited from the earlier generations or
from the debt bondage. They were used as laborers by both the noble people and by free people.
No doubt, they were loyal to their masters and to other authorities for the sake of their lives.
The Toraja people recognise the concept of siri’, which is defined as self-esteem or honor
(Jong, 2013: 194) since the Torajan people are well aware of their social status. To maintain
their siri’, they are willing to spend a lot and sacrifice their time, energy, and mind (Jong,
2013: 4). The Upacara Rambu Solo (a funeral ceremony) is a prestigious and costly event for
the people of Tana Toraja. Therefore, if an aristocratic family has difficulty in carrying out
the ceremony due to financial constraints, they would help each other to make sure that the
tradition is upheld. By doing this, they are actually defending their siri’ in front of the noble
communities. Therefore, it is reasonable that this tradition is still maintained until now.
In 1906, Tana Toraja was occupied by the Dutch, and it automatically came under the control of the Government of the Netherlands. Tana Toraja (onderafdeeling Makale/Rantepao)
became part of afdeeling Luwu and was divided into 32 districts (Tangdilintin, 1975:72–73).
As time went by, the people of Tana Toraja demanded that they should be given authority
to manage their own government. Eventually, J. M.Van Lijf as the controleur of MakaleRantepao granted this demand in 1946. On 8th October 1946, Tana Toraja started to be
recognized as an autonomous region. Then, on 15th October 1946, seven Chiefs of Lembang
(village chiefs) signed the declaration. On 31st October 1946, seven people who signed earlier
were named the members of the Tana Toraja’s Daily Assembly called Tongkonan Ada’ and
they appointed A. D. Andilolo Puang Makale as the chairperson (Lijf, 2004: 145–147).
Tongkonan Ada’ officials are appointed for life, or they can resign at their own request or
due to age, health reasons, incompetence, or due to serious violations. In other words, there
is no democratic election. Although given authority over its own region, the Tana Toraja
people were bound to the Government of Luwu, and the capital remained in Palopo (ANRI
Tana Toraja 1901–1959, Reg, 244).
After the recognition of Indonesia’s sovereignty by the Netherlands on 27th December
1949, political turmoil began emerging in Eastern Indonesia, especially in South Sulawesi.
The emerging factions wanted to join the Republic of Indonesia and demanded the dissolution of the State of East Indonesia/Negara Indonesia Timur (NIT). However, this caused
strong reaction from groups that wanted to maintain NIT and the NIT government arrested
many young former army soldiers in South Sulawesi. In response, the people in various
regions in South Sulawesi protested and united to proclaim the merger of their territory into
the Republic of Indonesia. On 16th March 1950, the Association of Indonesian Independence Struggle (GAPKI) in Makassar held a meeting which was attended by twelve political
parties and organizations of the people that demanded the dissolution of NIT. A day later,
on 17th March 1950, there was a rally involving 200,000 people that demanded for an immediate dissolution of NIT. After the Andi Aziz’ rebellion, the protests and demands led to the
proclamation of the establishment of the National Committee of Indonesia (KNI), and the
formation of an emergency government (the Ministry of Information, 1953: 162–166).
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On 17th April 1950, in Polongbangkeng, the people declared that NIT is no longer in
power. The declaration is known as the Polongbangkeng Proclamation:
On behalf of the people of the Republic of Indonesia throughout Eastern Indonesia:
We hereby proclaim that:
We have rescinded from the jurisdiction of NIT and will defend our areas as parts of the
Republic of Indonesia, and we will remain to be its citizens—with Djakarta as its capital –
who are bound to its law.
Fully independent!!!! (Ministry of Information, 1953:167).
On 29th April 1950, a committee consisting of the representatives of political parties formed
an array of the Emergency Government of the Republic of Indonesia in South Sulawesi and
also helped set up the National Committee of South Sulawesi Province in Indonesia (ANRI
Tana Toraja 1901–1959, Reg. 557).
The political situation in Tana Toraja was followed by significant political developments in
South Sulawesi. On 19th May 1950, with the approval of the political parties in Tana Toraja,
the Regional Emergency Government of the Republic of Indonesia Makale/Rantepao was
formed. On 25th May 1950, the Regional Emergency Government of the Republic of Indonesia Makale/Rantepao along with KNI was inaugurated. Calvijn Rongre was appointed as the
Head of Government. KNI members consisted of 21 people from the representatives of workers, peasants, political parties, youth, and minorities (ANRI Tana Toraja 1901–1959, Reg. 244).
1.2 Tongkonan Ada’ Government: The catalyst of Toraja people’s involvement in the DI/TII
movement
After the inauguration of the Regional Emergency Government of the Republic of Indonesia Makale/Rantepao, Tongkonan Ada’ was officially no longer recognised as a legitimate
government in Tana Toraja. Thus, the government officials of Tongkonan Ada’ resigned.
With these changes, the political parties in Tana Toraja wanted to reorganise the government
down to the lowest level such as the village level, in which the changes included reorganising
the number of villages in the region and the reshuffling of its officials. The main reason of
this reorganisation was that the former government was considered as a Dutch heritage and
was not based on the principles of democracy (ANRI Tana Toraja 1901–1959, Reg. 244).
However, with the changes of leadership in Tanah Toraja, some of the village chiefs disagreed with this reorganisation since it was uncertain for them whether they would secure a
position in the new government. The new government that was formed deliberately reduced
the number of districts from 32 to 15 districts (Tana Toraja ANRI 1901 to 1959, Reg. 244;
Bigalke, 2016:316) and they merged the villages from 410 to 132 villages (Bigalke, 2016:316).
More than half of the district and village chiefs lost their jobs, which led to times of hardship
in Tana Toraja in the political context.
On 11th July 1950, in the District of Nanggala, the groups that did not agree with the
dissolution of the Tongkonan Ada’ Government spread pamphlets to appeal for the dissolution
of the Regional Emergency Government of the Republic of Indonesia Makale/Rantepao and
urged people not to recognise it as the legitimate government. Such provocations occurred
in Balusu, Rantepao, and Sangalla’ (ANRI Tana Toraja from 1901 to 1959, Reg. 558).
Dissolution of the Tongkonan Ada’ Government brought its own problems among people
who held positions in the government and they started a rebellion against this policy.
Londong Allo, from the noble community who served as a village chief in Batualu,
Simbuang District, was disappointed with the change in the government. People of several
districts and villages were frustrated by many of the district authorities and the village chiefs.
Because of these frustrations, Londong Allo’s colleagues fled to the forest with the aim to
round up a movement to revive the Tongkonan Ada’ Government. In their struggle in the
forest, Londong Allo and his followers always received help from the former government
officials of Tongkonan Ada’ and their families. Londong Allo also got a lot of support from
the noble community of Tana Toraja who sympathized with their struggle. Lai ‘Rinding who
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was the son of Laso’ Rinding (Puang Sangalla) assisted them by supplying weapons obtained
from Makassar (ANRI Sulawesi Province from 1950 to 1960, Reg. 324).
The involvement of the Toraja people in the movement led by Qahhar Mudzakkar can
be seen from the merger of Londong Allo and his troops with the battalions led by Andi
Sose. Although Andi Sose decided to leave Qahhar Mudzakkar and was inducted into the
military on 4th March 1952, Londong Allo and his followers remained in the forest when
they decided to join the DI/TII Kartosuwiryo in West Java as they had similar agendas and
experience. Both were hurt and disappointed with the central government (ANRI Sulawesi
Province from 1950 to 1960, Reg. 324).
In social life, the people of Tana Toraja are known for their concept of siri’ (dignity) containing a very deep meaning for every human in Toraja. Siri’ is the driving factor for Londong Allo
to join forces with Qahhar Mudzakkar’s group. Londong Masiri Allo’ was in disgrace and Dipakasiri’ was also in dishonor because they no longer had a position in the government. Moreover,
when Calvijn Rongre was appointed as the Head of Government of Tana Toraja, many Tana
Toraja noblemen were disappointed because the highest position in the government was held by
the lowest caste. In the tradition of Aluk Todolo, only the people from the noble community
have the right to hold important positions in the government and in the customary traditions.
The rise of Calvijn Rongre who broke the tradition was regarded as an insult to the Tana Toraja
noblemen, who were discharged as district and village chiefs (Pasande, 2011: 223–225).
Patron-client relations were very deeply rooted in the lives of the people of Tana Toraja, and
this made Londong Allo, a nobleman, gain many followers and strong support. Toraja people
joined the DI/TII led by Qahhar Mudzakkar in order to restore siri’, to fight for the Tongkonan
Ada’ government, and to restore their positions in the government. In its development, Londong Allo then embraced Islam and took a new name Amir Londong Allo after Qahhar Mudzakkar and his group were affiliated with the DI/TII (Aqamuz, 2007:584). A few years later,
Amir Londong Allo was given a high position as the Secretary General of the Young Officers
at DI/TII Headquarters (ANRI Sulawesi Province from 1950 to 1960, Reg. 327).
Besides Amir Londong Allo, other Tana Toraja nobleman who also joined the DI/TII was
Tandu Lange, who decided to convert to Islam in 1954, and later took a new name Abdul
Salam Abadi. He became one of the leaders who succeeded in recruiting as many as 4,000
people from Tana Toraja regions and its remit included Palopo to become DI/TII followers (Aqamuz, 2007:584–589). Francis Batara Randa, a nobilman of Mengkendek who also
decided to join the DI/TII, was one of the respected leaders of TII in Mengkendek’s territory.
After embracing Islam, he changed his name into Mansur Batara Randa (Interview Mrs.
Mansur Batara Randa on 16th April 2016).
On 15th September 1952, a meeting was held to establish Islam as the ideological basis for
the struggle of DI/TII led by Qahhar Mudzakkar and his battalion commanders. After receiving the news on 10th June 1953, another meeting was held at Kampung Bokin Buntao District/
Rantebua by the Tana Toraja’s guerrilla commanders to discuss its merger with DI/TII. Subsequently, in July 1953, the ideology of Islam was used as the basis for the struggle, and it began
to be broadcast to the entire Tana Toraja region (ANRI Tana Toraja 1901–1959, Reg. 926B).
The group led by Qahhar Mudzakkar had been in Tana Toraja since 1950. In the western
region, there were areas controlled by groups such as Simbuang (District Sangalla), Gandang Batu (District Mengkendek), Bittuang District, and District Buakayu. By June 1953,
the Military District Administration in Gandang Batu (Sillanan) had been estblished; this
region was made into a closed/restricted area and the area of concentration for these groups.
People had to pay a tax of 4% of their income (ANRI Sulawesi Province from 1950 to 1960,
Reg. 332). However, the eastern region of Tana Toraja experienced disturbances from the DI/
TII Batuputih Brigade troops whose headquarters were in Luwu. At least one battalion was
deployed in TII Tana Toraja led by Mustafa Lambat (Arsip Tana Toraja 1959–1990, Reg.
1443). The Guerillas based in the region were generally located in the plateau region Buntao/
Rantebua, which is ±19 km from Rantepao, with Ne’Uban as the commander, in Kambutu
(Buntao/Rantebua), which is ±20 km from Rantepao, with So’Balusu as the commander,
and in Bokin-Ulusalu, which is ±17 km from Rantepao, with B. Bungin as the commander
(ANRI Tana Toraja 1901–1959, Reg. 926B).
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The border areas of the districts of Tana Toraja including Sa’dan/Balusu, Nanggala,
Buntao/Rantebua, Sangalla, and some other districts of the southern and western parts of
Tana Toraja (ANRI Tana Toraja 1901–1959, Reg. 933) were the favorite areas for DI/TII to
smuggle members who would enter the military. The strongest base of DI/TII in Tana Toraja
was in Bittuang, which was led by Tuwo Daru’ who ruled the district for five years from
1950–1955 which made people abandon the village and join DI/TII in the forest. The road to
the district was destroyed to prevent the Indonesian Army/Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI)
from operating military actions in the region (J.B. Misalayuk Interview, 9th April 2016).
2
CONCLUSION
The Toraja people’s involvement in DI/TII is an interesting phenomenon because their ideology is very different from the ideology of the DI/TII movement. There are several factors that
led to the involvement of the Toraja people in Qahhar Mudzakkar’s DI/TII movement. First,
the reorganisation in the government made most of the government officials who came from
the noble community lose their job/positions. Those involved in the DI/TII movement were the
disappointed aristocratic factions. Second, the patron-client relationships were strongly held
by the Tana Toraja people. Having such strong relationships, the frustrated noblemen gained
a lot of support from the community. Third, the people of Tana Toraja have the concept of
siri’ which is upheld as a guide in their customs and culture. Hence, when they no longer served
in the new government after the reorganization and the fact that Calvijn Rongre, a man from
a lower caste in Tana Toraja was appointed as the Head of Government, these caused the
aristocrats who lost office were to feel ashamed (masiri)’ and humiliated (dipakasiri’). In Aluk
Todolo’s ways of life, members of the noble community dominated the positions in public
offices and customary figures. The people from lower classes only served as servants/slaves for
the noble community. Therefore with such a strong community life of Tana Toraja under the
teachings of Aluk Todolo, when Calvijn Rongre emerged as the top leader in the government,
a lot of criticism came from the noble community who no longer held government positions.
Therefore, after reviewing all the above factors, the movement of DI/TII in Tana Toraja should
not only be considered as purely a religious conflict. The involvement of the Torajan people in
the movement indicates that religion was not necessarily a factor in this case. The political situation in Tana Toraja at that time was the main cause of the merger between the Toraja people and
Qahhar Mudzakkar’s group. The term mutualism symbiosis can be used to describe the relationship between the two groups. Their cooperation was mutually based on a mutual aim to fight
against the new government. The collective actions undertaken by the Toraja people together
with Qahhar Mudzakkar and his followers were the culmination of their disappointment.
REFERENCES
Arsip Propinsi Sulawesi. (1950–1960) Reg. 324. Badan Arsip dan Perpustakaan Daerah Sulawesi
Selatan. (Archives of Sulawesi Province (1950–1960) Reg. 324. Regional Agency for Archives and
Library of South Sulawesi).
Arsip Tana Toraja. (1901–1959) Reg. 926B. Badan Arsip dan Perpustakaan Daerah Sulawesi Selatan. (Archives of Tana Toraja (1901–1959) Reg. 926B. Regional Agency for Archives and Library of
South Sulawesi).
Arsip Tana Toraja. (1901–1959) Reg, 244. Badan Arsip dan Perpustakaan Daerah Sulawesi Selatan.
(Archives of Tana Toraja (1901–1959) Reg. 244. Regional Agency for Archives and Library of
South Sulawesi).
Arsip Tana Toraja. (1901–1959) Reg. 557. Badan Arsip dan Perpustakaan Daerah Sulawesi Selatan.
(Archives of Tana Toraja (1901–1959) Reg. 557. Regional Agency for Archives and Library of South
Sulawesi).
Arsip Tana Toraja. (1901–1959) Reg. 558. Badan Arsip dan Perpustakaan Daerah Sulawesi Selatan.
(Archives of Tana Toraja (1901–1959) Reg. 558. Regional Agency for Archives and Library of South
Sulawesi).
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ArsipI Tana Toraja (1901–1959) Reg. 798. Badan Arsip dan Perpustakaan Daerah Sulawesi Selatan.
(Archives of Tana Toraja (1901–1959) Reg. 798. Regional Agency for Archives and Library of South
Sulawesi).
Arsip Propinsi Sulawesi (1950–1960) Reg. 327. Badan Arsip dan Perpustakaan Daerah Sulawesi Selatan.
(Archives of Sulawesi Province (1950–1960) Reg. 327. Regional Agency for Archives and Library of
South Sulawesi).
Arsip Propinsi Sulawesi (1950–1960) Reg. 332. Badan Arsip dan Perpustakaan Daerah Sulawesi Selatan.
(Archives of Sulawesi Province (1950–1960) Reg. 332. Regional Agency for Archives and Library of
South Sulawesi).
Arsip Tana Toraja (1959–1990) Reg. 1443. Badan Arsip dan Perpustakaan Daerah Sulawesi Selatan.
(Archives of Tana Toraja (1901–1959) Reg. 1443. Regional Agency for Archives and Library of South
Sulawesi).
Arsip Tana Toraja (1901–1959) Reg. 933. Badan Arsip dan Perpustakaan Daerah Sulawesi Selatan.
(Archives of Tana Toraja (1901–1959) Reg. 933. Regional Agency for Archives and Library of South
Sulawesi).
Aqamuz, E. (Siti Maesaroh). (2007) Profil Abdul Qahhar Mudzakkar: Patriot Pejuang Kemerdekaan
Republik Indonesia dan Syahid NII/TII. (Profile of Abdul Qahar Mudzakkar: Freedom Patriot and
Syahid of NII/TII) Tangerang, Yayasan Al-Abrar.
Bigalke, T.W. (2016) Sejarah Sosial Tana Toraja. (Social History of Tanat Toraja) Translated by
M. Yuanda Zara. Yogyakarta, Ombak.
Gonggong, Anhar. (1992) Abdul Qahhar Mudzakkar dari Patriot hingga Pemberontak. (Abdul Qahar
Mudzakkar from Patriot to Rebel) Jakarta, Grasindo.
Jong, E.D. (2012) Making a Living between Crises and Ceremonies in Tana Toraja (The Practice of Everyday Life of a South Sulawesi Highland Community in Indonesia). Leiden-Boston, KITLV.
Ministry of Information. (1953) Republic of Indonesia, Indonesia, Sulawesi Province. Makassar,
Ministtrry of Information.
Latief, A. (2000) Dinamika lokal militer di Sulawesi Selatan (Local Military Dynamics in South Sulawesi).
In: Dr. Edward L. Polinggomang, M.A. & Drs. Suriadi Mappangara, M.Hum (Eds.) Dunia Militer di
Indonesia. (Military World in Indonesia) Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press.
Lijf, J.M. van (2004) Laporan Serah Terima Mengenai Onderafdeling Tana Toraja dari Kontrolir
Pemerintah Dalam yang Lepas Jabatan. (Minutes of Transfer of Authority on the dismissal of the
Onderafdeling from the Government in Tana Toraja) ANRI Institution and Regional Library of the
South Sulawesi Province.
Lloyd, C. (1993) The Structures of History. Oxford UK & Cambridge USA, Blackwell.
Pasande, D. (2011) Politik nasional dan penguasa lokal di Tana Toraja. (National Politics and Local
Rulers in Tana Toraja) In: Sita Van Bemmelen & Remco Raben (Eds.) Antara Daerah dan Negara:
Indonesia Tahun 1950-an. (Between Region and State: Indonesia in the 1950s). Jakarta, Yayasan
Pustaka Obor.
Tangdilintin, L.T. (1975) Toraja dan Kebudayaannya (Toraja and its Culture) Tana Toraja, Yayasan
Lepongan Bulan.
Tilly, C. (1978) From Mobilization to Revolution. Sydney, Adison-Wesly Publishing.
Zuhdi, S. (2008) Metodologi Strukturistik dalam Historiografi Indonesia. (Structuristic Methodology
in the Historiography of Indonesia) In: Djoko Marihandono (ed.) Titik Balik Historiografi di
Indonesia. (Turning Point of Historiography in Indonesia) Jakarta, Wedatama Widya Sastra.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Digital art and its uniqueness without aura
A.I. Badry & A.Y. Lubis
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Modern technology plays an important role in our daily lives. Many people
use technology for their works, interactions, and special interests such as art. Art as a discipline, which expresses human emotion and creative side, takes a new form for its contextualization with the help of information technology. A neologism for this discipline is “digital art.”
Some experts who employ a traditional value in their aesthetical perspective consider this new
approach unlikely. Walter Benjamin, an eminent figure from this group, stated that art must
have an aura in its production as is the case in paintings. With this aura, the work of art and
not artwork has uniqueness of value. However, the problem arises when information technology becomes a predominant tool for the work of art. Digital art does not consider the aura as
the core value in defining something as a work of art. Furthermore, digital artists think that art
can exist within a digital object and maintain its uniqueness. Parallel with the latter, this article
will describe the dispute and make a clear statement that a work of art in the digital age does
not require aura.
1
INTRODUCTION
The discourse of digital art1 is one of the contemporary aesthetic issues that emerged in the
20th century and covers an interaction between art and information technology. In addition
to functioning as a new area for creativity or expression, digital art is always faced with a
debate in terms of the originality of a work of art. In this context, the origin of the debate
comes from the famous article written by Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction.” He introduced the concept that the originality of a work of art
must be based on the “aura,” while something that is mass-reproduced by machines, such as
a photograph,2 cannot be called a work of art.
Before attempting to understand Benjamin’s argument and explain why this argument
can be debatable in parallel to that of William Vaughan, we would like to step back further
to the description of the relationship between art and technique. This is important as the
foundation for gaining a comprehensive perspective about the ground of digital art’s discourse itself.
1. The term digital art is much more popular than electronic art. For coherence in this article, we prefer
to use “digital art” rather than “electronic art” as a technical term. It is because the core of contemporary electronic art is based on digital data and not analogue data.
2. We use the guidelines mentioned in Clive Cazeaux (Ed.). The Continental Aesthetics Reader. London:
Routledge, 2000, pp. 322–343 for citing this article. See the argument by William Vaughan about
the debate on Benjamin’s position in his writing, “History of Art in the Digital Age: Problems and
Possibilities,” which is published in Anna Bentkowska-Kafel, Trish Cashen, and Hazel Gardiner (Eds.).
Digital Art History: A Subject in Transition. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2005, pp. 6–7.
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1.1
The relationship between art and technique3
Discourse about this relationship can be traced back to the ancient Greek period. Technique has
an etymological root in Greek, i.e. tekhne (Τεχνε′), which means “every skill to do something.”
It was differentiated from physis (instinctive ability) or tyche (possible ability). Tekhne is a special term in philosophy used by Plato in his dialogue entitled Politheia or Republic. This term
also appears in the Protagoras dialogue. In other dialogues, i.e. Sophistes and Politikos, Plato
preferred to use the term tekhne, which means “art.” An explicit example in using this term
can be found in one phrase, i.e. maieutike tekhne (midwifery art). This phrase illustrates well
Socrates’ dialogue method, which could open someone’s mind about his/her fallacies.4
In contrast to Plato, Aristotle defined tekhne as hexis (characteristic), which stresses the
production side (poietike). With this definition, all actions that do not produce anything cannot be called tekhne and belongs only to the domain of praktike (action). In short, tekhne is
the accumulation of experienced knowledge to produce something.5 According to this definition, tekhne can also be interpreted as “craft.”6 Nevertheless, the problem arises when tekhne
has a dual meaning, such as in Aristotle’s definition. A synonym between art and craft can
be easily interpreted. In contemporary art, for artists, critics, and aestheticians, synonymy
between art and craft must be rejected.
The origin of this opinion dates back to the end of the 17th century. As a continuation of
this opinion, Robin George Collingwood and Benedetto Croce made some theoretical formulations to elaborate it as a clear argument in the beginning of the 20th century. For Collingwood and Croce, craft is imitative and does not result in a new creation. Because tekhne is the
production of something, craft is the production of something guided by a model. Besides,
art produces something in its interaction with the object and cannot be predicted as is the
case with craft. Therefore, art is creative and produces some innovations.7
Even though the latter is important, the core problem of the relationship between art and
technique is not about the differentiation between art and craft itself. It will be based on truth
as the foundation of the core problem.8 To understand this, we must refer to the argumentation of Martin Heidegger. He stated that art would bring truth outside from its hiddenness.
For example, Heidegger analysed Vincent van Gogh’s painting entitled A Pair of Shoes (1887).
The question for this work of art is very simple. For what purpose was this painting created? In
that painting, we can only see a peasant woman’s pair of shoes and nothing more. However, for
Heidegger, it does not stop there. He is capable of seeing many possibilities of “beings in there,”
including the peasant woman herself that Heidegger describes as working hard and wearing the
shoes until late in the evening. Therefore, we can learn that the work of art can be understood as
an unconcealed thing. The work of art has an aletheia (unconcealedness or truth) in its presence.9
3. This section was first discussed in Ahmad Ibrahim Badry’s Konstruk Tanda dan Citra di Dunia Cyber:
Analisis Semiotik atas Kasus Bahasa Pemrograman dan Cyberspeak (Sign and Image Construct in the
Cyber World: Semiotic Analysis on the Case of Programming Language and Cyberspeak). Yogyakarta:
Fakultas Filsafat Universitas Gadjah Mada, 2003, in section 1. 2. 1. In writing this article, we revised
this part for inclusion in the article, and more detailed arguments compiled from other sources were
added.
4. See the description of tekhne as a special term in F. E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon,
New York: New York University Press, 1967, pp. 190–191, and for maieutike tekhne in Plato, “Thaeteteus,” see
sect. 150b, in Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Ed.), The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Including the
Letters), Bollingen Series LXXI, 6th print, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971, p. 855.
5. Peters. Op.cit., p. 191.
6. Nicholas Bunnin, and Jiyuan Yu. The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, 2004, p. 679.
7. See further explanation about this history in Dabney Townsend’s Historical Dictionary of Aesthetics.
Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2006, p. 79.
8. This statement is inspired by the writing of Herman Rapaport, entitled Is There Truth in Art? New
York: Cornell University Press, 1997, especially when he describes Heidegger’s position in questioning
the essence of art on pp. 19–35.
9. Martin Heidegger. “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Cazeaux. Op.cit., pp. 86–87.
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Figure 1.
Figure 2.
Furthermore, we can consider another important contention by Heidegger about tekhne
in relation to art. He reminded us to think about tekhne carefully. With his knowledge of
ancient Greek, Heidegger showed us that tekhne can be a mode for poiesis, which has a creative character, and aletheia, which has an unconcealed character. Within poiesis, there are
craft and art.10 Therefore, if we make a diagram of his explanation while also considering
Collingwood and Croce’s differentiation, the result would be the following:
Besides this opinion, we note that Heidegger’s attitude toward technology is rejection. For
him, technology is a tekhne without poiesis or Ge-stell (enframing). In Ge-stell, the mode of
creation is substituted by the mode of production, whereas the mode of revealing is eliminated or cancelled. In other words, aletheia as truth is not becoming.11 Hence, truth that
comes from this side is a veritas. Veritas as truth has a rigid character like a formal logic and
meaning, as does rectitudo (straightness) or iustitia (justice). Not only are there all these characteristics, but veritas must have an agent to distinguish true (verum) from false (falsum).12
If we do not misinterpret Heidegger’s contention about his attitude toward technology in
its relationship with art and truth, we can make another diagram to complete our first diagram. The diagram is as follows:
10. See a good resume of Heidegger’s formulation in Jay M. Bernstein’s The Fate of Art: Aesthetic
Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press,
1992, p. 112. For a comparative explanation, see Townsend. Op.cit., p. 147.
11. Bernstein. Op.cit., p. 113.
12. See Rappaport. Op.cit., p. 20.
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From these diagrams, we can summarize the relationship between art and technology in
two models. As a result, models of relationship between art and technology can be used as a
guideline to differentiate several opinions that come within this context.
1.2
Production and reproduction of the work of art
After discussing the relationship between art and technology, now we will discuss Benjamin’s
article. In his article, Benjamin stated his thesis that “in principle, a work of art has always been
reproducible.” With the development of technology, especially when humans found a mechanical way of reproduction, the reproduction of a work of art can be done in a short time and in
large quantities. This is a massive reproduction of a work of art. In spite of all this, Benjamin
noted that even massive reproduction of the work of art has one deficiency, i.e. “its presence in
time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be”13 is non-existent.
The supposition that a work of art must be unique in Benjamin’s argument is another way
of saying that a work of art must be original or authentic in its core values. Anything that
was reproduced is neither original nor authentic. This is parallel with the case of reproduction via machine. For the case of reproduction, Benjamin also noted that, first, the process
of reproduction via machine is free from originality if we compare it with manual reproduction. When a machine implements duplication, it does not work like the original. Therefore,
we can say that the machinery process of reproduction produces “originality,” because it is
different from the original way of making the product. Second, technical reproduction can be
made into an imitation with a quality beyond the original in a special context. For example,
when a photograph or a recorded sound functions as the representation of the original, its
status of imitation is better believed than the original.14
Despite the fact that a machine can produce “the original,” to differentiate it from the
actual original, Benjamin formulated originality as follows:
The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning,
ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. Since the historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter. And what is really
jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authority of the object.15
In relation to originality, there emerges the concept of aura. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines aura as “a special quality or feeling that seems to come from a person, place,
or thing.”16 However, it has a special meaning in Benjamin’s view. First, aura is related to
authenticity itself, because the situation of the weakness of aura is based on substituting
the pluralities of the uniqueness. Second, aura must have a distance, a quality that impresses
someone for its presence. Finally, it is important to underline individuality as a quality of
aura as it cannot be taken away from its shell.17
After comprehending the machinery reproduction of a work of art and its impact on the
work itself, we can say that the technology that produces the machine has a negative effect
on a work of art. On the one hand, this opinion is true, but we must also note a different
side of it. Photography and film, as shown by Benjamin, have reached their status as art via
machinery reproduction. However, their status as art has a dilemmatic side as they conduct
13. Benjamin. Op.cit., pp. 323–324.
14. Ibid., p. 324.
15. Ibid.
16. See the definition in: <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aura>, accessed on the 28
September 2016.
17. Benjamin. Op.cit., pp. 325–326. Identification of the key features of aura in Benjamin’s argument
was adopted from Martin Donougho’s “Walter Benjamin,” in Stephen Davies et al. (Eds.). A Companion
to Aesthetics. 2nd Ed. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, p. 176.
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mass production and lack the aura. He noted too that massive production can be used as a
propaganda instrument, such as what the Nazi did in Germany.18
Furthermore, if we relate Benjamin’s contention to the models of relationship between art
and technology, Benjamin’s position is the same as Heidegger’s. All statements of Benjamin
serve as examples for what Heidegger said as Ge-stell. However, in this case, we cannot say that
aura is parallel with aletheia. Benjamin’s intention, perhaps, is not meant as a search for truth
via aura. His position is more similar to that of Immanuel Kant, who claimed that aesthetical
experience is unique.19
Even though we are aware of Benjamin’s position, there is another essential problem related
to the production of a work of art, i.e. how we can comprehend what is meant as the production
of the work of art itself. In this case, if we imagine a simple method, we can come to the conclusion that in producing a work of art, such as paintings, poetry, and songs, we must have a suitable tool. As illustration, to paint in a primitive way, we only need charcoal or blood. This model
of painting can be seen in the old caves and is recognized as the origin of the painting technique.
Based on this, analogically, we can say that this method has an inherent technique or technology. In other words, to produce this work of art, we need to have a tool suitable for our
technique or technology. Producing a work of art presupposes a technique or technology
as Aristotle said. This presupposition can also be applied in the machinery reproduction,
because the machine is only a new suitable tool. Therefore, the core problem of originality
of a work of art has shifted to the way or method of production and is not based on aura.
The originality of a work of art always comes with a new tool in its production. For example,
if we can paint a new object using a tool that is different from ink, then the painting has its
originality and uniqueness.
Meanwhile, the reproduction of a work of art, especially through mass reproduction, is
not an essential problem for us. We can say that mass reproduction is part of art appreciation
or socialization. We cannot know about a work of art if we do not have any copy of it, even
if it is, minimally, in a catalogue. A work of art without appreciation is like nature without
man. Thus, unlike Benjamin, we do not agree that aura and mass production are to be seen
as core values to judge a work of art as “real or original art” in its context.
1.3
Digital art as part of the production mode of a work of art
In contemporary life, humans cannot be separated from technology. As a result, the fast
development of technology has created a convergence between information technology and
communication technology. This convergence bears a new tool, such as a personal computer
with visual display, or the Internet. It has revolutionized the world and made it transparent
and connected. With the help of this convergence, digital art comes into realization.
Currently, similar to traditional art, digital art has many branches, such as digital photo
manipulation, cartoon animation, movie special effects, 2D and 3D modelling, electronic
games, hypertext poetry, visual designs, web designs, multimedia presentations, and simulation. From digital photo manipulation to simulation, they have one primary key feature,
that is the fact that the data are digital. It is the reason why art based on digital data is called
digital art. The word digital itself means a binary code because the data format has only two
numbers. It symbolizes the electric gate as consisting of two conditions. The first is 0 (zero)
for the “off ” condition and the second is 1 (one) for the “on” condition.
We can imagine that by only using the signs 0 and 1 someone whose profession is a digital
artist can make a manipulation of images and colour in any way that s/he wants. For this purpose, computer engineers are capable of making a variation of codes to “paint” a form using
digital data. It is coded on the byte that has an 8 × 8 bit of data in one square. As illustration,
we show a letter “A” on the diagram below as coded in 1 byte of data.
Each letter that we can see in this picture is written as “bulk” of data like this:
18. Benjamin. Op.cit., pp. 336–337 for the epilogue.
19. Townsend. Op.cit., p. xxix.
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Figure 3.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
0000 0000
0001 1000
0010 0100
0100 0010
0111 1110
0100 0010
0100 0010
0000 0000
It is not easy for us to understand this code if we cannot see the pattern of the letter A. We
observe that the capacity of engineering and manipulating data like these is parallel to the
capacity of painting. Computer engineers and painters do not look different in their capacity
of painting something. The difference is only in the tools they use. Computer engineers paint
on visual display (monitor) by code generation within the computer, whereas painters paint
on canvas or paper using oil or water colour.
For this case, it is not relevant for us to consider aura as proposed by Benjamin to judge the
originality of a work of art. Otherwise, we cannot say either that the letter A used by computer engineers does not fulfil the criteria to call this as a work of art. A letter itself is one of the
examples of creativity in the computer world. This is a new creation with a new tool.
Parallel to this conception, Vaughan argued that digital art challenges the concept of aura
in two ways. First, the possibilities of infinite reproduction from the digital image can be a barrier for aura to enter digital art as one criterion for judging authenticity. This is true, but when
he said that “it is nothing but reproduction,” Vaughan did not recognize computer engineers
as “painters” as described above. He just focuses on the digital artist who manipulates digital
photos. Second, with the dependency on performative nature, digital artists express creativity
in their interpretation of phenomena, fragmenting, analysing, and reproducing objects and
realities. Thus, the aura for the second point is not needed anymore because every process in
digital art presupposes creativity. However, when he said that digital art is “passive reproduction,” we do not agree with his statement either. Digital art is not merely a reproduction.20 We
tend to agree with John Andrew Fisher, who said:
“... new technologies have not only expanded established art forms, generated new
art forms, and affected the way traditional art forms are experienced, but perhaps
also diluted the very status of the fine arts in general.”21
If we consider this observation in the context of the production of a work of art, digital art
has uniqueness and originality as opposed to what Benjamin said in the context of machine
reproduction. However, the mode of the production of digital art is not the same as that of
traditional production or machine reproduction of a work of art. Digital art is based on
20. Vaughan. Op.cit., p. 6.
21. John Andrew Fisher. “Technology and Art,” in Stephen Davies, et al. (Eds.). A Companion to
Aesthetics. 2nd Ed. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, p. 559.
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immaterial production. It does not need too much of the real material as part of the production except a computer with a display to process this material. A work of art in digital art can
exist without material form.
2
CONCLUSION
From the above explanation, we show that originality in the context of digital art can be
traced to its method of production. If we recognize that the problem of originality is not
based on aura but on the method of production, every new form of technique or technology
to express art can have its originality. Besides, digital art has its uniqueness even without aura
as its character is immaterial. With this immateriality, digital art can absorb every traditional
form of art into its area with the process of digitalization.
However, if we consider the first diagram depicting the relationship between art and technology, especially related to Heidegger’s contention about truth, digital art cannot answer
it temporarily. With the characteristic of veritas as the truth that they have, it is difficult to
counter the statement that digital art has exercised an “essential domination”22 as exemplified
by digitalization. It is also interesting to say that digital art is not an eliminated character of
“reflexivity.” It can help humans to contrast and to mix something unreal with something
real within one domain. It is unlike Heidegger’s concern that focuses on the need to open
concealedness. Instead, digital art tends to open “nothingness” in reality.
REFERENCES
Badry, A.I. (2003) Konstruk tanda dan citra di dunia cyber: Analisis semiotik atas kasus bahasa pemrograman dan cyberspeak (Sign and image construct in the cyber world: Semiotic analysis on the case of
language programming and cyberspeak). [Thesis]. Yogyakarta: Fakultas Filsafat Universitas Gadjah
Mada.
Benjamin, W. (2000) The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In Cazeaux, (Ed.). The
continental aesthetics reader. London: Routledge.
Bernstein, J.M. (1992) The fate of art: Aesthetic alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Bunnin, N. & Yu, J. (2004) The Blackwell dictionary of western philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Donougho, M. (2009) Walter Benjamin. In Davies, S. et al. (Eds.). A companion to aesthetics. 2nd Ed.
West Sussex; Wiley-Blackwell.
Fisher, J.A. (2009) Technology and art. In Davies, S. et al. (Eds.). A companion to aesthetics. 2nd Ed.
West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Heidegger, M. (2000) The origin of the work of art. In Cazeaux, Clive (Ed.). The continental aesthetics
reader. London: Routledge.
Merriam Webster’s Dictionary. [Online]. Retrieved from: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/
aura.
Peters, F.E. (1967) Greek philosophical terms: A historical lexicon. New York: New York University
Press.
Plato. (1971) Thaeteteus. In Hamilton, E. & Cairns, H. (Eds.). The collected dialogues of Plato (including the letters). Bollingen series LXXI. 6th print. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Rapaport, H. (1997) Is there truth in art? New York: Cornell University Press.
Townsend, D. (2006) Historical dictionary of aesthetics. Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Vaughan, W. (2005) History of art in the digital age: Problems and possibilities. In Bentkows ka-Kafel,
A., Cashen, T. & Gardiner, H. (Eds.). Digital art history: A subject in transition, Bristol: Intellect
Books.
22. We borrow this term from Rappaport in Op.cit., p. 21.
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 96
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Accelerating Quentin Meillassoux with Antonio Negri: On the
deadlock of speculative realist ontology
H.Y. Polimpung & A.Y. Lubis
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Quentin Meillassoux’s breakthrough in relaunching philosophical realism
through its speculative project against what he dubs correlationist philosophies provides an
excellent opportunity to continue philosophy despite the prevailing postmodernist trend to
dismiss the realist philosophical topic: the existence of absolute and objective reality. However, Meillassoux’s philosophical edifice is insufficient to carry on the project due to its problematic postulation of the outside realm, or what he calls the Great Outdoor. The author sees
that the recent young tendency in philosophy, called accelerationism, is a promising approach
to overcome the deadlock found in Meillassoux. Again, this philosophical tendency still does
not have adequate ontological thinking but the potentiality it conceives. It is on this occasion
that we introduce Antonio Negri’s ontological thinking, or what we call claustrontology,
both as a potential solution to Meillassoux’s deadlock and as ontological underpinning for
the young accelerationism.
1
INTRODUCTION
Over the last decade, the stage of philosophical debate has been marked by the so-called
“return to realism.” Speculative realist philosophy, pioneered by, among others, Quentin
Meillassoux, has now spawned many new syntheses and bifurcations as endeavors to overcome the deadlock inherent in that philosophical edifice. One of the youngest approaches,
perhaps could also be said to be the most prominent and attracting attention/contention, is
the accelerationism.1 Ontology formulated by Meillassoux suffers some deadlocks, and one
of the most appalling is its failure in paving the way for thought and imagination toward
political alternative to existing neoliberal capitalist order. Accelerationism attempts to set off
from the problematic horizon of speculative realist political philosophy and seeks to formulate a solution. This article is thus aimed at providing a contribution to the young philosophical movement of accelerationism.
Among many commentators, including the accelerationists themselves, who attempted
to surmount the political philosophical deadlock of Meillassoux and speculative realism in
general, there is still little engagement or synthesis with the thought of an Italian philosopher, Antonio Negri, whose Empire trilogy has become the best seller in the world. As for
accelerationism, this is quite strange as Negri himself gave his open public support for the
movement. Apart from the public courtesy, in fact, Negri’s ontological thinking departs from
a problematic horizon dear to that of Meillassoux’s speculative realism, namely the problem of imprisonment and passivity/potentiality, of which accelerationism situates itself. For
Meillassoux, it is the imprisonment of thought in the vicious cycle of correlationism that
results in philosophy’s passivity to claim an absolute truth. However, for Negri, it is about the
1. There are indeed two antithetical versions of accelerationism: Williams & Srnicek’s leftist version
and the originary Land’s ultra-right wing version. However, due to the limitation of space, this
article leaves the discussion of the two to another occasion. For this schism, see Williams & Srnicek,
“#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics,” in Mackay & Avanessian, eds., #Accelerate
Reader (Urbanomic, 2014).
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imprisonment in contemporary capitalist totalization that has completely subsumed every
aspect of life under the logic of profit accumulation, which results in the loss of revolutionary potential in the part of the subject. This similarity prompts the authors to fulfill the
lacunae of synthesis between Meillassoux and Negri.
This article is divided into four parts. The first part expounds some philosophical deadlocks internal to Meillassoux’s thought. The second part describes the accelerationist movement in general and how its philosophical method would be helpful to undertake the primary
task of the present article: to accelerate Meillassoux’s philosophical edifice using resources
from Negri. The third part deals with the way in which Negri’s ontological thought is able
to inspire this acceleration. Particularly, two of Negri’s ideas are focused: on the world
without outside, which we would call “claustrontology” – an ontology of a closet world for
which there is no longer outside; and Negri’s synthesis of Spinoza’s concept of pathema with
Foucault’s idea on biopolitics that bears his idea on “dual ontology” (Negri, 2008) and “biopolitical event” (Hardt & Negri, 2009). The last part summarizes and concludes the article.
By way of these two ideas of Negri, the authors contend that we can set ourselves free of
thought imprisonment in correlationist circles so long as we affirm that it is imprisonment,
rather than naively denying it as done by Meillassoux, and to accelerate it further, even further than that which is imagined (and allowed) by Meillassoux’s philosophical horizon. This
process of acceleration can only be done if we are able to see the indeterminate ontological
duality of the imprisonment that thus implies its ambiguities and, in turn, to exploit back
these ambiguities to break through the correlationist circle.
1.1
Correlationism and its discontent
After the so-called death of God—or whatever its avatar is: grand narration, universals, big
structures, and so on—philosophy has been divided into at least two big fortified camps: one
struggles to keep God dead and combats any attempt to resurrect it under the guise of many
names (the signified, the State, the absolute idea, the Big Other, objectivity, Cogito, etc.)
while celebrating the world without God, and, on the contrary, there are those that endeavor
to rehabilitate and reconstruct the notion of absolute without resuscitating the metaphysical dimension of that absolute which constitutes a god or the God. The first camp is mostly
populated with philosophies ranging from phenomenology all the way to postmodernism.
The second is somewhat loosely named post-continental, post-Marxism, new realism, and
speculative realism to name a few flimsy planks. It is among the latter that one might find the
name of Quentin Meillassoux and his philosophical project of speculative realism.
Meillassoux’s speculative philosophy departs from what he calls the problem of ancestrality, namely philosophy’s capacity to ratify a claim according to which reality exists independently of (i.e., in the sense of preceding [anterior], external to [exterior], and persisting
beyond [ulterior]) both humanity and human kind at large. This type of claim is what he
termed ancestral claim. We have ample ancestral claims that could be found easily even on
the popular encyclopedia, ranging from the chronicle of the Big Bang and Supernova to the
objective mathematical and/or natural law of everything that is ignorant of human’s thinking
and the scenario of the end of the world. The conundrum is quite simple to be perceived: is
it possible to think that which is outside of thinking itself ? Is humanity able to step on the
realm that exists beyond humanity itself ? This is a task Meillassoux put on the shoulders of
philosophy—and philosophy to come.
What is at stake, for Meillassoux, is not simply whether we, humans, are able to know the
true objective reality beyond any kind of subjectivity. Precisely, the existence of this outsidehuman and outside-thought reality, the real of the realists, or what he calls the Great Outdoor
(le Grand Dehors) are severely at stake. Not only that, science, along with its mathematical
form, is also at risk in its credibility to claim an objective truth. Failing in carrying out the
task will condemn philosophy to be irrelevant before the countless scientific discoveries, for it
has no right to claim their truism. Philosophy will then be banished to the corner of a fideist
shrine, dumbfounded by what is occurring before its very eyes, and is only able to take everything as granted, as banal occurrences without any meaningful depth. This philosophy has
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been stripped off its ability to courageously claim a truth and verdict a falsehood. It is from
this bleak destiny where mainstream philosophy is regressing to—steered by the bacchanalia
of postmodernists—Meillassoux tries to rescue philosophy.
Meillassoux dubbed the philosophy that is fond of dismissing any attempt of philosophy to
establish its project around the notion of truth, of the absolute, and/or of the objective reality
as correlationism. Correlationism pertains to every form of philosophical reasoning according
to which thinking has no, and will forever be so, access to being. According to correlational
thinking, ontology will never be able to be devoid of the contamination from the part of
thinking. In short, there is no such thing as external reality. What is present is only correlations. Between thinking and being there stands the correlates: language, meaning, idea, will,
power, ideology, and so on. Their “philosophical” debate consists of yelling over which correlate is the correlate. The possibility of an absolute and noumenal world that is not related to
any kind of phenomenal correlate has forever been foreclosed by a correlationist philosopher.
Correlationist’s argument consists of what Meillassoux calls “correlationist circle”: one
could never think a thing-in-itself (i.e., the ancestral realm, the Great Outdoor, the absolute,
and the objective reality) without succumbing to a vicious cycle, which in the end contradicts
itself. The contradiction lies in the enigma of how one is able to claim a thought-independent
truth while the only medium through which we are able to reach that truth is thought itself ?
How is it that one is able to claim that which is given to thought while the given itself is a
by-product of that very thought? Is one able to jump out of one’s thinking to catch the thingin-itself that is independent to thinking?
In After Finitude, Meillassoux did an excellent job to fend off correlationism of all stripes.
He managed to validate the problem of ancestrality, of the possible existence of the Great
Outdoor, without falling prey to the correlationist circle. His overall argument is that behind
the seeming tightly knotted correlationist circle, correlationists stand on a self-contradictory
assumption. By resolving the fact that “the thing-in-itself is unthinkable” is supportive to
the argument that “we can never think the unthinkable,” correlationists have to bizarrely
absoluticize the unthinkability of the thing-in-itself in the first place. Otherwise, they would
not have any reason to claim that the thing-in-itself is not accessible to thinking. Thus, the
absolute—that demon forever exorcised in rhetorics by correlationists—has always already
been present in their so-called philosophy, hence invalidating all their dismissive attitude
toward the absolute. Meillassoux takes it from here that this unthinkability is precisely the
very objective feature of the thing-in-itself—that is the Great Outdoor. In the hands of Meillassoux, unthinkability is seen NOT as incapacity of thought to think, but as “the real property whereby everything and every world is without reason, and is thereby capable of actually
becoming otherwise without reason. We must grasp how the ultimate absence of reason,
which we will refer to as “unreason,” is an absolute ontological property and not the mark
of the finitude of our knowledge (AF, 53). Unthinkability, or unreason, is our knowledge,
absolute knowledge, of the Great Outdoor.
Meillassoux then proceeds to propose (if not to postulate) mathematics as a solution to
crack out from the correlationist vicious circle. In this article, we will not reconstruct all the
finesse of his reasoning on this. Instead, we content ourselves with the conclusion that Meillassoux drew from his relentless critique of correlationism, i.e. philosophy must “achieve what
modern philosophy has been telling us for the past two centuries is impossibility itself: to get
out of ourselves, to grasp the in-itself, to know what is whether we are or not” (AF, 27).
1.2
Mirage of outside
Brilliant and path-breaking as it has been heralded, however, Meillassoux’s validation and
postulation of the existence of the Great Outdoor are not without problems. Meillassoux has
repeatedly questioned, challenged, and critiqued the correlation that stands in the way to the
absolute. Yet strangely, there is no speck of doubt about the existence of the absolute itself
that he desperately tried to emancipate. This is not to say that Meillassoux’s effort to recover
the absolute is not valuable, but it is going to be a philosophical blunder to recover something
that has never existed, or at least the existence of which has never been ascertained in the first
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place. Consequently, Meillassoux runs the risk that the absolute Great Outdoor might possibly be a mirage, a fundamental fantasy (to use Lacan’s expression) that structures, justifies,
and makes thinkable his philosophical journey to visit the absolute.
Within this ironically speculative scenario, it is highly possible that Meillassoux’s ambition
toward the absolute not only distorted but also created his entire philosophical field itself in
the first place. As a result, his desire cuts and divides the world into two mutually exhaustive
poles: thinking and being. From this vantage point, one could see that both Meillassoux and
his correlationist adversaries are trapped within the same mirage as they have taken for granted
the opposing duality of thinking and being, of the Great Outdoor and, if the readers allow
me, of the Sacred Indoor. Particularly for Meillassoux, his speculative project loses all of its
speculative dimension because what is speculative for Meillassoux has been given a final end
and inaugurated with names such as the Great Outdoor, the absolute, and the external reality.
If this problematization is granted, one might want to revisit the dying correlationism, i.e.
its ruins and remnants. This is so since humanity has nothing but correlationism itself to desperately struggle to break through the correlationist circle. Let us set aside what motivates this
desperation for now (as this will surely spark another field of problems) and be content with
the existing undercurrent of traversing correlationism. The renewed question would then be:
if one has to navigate to cross the correlationist circle, what possibilities exist within the correlationism itself to be turned and redirected against it? This is where accelerationism comes in.
1.3
Accelerating the correlationist contradiction
Revamped in accelerationist parlance, the above problem might be rendered this way: if correlationism is defective and contradictory, then the only way to have done with correlationism
is to push the defection to the extreme by accelerating the contradiction. Thus, accelerationists might ask, what is to be done with the existing concrete constellation of correlationism?
From the short teaser presented above, one might get a glimpse of what accelerationism is.
Accelerationism is a form of thinking that not only affirms the fact that we are already inside,
but that the only way out is to stop pathetically daydreaming about the outside and to start
to hack everything existing inside:
“Accelerationism is a political heresy: the insistence that the only radical political
response to a totalizing system is not to protest, disrupt, or critique, nor to await
its demise at the hands of its own contradictions, but to accelerate its uprooting,
alienating, decoding, abstractive tendencies.” (Mackay & Avanessian, 4; with slight
modification)
Philosophies that inspire accelerationism are especially Marxian; however, they can also
be of Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, François Lyotard, Luce Irigaray, and Nick Land to
name a few big names. The blatant accelerationist statement from Marx, for example, is:
“But, generally speaking, the Protective system in these days is conservative, while
the Free Trade system works destructively. It breaks up old nationalities and carries
antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie to the uttermost point. In a word, the
Free Trade system hastens the Social Revolution. In this revolutionary sense alone,
gentlemen, I am in favor of Free Trade.” (Marx, 2010, p. 465).
Marx is renowned to theorize the internal contradiction(s) of capitalist accumulation. For
him, the limit of capital is capital itself. In other words, capitalism is a self-cancelling tendency;
it is self-destructive in nature. The accelerationists excel this further by saying that the only
available means to destroy capitalism is to accelerate its contradiction. Indeed, the present
discussion does not necessarily concern capitalism. However, the philosophical assumption
driving accelerationist insistence to accelerate has much to say with regard to our question of
Meillassoux’s deadlock: how to accelerate correlationism to demolish correlationism?
Accelerationism is a young philosophical current. In fact, its proponents see their “philosophy” not as a form of a philosophical system. They regard accelerationism as a philosophical tendency instead of an encyclopedic thinking. Therefore, it is quite permissible to spare
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accelerationism from the demand of philosophical and ontological arguments. However,
there is at least one philosophical thinking that perfectly fits the accelerationist tendency.
We argue that Antonio Negri’s ontological thinking might give substantial support for accelerationist theories. There are indeed many facets of Negri’s philosophy, such as law, state,
Empire, post-Fordist capitalism, and biopolitics, but his meditation on Spinoza (and then
applied to Foucault) has provided him (and us all) a robust and, this is the most important,
useful ontology to address Meillassoux’s deadlock. We could then safely say that Negri’s
philosophy is an accelerationism avant la lettre.
1.4
Negri’s claustrontology
Negri’s ontological thinking has singular traits that arguably could not be found in other
philosophers. It is not only that his philosophy is contemplated during his imprisonment but,
most importantly, that his philosophy departs and deals with the problem of philosophical
defeat and imprisonment. Negri sees his imprisonment as the aftermath of a failed attempt of
revolution in Italy and not only as a political misfortune. Furthermore, his defeat is emblematic to the prevailing total dominance of the system (state and capital) against the subject.
It is this totalization that imprisons thought and imagination in the part of the subject. It
is this totalization that then became the topic of Negri’s philosophical reflection; its nature,
its ontology, its consequences, its operative mechanism, its material manifestation: the entire
specificity of the phenomena of totalization has become the subject of his rumination. Negri
struggled philosophically to turn his actual defeat and imprisonment into a potent to revolt.
For its singularity to depart and address the actual condition of imprisonment, we call
Negri’s ontology claustrontology, according to which everything is already inside the totalizing system and that only from within must any attempt to overthrow the system be formulated. Claustrontology is a closet ontology, or it could also be considered an ontology of
a closed world, of a closedness. In Negrian claustrontology, being is always already beingwithin. However, this is not sufficient enough to characterize Negri’s ontology, for his ontological thinking has always had political implication, i.e. a political project to challenge the
system. Therefore, to perfect the characterization of claustrontology’s conception of being, it
is necessary to see being as being-within-an-against (Negri, 2014, p. 367). There is one condition to be met, however.
One has to abandon any illusion of the outside. As for Negri, if he kept on lamenting his
political imprisonment and never accepted the actual situation that he was in prison, he would
never have stood a chance to objectively and fruitfully meditate on the nature of, not only his
imprisonment, but also imprisonment in general. Negri’s remark on this is worth quoting:
“The situation I found myself in was desperate. I had been held in a high-security
prison for some time, solely on political grounds, and I had no idea of how to get out.
I sought a means to resist through the analysis of suffering. Once I had overcome the
illusion that one could defend oneself from an absolute Power, the problem became
that of not becoming immersed in the pain and misery of prison. It was the question
of how to develop an adequate understanding of repression so as to resist it and to
find a way to interpret political defeat as a critique of Power.” (Negri, 2009, p. xvii)
The outside has always been a by-product from the inside (Hardt & Negri, 2000, p. 184). It
is a fantasy that sutures the lack in the inside; it is only from the calamity of the inside that a
precious phantasmatic outside be created. The idea of outside is then just a pitiful compensation and self-consolation for the prisoners of the inside. Ironically, it is precisely this that forever prevents those prisoners to devise a strategic scheme to break through the prison, which
surely requires an objective mind. The idea of outside in this way imprisons them more than
the bars surrounding them. It is only by affirming that we are already inside that we are able
to start thinking the autonomy from the system that entraps us.
“[W]e’re entirely within this real illusion. We’ve nothing more than this real illusion
before us and behind us. There’s no longer an outside, neither a nostalgic one, nor a
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mythic one, nor any urgency for reason to disengage us from the spectrality of the
real. … [T]he ghostly reality which embraces and keeps us, not only in ideology but
in the body, forms an ontology in which we’re enveloped … without an outside any
longer possible, without the precedent of a human universal.” (Negri, 2008, p. 9)
“It is false, in any case, to claim that we can (re)establish local identities that are
in some sense outside and protected against the global flows of capital and Empire.
We should be done once and for all with the search for an outside, a standpoint that
imagines a purity for our politics.” (Hardt & Negri, 2000, pp. 45–6)
Negri’s claustrontology uniquely rests on a philosophy of emotion and desire—one that
Negri is not renowned for. Negri develops and complicates Spinoza’s idea of “pathema [passivity, Eng.] of the soul.” Spinoza defines it as “a confused idea, by which the Mind affirms
of its body, or some part of it, a greater or lesser force of existing than before, which, when
it is given, determines the Mind to think of one thing rather than another” (quoted in Negri,
2008, p. 11). Spinoza attributes this to emotion. Emotion, then, is characterized by flexible
nature, or, more specifically, its ability to affect and to be affected. Emotion can influence,
but can itself be a result from an external influence. Spinoza insists on the fluidity of emotion
when he refers it to pathema. For Negri, the openness and flexible nature of emotion provide
him substantial resources to theorize subjectivity; in fact, revolutionary subjectivity seeks
autonomy from totalizing power:
“The pathema is therefore a dual state of mind, which is between passivity and
activity and lives in the present though it is prefabricated in memory, enduring the
past while turned toward action. Consequently, the pathema is also the perpetually
uncertain but nevertheless the open moment of an ontological passage which leads
the mind to grasp the very nature of Desire, beyond the (past) determinations of
existence or the (present) external dialectic of sadness and joy.” (Negri, 2008, p. 11)
The idea of pathema of the soul is construed as a potentiality that resides in subjectivity. It
is this potentiality that may prevent any attitude to essentialize one’s (suffering) condition. In
Commonwealth, Negri even goes so far as to state that “our desires, in other words, are also
adapted to nature” (Hardt & Negri, 2009, p. 63). The adaptive nature of our desire and emotion might serve well to break the spell of power that tries to fixate and crystallize our desire
to their order, pity, and subsidy. Pathema of the soul is a loud reminder that any condition
has ontological possibilities to change—to actively change or to be changed. This argument
will render shameful any maneuver of self-victimization, which forever protests, demands,
and waits for salvation. It is only by seeing a condition claustrontologically that one might be
able to see the situation as potentially malleable, hence potentially political.
Complicating the notion of pathema of the soul further, Negri (with Hardt) also saw power
as ontologically malleable. This time, he extended Spinoza’s ontological duality to Foucault’s
conception of power over life, i.e. biopower. Negri saw in Foucault what he dubs the “doubleness of power,” that is a kind of both an other to power and an other power which “not
only resists power but also seeks autonomy from it” (Hardt & Negri, 2009, p. 57). Foucault
theorized that power produces its own resistance. Negri was quick to separate himself from
a majority of interpreters of this theory, which sees this resistance as external to power.
Instead, Negri saw resistance as potentially inherent in power itself:
“This understanding of the doubleness of power helps us approach Foucault’s
attempts to develop the concept of biopower ... the power over life … But there is
always a minor current that insists on life as resistance, an other power of life that
strives toward an alternative existence ... the dual nature of biopolitics.” (Idem, 56–7)
Potentiality is something that must be optimized, even exploited, instead of just being
celebrated. This then rescues Negri’s openness of ontology from relativism dear to postmodernism. Relativity must be seen as a raw material to be creatively manipulated by the cunning
of the living knowledge to create something new. As the possibility is wide open, so is the
space for creativity. According to Negri, creativity is not just a free-floating random gimmick.
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Creativity must introduce a break in the present condition by introducing a difference, or, as
Negri put it, a separation. This separation, according to Negri, has an ontological value for
it manifests the potential and inherent ambiguity of ontology:
“[T]he process of separation, insisting on difference, will produce another deeper
passage—a passage, an ontological turn that belongs to both these positions. A creative caesura. [T]hey were not entrenched in defensive positions, but became resistance that is productive; they showed that they were a manifold guerrilla movement.
... Separation ... turns into a creative difference. .. What is at issue here is really a
caesura, a break, an ontological event.” (Negri, 2009, pp. 18–9)
It is along this vein we can understand why Negri predicates biopolitics as an event. Event,
in Badiou’s sense, is that which introduces a break, a newness, a novelty, a wholly other of the
existing condition. The eventuality of biopolitics, according to Negri, disrupts the existing
system of power, short-circuiting it from the inside. An alternative to power, even an alternative power, has to be read along this line of thinking. An alternative power has to insist on
being a difference that is other to the existing constituted power. Any project to consolidate
power, be it macro/state or micro/collective, will never be counted if they are not in the path
of sparking out political antagonism in the present depoliticized system. In Negri’s words:
“Biopolitics … has the character of an event first of all in the sense that the ‘intransigence of freedom’ disrupts the normative system. The biopolitical event comes
from the outside insofar as it ruptures the continuity of history and the existing
order, but it should be understood not only negatively, as rupture, but also as innovation, which emerges, so to speak, from the inside.” (Hardt & Negri, 2009, p. 59)
2
CONCLUSION
Coming back to Meillassoux’s deadlock with Negri’s claustrontological thinking, we might
arrive at some potential and feasible solutions. First, a speculative realist must relinquish his
yearning for the Great Outdoor as it is that which prevents him from seeing and exploiting
the potentiality of correlationism and its correlates, let alone that this Great Outdoor is just
a make-believe of insiders. Second, a speculative philosophical project must speculate, by virtue of the open possibility—i.e. the pathema—of correlationism, on the nature of a correlate
and on the possible (mis)use of it against its totalizing tendency. More specifically, a speculative realist might want to start off to attempt to accelerate correlationism’s contradiction as
excellently expounded by Meillassoux. Thus, we conclude the discussion with the question:
how is it possible to use thought which, in the process of using it, cancels itself ? [HYP].
REFERENCES
Mackay, R. & Avanessian, A. (2014) #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader (Urbanomic).
Marx, K. (2010) Speech on the Question of Free Trade. UK, Lawrence & Wishart.
Meilassoux, Q. (2008) After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. UK, Bloomsbury
Publishing.
Meilassoux, Q. (2008) Spectral Dilemma. Collapse IV. pp. 261–275.
Negri, A. & Michael H. Trilogy of Empire (2000) Multitude (2004), Commonwealth (2009).
Negri, A. (2014) Some Reflections on the #Accelerate Manifesto In: Mackay & Avanessian, (eds.) Critical Legal Thinking: Law and the Political.
Negri, A. (2015) Flower of the Desert: Giacomo Leopardi’s Poetic Ontology. New York, SUNY Press.
Negri, A. (2008) “The Specter’s Smile, In: Sprinker, M. (eds.) Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on
Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx. New York, Verso.
Williams, A. & Srnicek, N. (2014) #Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics. In: Mackay &
Avanessian, (eds.) Critical Legal Thinking: Law and the Political.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Historical aspects of Babad Sepehi
Y. Irawan & K.H. Saputra
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Babad Sepehi (BS) is a Javanese traditional historiography—commonly called
babad—which describes many events that took place during the British colonial government in
Java, from 1811 to 1816. BS portrayed the involvement of Sepoy troops—often referred to as
Sepoy as well as Sepehi, Sepei, Spehi, sepoy, or Sipahi by Javanese people or Javanese texts—
during the raid of Keraton Yogyakarta, from 18 to 20 June 1812. The Javanese commemorate
this raid as the event of “Geger Sepehi”. It is likely that BS manuscripts were duplicated in the
period from 1813 to the early 1900s. In this article, we describe how BS recorded the “Geger
Sepehi” event. Research on philological work was conducted to present the written edition
of BS. How BS texts recorded “Geger Sepehi” was textually and contextually explained from
its historical notes. The text is an extract from the manuscript PW.141/NR 36, which is part
of the collection of Universitas Indonesia Library. The author of the text was Mangkudiningrat (1778–1824), the son of Sultan Hamengkubuwana II and Ratu Mas. The notes found
in “Geger Sepehi” reveal that this text is rich in historical data. BS recorded in the manuscript
PW.141/NR 36 was known to be a typical daily journal in that period.
1
INTRODUCTION
Historians often overlooked the role of the local babad (chronicle) as an important tool in
writing the history of Java. Babad can also be used as a textual data source for any writer of
Javanese history. Babad texts are based on beliefs of the society, historical events, situations,
events, and actions that need not be held accountable. The fictional and referential materials in babad are needed to construct its story. In this article, we describe how a babad text
recorded the referential materials of historical events textually and contextually. The object
of this study is Babad Sepehi.
Babad Sepehi (the Sepehi Chronicle) is one example of manuscripts that contains abundant
historical data dating from the era of British occupation in Java from 1811 to 1816. Babad
recounts the involvement of Sepoy troops during the attack on Yogyakarta Palace on 18 to 20
June 1812. In fact, the word “Sepehi” came from the collective name of the troops “Sepoi”, a
Bengal Voluntary Battalion trained by the British government in their effort to crush FrancoDutch military power in Java. This event occurred at the beginning of the British colonial
era in Java when Lieutenant-Governor T. S. Raffles took necessary measures to strengthen
Britain’s position in this new colony, including Sultanate of Yogyakarta. In fact, Raffles supported Sultan Sepuh (Sultan Hamengkubuwana II) to reclaim his position as the ruler of
Yogyakarta, but the Sultan intended to fight Britain and even mustered his troops for this
purpose (Carey, 1980, p. 69; Raffles, 1812). Therefore, Raffles considered Sultan Hamengkubuwana II (HB II) as a threat to Britain’s colonial power, and immediately ordered British
forces under the leadership of Colonel Robert Rollo Gillespie to attack Yogyakarta. The
British–Indian troops attacked and seized Yogyakarta Palace on Saturday, 20 June 1812.
Thus, Yogyakarta fell into the hands of the British government almost 57 years after the city
was designated as the Sultanate’s capital by Mangkubumi on 6 November 1755. Javanese
people still remember this attack and refer to the event as “Geger Sepehi” (Thorn, 2004;
Skinner, 1971).
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A total of eight existing manuscripts of Babad Sepehi have been kept in different places.
Considering the “map” and the connection of manuscripts, the study focuses on the manuscript “Serat Suluk akaliyan Babad Sepehi” that is part of the collection of Universitas Indonesia Library, with code number PW.141/NR 36 (henceforth referred to as BS). BS contained
the oldest Babad Sepehi text, and its author had a first-hand experience of the event “Geger
Sepehi”. The text was written by Prince Mangkudiningrat on Tuesday, 20 Rabiul Awal year
Ehe, 1228 Hijr (i.e. 23 March 1813 AD). The text was written in the form of macapat (Javanese traditional lyric poems) and recounts the author’s personal experience during the “Geger
Sepehi” event. Katalog Induk Naskah-Naskah Nusantara Jilid 3b, Fakultas Sastra Universitas
Indonesia (the Union Catalogue of Indonesian Manuscripts Volume 3b, the Faculty of Letters, Universitas Indonesia) indicates that a member of Pigeaud’s staff made four copies of
this original manuscript in typescript. These four copies have been kept in different places: (1)
Universitas Indonesia Library (formerly kept in the Faculty of Letters, Universitas Indonesia), with collection code SJ.143/G105, (2) the National Library of Indonesia, with collection
number PNRI/G105, (3) Leiden University Library, with collection number LOr 6791, and
(4) the Sonobudoyo Museum, with collection number MSB/P.54.
2
2.1
DISCUSSION
Author
Information about the work’s authorship can be found in manggala (BS, pupuh I, pada 1).
The author of BS is Prince Mangkudiningrat (1778–1824). The author’s mother name “Ratu
Mas” further confirms his identity. In fact, Prince Mangkudiningrat was the son of Sultan
HB II and Ratu Mas (Carey, 1980). In fact, he was more eligible to be the next king as he
had a higher rank of nobility than R. M. Suroyo. Nevertheless, Suroyo was appointed as
the Crown Prince and eventually ascended the throne as Sultan HB III, even though his
mother was only a descendant of the Regent of Magetan, Kyai Purwodiningrat. After the
capitulation of Yogyakarta Palace, the British interim government exiled Sultan HB II and
Prince Mangkudiningrat to Penang Island on 3 July 1812 (Raffles, 1812). In 1817, they were
returned to Batavia, only to be exiled again to Ambon in the same year (Kree, 1815). Prince
Mangkudiningrat eventually died in Ambon in 1824 (Carey, 1980, p. 188).
Prince Mangkudiningrat started composing BS during his first exile in Penang Island
on 4 Rajab, Ehe year, 1228 Hijri or 1 July 1813 (BS, pupuh I, pada 1–2). The downfall of
Yogyakarta Palace took place on 20 June 1812. The time span between the beginning of the
composition and the downfall of Yogyakarta Palace is 1 year and 11 days. At the time he
started the composition, it was assumed that the author was in full possession of the details
concerning the “Geger Sepehi” event as he was personally involved in it.
Prince Mangkudiningrat said that he composed BS as a remedy for his sadness over his
kingdom’s defeat in “Yogya War” (BS, pupuh I, pada 2–4). He said that writing his experience
could ease the suffering of his heart. He also admitted in his writing that he deeply grieved his
exile to Penang Island because he had to leave his family behind in Yogyakarta. He entrusted
his mother, wife, and children—Raden Rakimi and Raden Suwita—to his younger siblings.
He always prayed to God for the safety of his family members in Yogyakarta. The author
was also saddened by the fact that his father decided not to take his mother—Ratu Mas—to
the exile (BS, pupuh IV, pada 22–23). To his consternation, his father, Sultan HB II, entrusted
his mother to Raffles—who is referred to as “Tuan Besar” (“Great Lord”) or “Jendral Rapul”
(“General Rapul/Raffles”)—in Semarang. He even expressed his disappointment to his
father. Such expressions of sadness can be abundantly found throughout BS.
The author also expressed his disappointment to his brother, R. M. Suroyo, Pangeran Adipati (Prince Regent) because he felt that Suroyo had unjustly accused him for something he
did not do. After the “Geger Sepehi” event, a thief was caught in the residence of a Chinese
Captain, Tan Jin Sing. The Prince Regent said that Jayadiwirya, the thief, was a servant of
his father, the Sultan, and that he had been ordered by Prince Mangkudiningrat to do the
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crime (BS, pupuh IV, pada 15–16). Because of this statement, the British interim government
then punished Prince Mangkudiningrat. The author kept seeking for justice over this false
accusation. His father’s letters to the British interim government never ceased mentioning
this case.
The author in fact did not wish for any war to occur (BS, pupuh I, pada 19–22). However,
he could not oppose his father’s intention to wage war against Britain. He took his father’s
side in the war as his token of gratitude. The prince felt that he owed a great debt to his father
for his existence in the world. Because of this, Prince Mangkudiningrat was willing to sacrifice himself in a war against Britain. He mentioned this in various parts of the text.
BS in pupuh I, pada 19, the author revealed his desire to sit on the throne of Yogyakarta.
However, he did not have the chance to express this to his father. It turned out that Sultan HB
II also wished Prince Mangkudiningrat to be his successor (BS, pupuh VIII, pada 20–21). It
was revealed during the Prince’s exile in Penang Island that Sultan HB II intended to secretly
elect Prince Mangkudiningrat as the Prince Regent who would succeed him in time. This plan
is implied in the conversation between Sultan HB II and his sons, Prince Mangkudiningrat
and Prince Mertasana.
The author’s writing style changed once he settled in Penang Island as an exile. The author
assigned a date to each important event in which he was involved from time to time. This
record was made in a chronological order, one event after another. This style of writing is
similar to how typical diaries are written today, that is, by indicating the date at the beginning of each entry. This writing style demonstrates that the author intended his work to be a
kind of personal diary that started from the beginning of his exile in Penang Island. Judging
from this style, it is highly probable that this text reflects Prince Mangkudiningrat’s account
of his own life experience, which contains valuable historical information. Below is a sample
passage from the Prince’s diary in BS:
yata malih ginupita/ Kangjeng Sultan den aturi/ dhumateng tuan Gowonar/ Wilem
Pitri yata sang sri/ nitih rata lan siwi/ kalih tekap sampun cundhuk/ aneng loji kebonan/ duk ari Selasa Paing/ wulan Siyam kalih likur etangira//
taun Alip wajah enjang/ duk pukul sawelas nenggih/ sawusira tetabeyan/ slamet
dhatengnya pribadi/ Jendral aturnya manis/ punapa kirangan prabu/ mundhuta mring
kawula/ sebarang dipunkarsani/ jeng sinuwun atrima kasih kalintang//
tan dangu denira lenggah/ nulya kundur sri bopati/ sung tabe Jendral neng lawang/
solahira tan ginupit/ pareng miarsa warti/ yen negari Jawa truwu/ nging dereng patya
terang/ apes jurit lan kumpeni/ Raja Baru wartane susah kalintang//
yata malih kang kocapa/ Jumuwah Kaliwon enjing/ wayah satengah sawelas/ wulan
Siyam tanggalnya ping/ selawe bentet nenggih/ taunira kadya wau/ tuwan Gupernur
Jendral/ Wilem Pitri amertami/ marang pesanggrahanira Kangjeng Sultan//
(BS, pupuh V, pada 39–42).
Translation:
It was told that Sultan was requested (to come) by Lord Governor Wilem Pitri. His Majesty
(went) by a carriage together (with) his son. Both of them arrived (and) met in benteng
kebon. (This event) fell (on) Tuesday Pahing, 25, Siyam month, Alip year, at 11 o’clock in the
morning. They exchanged greetings. (The Lord) said welcome. The General said, “Whatever
you lack of, ask me. Whatever you want!” His Majesty (replied) “I gratefully thank you.”
He did not sit too long, and then he went home. In front of the door, His Majesty offered a
greeting (to) the General. (He) went home without any guard. Then, tidings were heard (that)
Java (was) unsafe, but (the news) was not very clear. The colonial government (had suffered)
a defeat (in) a battle. (There was) word (that) the New King was very anxious.
It was told that, (on) Friday Kliwon, at half past 10 in the morning, on the date of 25 full
moon, Siyam month, the same year, the Lord Governor General Wilem Pitri came to Sultan’s
residence.
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2.2
Year indicator
There is always a date assigned to each episode in the “Geger Sepehi” event. The years mentioned in BS are based on the Islamic calendar system indicated by the phrase Anno Hegirae (A.H.) and on the Javanese calendar system indicated by the phrase Anno Javano (A.J.).
However, no year is assigned to those 18 dated episodes. The only clue is the word “Ehe” that
apparently refers to the name of a year mentioned in a draft letter of Sultan HB II to a Dutch
government’s representative in Penang Island. This draft letter can be found on pages 96–100
of Serat Suluk akaliyan Babad Sepehi manuscripts (PW.141/NR 36). The letter was written on
Tuesday, 20 Rabiul Awwal, Ehe year, 1228 Hijri (i.e. 23 March 1813 AD). The next year indicator is found in the account of an incident between Jayaningrat and the British forces, which
occurred in “Alip” year. The phrase “duk ing nguni” (BS, pupuh I, pada 5) at the beginning of
the text suggests that the Jayaningrat incident took place before BS was written. At this point,
we have to take account of the Windu year cycle, each of which consists of 8 years with their
respective names in this order: Alip, Ehe, Jimawal, Je, Dal, Be, Wawu, and Jimakir. Because
the Alip year comes before the Ehe year, it can be concluded that the “Alip” mentioned in the
text occurred 1 year before 1228 Hijri (1813 AD), that is, 1227 Hijri (1812 AD).
Therefore, the episodes in the “Geger Sepehi” event took place in 1227 Hijri (1812 AD).
This year is determined according to the words or sentences appearing in the text body. Such
indicators give information, for instance, that the year in question was still the same “Alip”
year or 1227 Hijri (1812 AD). The same year is also indicated by words or sentences such as
“taunira kadi nguni” (in the same year as before), “taunira teksih kadya wau” (the year was
still the same as before), “taune meksih sama” (the year was still the same), and “taun kadya
duk waune” (the year as before).
2.3
Synopsis of the chronicle
BS starts with information about when, where, and for what the chronicle was composed (BS,
pupuh I, pada 1–4). The story begins with the causes of conflict between Sultan HB II and the
British interim government, as well as both parties’ preparation for the upcoming war. They
consolidated their respective military powers and concentrated their forces around the city of
Yogyakarta (BS, pupuh I). The British army started to attack Yogyakarta Palace, and battles
ensued in several places around the city of Yogyakarta (BS, pupuh II). The British forces were
eventually able to capture Yogyakarta Palace and arrested Sultan HB II (BS, pupuh III). Raffles then appointed Prince Regent as Sultan HB III and exiled Sultan HB II from Java Island
(BS, pupuh IV). During his exile in Penang Island, Prince Mangkudiningrat requested that
his mother, wife, and children be brought to him. Sultan HB II sent a letter to the Governor
General in Batavia, requesting that his wives, children, and daughter-in-law be sent to Penang
Island (BS, pupuh V). Next, Sultan HB II asked the Governor General to fulfill his promise
to send the Sultan’s wives, children, and daughter-in-law to Penang Island—starting from
this section, all events were assigned dates (BS, pupuh VI). On Wednesday Legi, 7 Sapar, 1228
Hijri, a letter was sent from Bengal, which informed that Sultan HB II would be returned
to Yogyakarta (BS, pupuh VII). In Penang Island, Sultan HB II said to his two children that
Prince Mangkudiningrat would succeed him as the king of Yogyakarta (BS, pupuh VIII). The
author recounted all events and correspondences, including a letter from his mother which
informed him of the good news (BS, pupuh IX-X). Sultan HB II and his entourage sailed
to Batavia on Sunday Kliwon, 25 Jumadil Akhir (BS, pupuh XI). On Tuesday Pon, 17 Sura
(Javanese version of the Muharram month), Demang Jaga Menggala came before Sultan HB
II. This pupuh (chapter) also talks about the marriage between Prince Mangkudiningrat and
Siti Jaleka (BS, pupuh XII). Sultan HB II and his entourage were then exiled to Ambon (BS,
pupuh XIII). In Ambon, Prince Mangkudiningrat also recorded all events that took place
there (BS, pupuh XIV). At the end of the chronicle, Prince Mangkudiningrat took the liberty
to send a letter to the Governor General in Batavia. He pleaded to be allowed to return to his
homeland to spend the last years of his life to fulfill his obligation as a husband and a father
for his family in Yogyakarta (BS, pupuh XV).
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2.4
Conflict between Sultan Hamengkubuwana II and Thomas Stanford Raffles
BS recounts the conflict that ensued between Sultan HB II and T. S. Raffles, the figurehead of the British interim government in Java. This conflict was the outcome of subsequent
events in the past. During H. W. Daendels’ administration, Sultan HB II’s son-in-law, Raden
Rangga Prawiradirja, often persecuted the people in Delanggu area. Deandels took this as
an act of rebellion. Daendels urged Sultan HB II to surrender Raden Rangga to the Dutch
colonial government. On 26 November 1810, Raden Rangga fled from Yogyakarta and proclaimed himself as the protector of the Javanese people and the Chinese communities in
East Java. To mark this, he established a palace in Majapahit area and initiated a war against
Daendels’ army. This rebellion was eventually crushed by the Dutch colonial forces. Daendels
forced Sultan HB II to relinquish his throne because of his alleged involvement in the rebellion (Carey, 1980, p. 8, pp. 32–34). Because of this arbitrariness, Sultan HB II bore a grudge
against the colonial government and considered it as a threat to his territorial integrity and
the dignity of Javanese kings, especially that of Yogyakarta.
Sultan HB II’s resentment against any foreign government did not fade when Britain took
over Java. Sultan Sepuh (another name of Sultan HB II), who was aware of the transfer
of power from the Dutch colonial regime to the British interim government, immediately
deposed Sultan HB III (who was enthroned by Daendels to replace his father) and demoted
him to his original status as the Crown Prince. Thus, Sultan HB II began his second reign as
the ruler of Yogyakarta (Marihandono, 2008, pp. 27–38). Sultan HB II was very concerned
about Raffles’ advances on Yogyakarta. He then began consolidating his power to deal with
the British forces (BS, pupuh I, pada 28–42).
As the new ruler of the British East India (with Batavia as its capital), Raffles promptly
took all the necessary steps to establish British influence in Yogyakarta. John Crawfurd
informed Raffles of the conspiracy between Sultan HB II and Sunan Pakubuwana IV to
fight against the British colonial government (Marihandono, 2008, p. 33). Upon receiving
this report, Raffles could no longer tolerate Sultan HB II. Raffles sent a letter to Sultan HB
II, demanding him to immediately relinquish his throne to his son, R. M. Suroyo. He even
warned that if he failed to fulfill this demand after a specified time, Yogyakarta would be
taken by force (BS, pupuh I, pada 59–60). Sultan HB II sent a reply that conveyed his refusal
to fulfill the Lieutenant-Governor’s demand. Hence, war was inevitable, and Raffles ordered
Major General Robert Rollo Gillespie to attack Yogyakarta.
The battle was won by the British forces: Yogyakarta Palace was taken over and Sultan HB II
was captured by the British army. Raffles then granted a pardon to Sultan HB II for his opposition to the British government (BS, pupuh IV, pada 10–11). However, the author seemed to
depict Raffles as an inconsistent person. Raffles is said to have promised to return Sultan HB II
to Yogyakarta after serving 3 or 4 months of exile. However, Sultan HB II felt the need to send
letters to Raffles several times in order to remind him of his promise (BS, pupuh V, pada 12–13).
2.5
Important events
This section outlines some important episodes in the “Geger Sepehi” event as recounted in BS
and confirmed by various other historical records.
In BS, the “Geger Sepehi” event began with a conflict between Sultan HB II and the British government. Prince Mangkudiningrat recounted this in pupuh I pada 8–9 and pupuh I
pada 28–38. Sultan HB II started preparing to confront the colonial power. He called upon
his people and distributed the task for the defense of the city of Yogyakarta. In fact, Raffles,
in his letter to Crawfurd (as reproduced in document IOL Eur. F 148/24), which was sent
from Batavia/Bogor to Yogyakarta, explicitly said that he could not trust Sultan HB II at all
because of his tendency for inciting rebellion. Therefore, Sultan HB II had to be arrested and
labeled as a dangerous person because he was capable of forming a guerilla army to fight
against the British forces.
This prediction came true: Yogyakarta troops eventually launched attacks, burned
bridges, and prevented the advances of the British army. Several military groups—Danurja,
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Sindureja, Martalaya, and their troops—intercepted the movement of the British forces (BS,
pupuh II, pada 3–5). The text proceeds to describe the ensuing battle. A letter from a British
commander to Raffles (Java Government Garzette, 4th July 1812, p. 3) informed that when the
British–Indian army moved from Klaten to Yogyakarta from 17 to 19 June 1812, they were
ambushed by a group of armed “bandits” sent by Sultan HB II. One of such attacks took
place in the gorge of Gajahwong River, Papringan area (now located near Ambarrukmo).
Sultan HB II’s forces intercepted the main road, and a detachment led by Raden Ria Sindureja laid an ambush against the British forces from all directions. The British army suffered
a defeat: 5 were killed and 13 were badly injured.
This incident between Jayaningrat’s army and the British army was recorded in BS (pupuh
I, pada 52–56). The text states that “Tuan Minister” (the Lord Minister), Natadiningrat, and
40 British soldiers ambushed Jayaningrat patrolling with his troops. Jayaningrat escaped, but
his hand was injured by a sword. In that incident, three of Jayaningrat’s soldiers were killed
while the British lost two. This event was also documented in the British record (Java Government Garzette, 4th July 1812, p. 3). According to Colonel Gillespie, he and his military group,
who were also referred to as the “50 dragons”, were observing Sultan HB II’s army that
camped on the eastern side of the palace. There, he encountered Jayaningrat and his troops.
John Crawfurd, who joined the patrol, tried to calm Jayaningrat, but Jayaningrat ordered an
attack, so an armed clash was inevitable. The incident left five “dragons” injured.
The next important episode concerns the announcement from the British government to
the people of Yogyakarta (BS, pupuh I, pada 50–52). Raffles published an announcement that
(1) Sultan HB II was deposed from his position as the Sultan of Yogyakarta, (2) the Prince
Regent would succeed him as the new Sultan of Yogyakarta, and (3) Prince Mangkudiningrat
would be granted a feudal land 3000 lungguhs wide. When Prince Mangkudiningrat delivered
the announcement, Sultan HB II ordered him to be exiled. The Sultan was furious, and he
even inquired Prince Regent about his opinion on the British plan to appoint him as the next
Sultan of Yogyakarta. This announcement was also published in Java Government Garzetta
(4 July 1812, p. 4) under the title “Proclamation”, followed by the detail of the orders. Copies
of the announcement were also displayed in many strategic places in Yogyakarta.
The attack on Yogyakarta Palace is described at the end of pupuh II and at the beginning
of pupuh III. On Saturday, 20 June 1812, the British forces made a sudden attack at approximately 5 o’clock in the morning and laid siege to the Palace’s fortress. A group of British
troops blew up the Trunasura Gate and took control of all of its openings and apertures.
The Sepoy army immediately turned the direction of all the royal cannons toward the Palace.
The British army managed to enter the fortress. Other groups of the British army attacked
the Nirbaya Gate, broke it down, and entered the fortress from two directions to besiege
Yogyakarta Palace. Sultan HB II surrendered when the British troops reached the Srimenganti Hall. Thus, Yogyakarta fell into the hands of the British government almost 57 years
after the city was designated as the Sultanate’s capital by Mangkubumi on 6 November 1755
(Carey, 2011: 383–398). This defeat was also documented in Java Government Gazette (4 July
1812, p. 3) and William Thorn’s diary (Thorn, 2004), which he wrote when he participated in
the British expedition to conquer Java.
Pupuh IV described the exile of Sultan HB II, Prince Mangkudiningrat, and Prince Mertasana in Penang Island. They left Yogyakarta for Semarang on 3 July 1812 at 3.30 in the
morning (BS, pupuh IV, pada 1). Prince Mertasana and Prince Sumadiwirya voluntarily
expressed their wish to join Sultan HB II in his exile. The British government initially wanted
to exile them to Bengal. However, they were allowed to follow the Sultan to Penang Island
on a condition that if they behaved well during their exile, they would be allowed to return
to Java (Raffles, 1812).
3
CONCLUSION
BS contains many valuable pieces of historical information. This text represents the “Geger
Sepehi” event from the perspective of a Javanese author. The author of the text was Prince
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Mangkudiningrat, the son of Sultan HB II, who personally witnessed the attack on
Yogyakarta Palace by the British forces. The text was mainly composed of the events that
took place during the Yogyakarta war. In addition to the “Geger Sepehi” event, it recorded
other events experienced by the author himself during his exile. The events during “Geger
Sepehi” have been recounted chronologically and confirmed by various other contemporary
historical records. These events were recorded in the form of a diary, typical of a modern
diary, which is marked by time indicators assigned to most events, especially during and after
the exile of Sultan HB II.
REFERENCES
Behrend, T.E. & Pudjiastuti, T. (1997) Katalog Induk Naskah-Naskah Nusantara Jilid 3A-3B: Fakultas
Sastra Universitas Indonesia (Main Catalogues of Indonesian Archipelago Manuscripts 3A-3B Editions: the Faculty of Letters of Universitas Indonesia). Jakarta, Yayasan Obor Indonesia & Ecole
Francaise D’Extreme Orient.
Carey, P. (1980) The Archive of Yogyakarta, Vol. I. Documents Relating to Politics and Internal Court
Affair. New York, Oxford University Press.
Carey, P. (1992) The British in Java 1811−1816. New York, Oxford University Press.
Java Government Gazette, 1(19). (4th July 1812).
Kere, W.P. (1815) W.P. Kree’s Letter to Raffles dated 9th April 1815, bundel Buitenland (Penang) number
11, Jakarta, Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia.
Marihandono, D. (2008) Sultan Hamengku Buwono II: Pembela Tradisi dan Kekuasaan Jawa (Sultan
Hamengku Buwono II: the tradition and Javanese sovereignty fighter), In: Jurnal Makara, Sosial
Humaniora, 12 (1), 27–38.
Raffles, T.S. (1812) Raffles’ Letter to Lord Minto dated 16th July 1812, bundel Engelsch Tusschenbestuur, number 7, Jakarta, Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia.
Serat Suluk Akaliyan Babad Sepehi Manuscripts. PW.141/NR 36. Javanese script. Jakarta, Perpustakaan
Universitas Indonesia.
Skinner, C. (1971) An Eye-witness Account of the Invasion of Jawa in 1811—The diary of Lt. W.G.A.
Fielding, In: Journal of the Malaysian Branch of Royal Asiatic Society, 44, 1 (219), 1–51.
Thorn, M.W. (2004) The Conquest of Java. Singapura, Periplus.
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 112
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Disturbance of local democratization: Riot in Tuban election 2006
M. Sodikin & Abdurakhman
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: After the Reform Era in Indonesia, which started in 1998, the regional leaders
were directly elected by the people. The General Election in Tuban District in 2006 is one example of the direct election. However, the direct local election held in Tuban, which was expected
to be a manifestation of the democratic system’s advancement, resulted in riots. This article
discusses the issues article concerning the process of the 2006 General Election in Tuban and
the causes of the riots that took place during the 2006 Tuban General Election. They are analyzed using a historical method that includes four important stages: heuristics, criticism, interpretation, and historiography. The results of the analysis as follows indicate that: first, the riot
was due to the inappropriate preparation of both the General Election Commission and the
political parties as well as the inadequate dissemination of information to the public. Second,
one of the candidates was dissatisfied with the election process due to a number of violations,
including administrative issues about the names and dates of birth of voters registered in the
same village, money politics, and the granting of voting rights to residents outside of Tuban.
1
INTRODUCTION
The political history of Tuban cannot be separated from the historical figure of Ronggolawe, who was important in the establishment of the government system and social values
of Tuban (Kompas, 2006, p. 37). In fact, the political elites often use Ronggolawe’s spirit
to gain the interest of the people and achieve political targets. For the people of Tuban,
Ronggolawe was not a rebel as written in the Pararaton, but a hero of justice. Ronggolawe
protested against Majapahit for appointing Nambi as the Duke who was considered less
competent, and there were many other figures who were more meritorious and more worthy
to take the position.
The geographical position of Tuban in the northern coast of Java made it a port city. The
port of Tuban has been known since the days of the Erlangga Era in the 10th century AD and
reached its golden period during the reign of King Hayam Wuruk of Majapahit in the 14th
century. Tuban port became the main port for international trade as Tuban meets the ideal
criteria for a port city with its geographical and geopolitical position (Sedyawati, 2010).
Since VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) controlled the Indonesian archipelago,
Tuban has become one area that has an important role in Java. It can be seen from the position of Tuban port with its international trading activities. In the 17th century AD, Tuban
was considered as one of the developed cities. The VOC monopoly policy against trade activities at the port of Tuban affected the income of local people, leading to a decline in their
livelihood; therefore, a resistance movement emerged against the dominance of VOC.
According to Poesponegoro et al., the idea of the movement based on a religious view was
very important to boost the spirit of farmers in supporting this movement. The establishment
of Sarekat Islam (SI) also had a significant influence on the peasants’ movement in Tuban
(Poesponegoro and Notosusanto, 2008, p. 423). In connection with the riots in Indonesia,
according to Cribb, the genealogy of the violence can be examined in reverse (Cribb, as cited
in Widjoyo and Fawzia, 1999, p. 62). This means that the riots that occurred during the 2001
election in Tuban, which reached its peak in the 2006 direct election, can be traced back to
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incidents in previous years, as there had been community resistance against the government
since the time of Ronggolawe.
Another interesting issue related to the direct election riots in 2006 was the “sweeping” of
members of the diaspora community who supported the candidate’s opponent in the election, Haeny–Lilik, although in reality it was not proven. However, the issue had sparked fears
for them, although Tuban had never experienced any riot related to differences in ethnicity,
religions, and races (SARA) over the years.
Direct elections in Indonesia were held for the first time in 2005 in Kutai Kartanegara,
East Kalimantan. Under the New Order regime, from 1966 to 1974, President Suharto had
the exclusive prerogative rights to appoint and dismiss the Head of the Regional Level I or
Governor of a province and to control the selection of the District Head or Mayor through
the Ministry of Home Affairs. From 1974 to the end of the New Order Era in 1998, the
Regional Representatives Council (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah/DPRD) of the provinces and districts/cities had the right to elect a Regional Head.
As stipulated by the Law No. 5 of 1974 regarding the Principles of Local Governance,
the local parliament (DPRD) could propose three to five Regional Head candidates to the
Minister of Home Affairs; then, two names would be selected to be sent back to the DPRD
to seek clearance from the then President, President Suharto. From 1999 to 2004, the political parties in the DPRD could recommend the names of the candidates for the regional head
and vice-regional head, and each member of council could cast one vote to elect the regional
head. However, the central government’s authority was limited only to make a short list of
the candidates; however, they did not play a role in the elections at the district/city level.
One of the regional head elections was held in Tuban Regency, East Java, which took place
on 27 April 2006. The democratic process went smoothly with no security issues. Although
there were still some shortcomings, it did not interfere with the electoral process and still
upheld the democratic values. However, after 2 days, a mass action caused protests against
the results of the vote count. One contestant did not accept the results of the vote count, even
before they were announced by the Regional General Election Commission (Komisi Pemilihan Umum Daerah/KPUD), because he suspected that the vote count was manipulated during the ballot-counting process. The mass of people who gathered to witness the vote count
and monitor the results of the election turned into anarchy, vandalism, and arson aiming
their protest at the government symbols of Tuban as well as targeting the assets of the incumbent. The question is: Why did the riot in the Tuban election happen? This article attempts to
answer this question with a review from several aspects: the interests of the political elite and
the people, democratic behavior, ethics of democracy, political ethics, and civility. The data
were taken from contemporary newspapers, which were analyzed using descriptive and critical interpretation. The sequence of the discussion in this article is based on the chronological
order of the events related to the 2006 Tuban election.
1.1
Political power in Tuban regency
The political constellation in Tuban cannot be separated from the three pillars of the political
parties that won the majority in Tuban. However, the victory of Haeny and Lilik in the direct
election in Tuban had potentially shifted the political support for the dominating party, Partai
Golongan Karya/Golkar in Tuban. In the 1997 election, the Golkar Party was still very dominant by winning about 67% of the votes, followed by the United Development Party (Partai
Persatuan Pembangunan/PPP) with 26.6% of the votes, and third, the Indonesian Democratic
Struggle Party (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan/PDI-P) with 6.4% of the votes.
The dominance of Golkar collapsed in the 1999 general election, earning the third position
with only 18.2% votes. The election that was held in the early days of the reform was won
by the PDI-P with 33.3% of votes, followed by a new party, the National Awakening Party
(Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa/PKB), with 26.6% of votes.
After Golkar “lost” the parliament election, Haeny was appointed to lead the Regional
Representative Board (Dewan Perwakilan Daerah/DPD) representing the Golkar Party of
Tuban. Surprisingly, Golkar, despite only having eight seats in the Parliament, was able to
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bring Haeny to become the Chairman of the Tuban DPRD for the period 1999–2004 (Kompas, 2006, p. 34). Another unexpected outcome was when Golkar was able to promote Haeny
and Soenoto to be elected as the Regent and Deputy Regent of Tuban, respectively, for the
period 2001–2006. This success was considered as recompense for Golkar’s defeat in the
1999 election. Haeny’s victory was beyond expectation, as the pairs had to face a coalition of
PDIP and PKB, which had 25 seats in the parliament (Jawa Pos, 2001, p.13).
When Haeny took office as the head of the region and the PDIP’s image was just declining
before the 2004 election, it became the key for Golkar to win back public sympathy in Tuban.
In the 2004 election, political realities came up inversely with the results of the 1999 election.
The Golkar Party successfully reaffirmed its dominance by winning in 14 districts in Tuban
with 28.5% of the votes, followed by PKB with 21.9% and PDI-P with 21.7%.
From an overview of the 1997, 1999, and 2004 elections, it can be concluded that the political
map in Tuban could not be separated from the rivalry between Golkar and PDIP. Meanwhile,
the presence of PKB in the cycle of local political power in Tuban could not be ruled out, as
PKB had local supporters in Tuban who came from the Nahdiyin (Mochtar, 2011, p. 12).
Historical closeness between PKB and PDI-P in 2001 repeated again in the 2006 direct election, although after the defeat in the 2001 election, this coalition also had an argument due to
an act of betrayal in the 2001 election (Jawa Pos, 2001, p. 13). The spirit and the same desire to
change the leadership in Tuban became a jargon for both these political parties. Noor Nahar,
who had previously been a candidate for the Vice-Regent to work with the Regent candidate
Slamet Susilo in the 2001 election, was back for the 2006 direct election. He teamed up with
Go Tjong Ping and they were supported by the PKB-PDIP coalition. The defeat of Noor
Nahar in the 2006 direct election was his second defeat in a contest against Haeny.
In the 2006 direct election, although the Haeny–Lilik pair was considered superior, the
political support for the Noor Nahar–Go Tjong Ping pair quite destabilized the dominance
of the Golkar Party with a very thin margin of victory. The victory obtained by Haeny and
Lilik was not approved by the Noor Nahar–Go Tjong Ping pair. It was evident when the
witnesses from the Noor Naahar and Go Tjong Ping camp did not want to sign the recapitulation of the final votes in the KPUD (Regional General & Direct Election Committee)
office.
Suspicion, disappointment, and skepticism toward the incumbent created an unavoidable
mass riot in Tuban. The disappointment then grew into a revolt when the Regent and her
family always showed off their lavish lifestyle in the midst of economic crisis. Those who were
disappointed over the leadership of Haeny in the previous period opted to use the momentum to join the protests. Therefore, it was not surprising that in the mass actions there were
some vendors who provided free merchandise to the protesters.
1.2
Coalition and conspiracy in the legislature
After the 1999 election, the election of DPRD Tuban’s Chairman took place. Although
PDIP managed to become the winner of this 5-year political battle, it was not successful to
place its cadres as the Chairmen of the Tuban Regency’s legislative. PDIP’s high acquisition
of votes was not in line with the desire of the legislators to determine who was worthy to be
the supreme leader of the Tuban legislative. The Golkar Party, which only had eight seats in
the Parliament, successfully brought its cadre Haeny Relawati Rini Widiastuti for the position of Chairman of DPRD Tuban for the period 1999–2004.
PDIP’s failure became a common topic in most conversations. Many said that Haeny’s
victory was due to her husband’s role in conducting political lobbies to the legislators to
give way to Haeny to be the leader of the Tuban legislative. There was also a rumor that
Haeny’s success in becoming the Chairman of DPRD Tuban was due to the amount of
bribes received by board members who were willing to vote for Haeny. In politics, the need
for dialogues, compromises, negotiations, and tolerance without sacrificing one’s ideals is
necessary. In addition, PDIP also appeared to have made less intensive communication to
build support from other parties. Instead, the internal part of PDIP was easily influenced by
Golkar, so they did not obtain a single vote.
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Tuban is an economy-supporting area in East Java, especially after the Lapindo disaster
when many investors began to look at Java’s northern coastal region as a land of investment.
After the fall of the New Order government up to 2006, at least two riots occurred related to
the elections in Tuban. First, when Haeny won the 2001 election, riots and mass protests led
to the destruction of the DPRD’s office building and the icon in front of it. The riot also left
four officers wounded and dozens of people injured (Jawa Pos, 2001, p. 13).
The second riot occurred in 2006. The people who were against the results ran amok and
attacked the offices of KPUD, Regency Hall, and the Regent’s official residence, including
Haeny’s official residence and personal assets, as she was the incumbent at that time. This riot
was not really fatal; only a few officers trying to disperse the brutal mass were injured. However, the material losses were estimated to have reached a hundred billions (Surya, 2006, p. 1).
Riots during the 2001 and 2006 elections were triggered by the same problems. Some supporters of the losing candidates who came from various districts were not satisfied with the
results. Masses moved to take action, vandalized, and set fire to buildings associated with the
local government (Nurhasyim, 2007, p. 105).
1.3
Riot during the 2006 Tuban election
The election riot in Tuban, East Java, occurred between the supporters of Noor Nahar
Hussein–Go Tjong Ping (Non-Stop) and their rival Haeny as the incumbent and candidate
for the period 2006–2011. Starting from the election held on 28 April 2006, the supporters of
Non-Stop felt that there was a lot of cheating occurring. They were seen to have gathered on
the day of the counting of the votes in KPUD Tuban from late afternoon to late night (Radar
Bojonegoro, 29 April 2006). When Non-Stop was declared lost, there was disappointment
among them. As a result, that evening, they consolidated a protest to be held in front of the
KPUD office on the next day by deploying a large number of masses.
On 19 April at 09:00, about 15,000 to 30,000 supporters of Non-Stop began to gather in
front of the KPUD office and delivered some speeches (Radar Surabaya, 30 April 2006).
They demanded a review of the election results by exposing some irregularities in the form
of the number of voters (Daftar Pemilih Tetap/DPT) with the recapitulation of the election
results by KPUD. Their actions did not receive any response from the leaders of KPUD,
and they eventually forced their way into the KPUD office. There was some jostling between
the masses and the police guarding the office. Finally, they made it into the office by using a
big truck to crash into the police barricade and ended up damaging and burning the KPUD
office (Surya, 2006).
As they thought they had not had the results yet, they continued their demonstration in
front of the Regent’s office and the Tuban local government office’s town square. Just like
their previous demand, they asked for the cancellation of the election results and demanded
the Regent to step down from her position. Because they received no response, the masses
eventually surged into the official residence of the Regent and the Tuban Regency Hall.
Owing to inadequate security forces, Pendopo Krido Manunggal and five other buildings,
such as the KORPRI building, the PKK building, the guest house, the Dharma Pertiwi building, and the women’s organizations building, eventually became the target of mass rioting
(Jawa Pos, 2006).
An angry mob with their spirit of resistance against the Regent later poured out their
disappointment by burning the personal assets of the state and the Regent located around
the Regent’s official residence (Radar Surabaya, 2006). Around 1 p.m., the crowd began to
spread toward the Regent’s assets, such as the mansion standing on the area of about 10
hectares, Mustika Hotel, and Warehouse 99 that belonged to the Regent, the gas stations on
R.E. Martadinata Street and Manunggal Street, the Regent’s private residence on Agus Salim
Street, and the Golkar Party’s office on Basuki Rahmat Street (Surya, 2006). All these buildings were looted and destroyed. Even luxury homes, hotels, and warehouses that belonged to
the Regent were burned by the mob. The action was not only done to the Regent’s personal
assets, but it also spread to the homes of KPUD leaders, among which were the house of
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Sumitro Karmani and the supporters of the Regent, who were generally contractors. That
afternoon, Tuban was on fire and there were panicky residents, especially the supporters of
the Regent who were afraid that their houses would be burned. An exodus mainly by those
who supported the Regent occurred in some areas to save their valuable assets.
First, both police officers and the officers of Tuban’s District Military Command
(Komando Distrik Militer/Kodim) could not handle the masses because they outnumbered
the officers. Even the officers could only watch while trying to secure places that they
could still secure. By noon, the masses began to disintegrate. Some of them went toward
the Regent’s personal assets while at the same time additional officers from Bojonegoro,
Lamongan, Jombang, and the provincial police commands (Kepolisian Daerah/Polda) of
East Java were brought in to help the existing police officers (Radar Surabaya, 2006). This
condition made it easy for them to control the masses. Until nightfall, the situation in Tuban
was still very tense because there was a rumor that the houses of the Regent’s supporters
would be burned. That night, Tuban was like a ghost town as a curfew was set to anticipate
another mass movement.
The next day, there was a rumor that there would be retaliation from some supporters
of the Regent as the incumbent. That afternoon, roads were clear and economic activities
did not run as usual. The supporters of both Non-Stop and Haeny prepared to secure their
assets. Some were on the Wanted Person List and sought by the authorities (Memo, 2006).
Some who were suspected to have been involved and become the provocateurs were arrested
as a shock therapy for people who were contemplating to hold another riot. Finally, this condition was able to be controlled, although it caused a lot of problems. Suspicion, disappointment, and skepticism toward the government encouraged people to commit acts of violence
in Tuban in addition to the existence of intellectual actors who deliberately provoked the
movement of the masses.
The way the direct election was implemented ignited several issues. The process that was considered to have wasted public funds, in addition to allegations of money politics, was responded
negatively and led to violent acts. The postelection conflict, which turned to violent acts, could
be seen in the election of the Regent in Tuban, East Java, in 2006 (Nurhasyim, 2003).
The riots in Tuban are very interesting to discuss because they were unique and localized. In addition, they turned out to have common characteristics, including how they were
conducted, which was massively, collectively, and spontaneously. Besides, those riots had a
tendency to cause violence. This is because of the differences in social, economic, and cultural
factors as well as local problems that exist in each region, thus becoming the local causes of
each riot.
2
CONCLUSION
The result of this study can be summarized as follows. The Tuban election riots cannot be
attributed to a single factor. They are multifactorial, one of which is the people’s dissatisfaction with Haeny Relawati’s leadership as well as economic inequality that occurred in Tuban,
which led to grassroots movements. As a result, dissatisfied citizens used the event of the
election to show that there were many problems with the government.
The other factors that caused the riots are as follows. First, the way the new system of election was implemented had disappointed the people. Second, the inharmonious relationship
between the government and the people made the Tuban people to demand for equal rights
and a fair distribution of prosperity. Consequently, both the government and the people were
critical of one another, which accumulated during the 2006 election. The people believed
that there were many frauds committed by the government. Therefore, they expressed their
anger by mobilizing the masses on a large scale that triggered anarchism and finally led to the
destruction of buildings and property.
The riots in Tuban have long passed, but there is a risk of recurrence noise in the absence
of a harmonious relationship, especially when the local election is approaching.
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REFERENCES
Jawa Pos. (the 11th May 2001) Rumah anggota FPDIP dirusak (The FPDIP members’ houses were
damaged).
Jawa Pos. (the 13th May 2001) Dituduh berhianat, siap disumpah pocong buntut kekalahan koalisi
PKB-PDIP (Accused of betrayal, ready to be sworn using the “Pocong Oath” as a result of the defeat
of the PKB-PDIP coalition).
Jawa Pos. (the 9th May 2001) Kantongi 29 Suara, Heany Bupati Tuban sebabkan empat aparat luka,
belasan demonstran kena popor (Heany the Tuban Regent obtaining 29 votes leading to four officers
injured, demonstrators getting beaten with rifle butts).
Kartodirjo, S. (1993) Pendekatan ilmu sosial dalam metodologi sejarah (The social science approach in
the methodology of history). Jakarta: Gramedia.
Kasdi, A. (2005) Memahami sejarah (Understanding history). Surabaya: Unesa University Press.
Kompas. (the 4th May 2006) Menelisik rusuh pilkada (Investigating the riot of pilkada (regional
election)).
Kompas. (the 6th May 2006) Berubahnya konstelasi politik (The changing of political constellation).
Kompas. (the 6th May 2006) Ronggolawe dan amuk massa di Tuban (Ronggolawe and mass amock in
Tuban).
Mochtar, H. (2011) Demokrasi dan politik lokal di kota santri (Democracy and local politics in the santri
town). Malang: UB Press.
Nurhasim, M. (2007) Konflik dalam pilkada langsung: Studi tentang penyebab dan dampak konflik (Conflicts in direct pilkada (regional election): A study on the causes and impacts of conflicts). Jakarta:
LIPI.
Poesponegoro, M.D. & Notosusanto, N. (2008) Sejarah nasional Indonesia IV: Kemunculan penjajahan
di Indonesia (The national history of Indonesia (part IV): The emergence of colonization in Indonesia). Jakarta: Balai Pustaka.
Republik Indonesia. (1965) Undang-Undang No. 18 tahun 1965 tentang Pokok-Pokok Pemerintahan
Daerah (The Law No. 18 Year 1965 on the Principles of Local Government). Lembaran Negara RI
Tahun 1965 (The State Gazette of the Republic of Indonesia Year 1965). Jakarta: Sekretariat Negara
(State Secretariat).
Republik Indonesia. (1974) Undang-Undang No. 5 Tahun 1974 tentang Pokok-Pokok Pemerintahan
di Daerah (The Law No. 5 Year 1974 on the Principles of Government in the Regions). Lembaran
Negara RI Tahun 1974 (The State Gazette of the Republic of Indonesia Year 1974). Jakarta: Sekretariat Negara (State Secretariat).
Republik Indonesia. (1999) Undang-Undang No. 22 Tahun 1999 tentang Pemerintah Daerah (The Law
No. 22 Year 1999 on the Local Government). Lembaran Negara RI Tahun 1999 (The State Gazette
of the Republic of Indonesia Year 1999). Jakarta: Sekretariat Negara (State Secretariat).
Sedyawati, E. & Manus, M.P.B. & Raharjo, S. (1990) Tuban: Kota pelabuhan di Jalan Sutera (Tuban: The
port town on the Silk Road). Jakarta: Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan (the Department of
Education and Culture), Direktorat Sejarah dan Nilai Tradisional (the Directorate of History and
Traditional Values).
Surya. (the 30th April 2006) Massa bakar kota Tuban (The mass burned Tuban town).
Taryati. (2010) Faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi tumbuh kembang dan pudarnya Pelabuhan Tuban
(The factors influencing the growth and fading of the Tuban Port). Jurnal Sejarah dan Budaya,
15, 9–10.
Tilly, C. (2003) The Politics of collective violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Widjoyo, M.S. & Fawzia, D. (1999) Resistensi orang Kenek di Sampang Madura (The resistance of the
Kenek people in Sampang, Madura). Jakarta: Yayasan Obor.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The concept of homo ecologicus spiritual-ethical (an ethical
reflection on the ecological humanism concept of Henryk
Skolimowski)
F. Fios & G. Arivia
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The co-existence between humans and nature always conveys ethical
contradictions. The contradictions can be resolved by engaging in moral philosophy of
environmental ethics of Henryk Skolimowski. Ethical theory, namely Aristotle’s virtue
ethics, is used to interpret the ecological humanism thoughts of Skolimowski. Henryk
Skolimowski’s ecological humanism can be claimed as an ethical imperative for modern
human times in order to be aware of the importance of the intrinsic value of the natural
ecology. Its ethics emphasize an equal position between humans and nature. It accentuates a
conceptual view of the essentials of human nature called Homo Ecologicus Spiritual-Ethical
(HESE). HESE is an expression of the way of human beings in nature. HESE personal traits
include harmonizing knowledge and values, being sensible ecologically, living modestly, and
remedying ourselves to allay nature. Personal manifestations of HESE appear in three main
indicators: to respect nature, to attain justice to nature, and to create a normative policy that
guarantees natural goodness. HESE is a concept of mentation that is recently considered as
an alternative to end an unethical relationship between humans and nature.
1
INTRODUCTION
The relation between human beings and nature is fundamentally an ethical contradiction.
Humans situate themselves superior to nature or consider nature inferior or an object of
exploitation. Skolimowski’s thought on ecological humanism comprises ethical perspectives
that require the development in providing a notable contribution to preserve nature. It also
constitutes the efforts to render the framework in addressing the occurring ethical contradictions. The ecological humanism of Skolimowski harmonizes the fundamental values between
human dimensions and ecological intrinsic values of nature.
This paper is an ethical reflection on Skolimowski’s concept of ecological humanism to
uncover a distinctive model of Homo Ecologicus Spiritual-Ethical (HESE). The theoretical
framework is based on Aristotle’s ethics (virtue ethics) and other relevant normative ethics.
The fundamental question is “what is HESE like?”. Can it establish relevant ethical principles
to address the ethical contradiction between humans and nature?
2
HENRYK SKOLIMOWSKI’S CONCEPT OF HUMAN AND ECOLOGY
Human beings are defined as spiritual entities. They possess a spiritual sensitivity and transcendence, and they are able to achieve perfection in nature (Skolimowski, 1981, p. 22).
Humans are a part of nature and integrated with the realm. The human dimensions, namely
mind, intuition, moral awareness, and the body, derive from sensitivity. Sensitivity directs
the mind, attitude, and behaviour of human beings in the cosmos. Humans utilize them to
acquire perceptivity. It constitutes an instrument to improve constantly and to create symbols. Skolimowski adopts religious symbols to verify the philosophical claims on human
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beings as symbolic creations. Skolimowski states that at the beginning of the world creation,
a symbol appeared. The creation exhibits the close relationship among the structure, symbols, and evolution. Skolimowski (1991) states that God created the word in the beginning,
the word developed into the structure, and the structure became life (p. 143). The word and
structure serve as the architecture of life that represent a philosophical reflection on the ecology of the universe. According to Skolimowski, people are gratified to use the symbol. The
similarities appeared on the statement of Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945) who considers mankind
as a symbol (animal symbolicum) and Paul Recoeur (1913–2005) who claims that the mankind usually uses allegory to express it.
Sensitivity is a prominent part of human evolution. Skolimowski (1994) states that “sensitivities are articulators of the growing consciousness” (p. 11). Sensitivity refers to awareness of thoughts, emotions, and human spirit. It motivates the development of mankind
in the evolution. It precisely articulates the forms and characteristics of the new evolution.
Skolimowski (1994) argues,
“…the meaning of sensitivities is intimately connected with the meaning of evolution,…
from the organic soup via the amoeba to the fish; from the fish via reptiles to primates;
from primates via chimpanzee to man – this has been a continuous and enthralling story
of the acquisition and refinement of ever-new sensitivities” (pp. 12–13).
Humans are animated spiritual beings, and the spirituality articulates the essence of our
humanity condition (Skolimowski, 1993, p. 1). Human life is considered humanly or experiences a spiritual crisis with a spiritual dimension. According to Skolimowski, the spiritual
aspect can also be discovered in human culture’s tradition. The expression of spirituality
is found personally by exploring soul intuition. In exploring the spirit, humans achieve the
ultimate contingent with metaphysical substance. Skolimowski (1993, p. 3) states that “...
when we are individually united with this ultimate oneness for which there is no word. Only
in the silence of our souls can we intuit how unfathomable the quintessential spiritual unity
of all things.” The spiritual capacity motivates humans to oversee the quality of their ethical
relationships with others.
Skolimowski (1991) consents to the human’s dimensions of freedom and responsibilities.
Freedom denotes the ability to make choices that are not prescribed to us but are our own
choice (p. 38). The structure of relationship with nature is determined by the human’s choices
as a rational being who has a free will to consider, sense, and behave. Freedom is inseparable
from the ethical dimension of responsibility. Skolimowski (1991, p. 39) states, “Furthermore,
you cannot have freedom without exercising responsibility; you cannot exercise responsibility if
everything is done for you; freedom is the capacity to act when your action springs from responsibility.” It indicates the significance of ethical dimensions of human existence as a moral agent.
Ecology is the aggregation of all the natural elements. “Ecology is the single unifying
thread that ties together the whole planet and all its people” (Skolimowski, 1992, p. 3). The
philosophy of ecology is a restatement of the rationality of the world which unifies the perspectives of the nature, cosmos, and mankind as a comprehensive structure. “Eco-philosophy
is a rational restatement of the unitary view of the world in which the cosmos and the human
race belong to the same structure” (Skolimowski, 1992, p. 2). The perspective is contradictory
to the traditional paradigm of western philosophy between humans and nature. Skolimowski
transcends unequal effects produced by mechanistic rationality by developing an alternative rationality labelled as ecological rationality. “What we need to evolve is an alternative
rationality..... We need to transform our present mechanistic consciousness so that it becomes
ecological consciousness” (Skolimowski, 1992, p. 3). Ethics and cosmology presuppose each
other and are inseparable. Skolimowski (1991, p. 55) states, “...here the ethics of people and
their view of the physical universe co-define each other.” Ecology is determined by the human
culture where the individual resides. Individual develops ecological relationships based on the
cultural context. Cosmology embodies the anthropic-cultural property. “There is a feedback
relationship between cosmology, culture and the individual human being” (Skolimowski,
1981, p. 56). The systems of human’s value and the universe support each other as they
emerge on traditional culture which is oriented toward ecology.
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3
CONTRADICTIONS OF ETHICAL HUMAN COEXISTENCE
WITH NATURAL ECOLOGY
The modern science makes mankind uses a less ethical paradigm in perceiving the natural ecology. Natural ecology is considered as an object which is dominated and directed by
rationality. The exploitation, investigation, and exploration over nature have been undertaken by humans for centuries. Natural ecology is perceived as an instrumental object for
human interest instead of a unique intrinsic subject.
“To set man against nature is to emphasize the distinctiveness-his rationality,
creativity and freedom. To count the man as part and parcel of nature emphasizes
the continuity of the human, animal, organic and inorganic worlds and maybe
suggests that human behavior is amenable to the same kinds of investigation....”
(Bochert 2006, p. 518).
The contradiction increases when mankind secedes from the parts of the empirical reality to
facilitate the investigation and science observation. Science produces discrepancy and dichotomy between mankind and other parts of nature. The nature of eco-centrism or cosmic unity
between man and all elements of ecology becomes distorted and ends in chaos.
Other ethical issues include unethical practice of human beings as conscious creations.
Economic activities in the world are controlled by the developed countries that tend to
exploit the less developed countries, especially Asian and African countries. Wei Ming claims
that the western countries are the responsible parties that act as the reformer, executive, judge
of international rules in histrionics defined by the competition to get wealth and power; the
platform has been regulated for the growth, development, and massive exploitation of the
countries outside the western countries (in Tucker & Grim, 2004).
The economic policy produced by mankind is detrimental to the world inasmuch as it is
prone to anthropocentrism. It appears in the regulation protecting human interests while
oppressing natural rights. Economic policy observes solely the theoretical principles of business and economy without regarding the values of ethical moral. DesJardins (2005) states
that “economic development policy of the United States several decades ago inflicted intensive damage on the environment as… [it allows] unrestrained [activities]” (p. 44) which are
not able to be controlled by the government policies that promote the virtue of the society.
In Indonesia, the government issued a regulation on forest protection through the Decision
of Minister of Forestry No. 49 of 2009, which signifies the government’s commitment to
protect forest ecosystems. However, the regulation is only rhetorical in nature without being
advocated with practical endeavours by the government agency consistently.
4
HOMO ECOLOGICUS SPIRITUAL-ETHICAL
Skolimowski (1981) applies ‘ecological humanism’ terminology (pp. 53–89) which contains
the philosophy of ecological humanity. Humanism implies the ideology of ‘human’ and ecology which refers to interconnected ‘interactions between living organisms’ with nature as
an ecosystem. A philosophical construction to re-establish a commensurable relationship
between humans and nature has been impaired. The philosophy of the human person who
is ecologically sound is constructed in the manner of ‘ecological humanism’. It poses the
reasoning mode that is associated with the noticeable ecological human figure (Homo Ecologicus) in a natural community and the culture in which the human resides. Homo Ecologicus
serves as an epistemological framework that refers to the figure “I” (The I) as a person and
human being in the community of nature and culture.
Homo Ecologicus is a concept that directs human actions in relation to nature. It requires
a consistent and subjective self-management. Self-management prepares Homo Ecologicus to
transform her/his spiritually. It necessitates a situation where mankind includes the reality of
spiritual contemplation that allows Homo Ecologicus to encounter the consecrated spiritual
nature. It is the spirit of ‘the light of moral consciousness’ that crystallizes in human beings.
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Mankind performs metanoia spiritual. Metanoia denotes self-repentance and remorse over
the mistakes a human has made over nature. He/she experiences the provenance of the sacred,
the sanctity of the Sacred Illumination. The subject of Homo Ecologicus undergoes a spiritual
journey to the reality of the spiritual self. The subject converges with her/his authenticity that
is a sacred subject endowed with the potential of illumination from which he/she obtains the
gift of sanctity. It reposes in the consciousness of the human spirit. Aristotle claims that the
soul is “arche” which provides the basis for the existence of all natural lives (Gendlin, 2012,
p. 2). The soul is the outset point and the first premise of all existence (esse). The existence
is not to be budged by the psyche; including the material. The soul (psyche) produces all the
lives that exist in plants, animals, and even stones; with ‘psyche’, all materials are real in the
reality of life (Gendlin, 2012, p. 3). The soul is the ‘radiance’ which renders moral consciousness of the subject. The soul (Aristotle’s terminology) and light (Skolimowski’s terminology)
are the pedigree, the commencement of all life. The soul gives luminosity to human beings in
order to instil an intact life, the feeling of replete, and valuable spiritual-ethical.
The intimate encounter with the ‘holy light’ or ‘divine soul’ in mankind is substantial for
the figure of Homo Ecologicus in order to have awareness of a vivid spiritual soul, so he/she
can actualize the spiritual creativity of life projects for the good of others. The encounter
with the luminous spirit becomes the fulfilment of momentum. The fulfilment transforms
into energy which enables Homo Ecologicus to gain sensitivity to connect her/himself with
others. It is influenced by the source of virtue; therefore Homo Ecologicus devotes her/himself to others and to remedy, recover, improve, and reform her/himself in order to have an
ethical relationship with nature.
The spiritual dimension is very importunate as an alternative way of life against the
popular, materialistic lifestyle and misguided public industries’ communal perspective which
tend to perceive nature as a physical, material entity. We discover the horizon of novel
perspective, namely Homo Ecologicus Spiritualists (ecological-spiritual mankind). Homo
Ecologicus Spiritualists consider the existence (esse) as the spiritual reality. Human beings
cultivate the reality of material consciously and are responsible for preserving the quality of
the dimension of spiritual nature. Human beings transcend the material towards the spiritual;
the infinite reality. They offer an empathy and altruism for the others’ merit. The paradigm
influences the attitudes and behaviors towards nature in which mankind resides. Homo
Ecologicus Spiritualists tap all resources of culture, traditions, and moral habits to cultivate
the body and develop themselves to achieve the possibilities of existential Ultim in relation to
nature. Homo Ecologicus Spiritualists position themselves and others as elements that possess
a spiritual soul or spiritual light. They discern all the esse in nature with respect to the sacred.
Human beings carry a torch for the nature, accumulate ascetic personality, love peaceful
lives, and maintain harmonious relationships with each other. Homo Ecologicus Spiritualists
perceive their journey of life as an attempt to detect the dimension of spiritual quality.
Homo Ecologicus Spiritualists accentuate the soul dimension as a higher element than the
physical elements. Homo Ecologicus Spiritualists disagree with Homo Ecologicus materialists,
who prioritize their attention to the physical aspects of the body and produce pragmatic
materialistic thinking that immerses psychological dimension of human spirituality. Homo
Ecologicus Spiritualists concentrate on the element of soul (light) in life.
Homo Ecologicus Spiritualists prefer to cultivate their esoteric space as a form of human
responsibility. Homo Ecologicus Spiritualists are oriented towards the perception of
the power of immaterial Ultim which underlies all life. Homo Ecologicus Spiritualists are
motivated to practice the development of spirituality through meditation, yoga, worship,
and contemplation with the Divine Soul (Holy Light) that is higher and more extensive. The
reality of the Light is renowned as transcendental and supernatural realities. At this level,
an individual realizes her/his existence as a mode or attribute of God. “Individual things are
modes whereby the attributes of God are expressed in a given determinate manner, [and] they
are things which express in a given determinate manner the power of God ...” (Spinoza, 2000,
p. 11). By realizing that the transcendental reality is higher than Homo Ecologicus Spiritualists, mankind would comport and ensconce themselves in line with the other creations
in the universe. Humility constitutes a salient spiritual wisdom to make Homo Ecologicus
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Spiritualists subsist in harmony with others. Homo Ecologicus Spiritualists serve as people
who dote more on the natural entities as family members, neighbours and relatives as stated
by Carmody, “we have to love nature like a neighbour or relative” (Nash, 1989, 110). Loving
nature is a way of life to be a spiritual person for the sake of humanity in the present and in
the future.
Being a Homo Ecologicus Spiritualist is not sufficient since there is the tendency of overbalance of asocial spiritualism. It demands the beneficial relevance of a socio-contextual perspective to manage a better relationship between humans and the natural ecology. The paradigm
contends that Homo Ecologicus Spiritualis and ecology act as the self-actualization of Homo
Ecologicus Spiritualists. It develops into a spiritual-ethical paradigm in the context of ecology.
The ethical paradigm of ecology synthesizes ‘human’ and ‘ecology’ into an integrated and
inseparable spiritual unit. We require the wisdom of thinking and the courage to take action
to undertake synthesis stride in order to improve ourselves at the initial stage. The initial stage
in restoring ecology of eternal nature occurs inside mankind before it refines nature. Humans
rectify themselves as the causa problema before they encounter others. Consequently, mankind is expected to transcend Homo Ecologicus Spiritualists. It requires the ethical capacity
of Homo Ecologicus Spiritualists to actualise themselves significantly in the external relational
context of nature. It hereafter shows ethical elements on the figure of Homo Ecologicus Spiritualists. HESE is able to create an equipoise of mankind’s internal and external relations with
nature. HESE affirms its significance as a substantial philosophical instrument and method to
rearrange the damaged ecological reality. HESE improves its position as a new epistemological
horizon that emerges from a dialogical dialectic between Homo Ecologicus Spiritualists and
natural reality. Being mankind signifies implementing HESE which includes understanding
the fundamental relation with others: being respectful towards nature, being impartial in the
interaction with nature, and creating normative policies that favour nature.
5
CONCLUSION
The concept of Homo Ecologicus Spiritual-Ethical (HESE) is perceived as a necessity in
human coexistence with nature. Skolimowski’s ecological humanism has inspired the appearance of “ethics of presence” of I-Subjective as a human in nature. HESE demands the
responsibility to cultivate spiritual dimension to actualize the outcome outside in an ethical
relationship with nature. The cultivation of Homo Ecologicus is an attempt to make radical spiritual changes in mankind. It excogitates a precious and virtuous individual with the
result that mankind is able to evolve an ethical relationship with nature: being unpretentious
and prudent in natural treat. The cultivation of Homo Ecologicus will be spiritually comprehensive when supplemented with the ethical dimension of Homo Ecologicus Spiritualist in
the person’s interactions with others. Homo Ecologicus Spiritualits is not immobilized like
passive spiritualism. However, it has to be actualized in an active-participatory action for the
good of nature. Homo Ecologicus Spiritualist transforms eminently into an ethical paradigm.
Homo Ecologicus Spiritualist contrives the concordance and observes an equitable relationship with nature. Homo Ecologicus Spiritual-Ethical (HESE) provides fundamental dimensions (i.e., mind, consciousness, action and attitude) beyond the essential ethical principles as
the foundation of life. It comprises reverence for nature, righteous interaction with nature,
and regulative policies that guarantee the goodness of nature. Homo Ecologicus SpiritualEthical (HESE) becomes an illumination for all entities in the universe.
REFERENCES
Bochert, D. (ed.). (2006) Encyclopedia of philosophy. (Vol. 7). Detroit, Thomson Gale.
DesJardins, J.R. (2005) Environmental ethics: An introduction to the environmental philosophy. California,
Wadsworth Publishing Company Belmont.
Gendlin, E.T. (2012) Line by line commentary on Aristotle’s de anima. (Books I and II). Spring Valley,
New York: Focussing Institute 34 East Ln.
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Roderick, N.F. (1989) The rights of nature. London, The University of Wisconsin Press.
Skolimowski, H. (1981) Eco-philosophy: Designing new tactics for living. London, Marion Boyars
Publishers Ltd.
Skolimowski, H. (1991) Dancing shiva in the ecological age. Delhi, Clarion Books.
Skolimowski, H. (1992) Living philosophy: Eco-philosophy as a tree of life. London, Arkana.
Skolimowski, H. (1993) A secret place to dwell. UK-Australia-USA, Elements Books.
Skolimowski, H. (1994) The participatory of mind: A new theory of knowledge and of the universe. London, Arkana.
Spinoza, B. (2000) The ethics. Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University.
Tucker, M.E. & Grim, J.A. (eds.) (2004) Worldviews and ecology: religion, philosophy and the environment.
New York, Orbis Book.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Applications of spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus in the local
indigenous context of Indonesia (a case study in the Oenbit village,
East Nusa Tenggara province)
F. Fios & G. Arivia
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Spiritual-Ethical Homo Ecologicus (HESE) possesses a practical and contextual dimension that can be applied in the context of local realities of indigenous people, especially in Indonesia. The study observes the conflict in East Nusa Tenggara Province
between business interest and the indigenous people. The indigenous groups strive for rescuing their land from mining corporations. Their argument posits on moral standing instead of
legal aspect. In the pivotal circumstance, where the conflict has escalated since January 2015,
HESE served as a prominent medium to comprehend indigenous reasoning. HESE performs
in the practical-constructive position in preserving indigenous rights. Local indigenous’ mode
of being is widely understood as a wealth of culture, natural heritage, and spiritual traditions.
HESE emphasizes the importance of political environment and movement to preserve nature
and empower indigenous knowledge and wisdom. The study of the conflict in Oenbit village
indicates a potent HESE dimension which in turn reveals the utilities of ecological justice
from the perspective of indigenous people.
1
INTRODUCTION
The philosopher of ecological humanity, Henryk Skolimowski (1981), discloses an orientation of conservation efforts for environments by applying the perspective of cultural dimensions. He denotes an integral correlation between nature, culture, and people (p. 56). Nature
conservation is attainable by standing upon the values of human culture as a point of departure. As civilized creatures, humans can utilize cultural values to achieve the ethical objectives
for the good of the nature. Culture serves as an ecological instrument for the realization of
the common good (bonum commune).
Skolimowski is a significant inspiration toward the initiative of Spiritual-Ethical Homo
Ecologicus to preserve nature on the basis of spiritual, humanitarian, and ecological cultural values. This paper further explores the application of Spiritual-Ethical Homo Ecologicus in the context of local indigenous reality of East Nusa Tenggara in preserving nature.
This paper argues that the people of East Nusa Tenggara, particularly Oenbit Village, can
show the spiritual-ethical ecological relationship with nature. The goal is to articulate the
applicative meaning of being of Spiritual-Ethical Homo Ecologicus in the context of indigenous cultural wisdom for nature conservation. Spiritual-Ethical Homo Ecologicus becomes
impractical when it stands autonomously without contesting the natural rights of local indigenous people.
2
ETHICAL-SPIRITUAL HOMO ECOLOGICUS IN THE CONTEXT
OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
Skolimowski asserts that individual personality as a symbolic creature indicates human
beings as civilized actors. Culture is an element of human identity indicator in nature.
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The way people communicate with nature reveals human’s characteristics as a cultural being.
Skolimowski values traditional cultures of human society oriented to the good of the natural ecology. He also respects and appreciates distinguished traditional cultures. In his book,
Dancing Shiva in the Ecological Age, Skolimowski (1991) discusses the cultural practices of
the Khasi Tribe in Meghalaya, Cambodia, in expressing their relationship with nature based
on the symbols of local culture. The Khasi Tribe sanctified natural materials, such as rocks,
trees, and mountains that were presumed to be the dwelling of the Almighty that protected
their life. Skolimowski (1991) states:
“In olden times, every village had a sacred rock, or some sacred trees or a hill sacred
within which the Khasi’s God resided to protect the people. ... The Khasi are a
unique people. They represent of human culture. The worshipping of God residing
in the rock, in the brook, and in the forest is the natural thing.” (pp. 140–141).
Skolimowski greatly appreciates ecologically-oriented traditional cultures. Skolimowski
(1991) believes that traditional cultures of the Khasi tribe and other tribes require assistance
by international agencies including UNESCO. He asserts:
“I think that UNESCO (or some other international organization) should extend its
Protectorate to review these traditional hill people. Their culture should be declared
as a part of the international cultural heritage. We are talking about a preservation
of a cultural heritage which belongs to the whole world.” (p. 142).
In the context of protection towards traditional cultures, Skolimowski’s position represents
the ethical concerns towards the development of traditional cultures widespread around various parts of the world.
Spiritual-Ethical Homo Ecologicus actualises itself based on the unique local indigenous ecological cultural value to preserve nature. Spiritual-Ethical Homo Ecologicus acts
on behalf of others in the spirit of ethical solidarity in preserving the natural ecology.
The totality of the existence of Spiritual-Ethical Homo Ecologicus is a stimulus to serve
nature by standing upon the cultural values of local indigenous community cherished by
the community.
On the philosophy of ecological humanity, Skolimowski (1981) reveals the initial orientation for the environmental protection efforts by pointing out the importance of “political
consciousness” (pp. 40–42) in cultural perspective. Skolimowski (1981) confirms the nature
of the integral relationship between nature, culture, and people (p. 56). Preservation of the
natural culture can be achieved through cultural values. Culture and politics are two collaborating elements which lead to the ultimate goal of preserving nature. The political perspective
of Aristotle which highlighted the act of thinking for the common good marks the essence of
mankind as a ‘zoon politicon’. Aristotle expressed that mankind is a political creature since it
develops communal ability to achieve the ethical objectives, namely the creation of “shared
prosperity” or the ‘bonum commune’ (M.A. Rachman, 1959, p. xii).
3
THE OUTLOOK OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN OENBIT VILLAGE
TOWARDS NATURE
In Oenbit Village, Timor Tengah Utara Regency, East Nusa Tenggara Province (NTT),
there is a traditional community that lives ecologically and is integrated with nature. Oenbit region is adjacent to Teba Village in the east, Upfaon Village in the north, Nunmafo
Village in the west, and Loeram Village in the south. The 21 tribes that inhabit Oenbit
are Ataupah, Naikofi, Mantonas, Haukilo, Neonbeni, Taisbenu, Tanouf, Amasene, Noetnana, Amtasi, Amkeun, Naiaki, Naiboas, Banusu, Silkono, Pakaenoni, Us Olin, Taboy,
Neonub/Saijao, Aplasi, and Sonaf Lanasu-Taolin (King of Insana). The community of
Oenbit tribes lives in harmony with nature and develops a spiritual-ethical relationship
with nature. They consider nature as a force containing spiritual-metaphysical power. Tobe
Amatus Naikofi expresses:
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“The nature provides the source of our livelihood. We beg for rain for the crops,
and then the nature grants us. When we perform the ritual on nature, it responds to
what we request. The nature is truly spiritual for us. The nature has a spirit and a
soul that respond to our request for the Oenbit tribes” (Interview in Oenbit Village,
Timor Island on 8th July, 2016).
The same thing was expressed by Mr. Niko Ataupah (a respected figure in Ataupah Tribe)
and Kornelis Us Olin (a respected figure in Us Olin Tribe). They stated that there is an intrinsic unity between mankind and nature. They also confirmed that “for us, Ataupah and Us
Olin Tribes, there is a strong bond between mankind, nature, flora, and fauna.”
The land is a valuable asset for the Oenbit community. Nature is the source of life for
the survival of the community and their descendants. The land represents the motherland, the
strength, and people’s lives, as stated in Oenbit local locution, as indicated by one of the elders,
Niko Ataupah: “Nijan nane au aina susun oena, onle oen oefa.” The land is understood as the
breast milk, like mead to life. The saying reveals the role of nature and the land to the survival of
the Oenbit local community. The community and their daily lives rely on nature. Niko Ataupah
stated, “All the strength and life exist in nature. We consume from nature.” Deterioration of
nature is unethical towards the nature. “It caused the water supply to dry up, and we would live
in hardship because of the lack of water.” Oenbit community appreciates living in harmony
with nature and preserving nature from being damaged or destroyed by human-oriented land
exploitation, such as for mining or others.
The community in Oenbit believes that nature is God’s creation. Nature is controlled and
regulated by the Almighty God as the causa prima. Emanuel Tabean, a youth activist in
Oenbit Village, conveyed that God created the universe: “Uis Neno apinat aklahat is esan moe
pah pinan i,” which implies that God is the Supreme Light and Refulgence. The concept is
identical to the statement of Henryk Skolimowski who considered the nature as the light (Vir
Singh, 1991, p. 31) that is the infinite reality. The perception portrays the Oenbit community’s
perspective of God’s characteristics. It converges with the luminous aspect as the provenance
that provides existence. The perspective of Oenbit community regarding metaphysicaltheological dimension towards the nature as reality exists in their lives. The Oenbit community postulates that the nature owns its soul and provides a response to the human urges. The
resembling concept of Aristotle in “de Anima” also states that nature consists of the soul or
spirit that provides the foundation of existence in reality (Gendlin, 2012, p. Vi). Materials do
not derive their existence from themselves, but they obtain it from certain entity beyond the
material prior to the material itself. It is known as the soul of nature.
4
MANGANESE MINING EXPLOITATION IN OENBIT: CONTRADICTORY
PHENOMENA TO THE SPIRITUAL-ETHICAL HOMO ECOLOGICUS
The population in Oenbit is concerned in maintaining harmonious relation with nature due
to their belief in God as the creator and the one who fulfils their needs. Nature is perceived as
a spiritual-metaphysical and transcendental reality. This perspective is contradictory with the
modern perspective of society that observes nature in the capitalistic outlook. In a traditional
society, such as the local community of Oenbit Village, mankind and nature have inseparable intrinsic unity and mutual complementary relationship. Nature and humans function as
subjects. However, in the modern social paradigm, nature is separated from mankind. Nature
is an object exploited solely for the benefits of human beings. This is in contrast with the
values of ecological unity between mankind and nature. When the perception of modern
human, whose logic focuses on profits and is oriented to economy, converges with that of
local indigenous groups, which is steadfast on spiritual-ethical principles, it results in a conflict of interest. The local community believes that nature should be preserved and should not
be exploited for business purposes, while the capitalists consider otherwise.
The case of Oenbit represents conflict of interest among different parties: the government, entrepreneurs, and local indigenous groups. The local government issued the license
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(Decision of the Regent No. 270 of 2013) to Elgari Resources Indonesia Company (ERI) to
conduct manganese mining activities in Oenbit Village. The mining site location, which is on
the ground called ‘pusuf kelef’ and ‘kot-tau niap-tau’ (the King’s Land), is spiritually believed
by the Oenbit people as a site should not be administered by any parties other than those
receiving the king’s order. “The land in this area was originally a part of the land ‘pusuf kelef’,
which belonged to King of Insana (the 8th king), King Dominikus Arnoldus Un Taolin in
1938, who handed over the control to the two great Tobe in Naihitu Net’na (Oenbit) and
Naihitu Noela (Loeram) that are Tobe Ataupah and Tobe Amasene” (Taolin, 2015, p. 1).
They are entrusted to maintain, supervise, and provide areas for the people for farming, raising cattle, performing mythical-magical ritual (spiritual practices to the god of nature), and
earning a living. ERI, the company that has exploited the nature, is considered to be against
the spiritual beliefs of the community.
Oenbit manganese mining activities by PT. ERI are conducted based on the instruction
of the Regent of Timor Tengah Utara (TTU) who issued the license to conduct business
activities in the area. Although there is a formal judicial license, the socio-cultural aspect
and customs have not been implemented adequately. “Mining activities have been carried
out by PT. ERI without any consent from the land owners in the area, ‘kot-tau niap-tau and
pusuf kelef;’ thus, it can be considered as an arbitrary action, an annexation, and larceny of
crops that belong to the indigenous tribes” (Taolin, 2015, p. 3). The indigenous people from
the 21 tribes living in Oenbit have urged PT. ERI to vacate the land owned by the local community. Otherwise, blockades would occur on the mining site. The people considered the
TTU government to be partly responsible for issuing the mining business license (IUP) to
PT. ERI. “The Regent of Timor Tengah Utara and the staff are responsible for granting the
mining license to PT. ERI without any regards to the legal owner of the land at the mine site”
(Taolin, 2015, p. 4). The government is regarded to have neglected the spiritual-ethical dimension of Oenbit society. The government miscalculated the manganese exploitation projects.
According to the people of Oenbit, they supported the development with consideration on
the aspect of justice and local wisdom related to the right of local community and the balance
of natural ecosystems. Nikolas Ataupah stated that: “Mining activities can be carried out,
provided that a prior discussion is held with the indigenous people of Oenbit village. We ask
for some respect to our cultural traditions that are inseparable with the nature.”
PT. ERI also disregarded the spiritual aspects of the community in Oenbit in preparing
the road for hauling the manganese. PT. ERI undermined a ritual of a tribe of Oenbit in
‘bijae bekof’ as the place of traditional rituals for fertility and reproduction of the animals,
especially the livestock. PT. ERI overlooked the dimensions of people’s spirituality in Oenbit.
For the violations of the bijae bekof, the public has urged PT. ERI to uphold a customary
compensation (fines). Niko Ataupah and Kornelis explained on 8th July, 2016 that “we urged
PT. ERI to provide a compensation of 10 million rupiahs for damaging a customary ritual
pusuf kelef”. The compensation system (fines) confirmed the importance of the moral order
restoration. The ritual practices of the indigenous community of Oenbit show the “practice,
the order of the narrative, and moral tradition” (MacIntyre, 2007, p. 187) as a source of
moral wisdom for mankind in its cultural context.
The manganese mine in Oenbit lies in a very sacred and central place for the local community. There lies an altar (to’tafah) composed of rocks with a wooden ornament symbolising
three branches that represent three authorities, namely: customs, the government, and God
the Creator. People usually perform an annual rite at the place by dedicating agricultural
crops (potato, rice, and maize) and sacrificing an animal as a form of accolade to all dominions. Considered the highest, God owns more powerful authority than customs and government authority, and it is symbolized by being at the uppermost position.
Exploitation of manganese in Oenbit signifies spiritual-ethical contradictions between
local human ecology (local tribes of Oenbit) that maintains the interest of local culture in
intrinsic unity with nature and the employers (PT. ERI) that are oriented to take natural
products for the benefit of the economy with official government’s support (through mining
license). Based on the perspective of environmental ethics, the action of PT. ERI and the
government is a violation of the ethics of virtue in treating nature, and it indicates a lack
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of respect for the spiritual wisdom of local communities. PT. ERI is deemed unfair to the
local community who lives harmoniously with the spiritual-ethical nature. Oenbit exploitation denotes the destruction of spiritual-ethical concept of the local community with nature
which is considered as a reality with spiritual-metaphysical value. A conflict of values occurs
between the supporters of economic values against the supporters of spiritual values. Based
on the perspective of environmental ethics, manganese mining in Oenbit also points out the
phenomenon of spiritual-ethical contradiction. The contradiction should be resolved by
applying a model of the human ecological paradigm that is spiritual and ethical to preserve
nature.
5
THE OENBIT COMMUNITY AS AN APPLICATIVE MODEL FOR
SPIRITUAL-ETHICAL HOMO ECOLOGICUS
Ecological unity between man and nature provides an indicator that marks the specific characteristics of indigenous people of Oenbit as an apparition (epiphany) and examples of
spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus (HESE). The Oenbit community, who can be considered as
a cultural community, defends the intrinsic value of nature that is corrupted by the capitalists and the ruling government. The struggle of the Oenbit community reflects an expression
of awareness and political movement to fight for their cultural and natural human rights.
The nature represents a subject with an intrinsic moral value that needs to be protected,
nurtured, and preserved by man as a moral agent. The destruction of nature and the denial
of cultural local rituals in Oenbit have inflicted protests and demonstrations. Protests and
demonstrations arising from a political consciousness manifested in the activity to maintain
the uniqueness of local indigenous cultures and natural entities in order to achieve sustainability. PT. ERI and the local government made ethical mistakes in the context of public
service to the community which should (das sollen) refer to subject that needs to be treated
fairly, politely, ethically, and spiritually. PT. ERI and the government neglected the ecological
principles which position human beings in a relationship with their fellow human beings and
with nature. When the employers and the government ignore the spiritual-ethical dimension,
the community of Oenbit stages a political movement to defend the oppressed culture and
nature.
The community of Oenbit performs traditional rituals at the manganese mining site. They
were conducted traditionally prior to PT. ERI’s exploitation. The Oenbit community lives
together with nature. It emphasizes their position as ecological human beings who appreciate harmony with nature in order to live and practice their culture. The Oenbit community
includes the local people who live a life with a spiritual-ethical nature and manage nature as
a moral subject. The Oenbit community expresses the spiritual-ethical dimension of nature
with the practice of traditional rituals for rain, asking for growth and seeking sustenance in
nature for prosperity. Nature is a part of their life. They perceive the natural cosmology as
an entity that represents a certain spiritual reality (Bochert, 2009, p. 242) that is abstractmetaphysical. The identity of spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus is a personality that spiritually cultivates life and expresses the outcome in an ethical relationship with others.
Spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus subsisted the knowledge and values in a balanced, selfaware, ecological, and simple life. All the characteristics are exhibited by the Oenbit community. They can be considered as spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus personality. The community
has applied the values of spiritual-ethical relationship with nature. They live accordingly to
the basic principles of spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus: respecting nature, upholding fairmindedness in nature, and creating the norms of moral tradition that guarantees the wellbeing of nature for generations to come.
The Oenbit community possesses an understanding of opulence and practice of Skolimowskian environmental ethics which is well-maintained, either through tradition, moral
rules, or rituals performed on the basis of spiritual-ethical relationship with nature. The community resides in an elegant simplicity that is proposed by Skolimowski (1991) in his ecological humanism thinking, which aims for “cultural ecological values of modest communities in
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various parts of the world” (p. 89) that maintains ethical relationship with nature. Ecological
culture represents the respect for nature, responsibility to nature, simple life, interconnection with nature, and compassion to nature. Ecological virtues are essentially Aristotelian
and prominent for ecological sustainability. Appreciation towards cultural values denotes a
spiritual-ethical sense and life choices that are integrated with consciousness in the mind of
nature in an ecological rationality paradigm. It is perceived in inner spirituality and indicated
by ethical action to others.
Various countries in the world are now encountering a major problem of how to understand and address the global environmental crisis, including the condition in Indonesia (i.e.
increasingly intense consumptive, economic, and money-oriented lifestyles). Materialistic
homo economicus emerges and it is embraced by the entrepreneurs and some elite communities in Indonesia’s cities. Materialistic homo economicus feasts on the economic prosperity that is supported by the accumulation of finances. It is achieved by exploiting natural
resources. Exploitation of nature ignores spiritual-ethical principles internalized by traditional communities in remote villages, which follow the spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus.
Habitation of traditional societies could bring out ecological communities that integrate
with nature. It also has spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus as the main strength to withstand
human’s life tendency in modern cities that thrives in materialistic homo economicus’ lifestyle.
Spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus is necessary to be applied by more people to preserve nature.
Spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus is required to emerge in order to preserve the damaged
nature.
In Indonesia, especially the rural areas of Bali, Java, Sumatera, Kalimantan, East Nusa
Tenggara, Sulawesi, and Papua, there are many indigenous groups who live ecologically with
nature. They do not exploit nature arbitrarily; instead, they treat nature as a moral subject.
The communities do not treat nature as a business object with a logic that pursues economic
progress; instead, they embrace an unpretentious life with nature. In particular circumstances,
the indigenous people are obliged to collect the crops, and they do it with respect for nature
that is regarded as a spiritual entity. The ecological practices in Oenbit, East Nusa Tenggara
represent other remote areas in Indonesia that have common practices in terms of entwining
ecological spiritual-ethical relationships with the nature. The Oenbit community could be
claimed as a model of spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus that provides substantial contribution
to human’s efforts in the hodiernal ecological realities. The people of Oenbit is a prototype of
spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus that inspires various stakeholders (government, citizens, and
companies) to excogitate a more personal spiritual-ethical character: respecting the nature,
being fair to the nature, and issuing policies with spiritual-ethical contents. Through this,
mankind will be able to preserve the nature from threat of damage.
6
CONCLUSION
Oenbit is a settlement that represents the local context and reality of the indigenous people in
Timor Tengah Utara Regency, East Nusa Tenggara. Oenbit accommodates the content and
significance of ethical wisdom of life, which is prominent in the relationship between mankind and nature as a comprehensive spiritual-ethical ecology. Unfortunately, the conflict of
interests between government, employers, and local communities transpired in Oenbit. The
paradigm between the materialistic homo economicus and the spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus collided. Materialistic homo economicus is represented by mining owners who exploited
natural resources solely for profit. At the same time, spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus is represented by Oenbit’s indigenous community, who maintains harmonisation and intrinsic unity
with nature.
The Oenbit society is claimed as a personality model of the ecological human with spiritual-ethical paradigm in relation to others (nature). The Oenbit people internalise the ecological culture from generation to generation. The society believes that nature is God’s creation,
respects nature as a trans-physical-metaphysical reality, develops spiritual ritual practices
against nature, lives an unpretentious life, and provides justice to nature with the intention of
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preserving the natural evolution. The phenomenon indicated the existence of spiritual-ethical
paradigm, which is notable for preserving nature. The spiritual-ethical homo ecologicus personality of Oenbit people derived from the cultural heritage of their predecessors. The Oenbit people possess the comprehension, way of life, and practice of denotative spiritual-ethical
dimension in the context of human’s positioning to support the evolution of the natural
ecology. They can be considered as Timor Island’s cultural wealth that offers inspiration and
enlightenment for mankind in preserving the nature towards a sustainable condition.
REFERENCES
Alasdair, M. (2007) After Virtues. 3rd Edition. Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press.
Bochert, D. (2006) Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Vol. 9. Detroit, Thomson Gale.
Eugene, T.G. (2012) Line by Line Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima (Books I and II), Spring Valey,
New York, Focusing Institute 34 East Ln.
Henryk, S. (1981) Eco-Philosophy: Designing New Tactics for Living. London, Marion Boyars Publishers
Ltd.
Henryk, S. (1991) Dancing Shiva in the Ecological Age. Delhi, Clarion Books.
H. Rachman, M.A. (1959) Aristotle Politics. London, William Heinemann LTD.
Maximus, L.T. (2015) Dokumen Surat Pernyataan Penolakan terhadap Tambang Oenbit (Statement of
Rejection toward Oebit Mining). Kefamenanu, Masyarakat Adat Oenbit.
Vir, S. (1991) My Poland Diary: Poland, Cosmic Philosophy and the History of the Future (From Copernicus to Henryk Skolimowski). Pantnagar, Uttharakand-India, Pant University of Agriculture and
Tecnology.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Music’s critical function to social conditions
K. Andjani & A.Y. Lubis
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This paper discusses music and its relationship with social conditions. Social
conditions are inseparable from music because they both interact together with humans in a
cycle of creation and appreciation. Music is socially constructed, implanted, and valued. Thus,
music can never act independently because it is closely linked to social conditions. In addition
to the aforementioned characteristics, music is often seen as a medium that can contain and
invoke a wide spectrum of expressional reactions, and with such a power, music can interact and
advance social awareness. Theodor W. Adorno stated that similar to philosophy that attempts
to analyse everything, music should challenge the society’s critical thinking and awareness to
advance human consciousness and thus create social progress. The tentative conclusion drawn
from this study is that great music plays a serious and noble role in the society; it is not merely
an entertainment or distraction. This topic was explored by examining historical and factual
research on a specific theme to collect relevant data from the literature, and the method used
was hermeneutics, which allows for a better understanding and synthesis of new perspectives.
1
INTRODUCTION
Philosophers, music lovers, and musicians have long sought to understand music better.
Whatever else it may be, it is imperative to understand that music is fundamentally social. It
is socially constructed, socially embedded, and infused with social nature and values. Social
aspects do not only serve as context or background of music, but are also intertwined as an
inseparable part (Bowman, 1998). Music has always been part of human activities and in
contact with humans or groups of humans who create and appreciate it.
Plato and Aristotle, whose ideas are highly influential in the Western intellectual tradition,
discussed the question that surrounds the philosophy of art. The function of art and the role
of the artist are not isolated from the rest of social life. At the level of vocabulary, the main
function of arts in ancient Greece relates to crafts and practical wisdom and equally refers to
the idea of doing something good or right, and philosophically, according to them, all arts
have a moral nature in the virtue of influencing how humans perceive and interact with the
world by channelling sympathy and emotion: the two dimensions that are considered as the
principal elements of broader morality (Schellekens, 2007).
According to Plato, music is the highest and closest art form to morality because of its
communion with our emotion. According to him, music stems from the same geometrical
patterns and formulas as the world itself; music becomes crucial for moral education because
of its main function of attuning humans with the world through proportion and quantity of
the rhythm and harmony that is heard. That is, by listening to music properly and appreciating it, humans would be able to gain a better understanding of the world, thus acting more
in line with it. So precious is music for Plato that he stated that if the mode of the music is
changed, the governmental law will follow the change (Schellekens, 2007). Aristides Quintilianus, who was an important source in understanding the significance of music in ancient
Greece, wrote that music is interwoven with all aspects of life in ancient Greece—their political and social systems are tightly knit with music, from the sacred hymns, offerings, banquets,
parties, entertainment, work, marriage, march, war to funeral (Hamilton, 2007).
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If music has been deeply connected with social life and considered able to enlighten humans
to understand their world better, then one might ask, “What kind of music can make people
understand the world better?”
2
MODERNISM AND LANGUAGE INNOVATION
The early 20th century brought with it a myriad of development of all kinds of art, ostensibly
putting an end to the paradigms that had governed how art had been done since the Renaissance (Witkin, 1998: 94). All these developments are coupled with the amount of diversity
that can be found to the present day. Meanwhile, Western music from Baroque, Classical, and
Romantic eras has stylistic similarities that enabled it to be categorized by period based on
their style. On the contrary, modern music, which has very diverse styles such as impressionism, neoclassical, expressionism, minimalism, twelve-tone, serialism, experimentalism, electroacoustic, electronic, pop, and jazz can be seen as a ramification of either following or not
following the tonal foundation of the preceding musical works. The latter, which also tends
to break tonal boundaries, is often referred to as atonal music.
This particular matter was because of the dynamics of modernism and language innovation of art in Europe. Modernism and postmodernism, despite their differences, have some
similarities, namely both being artistic innovations, reactions against the past, challenging
realism, naive mimesis, a strategy for gaining attention through avant-garde, and a sense of
awareness of the relationship with the general culture of the time (Butler, 1994: 1). These conditions for revolutionary change are involved in the atmosphere of scepticism, which leads to
a fundamental examination of the languages of art.
Modern times find themselves with an immense system of institutions that has existed
from previous eras with established facts, dogmas, customs, rules, and so on. It is in this
system that their life has to be carried forward, yet they begin to develop a sense that this
system is not of their own creation, as they consider the establishments no longer relevant.
The awakening of such sense constitutes the awakening of the modern spirit (Butler, 1994: 2).
The innovators distance themselves from the assumptions of the previous generations in two
ways. First, to be fully autonomous in style, they rely on conventions that are independent of
the existing public norms. Second, they rely on the idea that creativity and art must be subjective, intuitive, and expressionist in character (Butler, 1994: 3).
Modernism teaches that the different aspects of a diverse and constantly changing experience yield different interpretations. There is no single, absolute, and correct way to perceive
something; there is always a variety. With it, modernism approaches relativism where no single version of a statement is more sufficient, and different statements are considered equally
helpful to understand. Modernist artworks are allowed to merge ambiguities and contradictions between the various distinctions. With the challenges in languages, the emergence of
the new and diverse art techniques in a single era is not surprising. In music, the new techniques leave behind tonality, which has been previously held as the natural musical language
consonant. Two great composers who often become the talk of the past and are still being
compared to each other are Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky.
Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) was one of the important philosophers in the 20th century.
Adorno studied at the University of Frankfurt and was a composition student of the modernist composer, Alban Berg, a disciple of Schoenberg. Teaching philosophy at Frankfurt University, Adorno became associated with the Institute for Social Research, but after the Nazi rose
to power in 1933, he left for England and then moved to the United States, where he started
doing sociological research on music. In 1949, Adorno returned to Germany to become one
of the leading members in Frankfurt School cultivating Marxist philosophy and a professor
in Frankfurt University (Gracyk & Kania (eds.), 2011: 391). With such a background, it can
be understood that Adorno has great expertise in the fields of critical philosophy and music.
Adorno is a philosopher of artistic modernism—which must be distinguished from
modernity, which refers to a social and cultural development occurred during the Enlightenment period and the end of the 18th century. Unlike modernity, the concept of modernism
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emerged during the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century and is
understood as an artistic phenomenon, as a critic or response to modernity (Gracyk & Kania
(eds.), 2011). The fundamental issue addressed by Adorno is how to philosophize art in the
absence of aesthetic norms (Paddison, 1993: 2), where modernism is considered a deficiency
in the aesthetic norm for the production of art and critical response to the artwork.
Since the Renaissance, art had moved independently until the 18th century, when it reached
an autonomous status; therefore, music was no longer considered socially and politically
intertwined. There was a greater artistic freedom, and artists could choose to produce works
for the sake of artistic manifestation or commercial materialization. Subjects could freely
exercise their choices and produced whatever they liked to make; however, at the same time,
they did not have any impact on social life and did not find fulfilment in the social institutions. The separation between the weak subjects and the powerful society was regarded by
Adorno as the crisis of modernity (Witkin, 1998).
However, the reproduction of the separation between individuals and society embodied in
the works of art and music serves as the real measure of the value of truth for both individuals
and society because the works of modernism stand in a critical position toward modern society. With a critical awareness toward modernity, the awakening of art on its autonomy is also
the awakening of art on its exile. The works of art can describe the objective truth of power in
a capitalistic society and the weaknesses of individual subjects as its victims (Witkin, 1998: 4).
Adorno formulated his dialectical aesthetics. First, the traditional philosophy has ignored
the specificity of artworks and chosen universality instead, while he was against it by emphasizing the particular works. Second, the traditional aesthetics have a tendency to ignore the
relationship between the art and its institutions, while Adorno saw the need for a critical sociology of art with the relationship between its usability and functionality in industrial societies. For this, he also thought that the autonomy of art is not merely an ideology, but also has
a critical function. Third, the traditional aesthetics have a tendency to avoid the aspects of
art history and the definition in order to seek for absolute values that transcend history, while
Adorno saw that art is part of historical process and part of the constant changes to define it,
either as a reflection or as part of the world and society (Paddison, 1993: 2–3).
3
PHILOSOPHY OF NEW MUSIC
According to Adorno, people have the wrong awareness of music. They judge music according
to their understanding of it. In addition, when they think they understand music, they only
perceive an inert, empty husk robbed of its own critical substance (Adorno, 1949: 11–12).
The culture industry that affects society is often assumed to embrace only popular art and
music, but this is a misconception because it also includes popular classical music that has
been turned into a museum-art, such as Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and Vivaldi’s The Four
Seasons, although it did not start as industrial products as easily accessible music (Gracyk &
Kania (eds.), 2011: 396). People’s ears are so inundated with traditional, light, and popular
classical music, which have catchy themes, lovely parts, sweet tones, repetitions, certain moods,
and associations. Because the culture industry has trained its “victims” to have fun and avoid
serious efforts with regard to the leisure hours allotted to them for cultural consumption, they
all cling more obstinately to the appearances that conceal the essence, their capacity to listen
becomes blunt, and serious listening is almost unattainable (Adorno, 1949: 12–13).
Adorno expressed through his arguments that there is a relationship between musical works
and social conditions. He assembled a powerful opposition between the works of avant-garde
musicians in the classical tradition on the one hand, and the products of mass popular culture
on the other. On the one hand, there is serious and responsible music—true music that develops
to the highest degree possible at historical trends inherent in the musical materials and conveys
the truth of human condition, the suffering subjects in late capitalist society. On the other hand
are the enemies of musical truth, the products of the musicians who do not acknowledge the
obligations imposed by the historical demands, retreat behind the idea of pure music, and seek
musical models estranged from the demands of the present, while embracing primitivism and
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neoclassicism. Composers such as Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, and the Second Viennese School provided him with his principle exemplars of music high in truth value, whereas
Tin Pan Alley (representing popular music in the 19th and 20th centuries), Jazz music, Stravinsky, Hindemith, and neoclassical composers were assigned to the category of the enemies of
true music that destroyed and extinguished the expressions of the subjects, which cooperated
with the forces of alienation and oppression (Witkin, 1998: 1–2).
Adorno’s distinction between the true music and the enemy of true music is based on the
capacity to challenge or manipulate consciousness. True or great music can raise consciousness and advance social progress, whereas the enemy of true music, or bad music, diverts and
dulls the mind and only shapes consciousness in negative and regressive ways. In fact, great
music can challenge perceptions and musical expectations, against passivity, submission, and
dehumanization of capitalism and totalitarianism, whereas bad music encourages consumption, dulls people’s awareness as an individual, and creates a comfort state of mind which
facilitates a kind of collective brainwashing. Great music resists the convenience of consumption and popularity by defying the law of the marketplace, whereas bad music—easy
listening, light, and popular—serves to maim consciousness into passivity and conformity,
thus making the dehumanizing influences and depravities of capitalist society seem not only
natural and inevitable but also pleasant (Bowman, 1998: 305–306).
In Philosophy of New Music, Adorno contrasts two great composers of modern music, specifically Schoenberg and Stravinsky. According to Adorno, music has a fundamental social
obligation to challenge the critical awareness, thus advancing the society. Unlike philosophy
that attempts to analyse everything, music should be able to complicate the simple, disrupt
the ordinary, and challenge the status quo by creating critical awareness on issues such as
contradiction, suffering, and alienation of modern life (Bowman, 1998: 308).
Adorno’s exploration of Schoenberg, aside from finding the spirit of change through atonality, and the twelve-tone technique discovers the similarities between Schoenberg’s music
and social life through expressionism, especially his ideas on how modern music should be.
Schoenberg’s opera Erwartung, for example, tells about a woman who is looking for her lover
at night, conquering darkness, then finding the dead body of her lover, calling for help that
never comes, getting confused and angry, and finally being able to continue her journey.
Erwartung brought music in such a form, with dissonant and disjointed music sections, which
expresses a case study on anxiety and loneliness (Witkin, 1998: 132). Anxiety and loneliness
are deemed by Adorno as the original emotions of the unconscious, a commitment to portray the inner feelings of an individual toward someone or something or to explain the subjective side of a person in relation to another. In other words, music can not only describe the
condition of alienation of modern social life but also expose part of the suffering of people
in a capitalist society, namely anxiety and loneliness (Witkin, 1998).
Meanwhile, although Adorno perceives Stravinsky as one of the many neoclassical composers, the reason of his lashing out on Stravinsky roots from Stravinsky’s claim that he is a
modern composer who provides musical response to the crisis of modernity. The essence of
Stravinsky’s neoclassical style, as stated by Eric Salzman, does not lie in the revival of the classical style, but in modernist renovations on classical forms (in Witkin, 1998: 147). Furthermore,
Stravinsky’s effort in building music as a pure objectivity is also judged by Adorno as similar
to phenomenology and existentialism that may dangerously disconnect the subject and object
for the pursuit of authenticity. Stravinsky’s ballet works are criticized by Adorno as movements
without progress (Adorno, 1949: 196). Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring is an example of
the fascination at the art at that time that took on primitivism as a means of a modernist revolution. However, Adorno perceived the implementation of primitivism as not only restorative
but also entertaining the preconditions of individual and pre-dialectic consideration by presenting a totem clan model. The Rite of Spring represents an objectivity project that is capable of
alienating the subjects, similar to subjects in a totalitarian society that are incapable of expression and growth, and rise to confront the oppression by collective power. The story focuses on
the sacrifice of a young woman who ended up dancing to her death. The music, the dance, and
the drama come together to celebrate the ceremony of the collective power, which eventually
destroys the subject as a victim. The most important point of it, according to Adorno, is that
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there is no antithesis between the victim and the tribe that sacrifices her, which is marked by the
abrupt end of the dance after the victim is dead (Witkin, 1998: 153).
Although Adorno sympathized deeply with Schoenberg and Stravinsky, antipathy and
antagonism between the two apparently later prompted him to think dialectically that there
are deficiencies and flaws as well in Schoenberg’s music. Even Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique still sets the tone and has a hierarchy as well. In one of his last essays entitled Vers Une
Musique Informelle, he explored the possibilities of the creation of music that is truly free
and spontaneous.
According to Adorno, informal music must take on the challenge of unlimited freedom,
which does not dwell in the past because history is irreversible and the past is obsolete, and
it is to avoid repeating Schoenberg’s music again (Adorno, 1961: 275). Stravinsky’s works
and those of other composers seem to indicate that expressionism is outdated because the
dissatisfaction with the expression is interpreted as a positive wish-fulfilment of the musical
world, in which people express themselves on one another to the point where the capability
to express grows irrelevant (Adorno, 1961: 279). Meanwhile, the twelve-tone technique that
was praised by Adorno also becomes irrelevant because Stockhausen’s works provide insights
into the occurring contradiction, where the whole rhythmical and metric structures, including
atonality and twelve-tone, are still in the borders of tonality (Adorno, 1961: 276).
The concept of informal music is very intriguing and enigmatic, and it introduces a new
ideal in Adorno’s philosophy of music that ponders the possibility of a “formless” music that
is currently non-existent but will exist in the future. It is a kind of music that rejects all previous solutions, which stands unique and dissimilar to any other forms that precede it and
reflects dialectical thinking and the spirit of critical theory to attempt the impossible, apply
the changes from the current one, and keep moving to find something new (Paddison, 2010).
4
CONCLUSION
Music is fundamentally social. It is related to all social and political activities that occur in
the society. It is even considered influential to help humans understand the world better. With
the development of history, one can see that everything in social life is interrelated with and
reflects each other. Every event has its effect on the knowledge, philosophy, artworks, and
vice versa. While it is true that the development of Western music in the modern era serves as
a background for review, it is intended to be learned further. The highly diverse development
of the 20th-century music, which is due to awakening of the modern spirit, can be seen as a
form of criticism and repulsion to continue the previous traditions and rules.
Adorno, a philosopher of the Frankfurt School who illuminated the philosophy of music,
comprehended that musical works are related to social conditions. According to him, similar
to philosophy that attempts to analyse everything, music should be able to complicate the
simple, disrupt the usual, and promote critical awareness on issues such as contradiction,
suffering, and alienation that occur in social life.
Schoenberg’s music was once considered by Adorno to represent great music, similar to
philosophy, disenchanted with its high value of truth. Meanwhile, Stravinsky’s music was
considered to represent bad music, together with other products of popular music that lull
awareness. With regard to music and its relationship with social conditions and the difference
between the true music and the enemy of true music, Adorno inadvertently formulated a
hierarchy in addition to the function of music. Nevertheless, previously it was criticized by
the postmodernists who would say that there are no high art and low art; however, it should
be understood that even though it may seem as a consequence of the discussion, he had created a hierarchical distinction between great and bad music, which was not the intention of
his endeavour. Even Schoenberg’s music, which had been considered ideal by Adorno, was
criticized by him subsequently. After coming into contact with Stockhausen’s works, he realized that the inadequacy and flaws in Schoenberg’s atonal music were that it still practiced
tone settings and hierarchy, which were still inseparable from the constraints of tonality.
Thus, in line with the thought that the most important thing in music is its ability to advance
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critical awareness and thus create social progress, he later explored the possibility of great
music that is truly free and spontaneous.
In the 21st century, the experience with sound in the society also illustrates how music
becomes a tool of some power such as capitalism. As sound is abstract enough to be experienced immediately without anticipation, it represents violence and manifestation of power
that renders music an agent of social control, enforcing people to follow a particular ideology
or to divert them from certain issues. However, music is also a glimmer of hope. Through great
music, people can reflect on their social conditions. The critical function of music in social life
is to advance awareness and thus create social progress through the reflection it brings and
ideals flowing in its embrace. Great music plays a serious and noble role in the society. Adorno
reminded us that theories and practices are and should be a single entity, for all things in social
life are interlinked with each other. His philosophy reflects the spirit of critical theory and
dialectical thinking. It also recalls the ancient Greek philosophy of Heraclitus that everything
continues to flow and nothing remains. The only thing that is constant is change.
REFERENCES
Adorno, T.W. (1949). Philosophy of New Music. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Adorno, T.W. (1961). Vers une Musique Informelle. In: Adorno, T.W. (1963). Quasi una Fantasia.
London & New York, Verso.
Bowman, W.D. (1998). Philosophical Perspectives on Music. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Butler, C. (1994). Early Modernism: Literature, Music, and Painting in Europe 1900−1916. Oxford,
Clarendon Press.
Hamilton, A. (2007). Aesthetics and Music. London and New York, Continuum.
Hamilton, A. (2011). Adorno. In: Gracyk, T. & Kania, A. (ed.). (2011). The Routledge Companion to
Philosophy and Music. London and New York, Routledge.
Mack, D. (2012). Sejarah Musik Jilid 3 (History of Music 3rd Edition). Yogyakarta, Pusat Musik
Liturgi.
Paddison, M. & Deliege, I. (eds.). (2010). Contemporary Music: Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives. Farnham, Ashgate Publishing.
Paddison, M. (1993). Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Schellekens, E. (2007). Aesthetics and Morality. London and New York, Continuum.
Witkin, R.W. (1998). Adorno on Music. New York, Routledge.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
No-self: Reflections on ethics and identity
J. Jiwanda & A.Y. Lubis
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The Anatta doctrine (no-self) in Buddhism has a unique position in the history of human reasoning as a doctrine that suggests the rejection of the existence of self,
soul, or atman. The idea of the Self is considered as an illusion or false belief which results in
the dangerous view of “I” or “mine,” a desire for self-fulfilment or selfishness, hatred, egoism,
etc. Self-permanence is considered as “feeler of sensation,” “thinker of thoughts,” “decider
of bad or good action.” As a reflection on ethics, the Anatta doctrine criticizes the claim of
“I” or “mine,” which results in individualism and selfishness, as well as implying a bond to
desire, wealth, power, and the idea or vision of life, concept, and ideal belief. This desire or
passion in Buddhism is considered as the source of all human sufferings (dukkha), and is used
to maintain human existence and obtain glory from a true claim on identity. In the history of
mankind, the false belief of identity is a cause of conflict or even war. The understanding of
the Anatta doctrine has its relevance by way of liberation from human suffering and provision for the moral foundation of human actions.
1
INTRODUCTION
A human being is an entity that is able to question everything around him/her as well as
himself/herself. The questions entail what the meaning of life is, who human is (self-identity),
what the meaning of its existence is, and so on. By questioning these, one is clearly aware
that he/she exists not only in the world, but he/she also has a full consciousness and reflects
his/her existence freely and critically (Magniz-Suseno, 2006). Humans will always look for
the answers for all those questions for their whole lives. This search for identity expresses
curiosity for the real persons behind any actions in their lives. It also represents existentialism
through the search for self-authenticity or self-autonomy.
On the other hand, the answer for questions on self-identity is often fixed to an absolute
value for its identity and is used to distinguish itself from other individuals. Identity is often
entangled with physical features, such as skin colour or ethnicity, religion, race, and political
affiliation. This absolute value of identity frequently leads to a clash of individuals or groups
through violence, conflicts, or even war. The rationale behind this is the belief that one identity is better than the other and there exists thirst for power and dominance.
Throughout the history of human beings, one can find many instances of conflicts caused
by fixation on self-identity that leads to racism; some of them are considered as the greatest evils in humanity. For example, the Holocaust by the Nazi Germans and the genocide in
Rwanda. Identity conflicts are also present in the Indonesian history, for instance the conflicts in Poso and Sampit.
Apparently, history is often considered as a mere tale from the past that triggers similar
violence in the present, including in Indonesia. For instance, the event in Tanjung Balai,
Medan, at the end of July 2016, where groups of different religions burnt a temple, triggered
by miscommunication over a use of a loudspeaker (http://sumut.pojoksatu.id/2016/07/30/).
Reflecting on such events, one should wonder why identity is so attached to a person, making him/her willing to fully sacrifice everything for his/her identity. One should question his/
her state of identity, whether the identity exists and whether it is attached to a person from
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the moment the person is born and remains the same until the moment he/she dies. How
could one claim that a person’s identity is universally complete and true, whilst one is always
trapped in an ever-changing cycle of life whether a social, educational, or cultural condition?
Is identity itself the real essence of one’s existence?
The Anatta doctrine from Buddhism provides insights and reflections for the concept of
self (individuality and identity) in bringing suffering to life. Anatta explains that a belief in
the permanent self (sakkyaditthi) is a false view about life. By rejecting selfhood, one can
understand the reality of life and moral principles that leads to the elimination of individualism and desire.
1.1
Atman and Anatta
The Anatta doctrine in early Buddhist tradition is inseparable from the widely believed and dispersed Indian tradition of Brahmanism, which is based on the Veda and the Upanishad. Brahmanism is more inclined towards sacrificial rituals based on and sourced from the Veda dogma,
including its interpretation by the Brahmin community. The rituals are addressed to the divine
power through manifested gods that control and nurture the cosmic order. Upanishad is the
part of Veda which contains reflection, describing the achievement of the ultimate goal of religiosity through human acts and understanding. The believers in the Upanishad tradition did a
quest to formulate an ideal concept of human happiness and an ultimate vision and knowledge
about the “Real” regarding a divine vision (Radhakrishnan, 1959 ). It is a metaphysical quest
for the world that would bring an enlightening salvation to the mind and strengthen the spirit.
This tradition later became the starting point of Buddha’s teaching that offered an alternative outlook in understanding the reality of life itself. The early Buddhism even clearly
rejected every form of metaphysical concept in Brahmanism that showed cruelty in rituals and degradation of human’s morality as a cause of mystical believe in the divine power
(Radhakrishnan, 1989). This can be considered as a critique on the theistic creationism.
Early Buddhism rejected a concept in the Upanishad tradition that became a foundation
in the Anatta doctrine: the Atman concept. What is Atman? Etymologically, atman means
vital essence in human life—a soul that covers its existence, breath (prana), and intellectuality
(prajna), which extends beyond everything (Medhidhammaporn, 1988). This is later interpreted as the Self. Atman is not born, but an eternal element, unconditioned from human
mentality and intellectuality. Based on this, Atman is nothing but a foundation for the reality
of power of individual consciousness; a foundation of the human soul and universal consciousness, not to be confused with the physical and mental phenomenon of a human being.
In the Samkara view within the Advaita Vedanta tradition, Atman is regarded to precede the
stream of consciousness, reality, and illusion, and good or bad.
In Chandyoga Upanishad volume viii section 7.1 (Radhakrishnan, 1959:501), Prajapati
explains the nature of atman (self) that is considered free from evil, free from old age, free from
death or has no relation with death itself, free from sadness, free from thirst and hunger, and
free from all desires growing without any space and time limit. The self (atman) is investigated
and known, and whoever investigates and understands the nature of self (atman) will obtain all
knowledge in the world and its desires. Beyond that, the self (atman) is not an aggregate of bodily or sensory quality (known as “me”) but as a subject (the “I”) that is behind and outside the
sensory quality (known as the speaking speech, the seeing eye, the hearing ear, and the understanding mind) (Radhakrishnan, 1989: 151–163). Of that nature, one can see that atman has
permanent, continuous, single, and eternally active characteristics. In the ever-changing human
mental experience, this subject is the one that unites all consciousness into a whole, which means
it is a fundamental identity of self that is not affected by ever-changing experiences.
The way to understand atman by sense is similar to the explanation of consciousness in the
Mandukya Upanishad that mentions four states of consciousness: wake (Vaisvanara), dream
(Taijasa), sleep Prajna), and spiritual consciousness known as Turiya (Radhakrishnan, 1953:
695). Turiya is a consciousness characterised as invisible, transcendent, unthinkable, understandable, undefined, and is the essence of the Self (atman) itself: peacefulness, ultimate
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happiness, and singularity. Later, in the the Turiya state, the atman consciousness permanently unites with the Brahman (Radhakrishnan, 1953). Therefore, to know what atman is,
our intelligence must transcend into Turiya.
Atman in the Upanishad is identified with what is called Brahman, the foundation of universal. super personal, and eternal spirit. Brahman can be regarded as divine or godly, a universal
spirit and foundation for every human personality (inner self). In Rg.Veda, Brahman is depicted
as a sacred knowledge or hymn; a sacred expression of spiritual wisdom. In the Brahmanic tradition, Brahman is more inclined towards ritual and almightiness. In this concept, Brahman is the
ultimate principle and universal spirit guidance (Radhakrishnan, 1953). Atman and Brahman
are viewed as identical in the cosmic and individual physical principle. The relationship between
them is depicted in microcosm and macrocosm relationships as an effort to perpetually nurture
the cosmic order. The similarity between Atman and Brahman is described in Table 1 below.
To achieve freedom, the subject or the Self (Atman) concept must extend beyond its intellectual level, thus making the concept of the intuitive self similar to Ananda, which is the
concept of unity between the knower, the known, and the knowledge. Knowledge, thought,
sense, and its objects are finite and conditioned. One is unable to achieve the ultimate happiness from these finite things.
There are two things that are criticized by Early Buddhism regarding the Atman concept
from the Upanishad tradition. The first is the rejection of the concept of the “self ” (Atman)
that is independent from the body and its qualities (beneath the consciousness itself). The
second is seeing the reality of life as dynamic and ever-changing, caused and conditioned
by something; hence, there is no fixed phenomenon essence. Such critiques make the selfpermanence or Atman behind any sensory qualities impossible because even the consciousness itself is formed or conditioned from the body. Such temporary and ever-changing conditions lead to an unsatisfactory state known as suffering or dukkha (Collins, 1982).
The Anatta doctrine in Buddhism tends to regard that the self-permanence (sakkayaditthi)
one often considers as “possession”, “mine”, or “my existence” (etam mama, eso ‘ham eso me
attati) as a wrong way of seeing the phenomenon. One has four possibilities in seeing “me” (the
“I”) as the Self. First, the subject (the “I”) is considered identical to the body as a clearly visible
object. Second, it is considered identical to the mind or thought, which means “me” is identical
to my thoughts on something. Third, it is considered identical to the body and the mind. Lastly,
it is considered identical to something more primitive such as names (Taylor, 1969).
Early Buddhism views that the phenomenon of personality is just a combination of the
physical and mental aggregates that work together, interdependent in ever-changing moments
based on the causality law, thus creating no permanent, eternal, unchanged character in the
whole existence (Rahula, 1974). In this view, the human is a combination of Nama-Rupa.
Nama means a mental phenomenon, and Rupa means a physical form or bodily phenomenon. The combination of Nama-Rupa is often stated as the Five Aggregates (pancakhanda)
consisting of Rupa (corporeality), Vinnana (consciousness), Sanna/Samjna (perception),
Sankhara (mental formations), and Vedana (feeling). The Five Aggregates are formed by the
contact (phassa) of our rupa. For example, the consciousness of the eye, formed by the eye’s
sensory contact with outside objects, is similar to the eye’s feeling, the eye’s thought, and the
eye’s perception. Within this assumption, consciousness is nothing but a formation of bodily
experience itself. The Five Aggregates are transient, so they are not considered as the Self
Table 1.
Similarities between Atman and Brahman.
Subject (Atman)
Object (Brahman)
The bodily self (Visva)
The vital self (Taijasa)
The intellectual self (Prajna)
The intuitive self (Turiya)
Cosmos (Virat or Vaisnavara)
The soul of the World (Hiranyagarbha)
Self-Consciousness (Isvara)
Ananda (Brahman)
Source: Radhakrishnan (1989: 172).
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and have no guidance and inner control as conceptualised by the Upanishad (Collins, 1982).
According to the Anattalakkhana Sutta, if the Five Aggregates are the Self, why one cannot
control them or make them follow one’s wishes? Instead, they may even cause humans pains
or sufferings (Sayadaw, 2008).
In Buddhism there is a law known as the “dependent origination” (paticcasamuppada) which
explains that every phenomenon is subject to a causality or a condition. Buddhism does not see
something as automatically present. Instead, every existence is conditioned by an external cause.
The stability of an empirical object is considered as mere imagination. The concept of the “Self”
(Atman) is no more than a conventional truth (sammuti-sacca). The concept of the Self is often
treated as an absolute value, which in Anatta is just a product of ignorance (avidya), thus making every effort to affirm this concept as a product of aggregation that leads to suffering. This
makes Anatta a characteristic of universe or life apart from dukkha (suffering) and annica (everchanging condition). Furthermore, this view gives a reflection for one’s identity.
1.2 Reflection of identity and personal continuity
Buddhism is more about guiding one to think what a human is like, what one is, what one
feels, what one thinks, and what one does in life. The truth is, when one puts and validates
himself or herself definitively, one is actually in vain because one is a fully-integrated part
of the world and lives with it. As it is impossible for one’s consciousness to be isolated and
separated, it is also impossible for a human to have an innate content such as Atman.
The Five Aggregates allegedly have the potential for acknowledgement of a complete self,
self-hood, or identity. In the Majjhima Nikaya 109.10 (Bhikku Nanamoli & Bhikku Bodhi,
1995: 889), it is stated how the view of identity or personality emerges from a material form,
such as the feeling as the self, the perception as the self, the consciousness as the self, or vice
versa. The identity considered coming from the body with its quality is just another name
for a continuity of the process of becoming. Born as a child, becoming a teenager, an adult,
and growing old are parts of the process of becoming. The substance of our body is similar
to composing the change in mental or mind experiences from one moment to another. The
identity in Nama and Rupa does not have a proof for a core reality or essence. There is no
principle or fixed reality in the world’s ever-changing reality. The main reality is the everchanging law and causality. The Upanishad reality firmly holds a concept that there must
be something permanent in this changing world. On the contrary, Buddha offers a concept
that everything is conditioned or must have a cause. One does not have a fixed consciousness
about fixed entity or eternal principles of human beings.
A similar point was expressed in the conversation between King Milinda and Nagasena in
the book of Milindapanha—with the question of who “Nagasena” is and explanation on the
“chariot” analogy. King Milinda started the question with “How your Reverence is known
and what is your name, Sir?” Nagasena answered, “Oh Great King, people called me Nagasena.” However, later on, Nagasena said that “Nagasena” was just a reference, a common
usage, and only a name with no permanent individuals or persons beneath it (Conze, 1959).
This made King Milinda ask, “Who will do a good and righteous life? If someone kills you,
that means there is no killer? And referring to the physical or mental phenomenon, is it the
hair or the nail? The body, the feeling, or the combination of them all?” Nagasena answered,
“No, oh the Great King.” King Milinda asked again, “If none of those, then who is the
person in front of me?” Nagasena answered this doubt by explaining the “chariot” analogy
to King Milinda. “If you come on a chariot, then please explain to me what a chariot is. Is
it the wheels, or the axis, or the combination of those?” King Milinda was unable to explain.
This also applies to the definition of who Nagasena is: He is just a combination of the Five
Aggregates—there is no individual essence attached inside him. Likewise, the chariot is just a
name given to the combination of the wheels, the axis, and so on.
Just like Buddha’s view on reality that states the ever-changing condition cannot be controlled by humans and that the identity also forever lies on continuity. It is impossible for humans
to be in the same state in two different moments, and this will continue in an endless existence
without being a whole. Both physical phenomenon and mental experience will keep changing
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eternally. If one talks about completeness, it is merely a physical phenomenon rather than the
mind or mental phenomenon. Thus, it can be seen that it is impossible for the individuality or
the identity to be fixed or complete; rather, it is an unstable part that always changes. What
will penetrate our understanding is how one sees the identity itself as one’s self-essence. The
possession leads to a fixed absolute value, and if related to the dukkha concept, this kind of
possession will make one unable to escape from sufferings. Rather, it may make one fall to the
comfortable attachment of sensory objects, such as happiness, glory, and so on.
The ever-changing currents are even conditioned by one another. This thing is attached to
karma, where the present time is determined by the past, or that future is determined by the
present, which means everything is intertwined. The idea of continuity can be analogised as
a planted seed which grows and produces fruits, from which there will be seeds to be planted
again, and so on and so forth. One is what one does. Continuity is a series in which whatever
emerges will have an ever-growing process. Individuals emerge from a condition and a conditioning of various series of such processes.
1.3
Reflection on ethics
The Anatta doctrine certainly has an implication on ethics, that is related to morality or what
should a human do. The most observable implication is that this doctrine is not paralyzing
and, instead, compels an introspection in individualism that is assumed as the possession
of identity or a self (my, mine, myself), all of which have no essence in reality and can be
assumed as trapped to the attachment and leads to suffering. According to Conze (2007) in
Buddhism: A Short History, in a situation seen by Buddha himself, the Iron Age had grown
the individualism of many ambitious war lords in building their kingdom with great towns,
vast trading, and rationally organized nations. The establishment of those towns replaced
small tribes through depersonalisation, specialisation, and social disorganisation (pp. vii–
viii). Even though they happened during the early days of Buddhism, such conditions are still
relevant with the condition of contemporary human beings.
Power and political struggles, conflicts caused by identity, and wars are the effects of individualism that show human cruelty and savagery. It can be said that the root of individualism
is like what is written on the Four Noble Truths. The first one is ceaseless desire (tanha). In
the second noble truth, it is said that the root of sufferings (dukkha) is called tanha or desire.
This perpetual desire comes from ignorance (avidya) that craves the thought of considering
non-essential things as the Self. There are two types of tanha that cover individualism: Kamatanha and Bhava-tanha. Kama-tanha is the desire to savour lust and expand existence. Tanha
is formed as the consequence of human sensory that makes a contact with its surroundings,
such as taste, smell, voice, and sight that will provide a desire to comfort and pleasure, thus
leading to an overjoyed state. The second is Bhava-tanha, which is the desire for a lasting life
or rebirth and the desire to defend existence. This state can be described as a temptation for
a person to achieve glory from the pleasure he/she obtains, compelling the person’s desire to
defend the current condition to avoid himself/herself from suffering.
The introspection of individualism through an extinction of desire can be considered as
the foundation of morality in this doctrine. In Dharmapada 7 (Buddharakkhita, 1985: 23),
Buddha explained:
Just as a storm throws down a tree, so does Mara overpower the man who lives for
the pursuit of pleasures, who is uncontrolled in his sense, immoderate in eating,
indolent and dissipated.
Mara is a symbol of the god of evil that tries to prevent humans from achieving salvation.
The extinction of desire is how one escapes from the streams of dukkha and human egoism,
which means one is guided to banish the potential of greed, hatred, and lust resulting from
the contact of human sensory with its surroundings, and from the feelings, consciousness,
desires, and interpretations from the contact of the five human senses. In Dhammapada 199
(Buddharakkhita, 1985: 54), it is said that: “Happy indeed we live, free from avarice amidst
the avaricious. Amidst the avaricious men dwell free from avarice.”
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The extinction of desire in the context of breaking free from suffering is ideal for arahat
and it will grow an ethical attitude through life, such as love (metta/amitiri) that hopes for
happiness and a prosperous life for all human beings, compassion (karuna) that eliminates
other people’s sufferings and eradicate human cruelty, respect (mudita) that goes beyond envy
and hatred, and equanimity (upekkha), which is the peaceful state (neither sad nor happy)
(Emmanuel, 2013). The extinction of desire is not interpreted as an abandoned life, but as
how one can carry it out with devotion in life itself. Simply put, this view can be considered
as the “Middle Way” between happiness and ascetics.
2
CONCLUSION
The Anatta doctrine from Buddhism gives insights and reflections for the concept of the
Self (individuality and identity), which brings sufferings to life. There is no phenomenon of
personality outside the combination of physical and mental combinations that work together,
interdependent in ever-changing moments under a causality law, thus creating a condition
where there is no permanent, eternal, or unchanged character in the whole existence. By
viewing that the reality of life is always changing, caused, and conditioned by something else,
it implies that there is no fixed essence of a phenomenon. In such a way, the permanent self
or the Atman beyond any sense of qualities is impossible. The permanent self hints the sense
of identity or individuality as the essence, but from the critiques it is also impossible to be
permanent. It can be assumed that being entrapped to the attachments will lead to sufferings
(dukkha). The Anatta doctrine guides us to an introspection of individualism and its effects
that show human cruelty or wickedness through the extinction of desire, and this can be
regarded as the foundation of morality. This perpetual desire comes from ignorance (avidya)
that craves the thought of considering non-essential things as the Self.
REFERENCES
Bhikku Nanmoli & Bhikku Bodhi. (1995) The Middle Length Discourse of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya. Sri Lanka: Buddhist Public Society.
Buddharakkhita, A. (1985) The Dhammapada: The Buddha’s Path of Wisdom. Sri Lanka: Buddhist
Publication Society.
Collins, S. (1982) Selfless Persons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Conze, E. (1959) Buddhist Scriptures. England: Penguin Books.
Conze, E. (2007) Buddhism: A Short History. Oxford: One World.
Defaza, S. (2016, 30th July) Ini Kronologi Lengkap Vihara Dibakar Massa di Tanjung Balai.
Pojoksatu.id. Retrieved from http://sumut.pojoksatu.id/2016/07/30/ini-kronologi-lengkap-vihara-dibakarmassa-di-tanjung-balai/. Translation: Complete Chronology of Mob Burning Temple in Tanjung
Balai. Pojoksatu.id. Retrieved from http://sumut.pojoksatu.id/2016/07/30/ini-kronologi-lengkapvihara-dibakar-massa-di-tanjung-balai/.
Emmanuel, S.M. (2013) A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy. United Kingdom: Willey-Blackwell.
Harvey, P. (1995) The Selfless Mind: Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism. London
and New York: Routledge Curzon.
Medhidhammaporn, P. (1988) Satre’s Existentialism and Early Buddhism. Bangkok: Buddhadhamma
Foundation.
Munger, R. (2011) The influence of ‘No-Self’ on ethics. Macalester Journal of Philosophy, 17 (1), Article 3.
Perez-Remon, J. (1980) Self and Non- Self in Early Buddhism. The Hague: Mouton.
Radhakrishnan, S. (1953) The Principle Upanisads. London: George Allen & Unwin LTD.
Radhakrishnan, S. (1989) Indian Philosophy, Volume I. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Rahula, S.W. (1974) What The Buddha Taught. New York: Grove Press.
Sayadaw, YMM. (2008) Komentar AnattalakkhanaSutta & MalukyaputtaSutta. Jakarta: DhammaCitta
Press. Translation: Comment of AnattalakkhanaSutta & MalukyaputtaSutta. Jakarta: DhammaCitta
Press.
Taylor, R. (1969) The Anattā doctrine and personal identity. Philosophy East and West, 19 (4), 359–366.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi: The struggle for identity and role
in the Indonesian National Movement (1923–1941)
Siswantari
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This study discusses the Betawi ethnic group’s struggle for identity, place and
recognition in the Indonesian National Movement during 1923–1941. Using the historical
method for gathering and analysing data, this study explores the role of the Kaoem Betawi
organisation in directing its cultural and social values in the national context. The study
reveals that the ethnic group failed to put itself in a strategic position in the Indonesian
National Movement due to the absence of outstanding political figures such as Muhammad
Husni Thamrin, and the lack of media support for disseminating its ideas and opinions. The
unfavourable internal conditions of the group and its low standing regarding other ethnic
groups weakened its role in dealing with national issues and hindered the organisation from
providing significant contributions to the movement’s objectives. All these negative factors
led to the diminishing role of the Kaoem in the Indonesian National Movement during their
struggle for independence from the Dutch. This study also shows that although the Kaoem
was only a local organisation in scope, it had a high spirit of nationalism.
1
INTRODUCTION
In the early 20th century, Batavia was growing rapidly as the city that became the centre of
the government, which turned it into the centre of political, economic, social and cultural
activities. Furthermore, the city of Batavia was also the city of education, especially after the
enactment of the so-called ethical politics; many schools were built during this period, including STOVIA. Budi Utomo, the youth organisation, was established in this school in 1908.
Young students from various regions passionately conducted meetings to liberate the nation
from the shackles of colonialism. The activities were prompted by the social inequalities
and discrimination felt by many of them. Following Budi Utomo, other national movement
organisations were born, including Sarekat Islam and Indische Partij. Other regional-based
youth organisations such as Jong Java and Jong Sumatranen Bond were established later in
Batavia, where the youth from different regions met.
The establishment of these regional-based organisations in Batavia inspired the youth of
the Betawi ethnic group to mobilise their own regional solidarity movement, because until
then, no organisation had accommodated the interest of the Betawi people. They formed
Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi, which was approved as a legal entity by the Dutch colonial government in 1923. To date, no in-depth study has been conducted on Perhimpoenan
Kaoem Betawi (Association of Betawi People), and only a few publications have dealt with
the subject, albeit briefly, such as Pringgodigdo (1991) and Hering (2003) among others.
Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi was born out of the spirit of togetherness among the people
whose hometown was Batavia. Previously, many Betawi residents were members of Pagoejoeban Pasoendan. However, their membership in the organisation did not bring much benefit
because the organisation focused more on the problems in Priangan. Community figures
in Betawi who felt disenfranchised left the Pagoejoeban Pasoendan to establish their own
organisation called the Kaoem Betawi (Suharto, 2002). This organisation cooperated with
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the Dutch government to find ways to influence the city government by placing its representatives in the municipal councils.
In the early 20th century, for practical purposes, the Betawi people occupied the lowest
social strata in Batavia. For their livelihood, they earned their living by selling crops, running
cottage industries and providing services such as cart pulling, oxcart driving and laundering.
The Betawi people were scattered in villages throughout the city and its surrounding districts.
Even in villages near the centre of the town, their lifestyle was similar to that in the hinterland
(Abeyasekere, 1990).
The shortcoming of the Kaoem Betawi was also acknowledged by Perhimpoenan Kaoem
Betawi. It was mentioned in the Verslag Tahoenan (the annual meeting) of Perhimpoenan
Kaoem Betawi about the marginalisation of their people:
Dapat kita katakan bahwa seoemoemnja orang Betawi setengah abad kebelakang
hidoep didalam kesoeboeran serta masing-masing mempoenjai roemahtangga sendiri, tanah pekarangan, dan djoega hampir setiap perdagangan ada di dalam tangannja. Tapi ini keberoentoengan hanja pada saat jang pendek, melihat sekarang bahwa
roemah-roemah tanah pekarangan dan perniagaan telah djatoeh didalam tangannja
orang asing. Ini ta lain, melainkan disebabkan oleh penghargaan jang tjoepat terhadap
pada pendidikan anak-anak kita. Kebanjakan anak anak kita (KB) di waktoe itoe
tida mendapat didikan dan peladjaran jang tjoekoep. Hanja sebahagian ketjil sadja
jang dapat meramalkan bahwa akan keterbelakangan anak-anaknja nanti, djika ta
diberi peladjaran. Kalau kita lihat sekarang. Setiap-setiap hari asib memberi sokongan pada orang miskin, diantara mana jang menerima itoe banjak kaoem kita, Betawi,
dan disini terlihat oleh kita bahwa kemadjoean anak Betawi ada didalam kemoendoeran jang sangat. (Berita Kaoem Betawi, March–April 1938).
Translation:
We can say that generally the people of Betawi, fifty years ago, lived in wealth and each
had their own houses, lands, and trades. However, such fortunes only lasted briefly. We
see now that the houses, lands, and trades have been taken away by foreigners. This is
nonetheless because we were too satisfied with our children’s education. Most of our
children then did not obtain sufficient education and schooling. There were only a few
of us could predict our children’s shortcomings if our children are not educated. If we
see no, poor people, among who are our people, Betawi, are given charity and we can
see that the people of Betawi are having serious decline. (News of Kaoem Betawi,
March–April 1938).
According to the above description, it appears that the decline of the Betawi people could
be traced to the decline in land ownership, trade and education. The problem of how Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi improved the welfare of their people is discussed in this paper.
For the Betawi people, their land was the source of their livelihood. In general, their lives
involved planting and growing fruit trees to be sold right on the premises. The rapid development of the city brought in a change in land ownership. Lands owned by the Betawi people
were getting smaller and smaller because newcomers purchased their lands. It had a detrimental effect on their livelihood, given that the Betawi people were quite dependent on the
revenue from the sale of fruits that grew in their yard, such as bananas, mangoes, kebembems
(a kind of mango), citruses, rambutans, hamlets, sapodillas, persimmons and mangosteens.
From the sociocultural perspective, the Betawi people are synonymous with Islam. The
Betawi people are faithful followers of Islam, and therefore, they send their children to attend
a pesantren (an Islamic boarding school), but not formal education. Lack of education has
clearly hindered them to compete with others in the changing times. Only a few Betawi people
completed Western education and obtained important positions in the government.
The acknowledgement of the shortcomings of the Betawi people had pushed the elite
among them to form Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi. This organisation was intended to be the
means for improving the welfare of the Betawi People:
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Kaoem Betawi kini moelailah bergerak, bergerak akan memperbaiki keadaan
ilmoenya jang djaoeh ketinggalan dari pehak bangsanja pada bahagian jang lain sehingga soekar ia dibawa moesjawara kan membitjarakan ini dan itoe. (Tjahaja Betawi,
10 July 1923).
Translation:
The people of Betawi please now move, move to improve our education that is lagging
compared to other fellow countrymen; thus it is difficult to talk about this and that to
the people of Betawi. (Tjahaja Betawi, 10 July 1923).
Hai bangsa Betawi tengoklah akan saudara-saudaramoe, djanganlah bersenang senang saja sedang saudara-saudaramoe bangsa lain pada masa ini sedang siboek mengoetarakan oesahanja akan membangoenkan kemoeliaannja seperti Pasoendan, Jong
Java, Soematranenbond demikianpoen perkoempoelan jang lain-lain seperti Moehammadijah, Partij Sarikat Islam, masing-masing sedang menjemaikan toejoeannja dan
memboelatkan soearanja. (Tjahaja Betawi, 10 July 1923).
Translation:
The people of Betawi, look your fellow countrymen. Do not be idle while your fellow
countrymen are busy making their efforts to get their glory, like Pasoendan, Jong Java,
Soematranenbond and other fellowships such Moehammadijah, Partij Sarikat Islam,
each of them is setting their goals and making their voices heard. (Tjahaja Betawi, 10
July 1923).
Hai bangsakoe Betawi marilah kita bersatoe dalam koempoelan kita “Kaoem Betawi”
bersatoe beroepaja membaikkan nasib kebangsaan kita seperti orang-orang jang lain
djoega. (Tjahaja Betawi, 10 July 1923).
Translation:
Dear my fellow Betawi people, let us join our fellowship “Kaoem Betawi” and unite to
improve our state as a nation like other people. (Tjahaja Betawi, 10 July 1923).
Betawi djanganlah toean-toean berpoetoes asa, mengira bahwa kehendak dan maksoed bagi memperbaikkan kemalangan kita, menghilangkan kebodohan kita enz.,
tiada kita akan dapat, itoe hendaklah toean-toean indarkan. (Tjahaja Betawi, 10
July 1923).
Translation:
My fellow Betawi people. Please do not be in despair and please do not think that we
cannot realise our intention and purpose to improve our adversity, diminish our ignorance. (Tjahaja Betawi, 10 July 1923).
The above quotation shows that the Betawi people were lagging in politics because they
were lulled by the circumstances forcing them to catch up with other similar organisations.
The Association of Betawi People was trying to be the driving force for that change. The
Perhimpoenan went on to carry out several strategic steps to improve the standard of living
of the Betawi people.
Initially, the strategy undertaken by Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi was to fight for their
interests and to rise above their disadvantageous position in public life in Batavia, which
at that time was experiencing a shift in values and social change in reaction to the colonialist practices and the emergence of the Indonesian nationalism, in order to establish
identity and solidarity among the Betawi people, and to join the union. Therefore, the
Perhimpoenan went out to promote themselves through media, such as Tjahaya Betawi
and Berita Betawi, about the importance of Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi. Their slogan
was as follows:
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Berhimpoen tegoehlah kamoe
Bertjerai roentoehlah kamoe. (Berita Betawi, February 1940).
Translation:
All of you unite steadfastly
If we do not unite, we will fall. (Berita Betawi, February 1940).
Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi urged the people to come and assemble and promoted
the rationale why it was important for the people to join in. The explanation published in
Tjahaya Betawi as the ‘trumpet’ of the organisation was as follows:
Orang Betawi tentoe soedah dikenal oleh sesamanja orang Betawi, maka heran
pengenalannja itoe hampa (kosong) sadja, artinja tiada menghasilkan pertjintaan.
Seorang berkata tiada bergoena berkenalan dengan dia artinja berkenalan dengan
orang itoe tiada menghasilkan goena kepada jang berkata itoe.
Saja lihat sekarang kaoem kita Betawi soedahlah berhimpoen menjadi soeatoe perhimpoenan. Perhimpoenan itoe terjadi dari pada laki-laki dan perempoean. Elok dibalik jang elok roepanja, nampaknjasebagaibatoe bata jang bersoesoen, mendjadikan
soeatoe dinding boeat berlindoeng kedatenganbahaja, bakal menolak ketjelakaan,
begitoelah keadaannja kaoem kita sekarang. Soenggoehpoen batoe bata itoe beres
soesoenannja rapi atoerannja belom boleh dikata koeat, masih koerang perjaja kita
akan koekoehnja soesoenannja itoe, begitoepoen koempoelan kita sekarang, biarpoen
djadi sehimpoenan, tetapi bersatoe belom, djadilah belom genap hati saja akan pertjaja kepada himpoenan kita “Kaoem Betawi”.
Apatah artinja soedah berhimpoen sedang bersatoe belon, heran boekan?
Sebeloemnja kita periksa koempoelan kita “Kaoem Betawi” perhatikanlah kepada
barang yang kita ambil kita djadikan bandingan dengan himpoenan kita “Kaoem
Betawi” yaitu soesoenan batoe bata. Soengoeh soesoenannja beres, atoerannja rapi,
letaknja beratoeran menjenangkan orang jang memandang tetapi koeatnja tiada,
maka koerang djoega goenanja.
Soesoenan batoe bata itoe baroe boleh mendjadi koeat kalau antaranja diberi adonan
pasir jang bertjamper kapoer;
Batoe bersoesoen saja oempamakan kita berhimpoen.
Batoe itoe oempamanja kita
Soesoenan artinja perhimpoenan kita
Kapoer dan pasir oempama tjinta dan sajang.
Begitoelah hendaknja kita dengan kita hatta kepada jang lain sekalipoen hendaklah
bertali pertjintaan, berikat dengan tali kesajangan. (Tjahaja Betawi, 10 July 1923)
The above passage somewhat indicate that the bond that supposedly connected the
Betawi people had not been made. The Perhimpoenan was there, but there were no
strong ties among the members of the movement. The solidarity among the Betawi people needed to be nurtured because there was nothing to unite them. They still referred
themselves by their places of origin, such as Kemayoran, Sawah Besar, Mampang and
others. The bond that tied the Betawi people as a whole needed to be nurtured. Therefore, Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi encouraged the people to join in and be united in the
Perhimpoenan:
Kemanakah perginja pemoeda-pemoeda Betawi jang diharap-harapkan tenaganja
oentoek masjarakatnja? Dan bilakah poetra-poetra Betawi akan insjaf? Oleh karena
itoe berseroelah saja kepada saudara saudara pemoeda Betawi jang masih mengasingkan dirinja dari perhimpoenan kaoemnja.
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Tjeboerkanlah diri saudara-saudara kedalam masjarakat kita (K.B.) moedah-moedahan
dengan ketambahan pengikoetnja dapatlah K.B. berdiri sedjadjar dengan perhimpoenanperhimpoenan lainnja. Djadikanlah diri saudara itoe sebagai anggota dari K.B. jang
setia…(Berita Kaoem-Betawi, January–April 1939).
The above quotation encouraged the youth to join in, to be active in society and to bring
Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi to equality with other organisations.
The lack of the Western-style education had made many Betawi people illiterate. In that
regard, Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi declared eradication of illiteracy as their objective.
It was stated in the 1940 Verslag of Kaoem Betawi (Berita Betawi, February 1940).
Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi also pushed more of its members to attend the Westernstyle education by establishing a number of association-founded schools, such as HIS and
Schakel schools, whose languages of instructions were English and Arabic. Schools that also
had a library and offered music classes were established to educate the Betawi people, so they
could invite others for discussions (Tjahaja Betawi, 17 August 1923).
The strategies of the Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi to boost economic and social statuses of the Betawi people were realised through Gemeenteraad Batavia (the government’s
executive body). Since its establishment in 1923, the association had been represented in
Gemeenteraad Batavia; even M. Husni Thamrin had been its member since 1919. The three
key Betawi figures in Gemeenteraad Batavia were M. Husni Thamrin, Mr Sag Safi’i and
Masserie. Thamrin remained vocal throughout his tenure by voicing the plight of the Betawi
people. Problems related to the improvement of Betawi villages were one of the issues campaigned by Thamrin. He said that hundreds of thousands of people in the villages had to
face dangerous conditions everyday due to squalid environment, poor sanitation and lack of
adequate facilities for garbage disposal:
Kami menelusuri kampung lebih dalam, perhatian kami tertuju pada selokan yang
terletak di kiri dan kanan jalan terutama yang terletak di antara rumah. Ini bukan got,
lebih seperti jalan mengalirnya air, digali sangat dalam yang mampet, penuh barangbarang busuk yang mulai menghitam, dan menimbulkan bau busuk, indra penciuman
kami benar-benar diuji di sana. (Notulen de raads Vergadering van den Gemeenteraad van Batavia, 1923).
Translation:
We walked through the inner villages and we set our attention to gutters on the left
and right of the path located among houses. The gutters do not look like sewers but
more like water flowing, deeply dug but were clogged, full of rotten objects whose
colour were black and from which foul smell was oozing. Our sense of smell was
really challenged there (Notulen de raads Vergadering van den Gemeenteraad van
Batavia, 1923).
The above passage describes the situation of the poor urban villages. That situation pushed
Thamrin, as well as Arifin and Soebrata in Gemeenteraad Batavia, to propose a vote on a
supplementary budget in 1923 for the improvement of the villages; the allocated budget was
drawn from the revenue received from the increased property tax. On 13 June 1923, Thamrin’s notion was proposed to the Gemeenteraad assembly, which accepted it subsequently,
and a committee was set up to prepare a plan for village improvements.
However, the distribution of the Betawi people in Gemeenteraad Batavia shrank after
Thamrin established Partai Indonesia Raya or Parindra, and the Betawi people no longer
stayed in Gemeenteraad Batavia. Since 1935, Thamrin stayed in Gemeenteraad Batavia as
the representative of Parindra (Berita Kaoem Betawi, January–April 1939).
Although it was a regional organisation, Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi not only fought for
the Betawi people but also for the welfare of others. The union also fought for Indonesia. The
people of Betawi supported nationalism and anti-provincialism:
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Soenggoeh boekan pada tempatnya kalau sifat provincialistis (provincie boven Alles)
masih meradja lela dimasa ke-Indonesiaan ini. Itoelah sebabnya, maka sangat keliroe,
djika orang berpendapatan, bahwa dalam “Kaoem Betawi” kita dimasa itu masih terdapat sifat-sifat itoe” (Berita Kaoem Betawi, December 1939).
Translation:
It is highly inappropriate if characteristics of provinciality still prevail during the era
of the current Indonesia. Hence, it is wrong if we think that in we still hold on to the
characteristics of provinciality in “Kaoem Betawi” (Berita Kaoem Betawi, December
1939).
The above quotation shows that despite its name Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi, which
marked its regional association, the organisation clearly demonstrated its nationalist spirit as
shown in the following quote:
Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi berdasar kebangsaan, walaupoen namanja seperti bersifat provincialistisch dan 100 pct anggotanja beragama Islam, akan tetapi perhimpoenan
itoe, tetap mempoenyai dasar kebangsaan Indonesia oentoek menoejoe kepada Indonesia Raja dan moelia. (Berita Kaoem Betawi, February 1940).
Translation:
Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi is based on nationalism although the name is of provinciality characteristic and although all of its members are Moslems, it remains to have
the foundation of nationalism to Indonesia towards the Great and noble Indonesia.
(Berita Kaoem Betawi, February 1940).
Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi built a network of cooperation with other movement organisations. This strategy was conducted to gain a more active role in the Indonesian National
Movement. The people of Betawi argued that change could only be achieved by establishing
cooperation with other like-minded movement organisations, as expressed in the following quote:
Doenia pergerakan kebangsaan pada zaman dewasa ini, ta’tjoekoep dan sampoerna dengan tindakan-tindakan jang beroepa reglementair, karena desekan politiek
memaksa pada kita oentoekmentjari djalan goena dengan langsoeng dapat berhoeboengan dengan lain perhimpoenan jang berazas serta toejoean jang sama. (Berita Kaoem
Betawi, February 1940).
Translation:
The current nationalism movement is neither sufficient nor perfect with “reglementaire” actions because political pressures force us to find ways in order to directly connect with other organisations with common principle and objectives. (Berita Kaoem
Betawi, February 1940).
Cooperation with other associations during the Indonesian National Movement was
apparent in the support for Soempah Pemoeda, although the element of the organisation
that was directly involved in the proclamation of Sumpah Pemoeda was its youth organisation, Pemoeda Kaoem Betawi, founded in 1927. In its motion, Pemoeda Kaoem Betawi
opened its door for all ‘Indonesian Youths’ because some of the governing officials of this
youth organisation were not of Betawi origins.
In 1928, Pemoeda Kaoem Betawi was invited to attend the Second Youth Congress or
Kongres Pemoeda Kedoea. Pemoeda Kaoem Betawi accepted the invitation and participated
actively in the congress. Rochjani Suud, who at that time served as the Secretary for Pemoeda
Kaoem Betawi, was appointed to represent Pemoeda Kaoem Betawi in the Second Youth
Congress Committee in 1928 that eventually gave birth to Soempah Pemoeda (the Youth
Pledge).
Muhammad Husni Thamrin encouraged Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi to be more active in
the Indonesian National Movement. Because of his influence, Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi
was involved in the national politics by becoming a member of Pemufakatan Perhimpunan150
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Perhimpunan Politik Kebangsaan Indonesia (the Association of the Indonesian Political
Organisations) or PPPKI.
PPPKI was formed by Soekarno in 1927 in order to unite the existing political parties.
According to Soekarno, PPPKI was a federation that reflected the social and political situations in Indonesia, where a variety of organisational orientations were present. The federation had a loose structure and formed a ‘sawo matang’ front, consisting of the native
Indonesians who traditionally had dark brown skin and were ready for intense fight with the
white front of the government and the European community (Ingleson, 1983).
In a meeting held on 17 and 18 December 1927 at Taman Siswa School in Bandung, in which
representatives of PSI, PNI, Boedi Oetomo, Pasundan, Sumatranen bond, Perhimpoenan
Kaoem Betawi and Indonesia Study Group were all present, the establishment of PPPKI
was agreed.
The influx of Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi into PPPKI demonstrated the ability of the
organisation to cooperate and be open to the spirit of a united Indonesia as a nation that had
longed for independence. Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi was not a narrow regional organisation
solely intended for the benefits of the Betawi people. Instead, this organisation opened itself to
a far-reaching interest, i.e. Indonesia.
In its development, PPPKI had to overcome a number of obstacles in setting up its activities,
which were the result of a conflict of interest between the cooperators and the non-cooperators.
The Islamic nationalist groups and the secular nationalist groups were putting forward ideas
that were difficult to reconcile. Mohammad Hatta criticised the existence of the PPPKI, deeming it as a weak and disorganised body. Thamrin stepped up under such condition, as he had
always been a mediator for and supporter of PPPKI, especially after the Dutch colonial government arrested Soekarno. Thamrin, along with Soetomo, took the reins of PPPKI.
In 1935, Partai Indonesia Raya or Parindra was established under the leadership of Soetomo. Parindra took almost all members of Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi. This led to a split
in the Kaoem Betawi. On 1 March 1937, the people of Betawi who did not join Parindra
re-established the Kaoem Betawi organisation with the following structure: H. Tamdjid as
Chairman, Abdel Manap as Deputy Chairman, Dachlan Nasir as Secretary and Tharbin as
Advisor. In addition, they also set up Perbi (Betawi Brotherhood) Kaoem Betawi in 1937,
which later created a publicity tool in the form of a magazine called Berita Kaoem Betawi.
In the late 1930s, Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi remained active in the Indonesian National
Movement, in response to the Soetarjo Petition. It also attended the Indonesian People’s
Congress on 17 December 1939. This event was a moment for Gabungan Politik Indonesia
(the Indonesian Political Federation) or GAPI to demand action from the Indonesian Parliament (Berita Kaoem Betawi, January 1940).
Despite the numerous efforts by Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi to improve the standard
of living of the Betawi people, many of its members were still pessimistic about the development of the organisation. In the verslag (annual meeting) of the organisation in 1940, it was
revealed that the development of the organisation was not as initially expected, due to the
lack of attention from its members:
Perhimpoenan ta’ mendapati kemadjoeannja seperti jang diharap, terboekti dengan
hampir sedikit sekali dari anggotanja jang menaroh perhatian dengan perhimpoenan.
Disebabkan dengan tida adanja soerat-soerat jang masoek dan keloear jang choesoesan boeat dari anggotanja. Ini adalah satoe tanda kelemahan perhimpoenan sehingga
dapat terlihat bahwa vereenigingsliefde sama sekali ta’ terdapa diantara anggotanja.
(Berita Kaoem Betawi, February 1940).
Translation:
The Association does not achieve its expected objectives proven by only a few of its
members fixed their attention to the Association. This is due to absence of incoming
and outgoing letters for its members. This is one of the weaknesses of the Association and thus it is visible that among its members,“vereenigingsliefde” is non-existent.
(Berita Kaoem Betawi, February 1940).
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2
CONCLUSION
Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi tried to improve the well-being of the Betawi people, who were
declining socially, economically and politically, by implementing their strategies in a number
of ways. First, Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi established its identity and solidarity among the
Betawi people. Second, the organisation tried to create a bond among its members and urged
them to be united under the association for the Betawi people. Third, the organisation tried
to be the driving force behind improving the welfare of the Betawi people. The organisation
launched a program for the establishment of schools for the people to improve their standard
of living. Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi also used Gemeenteraad Batavia as a means of their
struggle to improve their standard of living, especially the improvement of villages.
Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi assumed the identity of the Betawi people—the indigenous
inhabitants of Batavia. However, the organisation did not stop at that level. It did not move
in a narrow regionalism solely for the Betawi people; instead, it became an organisation that
upheld the spirit of Indonesia as an independent nation. The organisation undertook strategies including promotion of anti-provincialism views and establishment of networks with
other organisations whose objective was to realise an independent Indonesia. Therefore,
we assert that Perhimpoenan Kaoem Betawi indeed played a major role in the Indonesian
National Movement.
REFERENCES
Abeyasekere, S. (1975) Partai Indonesia Raja 1936–1942: A study on cooperative nationalism. Journal
of South East Asian Studies, 3(2), 262–276. Translation: Great Indonesia Party 1936–1942: A study
on cooperative nationalism. Journal of South East Asian Studies, 3(2), 262–276.
Abeyasekere, S. (1990) Jakarta: A History. Singapore: Oxford University Press.
Berita Kaoem Betawi 1938, 1939, 1940. Translation: News of the Betawi People 1938, 1939, 1940.
Brosson, C. (2004) Batavia awal abad 20. Jakarta: Komunitas Bambu. Translation: Batavia in the Beginning of 20th Century. Jakarta: Komunitas Bambu.
Castles, L. (2007) Profile etnik Jakarta. Jakarta: Masup Jakarta. Translation: Profile of Ethnic of
Jakarta. Jakarta: Masup Jakarta
Hering, B. (2003) Mohammad Hoesni Thamrin, tokoh Betawi nasionalis revolusioner perintis kemerdekaan. Jakarta: Hastamitra. Translation: Mohammad Hoesni Thamrin, a nationalist, revolutionary
Betawi figure who pioneered the independence. Jakarta: Hastamitra.
Ingleson, J. (1979) Road to Exile: The Indonesian nationalist movement 1927–1934. Singapore: Heineman.
Pringgodigdo, A.K. (1991) Sejarah pergerakan rakyat Indonesia. Jakarta: Penerbit Dian Rakyat. Translation: History of Indonesian People Movement. Jakarta: Penerbit Dian Rakyat.
Ruben, R. (2007) Seputar Batavia etnisitas dan otoritas di Ommelanden 1650–1800. In: Kees, G. Jakarta
Batavia, esai sosiocultural. Jakarta: KITLV. Translation: Of Batavia’s ethnicity and authority in
Ommelanden 1650–1800. In: Kees, G. Jakarta Batavia, sociocultural essay. Jakarta: KITLV.
Shahab, Y. (1994) The creation of ethnic tradition: the Betawi People of Jakarta. [Dissertation] Jakarta:
SOAS.
Suharto. (2002) Pagoejoeban Pasoendan 1927–1942: Profile pergerakan etno nasionalis. Lembaga Kajian
Strategies Paguyuban Pasundan: Sastra Historia. Translation: Pasoendan Association 1927–1942:
Profile of etno-nationalist movement. Lembaga Kajian Strategies Paguyuban Pasundan: Sastra
Historia.
Taylor, J.G. (2002) Kehidupan sosial di Batavia: Orang Eropa dan Eurasia di Hindia Belanda. Jakarta:
Masup Jakarta. Translation: Social Lives in di Batavia: Europeans and Asians in Dutch Indies.
Jakarta: Masup Jakarta.
Tjahaja Betawi (1923) Weltevreden: Ksoem Betawi, 1923–1924. Jakarta: Weltevreden Ksoem Betawi.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Freedom of expression at the Jakarta Art Centre during
Soeharto’s New Order
S.N. Kusumastuti
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This paper discusses the self-imposed freedom of expression in art performances during Soeharto’s New Order at the Jakarta Art Centre, which was established in 1968.
It used a historical approach to collect and analyse data. The study shows that the transformation of some traditional dances into contemporary ones, representing aesthetic values of
the time, was possible by making the centre immune to political motives and refrain from
criticising the New Order regime. The regime equipped the Jakarta Art Centre with supporting facilities for art performances, allowing the artists to develop their own talents and
creativities. This relatively favourable condition led to significant changes in Indonesian traditional arts for their survival at that time. Unlike the Old Order, which used arts—especially
dance—as instruments for partly building the national political identity, the New Order saw
arts as confined to their basic conviction: to entertain, not to be politicised. This study also
finds that the smart strategy for freedom of expression adopted by the Jakarta Art Centre
had helped develop contemporary creative arts during that period.
1
INTRODUCTION
Several choreographers in Indonesia have strong traditional dance backgrounds. However, current developments have made them aware of the need to re-style traditional dances to create
new choreographic techniques that may adapt to new situations. Herein, we discuss such developments by focusing on the period from the 1950s to the 1970s, which demonstrated an evolution from traditional to modern dances and eventually to contemporary dances. In this case,
development is the emergence of new knowledge, creative process and choreography setup.
The development stages can be divided into two periods: the first period (1950s–1960s)
with two major figures, Bagong Kussudiardja and Wisnoe Wardhana, and the second period
(1960s–1970s) with three major figures, Sardono W. Kusumo, Huriah Adam and I Wayan
Diya. These names are part of the largely inclined choreographers in Indonesia who had
produced new masterpieces beyond traditional works. The new creations emerged not only
from the artists but also under certain conditions to accommodate the government’s policy,
with respect to the artworks and the public factors or the audience, as well as reports in mass
media and reviews by art critics.
The first transformation process (1950s–1960s) was initiated by Bagong Kussudiardja and
Wisnu Wardhana, both of whom had a strong background in the aesthetics of the classical
traditional dances from Yogyakarta. They created new dances because they were discontented with the traditional dances, which they regarded as static, leading to the confinement
of these dances from expressing opinions, comments, questions and criticisms. These were
actually related to traditional dances. In addition, both artists were influenced by the knowledge obtained from reading and watching performances abroad when participating in Indonesian art missions. The torrent of modern views entering Indonesia and the experience of
studying modern dances in the United States had encouraged the artists to initiate a reform
on their own creative process. Thus, Kussudiardja and Wardhana were considered pioneers of
the development of modern dance in Indonesia from the 1950s to the 1960s, without negating
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the traditional aesthetics embodied in their artistry. Both of them asserted the transformation from traditional to modern dance by establishing dance schools, which they named
‘Padepokan Bagong Kussudiardja’ and ‘Sekolah Tari Kontemporer Wisnu Wardhana’. The
inclusion of their names also indicated that they had established their own style, or, as stated
by Murgiyanto (2015), each of them had established their own techniques of movement following the footsteps of the American modern dance figure, Martha Graham.
Afterwards, from the late 1960s to the 1970s, other dance artists brought a spirit of novelty for choreography in Indonesia. They not only mastered traditional dances, but also
aspired to make new creations with traditional materials: Sardono W. Kusumo with a background in the aesthetics of Surakarta classic dances, Huriah Adam with a background
in Minangkabau dances and I Wayan Diya with a background in Balinese dances. In the
search process, these three artists even conducted deep creative explorations because of their
close associations with the workshop at the Jakarta Art Centre in Taman Ismail Marzuki,
which was just built by Governor Ali Sadikin in 1968. In the closeness of the standardised
dance practice room, each of them contributed the best of their abilities to create a form of
transculture in motions and thoughts. It opened their minds in creating masterpieces from
new perspectives by placing the standards of tradition into a modern area, which inevitably
required a reform in thoughts and body motions to achieve the transformation.
Based on this elaboration, this study seeks to understand the tendency of choreography
development in Indonesia from the 1950s to the 1960s, as well as to the 1970s, by observing
the shifts from traditional dances to modern and contemporary dances. Furthermore, this
study endeavours to discover the influence and the role of the government and the public in
these two periods.
1.1
Creation of new dances from the 1950s to the 1960s
Bagong Kussudiardja (1928–2004) and Wisnoe Wardhana (1929–2002) contributed to the
creation of works during the era of Soekarno’s Presidency. From 1950 to 1966, Soekarno
initiated a number of cultural activities with a fervent spirit of nationalism to expunge the
image of colonialism. For Soekarno, the new enemy in the struggle for preserving the independence was neo-colonialism and imperialism in all forms, both in and outside the country,
including in the form of arts (Soenarto, 2007).
Soekarno’s concrete steps in making Indonesia a sovereign nation with self-assurance
were shown by sending artists to perform in dance, music and puppetry shows abroad. They
performed various dances and local traditional music, as well as puppetry shows as emissaries in the Indonesian art missions. In addition, dance artists were sent to teach or learn
in several friendly countries. For Soekarno, introducing Indonesian arts also meant introducing Indonesia. Bagong Kussudiardja and Wisnoe Wardhana were the dance artists who
had the opportunity to participate in the mission of arts and to study abroad with scholarships from Rockefeller1 in 1957 to learn modern dances in the United States, particularly
at the Connecticut College School of Dance and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance. The scholarship was awarded based on the development of Kussudiardja’s
1. After World War II, Indonesia became an important place in the political scene of a global culture and was considered a contested arena for various international influences. Burt (1998) stated that
American foreign politics perceives arts and culture (including dances) as means for strengthening its
domination in global arena, including Indonesia. Thus, it was not without calculation when the American government sent the Martha Graham Dance Company to perform in Jakarta and Asia in 1955.
Prevots (1998) revealed that the Martha Graham Dance Company was a consequence of the United
States’ foreign policy and cultural diplomacy. Asia was considered important in politics and military,
and cultural export was enforced. The same thing went for offering scholarships for artists to study in
the United States. Although the political situation became heated and the Indonesian government acted
in a hostile manner to the United States, the performance of Martha Graham was well received by the
audience. The audience’s reception demonstrated that Indonesia was inseparable from the frequency of
international modernity (Murgiyanto: 1976; Lindsay, 2011).
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choreography in terms of the creation of new arts, which revealed the search for the self. On
the contrary, the scholarship for Wardhana was awarded based on his talent and creativity
as a dancer and choreographer; furthermore, he was seen as being gifted in portraying dashing figures in the performance of Wayang Wong with Yogyakarta style.
Back to Indonesia in 1958, Kussudiardja and Wardhana had the determination to create new pieces, inspired by the resonance of the second generation of modern dances in
the West, as represented by Martha Graham (1894–1991) – from whom they learned new
experiences without forsaking the aesthetics in Yogyakarta traditional dances, which they
had mastered. The new dances were then combined with several elements of techniques
and Graham’s style. Both dance artists also developed their own techniques and styles as an
expression of individuality. Afterwards, Kussudiardja even actively and creatively learned
various traditional dance techniques from different parts of Indonesia, in training as well
as creating new masterpieces and becoming synonymous with the Indonesian modern–
traditional dances at the time (Sedyawati, 2006).
Bagong Kussudiardja was the figure who leaped from traditionalism to modernism, and
Soedarsono (2002) explained that Kussudiardja was an expert in portraying dynamic and
naughty characteristics with aggressive roles and rich motions that provided him with the
opportunity to demonstrate his creativity as well as express his passion to move freely. All
of this was his way of expressing his discontentment towards the rigid standards within the
classic traditional Yogyakarta dances, as well as marking the creation process of an individual named Bagong Kussudiardja (Murgiyanto, 1991).
Before leaving for the United States, Kussudiardja’s inclination towards novelty was
already shown in his new dances, such as Kuda-Kuda (1954), Batik (1955) and LayangLayang (1955), with themes developed from familiar, everyday life situations. The movement
of Layang-Layang was as simple as the costumes and accompaniment. Although it continued to use a number of motion elements that characterised the Javanese traditional dances,
the motion had nonetheless been reworked in such a way into something new that combined
the movements of dances from Bali, Sumatera, China and India. The costume consisted of a
pair of knee-length pants, a sleeveless top, a shawl tied around the waist and ankle bracelets
that made tinkling sounds according to the rhythm—they also strengthened the dynamics
and created a cheerful situation. The musical accompaniment of the dance consisted of
ketipung, kentongan and a large kendang. Inspired by his experience in the United States,
Kussudiardja was directly influenced by the techniques and style of Martha Graham. He
reworked the Layang-Layang dance in 1959 using several of Graham’s techniques.
Since very young, Wisnoe Wardhana had studied the classic traditional Yogyakarta dances
before attending a short course in the Martha Graham School. Wardhana had worked on
sendratari for a long time, even before the term ‘sendratari’ emerged as a new genre, i.e. a
dance drama without verbal dialogues, which in 1961 debuted in the performance of Sendratari Ramayana in Prambanan Temple (Soedarsono, 2002).
After going back to Indonesia, Wardhana developed several dances, such as Introspeksi,
Nada Irama and Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, which were inspired by many things in life. The
dance movements and techniques were a mixture of the traditional Javanese dances and the
styles from Yogyakarta, Sunda and Bali, combined and explored with Graham’s modern
techniques. The musical accompaniment is a fusion of the Javanese and Sundanese gamelan, and the costume—not as glamorous as the traditional dance costumes of Yogyakarta
and Sunda—was a new rework based on the dance themes. Wardhana was also known as
a good and productive teacher and choreographer, and he had created hundreds of solo,
duet and group dances and dance dramas. In the 1970s, he studied teaching and education
and earned a doctoral degree from the Institute of Teacher Training and Education Science
(IKIP) Yogyakarta, where he was also teaching.
1.2
Contemporary dances from the 1960s to the 1970s
During his early presidency period in 1966, the cultural policy in Soeharto’s era was all
about institutional reinforcement; freedom of creativity should stay within the boundaries
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of security and stability. As long as it did not create a disruption that could lead to security-related issues—including voicing harsh criticism toward high-ranking officials—freedom of expression in arts was not prohibited. The limited freedom was sufficient to make
artists actively pursue artistic musings, from exploring traditional works to venturing into
international artistic developments, particularly in the West. The approach of modern and
contemporary arts, found through the search and the expression of the original, had the
opportunity to develop (Supardi, 2012), and some artists did that without forsaking the
traditional arts of various ethnic groups in Indonesia.
The institutional reinforcement and the freedom of creativity within the corridors of security and stability were provided by the Governor of Jakarta Ali Sadikin when he built the
Jakarta Art Centre in Taman Ismail Marzuki (also known as PKJ-TIM) in 1968. Since then,
the centre had become the host of various programs and activities relating to arts. One of
them was the dance workshop (known as bengkel tari) proposed by Sardono W. Kusumo,
who had just returned from the United States. The workshop was conducted with several
fellow dance artists who lived in Jakarta and had various cultural backgrounds, among them
were Huriah Adam and I Wayan Diya. The main purpose of the workshop was to build the
participants’ motivation and creativity. Kusumo aspired to show them that preserving traditional dances could be done not only by preserving the tradition but also through creative
interpretations.
Through this bengkel tari, valuable seeds of ideas, such as freedom, passion, creativity and
togetherness, were planted. Thus, the forum became one of the momentums that marked
a new artistic search of dance arts in Indonesia. Furthermore, the forum also succeeded in
widening the artistic horizons of the participants and promoting the birth of new and contemporary dances in Indonesia from the workshops’ participants at that time.
Huriah Adam (1936–1971) worked on the story of Malin Kundang (1969), adapted from
a Minangkabau (West Sumatra) legend, in a form of a dance drama. Adam reinterpreted
the story because she believed that a Minang mother would not have the heart to curse her
own beloved son. Adam modified the story by depicting the mother as pleading to Allah to
send a reminder to her son.
Malin Kundang became the first work of a Minang choreographer successfully produced
and performed in the newly opened PKJ-TIM, and it was well appreciated by the audience.
Malin Kundang was reworked as a dance drama without any dialogues (sendratari), which in
1969 was a popular form. However, Adam modified the form of presentation by excluding
pantomimic movement common in sendratari. In addition, she included characters that did
not exist in the original story; these inclusions were Orang Bunian, or supernatural beings.
Orang Bunian was materialised as an evil spirit that influenced Malin, the titular character,
not to acknowledge his own mother. The other creative ideas and concepts of Huriah Adam
in this work include, among others, a setting that illustrated the ruins of a ship.
In the scenes of Malin Kundang, the Barabah dance was also inserted. This was a separate dance created by Adam that contained martial arts movements, which illustrated the
fortitude of the Minang people in life, accompanied by the Talempong Pacik and Gandang
dances. In the last part of the Barabah dance, there was a scene where Malin Kundang and
his wife were dancing together in an elegant style when they were disrupted by the appearance of Orang Bunian. The evil spirit danced with hard and sharp movements, accompanied
by rebana sound played by the dancers in improvisation. When Malin Kundang was embarrassed and did not want to acknowledge his mother, and then kicked her, the Minang song
Palayaran was played as an expression of the heartache of a mother rejected by her beloved
son. In the scene when Malin Kundang’s ship was destroyed by a storm, the musicians hit the
large drums (dhol) to illustrate the bleak situation. Only Malin Kundang could slowly stand
strong and tall but with a stone soul; he was not turned into stone because of his perfidious
act as written in the original legend. Malin Kundang continued to live, although in regret.
Adam believed that Malin Kundang was meritorious and did not deserve to be put to death.
During a performance in Minangkabau, Adam modified the interpretation and the choreography of Malin Kundang. Several dramatic moments were omitted, and the scene with
the Orang Bunian was removed to avoid any controversy. The dance costumes were designed
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to mimic the traditional Minang dance costumes, which were glamorous. For the accompaniment, Adam used Minang songs, music and instruments, both wind instruments (saluang,
serunai and bansi) and percussions (talempong, canang and gandang). However, for certain
scenes, Adam played the traditional instruments in uncommon fashion, such as hitting the
canang with the back of a plate to obtain a particular sound.
The differences in the performance of Malin Kundang in Jakarta and in Padang occurred
because Adam realised that the Padang (West Sumatra) audience was not ready to accept
such novelty in their traditional arts.2
The work, of course, stepped out of the original narration. In Malin Kundang, Adam
reviewed the original story and came upon a transcendental answer that the entity who
punished Malin Kundang was not the mother, but Allah. The faith in the mother’s morality
made Adam doubtful that a mother had the heart to curse her own child.
Meanwhile, I Wayan Diya (1937–2007) always departed from his Balinese cultural background when working on his dances. Nevertheless, according to the dance observer Edi
Sedyawati, Diya was capable of creating works according to the artistic condition in the
area where the work was presented, which was in PKJ-TIM. He understood that in PKJTIM there was a physical boundary between the audience and the performance, unlike the
Balinese traditional performance, where both felt as one. In addition, although there were
no parts in his works that deviated from the basics of Balinese dances, Diya continued to
absorb the non-Balinese elements, which he obtained from working together with artists
from various ethnics, as well as from exploring various places in Indonesia. All non-Balinese elements were working side-by-side with the Balinese elements. The main elements in
the Balinese traditional performance—previously categorised into different types, such as
Topeng, Gambuh, Arja and Baris – were worked into one coherent unity. The unity created
forms, motions and implementations that were uncommon in Balinese dances.
This unusual act became a mark of novelty in Diya’s work. Although he continued to
present strong Balinese characters, other elements outside Bali were inserted and they
blended in with the other ingredients to create a flavour that was not entirely Balinese. In
the temporal context (1973), this was considered as contemporary. Diya belonged to a group
of creators who were passionate about new creations as a trend at that time. Diya, who truly
understood Balinese dances, was in tune with a group of artists who were also experts in
their own fields. Here, the creative vision was formed, and it was not only for protecting each
other’s traditions but also for producing novelty by exploring various possibilities through
experiments.
The performance of Jelantik Bogol was a historical story from Bali, which had usually
been used in the performance of the Topeng dance drama, in which the dancers also wear
masks. One thing that stood out from the reworked piece was that Diya conducted more
experiments in compiling the accompanying music. He combined musical instruments that
were not commonly used in Bali, such as Gong Gebyar with Luwang Gamelan, Gending Pleganjuran, Tambur Baris Cina and Tektekan. The dance movements were derived from the
basic gestures and techniques of the Balinese dances complemented with the non-Balinese
2. Chairul Harun, a Minang literature artist who watched the performance of Malin Kundang in Padang,
revealed that most of the 600 Minang audiences who watched the performance of Malin Kundang
were impressed with Huriah Adam’s work. Many educated Minang people were enthusiastic for the
well-received progress of Adam’s work. However, there were also some in the audience who questioned
whether the performance could be considered as a Minang dance. The movements and the musical instruments indeed came from the Minang tradition, but the manner of playing the lempong, canang and bansi
was different from the traditional way. Adam argued that the accompanying music of Malin Kundang was
designed that way because part of it had to be adjusted to the need of the artistic choreography, such as
for accompanying the movement created or creating a dramatic ambience (Tempo Magazine, 1971; Murgiyanto, 2000). An interesting finding revealed from the performance of Malin Kundang in Jakarta was
that not all dancers came from Minangkabau, and they did not have a background in traditional dances
or Minang martial arts. This situation encouraged Adam to make use of the diversity and the strengths
of each dancer as part of the experiment in the search and the creation of the movement.
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dance movements, i.e. the Javanese, Malay and Minang dance movements—all conducted
through improvisations of movements and explorations.
Sardono W. Kusumo (born in 1945) created Samgita Pancasoma I-XII (1969–1971) in
his endeavour to seek a new cultural expression. This piece was inspired by an Indonesian
ethnic tradition taken from one of the episodes of the Javanese version of the Ramayana
epic, Sugriwa-Subali. The musical creation continued to use the Javanese traditional singing
(macapat), but he accompanied it with a gamelan orchestra with fewer instruments than
the conventional gamelan, composed of a fused form of sekaten, langendriyan, kendhangan
Bali and two kendangs with a fast imbal rhythm. As for the dance movements, the dancers’
inspirations and body patterns were adapted from visual sculptures found in the Prambanan
Temple. Moreover, the dance movements were built by the energy coming from the sound
of the song, sung by the main character that did not follow the convention of tunes in the
traditional Javanese songs, and without the accompaniment of the conventional gamelan.
The dancers were no longer in tanjak gestures or simple poses, which were illustrative and
could be seen in the traditional Javanese dances (Sedyawati, 1970). Through the processes
of attempting to move and continually feeling it, the dancer achieved an intense movement,
which was essential as well as expressive, as the movement was performed to be in line with
the ambience and the message that the piece sought to accomplish (Kusuma, 1974). In Samgita, Kusumo eliminated the boundaries between the male and female dance movements,
which have clear boundaries in the Javanese Surakarta traditional dances. The dancers’ costumes were minimalistic: the male dancers were bare-chested and wearing batik as cawat,
while the female dancers wore long fabric and faded-coloured kemben.
Another interesting thing about Samgita was that every time it was performed, at least 12
times, there had always been a different element in the piece, hence the making of versions
I to XII. The shift was the result of a loose choreography in the composition and its rich
improvisation, slowly coalescing into a structured choreography.3 Samgita Pancasona could
also be categorised as an Indonesian contemporary dance.
2
CONCLUSION
Indonesian choreographers from two periods, 1950s–1960s and 1960s–1970s, mostly came
from traditional dance disciplines. Their mastery of traditional dance philosophies and
techniques was so strong that it did not easily disappear with the passing of time. Quoting Sardono W. Kusumo, ‘Preservation has to be done, not only through preservation, but
also through creative interpretation, and it is the characteristics of the dance artists who
bring these changes, departing from traditional dances toward contemporary dances.’ The
objectives of their explorations are to obtain new inputs from various artistic dance sources,
including from abroad, to open up wider horizons and to enrich techniques or dance styles
that cannot be obtained from traditional arts. There is no discontinuity between the past
(traditional) and the present (modern/contemporary) in the universe of Indonesian dances.
All are owned by dance artists without removing the original roots, i.e. the tradition. This
is what makes modern works of art, including the most innovative and contemporary ones,
which always contain a traditional aura that can be seen or felt. Time may change but the
traditional spirit must not disappear from Indonesian dances, created for space and time,
and must include even the most recent ones. This may explain why dance performances in
3. Approaches in the performance of Samgita, which discarded the glamorous elements from the traditional dances and the conventions of customs and values in the Javanese traditional dances and music,
were well received by the audience in Jakarta when performed in PKJ-TIM. However, when Samgita
was performed in Surakarta (1971), which was the birthplace of the artist, the novelty in the choreography was considered odd: the dance accompaniment, the vocal and the costume were deemed too simple,
the storyline was unclear and the minimalist dance movements felt strange. This was considered crossing
the boundaries by the traditional Javanese audience. A number of people in the audience were so disappointed and ‘angered’ that they threw rotten eggs at the stage.
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Indonesia, which the Soeharto’s government perceived as creating disturbance to the sense
of order and security, did not clash with the government’s security apparatus. Indonesian
choreographers tend to create new works imbued with traditional characteristics and make
them focus more on aesthetic expressions.
REFERENCES
Burt, R. (1998) Alien bodies: representation of modernity, ‘race and nation’ in early modern dance.
London and New York: Routledge.
Lindsay, Jennifer. (2011) Ahli waris budaya dunia 1950–1965; sebuah pengantar. In: Jennifer Lindsay
and Maya H.T. Liem (eds.) Ahli waris budaya dunia. Menjadi Indonesia 1950−1965. Denpasar: Pustaka Larasan. Translation: Beneficiaries of World Culture 1950–1965; an introduction. In: Jennifer
Lindsay and Maya H.T. Liem (eds.) Beneficiaries of World Culture. Becoming Indonesia 1950–
1965. Denpasar: Pustaka Larasan.
Majalah Tempo, 6th March 1971, pp. 28–29.
Murgiyanto, Sal. (1976) The influence of American modern dance on the contemporary dances of Indonesia. [Thesis] Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Colorado, Colorado, United States.
Murgiyanto, Sal. (2000) Huriah Adam, peneguh tari Minang baru. Kalam 16, Jurnal Kebudayaan.
Jakarta: Komunitas Utan Kayu, p. 77. Translation: Huriah Adam, strong figure of new Minang
dances. Kalam 16, Jurnal Kebudayaan. Jakarta: Komunitas Utan Kayu, p. 77.
Murgiyanto, Sal. (2015) Pertunjukan budaya dan akal sehat. Jakarta: Penerbit FSP IKJ dan Komunitas
SENREPITA. Translation: Performance of culture and conscience. Jakarta: Penerbit FSP IKJ and
Komunitas SENREPITA.
Prevots, N. (1998) Dance for export: cultural diplomacy and the cold war. Middletown, United States:
Wesleyan University Press.
Sedyawati, Edi. (2006) Tari di Indonesia 1951–2000. In: Philip Yampolsky (ed.) Perjalanan kesenian
Indonesia sejak kemerdekaan: perubahan dan pelaksanaan, isi dan profesi. Jakarta: Equinox. p. 168.
Translation: Dances in Indonesia 1951–2000. In: Philip Yampolsky (ed.) Journey of Indonesia’s
arts since independence: changes and execution, content and profession. Jakarta: Equinox. p. 168.
Soedarsono. (2002) Seni pertunjukan Indonesia di era globalisasi. Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University
Press. Translation: Indonesia’s performing arts in a globalisation era. Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada
University Press.
Sunarto, Wagiono. (2007) Pemitosan dan perombakan mitos Soekarno dan ideologinya dalam karikatur
politik di surat kabar Indonesia pada masa Demokrasi Terpimpin sampai akhir kekuasaan Presiden
Soekarno (1959–1967). [Dissertation] Program Studi Ilmu Sejarah, Program Pascasarjana, Fakultas
Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia. Translation: Myth-making
and dismantling the myth of Soekarno and ideology in political caricatures in Indonesia’s newspapers in the Guided Democracy era to the end of President Soekarno’s administration (1959–1967).
[Dissertation] History Study Program, Post Graduate Program, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas
Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The eco-spiritual ethics of Balinese Hindus challenged: The case
of the reclamation of Benoa Bay
I.N. Suwidjana, G. Arivia, G. Dwikartika & R. Lustanto
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: In the past, the relationship between humans and nature was generally
anthropocentric, in which a man tended to exploit nature without making adequate efforts to
preserve it. Such attitude constituted an ecological injustice that could lead to nature imbalances. To prevent this from materialising, a change in attitude toward nature is imperative,
specifically from anthropocentric attitude to a more compassionate one, in which a person
sees the world as a sanctuary where all inhabitants live under mutualistic symbiosis relationships. Through the application of the eco-spiritual ethics of Tri Hita Karana—the local
equivalent to the eco-spiritual ethics of Henryk Skolimowski—this study examines the implementation of the concept and the challenges faced, in particular to the case of the mega
investment involving the reclamation of Benoa Bay in Bali.
1
INTRODUCTION
Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet, a book written by Barbara
Ward and Rene Dubos (1972), has shifted the world’s attention from the much-glorified
technological advancements to environment-related matters, such as the degradation of the
quality of the earth due to pollutions from plastic and nuclear wastes, and the threats they
posed to life. So much was the pollution threat that “Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop
to drink”—part of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner—became the
slogan of the 1970s. In 1973, Arne Naess introduced the deep-ecology movement—a movement that attended to not only the material aspects of ecology, but also the intrinsic values
of the environment. Naess promoted the concept of ecosophy, a philosophy of ecological
harmony and equilibrium through which he advocated that all forms of life carry a universal
right to live and that there is no single species of a living being which has more rights than
others (pp. 95–100).
Embracing Naess’s concept of deep ecology and combining it with the Eastern teachings and the nature-oriented spirituality of indigenous “religions” of the mountain people to
his Christian background, Henryk Skolimowski introduced the concept of eco-philosophy,
drawing on spirituality as the base reference. Conditioning that humans must treat the environment with respect and dignity just like they treat others, Skolimowski holds that the world
must be treated as a sanctuary, and that humans as the most superior of all beings must take
the role of a shepherd. According to Skolimowski, the relationship between humans and
the environment must adhere to the subjects of spiritual equality, mutuality, and symbioses
rather than that of exploitive subject.
Such balanced relationship has in fact been practiced by Balinese Hindus for centuries
under the concept of Tri Hita Karana (THK), a practical life philosophy extracted from a
3,000-year-old scripture, the Vedas. This concept suggests that harmonious and balanced
relationships between humans and God, humans and humans, and humans and the environment are the source of happiness for all. However, with Bali being a tourist destination, the
application of the concept is often found in conflict with the interests of investors and, at
times, authorities. This is apparently the case with the proposed mega investment involving
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the reclamation of the sacred Benoa Bay. This study examines how Balinese Hindus find the
implementation of THK runs into conflict with the interests of investors and authorities.
1.1
The eco-spiritual ethics of Henryk Skolimowski
Driven by his interest to find new “tactics for living,” a less wasteful yet benevolent life, Skolimowski (1993) introduced spirituality into the relationship between humans and the environment—a value he termed “eco-spiritual ethics,” with spirituality defined as “an articulated
essence of human condition of a given time” (p. 69). Skolimowski (1992) promoted spiritual
equality among all beings that exist in the world, including humans. He proposed that the
environment be treated with reverence and that “humanity must be seen as one with nature
by the process of evolution” (p. 95). Skolimowski introduced the eco-spiritual-ethics human,
who: 1) treats the world as a sanctuary; 2) adopts humanism as guiding values in life; 3) views
frugality as equal to happiness; 4) is capable of regarding spirituality as complementary to
rationality; and 5) sees that human must stay composed to shepherd all other creations in the
world.
According to Skolimowski, humans must see the world as a sacred dwelling place, where
humans and all other creations of God, life and unanimated, live side by side. Humans must
now see that they are part of countless other beings with equal spiritual standings and rights;
therefore, they command the same respect and rights as others—the rights to exist, to live, and
to be undisturbed. The relationship, therefore, must be mutualistic and symbiotic. Humans
need to care for the environment, and likewise, the environment will care for humans.
God is present in all its creations, including the environment. Therefore, the relationship
between humans and the environment must adhere to subject, and not to object. As a being
with the smartest mind, humans must assume the position of a steward; human’s love and
good virtues are required as the guiding principles to a harmonious coexistence. This is what
ecological humanism is about: treating the environment as human. In turn, it calls for the
appropriation of human to nature.
Humans must consume only as required, not as desired. In the past, humans tended to
adopt a view that the environment is God’s gift to mankind, and that it was there to provide
for their every need and greed. Human’s welfare in the past was determined by level of productivity and consumption. This must change. In the future, frugality as demonstrated by
Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Theresa must be viewed as a model for a noble and respectful
life, while lavish and wasteful lifestyle is perceived as mean and disrespectful. Mother Earth,
said Gandhi, has enough resources to feed all humans on this planet, but not enough for one
greedy man.
Culture and tradition provide structure and dynamism for living. Nonetheless, they have
often been misunderstood, misread, and perhaps even distorted and viewed as the product
of old and obsolete minds because in the eyes of many, they are considered irrational. Skolimowski proposed that such view should be re-examined for the sake of peaceful coexistent
and harmony because behind the apparent irrationalities, there is a great extent of rationality.
To say that the universe is alive might sound irrational, but if one were to ask how matters
appear and vanish continuously, one would see that there is a great deal of rationality behind
it. There are things in life that rationality alone cannot explain, yet irrationality and spirituality can. With spirituality defined as “an articulated essence of human condition of a given
time,” irrationality must be accepted as a complimentary to rationality.
The role of human in the sanctuary world is central. As a shepherd, human must be
responsible in ensuring that the environment is appropriately cared for and live its natural
life. For such, humans must stay fit and composed to lead the task, to perform as stewards
to other entities.
1.2
The eco-spiritual ethics of Balinese Hindus
Before getting into the subject of eco-spiritual ethics of Balinese Hinduism, it is useful to
take a brief look at their cosmology. The tenets of Balinese Hinduism are Panca Sradha (Five
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Precepts), which are the root of beliefs from where all other living philosophies are derived
from. Panca Sradha is comprised of: 1) believe in God; 2) believe in the Atman; 3) believe in
reincarnation; 4) believe in the law of karma; and 5) believe in moksha as the eventual and
the ultimate goal of life.
Balinese Hindus believe in only one God that is Hyang Widi, although he is addressed and
worshipped in many different names and forms in accordance with the perceived roles and
functions. The three principals are: Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Isvhara
(the decomposer and purifier). God is one, but the paths are many. “Any path you take to
pursue me, as long as the one you intend is me, I will affirm it, because any path is my path,”
(Bhagavad Gita 4: 11). In its ultimate and its oneness, God is Ogkara. Ong is an abbreviation of Ang, the sound of creation; Ung is the sound of preservation; Mang is the sound of
decomposition and purification (pralina); and Kara is a Sanskrit word that means cause.
Ongkara means God is the cause of everything.
To Balinese Hindus, every entity has two dimensions: material and spiritual. The body is
the material element and the Atman is the spirit representing God. The body is temporary,
while the Atman is eternal. The body disintegrates, while the Atman does not. The Atman
causes body organs to function, tissues to grow, and the nerve system to work (Rig Veda I:
164. 30). The Atman is pure and divine. However, the purity and the divinity can be spiritually stained by evil minds, foul words, and mischievous deeds. Therefore, humans must ensure
that their minds, words, and deeds are always pure, noble, and coherent. Humans must not
allow themselves to be invested by evil minds (Ray, 2007: 85).
The Atman is the form and name of God that dwells in its creations, inside all beings, alive
or unanimated. Balinese Hindus believe, as does Skolimowski, that God is present in all its
creations. The Atman gives life to all beings. Without the Atman, human is not a living being.
Without the Atman, the law of the continuous recreations does not work. The Atman is the
single and the highest “truth” of all beings—the highest, the purest, and the most common
spiritual identity (jati) of human and all other beings. The Atman is the reason for human to
treat all others, including the environment, as beings of equal spiritual standing—ethically
and with respect, dignity, and reverence. Otherwise, it would constitute an ecological and
cosmological injustice. With the Atman as the common jati, human must never treat other
creations of God as “the other.” This is Balinese Hindus’ version of Skolimowski’s ecological humanism. To Balinese Hindus, the nature is spiritually the other side of human’s living
equation.
The law of karma (Karma Phala) is the natural law of cause and effect, the law of nature
(lexnaturale), and the highest form of justice to Balinese Hindus. Every action or inaction
has its consequence those committing it. Humans shall reap the effect of anything they do,
sooner or later, in the current or later life. As irrational as it may seem, behind this irrationality there is a great extent of rationality that humans must be responsible for everything he/
she does. There is no flaw in the law of karma. The law of karma is applicable to all without
exception.
Moksha is when the Atman is pure and divine and returns to its origin, God. When one
cannot reach the state of moksha, the Atman returns to assume a new bodily life, as human
or perhaps even lower beings—animals or trees—until the time when human achieves the
divine life. It is the presence of the Atman that makes all creations command equal spiritual
standing. Therefore, humans are obliged to treat others as themselves. This is another aspect
of the ecological humanism according to Balinese Hindus.
To Balinese Hindus, the island of Bali is configurationally and spiritually a world of its
own. To them, the island is a sanctuary where all inhabitants, alive or unanimated, live side by
side and in harmony. Bali is a land of spiritualism, guarded by nine guardian angels (devas),
one in each of the eight directions and one symbolically at the centre (Nawa Sanga), to keep
the island balanced and stable. Temples (pura) are built in every direction for the nine devas.
The above philosophies are crystallised into the concept of Tri Hita Karana—three
harmonious balances that constitute the sources of happiness to human, the practical life
philosophies of Balinese Hindus. The teachings suggest humans to lead a harmonious balance within three relationships: with God, with other humans, and with the environment.
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The non-living things, which make up parts of the living things in the sanctuary, are just as
alive as others, as is evident from the continuous creations and recreations. They deserve the
respect and loving care of humans just as all others do.
Citing the Yajur Veda, Wiana (2007) explains that to Balinese Hindus, the universe is the
material aspect of God (p. 151). Humans and the universe are God’s representations in material and spiritual lives. The concepts of bhuwana agung (macro cosmos) and bhuwana alit
(micro cosmos) exert that the oneness of humans and the universe for both are made up
of the same five principle elements called Panca Mahabhuta: solid (prithvi), liquid (apah),
energy (teja), air (bayu), and atman (soul). It is the presence of the Atman that leads humans
to honour the environment as they do to themselves. The Rig Veda III: 51.5 states, “Idraya
dyava osadhir utaporayim raksanti jirawo vanani,” which means humans must preserve the
treasures of the environment, such as the atmosphere, the plants, the water/rivers, the animals, and the forests, because the nature exists for them (Wiana, 2007: 152). It is only when
humans preserve the environment that the environment can preserve humans. The Bhagavad
Gita even promises nirvana (heavenly life) to those who are sincere in preserving the environment (Bhaktivedhanta, 2006: 297).
With the above set of beliefs, it is easy to see how Henryk Skolimowski’s concept of the
eco-spiritual ethics is in line with what Balinese Hindus have been practicing for hundreds
of years. This is similar to the Khasi, a tribe located on the East of the Himalayas who lives
an intertwined and harmonious life with nature, from which Skolimowski got the inspiration. Guided by the Vedas, Balinese Hindus believe that humans and nature are parts of a
larger entity—the universe, God’s material elements, and that the world is a sanctuary, where
humans and other entities are all spiritually equal, and therefore must live in a mutually symbiotic manner.
1.3
Balinese Hindus: A living example of Skolimowski’s homo ecologicus-spiritual ethics
Spirituality is central to Balinese Hindus’ life. Known as taksu (spiritual power), Balinese
Hindus see spirits in every entity around them, particularly those with special significance
to life, such as forests, lakes, rivers, river banks, the merging of two or more rivers, the meeting of rivers with oceans, shores, trees, rocks, and the likes. They are seen as life itself, which
deserves equal love and care like humans. They are very sacred to Balinese Hindu that shrines
or sacrificial altars are built around them, offerings are made, and even religious rituals are
held in honour of the spirits.
Balinese Hindus treat the environment like they treat themselves. This is evident in, among
others, the philosophy and practice of Sad Kertih—the six elements of the earth that must
be kept well and prosperous. Sad Kertih calls for a peaceful prosper existence of the forest
(wana kertih), the lake (danu kertih), the ocean (samudra kertih), the society (jagad kertih), the
human (jana kertih), and the soul or Atman (atman kertih), and this can be achieved through
bhakti (sincere devotion) and yadnya (sacred sacrifices).
The love and care of Balinese Hindus to the environment, both materially and spiritually,
are also expressed through the assigning of special sacred days for animals (tumpek kandang)
and trees (tumpek bubuh). On such days, animals and trees are presented with ceremonies and
offerings as an expression of gratitude and hope for a peaceful and prosperous life ahead for
animals, trees, and humans. Any felled tree is accompanied by prayers of thanking God and a
promise to plant at least one in its place. Any animal slaughtered is accompanied with prayers
to release and purify the Atman, with a wish for the Atman to reincarnate in the form of a
higher being. Humans must replenish whatever they take from nature to keep it in balance.
1.4 The reclamation of Benoa Bay represents an imposition of ecological injustice
Benoa Bay is currently under contention between two major interests: the indigenous Balinese Hindus on one side, and the investors and the provincial governments (both legislators
and executives), on the other side. The investor, PT Tirta Wahana Bali International (PT
TWBI), a company with strong political clout, is set to reclaim around 800 hectares of the
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total 1,400-hectare Benoa Bay. Located within the vicinity of Ngurah Rai Airport, the only
international airport in Bali, the bay will be turned into several artificial islands, on which
man-made tourist objects will be built.
The investment was made possible through the amendment of the Presidential Regulation
No. 45 (2011), which assigned the bay as conservation and buffer zones, into the Presidential
Regulation No. 51 (2014), and such will allow the bay for bona fide commercial activities.
The change was made by the same president within his five-year term and was promulgated
just a few months before the end of his term of office. The authority of the investment lies on
the hands of the central government after consultation with the local government.
The provincial authorities—legislators and executives alike—are in support of the investment, citing the need for additional tourist objects to attract a greater number of visitors and
the creating new employment opportunities ahead. They ignore the cry of Balinese Hindus
regarding the serious consequences of the investment for Bali’s spirituality, culture, security,
social structure, and eventually, power constellation. Unsurprisingly, the regional authorities
are against the investment.
In an apparent anticipation of opposition, the investor sought to secure the legal aspects
of the investment first before exposing it to the public. With the support of the provincial
government who stated that a considerable sum of money has been spent on the project –
while no activities are apparent on the site yet (Sumartana, 2015), the investors could easily
disregard the protests in the name of upholding the laws.
To Balinese Hindus, Benoa Bay is sacred. It is a site for many religious rituals, as has been
declared by the Parisada Hindu Dharma, the highest Hindu council in the country. It is a
campuhan agung, the merging of five rivers—four on the surface and one under the ground.
It is also the site of several temples of extraordinary significance to Balinese Hindus: the
temples of Suwung Deluang, Beji, and Segara on the island of Pudut, the temples of Sakenan, Segara, and Pesamuan Agung on the adjoining island of Serangan, and the submerged
temple of Dalem Karang Tengah, located in the middle of the bay. Marked by a shrine and
sacred white and yellow banners on the surface, the Dalem Karang Tengah temple is used for
submerging sacred sacrifices. In addition, there are more than 60 other shrines and sacrificial
altars dedicated to the divinities of the water and the shores spread around the campuhan
agung. Offerings of various sizes are occasionally submerged in the bay (pakelem) to purify
bhuwanaagung (the environment) and bhuwana alit (human). Ceremonies in which Hindus
from every corner of Bali participate are held at the Sakenan temple once a year in the Balinese Hindu’s calendar. Every day, hundreds to thousands of pilgrims visit the other temples,
especially those located at the mouth of the merging rivers, Tanah Kilap and Dalem Peed,
marking their importance and significance. Because it is considered sacred, no commercial
activity is allowed on the site.
The investment has raised serious concerns among Balinese Hindus, particularly over the
loss of the natural structure of the bay, its spiritual standing as campuhan agung, and its
effects on its spiritual significance. This would constitute a serious offence to the spirituality
of Balinese Hindus who have been preserving the bay for generations for its spiritual values.
Driven by individual awareness over the threat to their common values, Balinese Hindus
came out into the open, spontaneously and uncoordinatedly, to demonstrate their deep feelings. The movement developed into three principal groups: the general public, the cultural
intellectuals, and the spiritualists. The mass group of people known as Forum Rakyat Bali
or the Bali People Forum came in hundreds to thousands to the streets virtually every two
weeks since they were first informed about the investment three years ago. They have also
expressed themselves in many creative ways, such as putting up banners, paintings, theatrical performances, and other kinds of cultural arts to bring the message of “no reclamation”
while demonstrating the would-be-lost culture. The spiritual groups, which Naess would call
“the ultimate,” perform rituals on the bay and at temples around the bay and the island. They
are praying for the investors and the authorities to come to their senses and withdraw their
investment, and leave the bay in peace in its natural balance.
By and large, Balinese Hindus live a balanced life, are highly tolerant, and are generally
far from material greed; they prefer spirituality and culture to anything else. This is evident
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when they were asked to hypothetically choose between the economic gain and spirituality.
All interviewees (individuals, village organisations, and prominent figures) spontaneously
and affirmatively chose spirituality, which is everything to Balinese Hindus. They believe
that the economic gains brought about by spirituality would come naturally and in a balance
manner. In the eyes of many, the reclamation of Benoa Bay represents a systematic denunciation of Bali’s spirituality and culture.
2
CONCLUSION
Skolimowski’s new tactics for living—in which frugality, humanism, rationality of irrationality, and composedness are the norms in managing the sanctuary world and in establishing a balance relationship with nature—have in fact been practiced by Balinese Hindus for
centuries. Guided by the concept of Atman and materialised into Tri Hita Karana, Balinese
Hindus live a balanced life between humans and God, humans and humans, and humans and
nature. Their Atman-centric concept serves as the base for mutual respect among all creations. However, these values and practices are currently under a serious threat by the investors’ greed and the myopic views of the local authorities that seem ready to sacrifice Bali’s
spirituality-based culture for short-term economic gains.
REFERENCES
Naess, A. (1973) The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement. Inquiry, 16(1–4), 95–100.
Pandit, S. (1999) Bhagavad Gita. Surabaya: Paramita.
PHDI Pusat. (1994) Keputusan Parisada Hindu Dharma Pusat Nomor: 11/Kep/I/PHDIP/1994 tentang Bhisama Kesucian Pura. Translation: Indonesia Hindu Council Decision Number: 11/Kep/I/
PHDIP/1994 on the Purity of Temples. Denpasar.
Prabupada, S.S.S.B. (2006) Bhagavad Gita: Menurut Aslinya. Tangerang: Hanuman Sakti. Translation:
Bhagavad Gita: As Is. Tangerang: Hanuman Sakti.
Presiden Republik Indonesia. (2011) Peraturan Presiden Republik Indonesia Nomor 45 Tahun 2011 tentang Rencana Tata Ruang Kawasan Perkotaan Denpasar, Badung, Gianyar, dan Tabanan. Translation:
Presidential Regulation Number 45 of 2011 on Spatial Planning in the City of Denpasar, Badung,
Gianyar, and Tabanan. Jakarta.
Presiden Republik Indonesia. (2014) Peraturan Presiden Republik Indonesia Nomor 51 Tahun 2014 tentang Perubahan Atas Peraturan Presiden Nomor 45 Tahun 2011 tentang Rencana Tata Ruang Kawasan
Perkotaan Denpasar, Badung, Gianyar, Dan Tabanan. Translation: Presidential Regulation Number
51 of 2014 on Amendment to Presidential Regulation Number 45 of 2011 on Spatial Planning in the
City of Denpasar, Badung, Gianyar, and Tabanan. Jakarta.
Ray, R. (2007) The God Who Dies Young. [Online] Available from http://odisha.gov.in/e-magazine/
Orissareview/june_july-2007/engpdf/Pages85-86.pdf.
Rene, D., Ward, B., & Jackson, B.L. (1972) Only One Earth. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Skolimowski, H. (1981) Eco-philosophy: designing new tactics for living. Boston: M. Boyars.
Skolimowski, H. (1992) Living philosophy: eco-philosophy as a tree of life. London: Arkana.
Skolimowski, H. (1993) A sacred place to dwell: living with reverence upon the earth. Rockport: Element
Books.
Sumartana, D. (2015, May 11) Surat Dukungan Reklamasi Teluk Benoa, Pengirim Diduga Menerima
Imbalan dari Investor. Retrieved from http://balipost.com/read/lingkungan/2015/05/11/34290. Translation: Letter of Support for Reclamation Benoa Bay, Sender Allegedly Receive Rewards from the
Investor. Retrieved from http://balipost.com/read/lingkungan/2015/05/11/34290.
Wiana, I K. (2007) Tri Hita Karana Menurut Konsep Hindu. Surabaya: Paramita. Translation: Three
Causes for Well-being in Hinduism. Surabaya: Paramita.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Vergangenheitbewältigung/coming to terms with the past:
Demystifying Hitler and the Nazi regime in German comics
L. Kurnia
Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Hitler has been a controversial figure in German history. Although he was
regarded as a war criminal, his figure has attracted the attention of some people. This was
mainly triggered by the various myths surrounding him and his mysterious death. These myths
have led to a fraud publication in the magazine “Stern” about Hitler’s diaries. A myth about
Hitler can even be found in Indonesia in a book by Soeryo Goeritno (2010), which fabricated
a story claiming that Hitler died in Indonesia (sic!). The young generation in Germany has a
unique way of coming to terms with the past by demystifying Hitler in comic books such as
Wolfgang Moers’ Adolf der Bonker and Äch, bin wieder da! These two comic books use humor
to show how Hitler would be perceived by the youth if he were still alive today. The theme of
the Holocaust as a collective memory is represented in Maus, a survivor tale, by Art Spiegelman.
Maus has been accepted as the first comic book to be considered “serious” and to be analyzed
in the academic world. Demystifying Hitler is a process of coming to terms with the past.
1
1.1
INTRODUCTION
Hitler and the Nazis
As a leading figure in German history, Adolf Hitler has always been a controversial figure.
This controversy has been triggered in academic circles by a large number of analyses and stories about Hitler that have naturally led to different opinions and interpretations. Not much is
known about the private life of Hitler outside his image of grandeur that was created and highlighted when he was in the spotlight. To add to the numerous stories already circulating among
the general public, historians came up with various analyses of Hitler, especially regarding his
role in all sorts of economic, political, and military decisions, as well as the planned genocide
of the Jews.1 The analyses of Adolf Hitler who was strongly linked to the atrocities of the Nazi
regime against the Jews and the resulting war, which took place during his reign, have led to
various studies on Hitler. One of the researchers of Hitler-oriented topics is Peter Matussek, a
professor in the field of media. He published a book Affirming Psychosis, the Mass Appeal of
Adolf Hitler in 20152, which discusses how Hitler was described or narrated in German history.
According to Matussek, the writing or narration of history can be categorized into two
types of arguments: the intentionalist and the functionalist. Intentionalist arguments tend to
1. The Genocide of the Jews is referred to as the Holocaust in the German literature. Holocaust is a
Greek word, whereas in Hebrew it is termed Shoah. Holocaust means “burnt down” in Greek, whereas
Shoah means “disaster”. These two words describe the systematic and well-planned annihilation of the
Jews during the Nazi regime. The Nazi regime called it die Endlösung der Judenfrage (the final solution
to the Jewish problem).
2. In the conclusion to his book, Matussek put forward four elements that he believes to constitute
the most distinguishing personal characteristics of Hitler, namely his ongoing willingness to commit
atrocities, his ability to admit the crimes that he had committed, his ability to control his actions, and
the confirmation that he received from his supporters. These are the symptoms of a mentally disturbed
person, and they were very prominent in Hitler.
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support the view that all of the atrocities against the Jews and the subsequent wars that took
so many lives were designed by Hitler, the Führer. On the contrary, functionalist arguments
view the atrocities against the Jews as a result of various elements of the bureaucracy, namely
the military, economy, and politics, where Hitler played a more passive role.
At the core of the discussion proposed by Matussek is an attempt to reveal who Hitler
really was and how a man like him could control a developed country with a long tradition of high education. Matussek tended to classify his research as intentionalist in nature
and considered Hitler as a psychopath who was extremely bold in expressing hatred and
cruelty, something that does not usually occur in a society or among sane people. This was
used by those who really wanted to get rid of the Jews and create the superiority of the
white blue-eyed men over any other race in the world. Thus, Hitler was supported by people
who matched his personality, and he became der Führer or the Leader for them. Hitler and
his party NSDAP (National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or abbreviated Nazi) then
managed to provoke the German people who were hit hard by World War I, and he was made
the Chancellor of Germany.
1.2 Myths around Hitler
Various myths have arisen from Hitler’s figure because he was revered and praised by racists
who believed in the superiority of the Aryan race.3 Thus, he became a great figure who was
always surrounded by an aura of mystery. The mystery was also largely due to the fact that
Hitler’s body went missing after Berlin was seized by the Allied Forces. Hitler was hiding in a
bunker or a basement with Eva Braun whom he married shortly before they committed suicide. When the Allied Forces entered Berlin, the city had already been occupied by the Soviet
Army. That is why the whereabouts of Hitler’s body remains unknown. An official statement
from the Soviet Army asserted that the bodies that had been found in the bunker were burned.
This incident, for instance, led to a myth in a book which argues that Hitler had fled to Indonesia and lived in Sumbawa Besar as a doctor known as Dr Poch who then married a Sundanese woman.4 This myth of Hitler’s death in Indonesia is so far-fetched that it makes no sense
at all because the documents concerning the entrance of the Soviet troops and the discovery of
the bodies of Hitler, Eva Braun, and Joseph Goebbels and his family are completely valid and
accompanied by photographs. The myths of Hitler in Germany are even more sophisticated
because they are not concerned about the whereabouts of Hitler himself but his diary. A diary
is a document that is often used in historical analyses to determine the thoughts of a historical figure (see the figure below). Therefore, when Stern magazine in 1983 admitted to having
purchased volumes of the diary from an antique dealer, it triggered an uproar. Stern was the
victim of a mere fraud because it turned out that the diaries were forged.5
The majority of the German people are more inclined to regard Hitler only as a war criminal and want to maintain this image. When the German state was established after World War
II, neither the state nor the German people wanted to acknowledge their dark past. They tried
very hard to forget it and not to talk about it. Such a situation arose from the realization that
they had committed countless of atrocities resulting in the genocide of the Jews and other
3. The supremacy of the Aryan race was the state’s ideology during the Nazi regime. This view was also
based on racial myths that had been created by racist-pseudo-scientists for the Germans. The word Arya
is derived from Sanskrit, and its meaning is not yet known. The word was used by Persians and Indians
to depict themselves. Linguists assume that the word was taken from the language that was used by the
Persian ethnic group in prehistoric times.
4. This scenario can be found in the book Hitler died in Indonesia, The Secret Revealed written by Ir.
KGPH Soeryo Guritno, M.Sc. and published by Titik Media in 2010.
5. At that time, Stern was one of the qualified political magazines. However, after the fraud was
uncovered, the magazine lost its reputation, even though the editors responsible for the incident had
been dismissed. Fraud such as this is actually very easy to prove, but the editors of Stern were under a
strong influence of Hitler myths. It also turned out that people purchased the diary volumes at a very
high price without examining them carefully.
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races that were considered to be inferior to them, such as the gypsies and other such communities. Moreover, the generation immediately after the war was the same as Hitler’s, and
most of them were actually his supporters. This attitude is observable among both political
and social conservative leaders. In the field of education, for example, German professors
who survived the war were those who had sided with Hitler and after the war still behaved in
the same manner. They were very conservative and rigid in their teaching practices. This was
not to the satisfaction of the younger generations born after World War II. They understood
well that their dark past had to be addressed so that they could overcome it together.6 The
younger generations in the 1960s wanted reconciliation with their nation’s past. They started
by revealing facts about the Nazi regime and how almost all of the German people had supported the regime. Efforts to deal with the past can also be observed in a variety of literary
works, which may now have become classics, such as the works of Heinrich Böll, Wolfgang
Borchert, the Nobel laureate Gunter Grass, Ingeborg Bachmann, and others. Although there
are still groups of people from the younger generations of today who still revere Hitler and
the Nazis, such as the Nazi and the Pegida party,7 there are also young people who do not
want to be associated with this regime and who feel that it would be a heavy burden if Hitler
or the Nazis remain part of the dark history of Germany. One of the many ways to channel
this new attitude toward the past is by using various media in popular culture.8 One of such
media is comics, where Hitler is portrayed through caricatures and cynicism. Comics are used
as an instrument to ridicule and expose Hitler as a frivolous figure who is even ridiculed and
considered ludicrous due to his posture and funny moustache. In this case, the comic functions
as a platform for a history written by the younger generation from their perspective.
6. Vergangenheitbewältigung or “overcoming the past” is an endless theme in literature and particularly
on today’s silver screen and movies. One example is das Weisse Band directed by Michael Haneke and
won the Golden Palm in 2009. This movie tells about how a strict education that was grounded in religious discipline in a village in Germany during the transition era from the Prussian Empire benefited
the Nazi regime. This education robbed the children of a childhood full of creativity and innovation and
turned them into people drenched in social trauma.
7. Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West (Pegida: Patriotische Europäergegen die
Islamisierung des Abendlandes) was founded in 2014 by Lutz Bachman, who was considered by his
followers to be the reincarnation of Hitler. His party aimed to curb the immigration law and prohibit
Islamic extremism and Islamization. They consider that it is very difficult for Muslims to be integrated
into the German culture. They are very hostile toward foreigners, especially those who they consider as
Muslims. The city of Dresden, where Pegida has its headquarters, is very anti-immigrant.
8. “Capitalist industrial societies are societies divided unequally in terms of, for example, race, ethnicity,
gender, generation, sexuality, and social class. Popular culture is one of the principal sites where these
divisions are established and contested, that is, popular culture is an arena of struggle and negotiation
between the interests of dominant groups and the interests of subordinate groups” (Storey, 2007:51).
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1.3
Art Spiegelman’s and Walter Moers’ comics
A comic book entitled Maus (rat) written by Art Spiegelman was published in the United
States in 1992. This book is a collection of the author’s strip-comics published in a magazine
in New York. Comic books do not usually stir up the academic world because they tend not
to be considered seriously by the academia; however, Spiegelman’s comics have attracted the
attention of researchers because of two reasons. First, the pictures are unique in that they
are able to function as a vivid allegory of the Nazi history and its atrocities. Second, the
comics are able to bring those issues in a unique and interesting way. The narratives of those
comics are also considered very different from comics in general. Common comics are usually
entertaining because they are funny and make the readers laugh. In addition, the narratives of
common comics tend to be flat and have a predictable plot. Maus is different. One study mentioned that the narrative of Maus is woven from the time before, during, and after the Holocaust, so all of the events are intertwined in one single work. The pictures of this comic are
juxtaposed in one panel, enabling readers to see various angles of history from the perspectives of the protagonists against a single backdrop, which depicts the Nazi-occupied Poland
and Rego Park in New York.9 Such imagination is created because Spiegelman actually tells
the experience of his own father, while he was a prisoner in a concentration camp during the
Nazi regime. The stories of his father continued to haunt Spiegelman all the time, so he poured
them out in the form of the comic Maus. One interesting highlight of the comic is the way the
present time—that is, the time when Spiegelman wrote the comic and interviewed his father in
New York—is intertwined with the past during his father’s imprisonment in a concentration
camp. Below is a picture of Book 2 of Maus, which shows an allegory of the concentration
camp prisoners who are depicted as rats. In the middle of the swastika, there is a cat with characteristics typical of Hitler: the bangs on his forehead and the legendary moustache.
In addition, Spiegelman’s comics attracted the attention of the academia who considered
them to be quality comics. Thus, various studies of the comics began to proliferate in the academic world because they are not seen as trivial comics but as literary works and a form of
9. The reader moves through several different “historical subject-positions” and narrated events; there
are the preholocaust, the Holocaust, and the postholocaust events. However, within one time frame,
one can also find other times and places coexisting as well. Maus thus juxtaposes and intertwines past
and present, the different histories of each protagonist, and the very different cultural contexts of Nazioccupied Poland and Rego Park, New York. Spiegelman’s Maus: The Intentional Subversion of Genre
and Cultural Norm, http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/holocaust/spiegelman.html.
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serious art using pictorial metaphors such as those seen on the cover image of the book.10 The
Holocaust is a serious part of German history, which has been immortalized in the work of
Spiegelman through the narratives of his father who was one of its victims. However, with his
ability to use the metaphor of rats to represent the prisoners and the metaphors of cats and
dogs to represent the Nazis, he managed to narrate the gloomy history of Germany very well.
Spiegelman’s comics have proved that the themes previously avoided or considered taboo
can be discussed thoroughly in comics. It is possible that this triggered Walter Moers to create
comics about Hitler in Germany. In this case, the German people tend to consider it taboo to
trivialize11 the dark history of Germany, let alone make fun of it, so some people consider the
work of Moers as a failing attempt to create a Holocaust-themed comic. However, Moers was
not deterred and continued to put together a collection of comic strips about Hitler, which
was published in a German comic magazine. There are two works about Hitler by Moers:
(1) Ächbinwieder da (Hey, I’m back) in two series, both of which were published in 1988, and
(2) Adolf der Bonker (Adolf the Bunker), published 7 years later. From the titles, it can be
assumed that the contents of Moers’ comics are highly cynical toward Hitler, while parody is
being used as an instrument of humor at the same time. On the cover image of Ächbinwieder
da (see the image below), it can be seen that the historical fact that Hitler hid in an underground bunker must have been the inspiration for Moers’ parody. After hiding underground
for 50 years, Hitler finally resurfaces, and very funny and absurd things begin to occur.
Parody can be a very effective weapon, especially when a controversial historical figure with
myths attached, such as Hitler, is turned into a funny or even ridiculous character in a comic.12
Like Spiegelman, Moers’ main character displays the typical characteristics of Hitler, namely
his bangs and moustache, but to that he added an extremely big nose. In the world of comics,
the super big nose brings about humor and silliness of the character to provoke the readers’
laughter. In the second book, the parody is increasingly sharpened by Moers, who was inspired
by the movie Der Untergang or Downfall (2006) on the history of Hitler. He created a parody
with a different narrative from that, which he used in his first two series. The book is structured
like a drama made up of Hitler’s dialogues with the people around him. It was this feature of
the third comic that encouraged Felix Gönnert to adapt the comic into a comedy movie.
10. The key to Spiegelman’s success in avoiding charges of trivialization may possibly lie in his artistic
choice to treat the Holocaust through metaphor. Timothy Sexton, http://voices.yahoo.com/the-holocaust-as-comic-book-metaphor-maus-ii-and-174164.html?cat=37.
11. An dem Buch scheiden sich die Geister: witzige Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit oder flache
Verharmlosung Hitlers? (The content of this book displays two important characteristics: a humoristic
manipulation of the past and a recreation of Hitler into a harmless and flat character?) http://archiv.
rhein-zeitung.de/on/98/07/24/topnews/moers.html.
12. Doch die ultimative Schrumpfkur für einen Mythos ist es, ihn ins Lächerliche zu ziehen.(The ultimate
way to heal a myth is by making it ludicrous.) Wiebke Brauer. http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/
moers-parodie-schrumpfkur-fuer-hitler-a-424980.html.
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2
CONCLUSION
Germans have a partly dark and shameful history when the Nazi regime was in power under
the leadership of Hitler, a man who turned out to have a mental disorder. This topic has often
been talked about and discussed, but more important than this fact is how Hitler has become
a myth that gave rise to a large number of texts or discourses both in and outside Germany,
and even in Indonesia. The strong influence of the Nazi regime’s racist ideology had spread
to various countries, including Indonesia. When the Nazis won the election in 1933, a rightwing party, Nederlandsche Indische Fascisten Organisatie (NIFO), was also established in the
Dutch East Indies. A group of people in Java Island was also influenced by fascism and later
founded the Fascist Party of Indonesia (PFI) under the leadership of Dr Notonindito in
Bandung. In fact, this was a Javanese chauvinist party that it did not last long.
After World War II, many younger generations in Germany have been trying very hard to
address this situation in an effort to demystify Hitler. Throughout the history, they have the
burden of reconciling with their dark past, and those collective memories are still haunting
them, which are shown in their art and literature. Fortunately, with the medium of popular
culture in hand, the younger generation can use it to reconcile with their nation’s past. This
task was undertaken by several comic writers such as Art Spiegelman and Walter Moers.
Together they have shown that history is part of the present and should be continuously
discussed so that the postwar generations, who did not personally experience the war, may
understand their country’s past in a much better way. Moreover, history must not be considered as a frightening taboo, something that must not be discussed seriously even in comic
books, which are generally treated as a fun and entertaining reading material. The use of
metaphors to describe the characters in Spiegelman’s comics allows the readers to capture the
seriousness of his comics and even the bitterness experienced by Jewish prisoners in concentration camps. The parody of Hitler is used by Moers not only to produce laughter but also
to bring enlightenment13, especially when he unhesitatingly destroyed the myths surrounding the legendary figure. Comics have therefore become a serious reading material and not
merely a means of eliciting laughter. Our analysis of several samples of pictorial metaphors
in Moers’ and Spiegelman’s comic books clearly shows that both comic writers have been
successful in their effort to demystify Hitler through their creative works.
REFERENCES
Brauer, W. Moers-Parodie, Schrumpfkur für Hitler. http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/moersparodie-schrumpfkur-fuer-hitler-a-424980.html.
Matussek, P. (2007) Affirming Psychosis. The Mass Appeal of Adolf Hitler. Peter Lang.
Moers, W. (2005) Äch bin wieder da!. Piper.
Moers, W. (2005) Adolf der Bonker. Piper.
Prietze, N. An dem Buch scheiden sich die Geister: witzige Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit oder flache Ver
harmlosung Hitlers? http://archiv.rhein-zeitung.de/on/98/07/24/topnews/moers.html.
Sexton, T. The Holocaust as a Comic Book Metaphor: Maus II and Art Spiegelman, 30th
January 2007. http://voices.yahoo.com/the-holocaust-as-comic-book-metaphor-maus-ii-and−174164.
html?cat = 37.
Spiegelmann, A. (1999) Maus. Die Geschichte eines Überlebenden. Rowohlt Taschenbuchvlg.
Spiegelman’sMaus: The Intentional Subversion of Genre and Cultural Norm http://www2.iath.virginia.
edu/holocaust/spiegelman.html.
Storey, J. (2007) Inventing Popular Culture. From Folklore to Globalization. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
13. Dieses Lächerlichmachen hat auch etwas Aufklärerisches”, glaubt er. “Wir waren uns klar, daß das
Produkt gut und richtig ist.” Moers zerschlage Symbole und Ikonen “auf eine sehr bösartige Weise”.
(This humor is at the same time an enlightenment, he thought. We have no doubt that this product is
good and right. Moers has destroyed all symbols and icons.) Nicola Prietze, http://archiv.rhein-zeitung.
de/on/98/07/24/topnews/moers.html.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The legacy of Soeharto’s New Order: Power sustainability through
control of information media
F. Gani
Department of Library and Information Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok,
Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This paper discusses the power sustainability of Soeharto through tight control of information media. He banned newspapers and other publications linked to the Old
Order, the Indonesian Communist Party, and activists who voiced their criticisms of his leadership style. Using a historical method to collect and analyze data, this study discovers that the
integrity, security, and stability of the New Order strongly relied on the one-sided information
policy. It involved the creation, processing, distribution, access, and use of information. Book
banning, media censorship, “telephone culture”, and the license revocation of news publications characterized the implementation of this policy at the cost of the people’s freedom of
expression. The New Order regime did not hesitate to launch a Third World communication satellite following the USA and Canada in order to integrate the nation under Bahasa
Indonesia and one undisputed state ideology, Pancasila. The goal is clear, namely to maintain
the integrity of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia. This study also shows that
although the regime exercised its self-styled control over information media for years without
any significant resistance, it failed to do the same with the emergence of the Internet.
1
INTRODUCTION
The Public Information Disclosure Law was passed in 2008. After 2 years, in April 2010, the
Government of Indonesia started the implementation of the law, known as Law No. 14 of
2008. It required public agencies and non-governmental organizations working with them
to provide information requested by the public. Public entities failing to comply with any
demand for public information were likely to be subject to criminal penalty.
In the Reform era, the government is no longer able to arbitrarily revoke press publication
permits, and it is very easy to obtain such permit. More than 1,600 new permits were issued
during the period of May 1998 to August 1999, before the regulations on this matter were
revoked, following the promulgation of Act No. 40 of 1999 regarding press publication in
September 1999. The number of newly established publication companies increased significantly compared to that during the Soeharto era, as only 241 press publication permits were
issued during his 32-year tenure.
Soeharto’s administration imposed extensive limitations on the production and distribution
of information to the public. Press agencies were closely watched, and freedom of expression
was tightly controlled. Government agencies, especially the Ministry of Information, placed
information under tight control and management. The goal was to create national stability
and ensure the sustainability of development for the people’s welfare.
Since the beginning of his administration, Soeharto had realized that control of information and restrictions on freedom of expression were important means of creating and maintaining the stability of national security as a key condition for successful national development
and the improvement of people’s welfare. Information control and restrictions of expression were carried out by monopolizing information channels, shutting down mass media
that adopted communism or criticized government policies, banning books, and exercising
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media censorship. Such control and supervision of information were carried out by the Ministry of Information, the Attorney General’s Office, and the National Censorship Board, by
imposing laws and regulations.
Taufik Abdullah, one of Indonesia’s leading historians, describes the New Order government in one phrase, “A greedy state”:
A greedy state is a state that is not satisfied with the monopoly of political power and
the economic control of the patronage system, but also to master consciousness and
collective memory of the nation. An understanding of the present structure is provided by the state. The content of the memory of past events are determined by the
state, which also has been making itself a single voter about which one should keep
in mind, even celebrated, and which should be forgotten or even discarded. A greedy
state is a state that does not provide a creative outlet for dissent and thoughts. It is a
country that is highly ideologized, also the supervisor of the power system that labels
differences as disorder and should not be tolerated. (Muhammad Hisyam, 2003: 45).
1.1
The New Order
Soeharto took the helm of the country when the condition in Indonesia was very bad in
terms of politics, security, and economy. In the mid-1960s, hostility, antagonism, and violence among groups surfaced and the country’s economy was on the brink of bankruptcy
(Schwarsz, Adam, 2001).
Armed with Supersemar (The Order of March the Eleventh) that granted him power, Soeharto named his regime the New Order. The main agenda of Soeharto’s New Order was to
restore the application of Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution, remove communism, fight
against liberalism, and recover the national economy. With full support of powerful military
forces, a small group of civil and economic technocrats who were graduated from the University of Berkeley, the USA, the New Order was able to reduce the high level of poverty and
improve the quality of education and health standards.
During his tenure, President Soeharto focused on two main pillars of security and stability: political and national development. His policies were sometimes challenged by some people who disagreed with him, and his efforts to promote stability and national development
also encountered various challenges and obstacles (Didik Pradjoko).
National stability was one of Soeharto’s development trilogies: a concept of national
development proclaimed by the New Order in Indonesia. It served as the basis for policymaking on the development of political, economic, and social sectors. The trilogy comprised
dynamic national stability, high economic growth, and equal distribution of development
and its benefits.
1.2 Press posture
Initially, the New Order government allowed the publication of mass media that were in line
with or supported the government. At the same time, it crushed media opposition, exercised
censorship, banned books, and outlawed opposing ideologies. Such measure was aimed at
closing the space for freedom of expression and preventing the public from disseminating
information, an activity actually guaranteed by Article 28 of the 1945 Constitution.
A number of newspapers that were closed down during the Guided Democracy period
re-emerged in the New Order era, which included Merdeka (June 1966), Berita Indonesia
(May 1966), Indonesian Observer (September 1966), Nusantara (March 1967), Indonesia
Raya (October 1968), Pedoman (November 1968), and Abadi (December 1968). In addition,
some new newspapers came into existence, such as Harian (June 1966), Angkatan Baru (June
1966), Angkatan 66 (June 1966), The Mahasiswa Indonesia Jakarta edition (March 1966),
The Mahasiswa Indonesia West Java edition (June 1966), Trisakti (February 1966), Harian
Operasi (May 1966), and Mingguan Abad Muslim (October 1966). By 1967, the number of
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publications decreased by 132 from that of the previous year. The Chinese newspaper was
closed down by the government (Lukas Luwarso, 2000).
The government’s power over the press appeared following the promulgation of Law No.
11 of 1966 regarding the Basic Provisions on the Press. According to Article 20 of the law,
during the interim period, newspaper publishers must obtain both the publication permit
(SIT) from the Ministry of Information and the printing permit (SIC) from the Command
for the Restoration of Security and Order (Kopkamtib). Without these two licenses, a publication would be considered unlawful, and if one of the licenses was revoked, the publication
would be banned (Proyek Penelitian Pengembangan Penerangan Departemen Penerangan RI,
1980: 230–231).
In Indonesia, as well as in some developing countries, newspapers and news magazines
have historically contained more political agenda than any other media. Therefore, the ruling
government would always try to control the press (Kyaw Thu, 2011: 3). In the early years of
independence, Sukarno dubbed the press as “Tools of the Revolution”, and it was responsible for empowering and mobilizing public opinion. The New Order government defined the
press as a “partner” in accelerating development, by both supporting the government and
taming political debates. The press had only two options at that time, either to submit to the
wishes of the government or to be banned (Hill, David T., 2005: 17).
Media control during the New Order era was much more focused, systematic, and manipulative than that of the Old Order era. Toeti Kakiailatu, a news reporter with Pelopor Baru,
reported that news reporting about student demonstrations demanding for the decrease
of the price of rice in 1968 was responded by direct warning from the New Order ruler,
Soeharto. At the bottom of Pelopor Baru headlines, the following statement was written
in red ink and signed by Soeharto: “The reporter who wrote this article is a Communist!”
(Kakiailatu, Toeti, 2007: 64).
To further control the press, the New Order government issued the Regulation of the Minister of Information of the Republic of Indonesia Number: 01/PER/Menpen/1969 regarding the Implementation of the Provisions for Press Companies, which particularly stated in
Article 5 that “Press Companies are required to be members of an organisation that has been
approved by the government.”
This regulation was the government’s attempt to unify the various journalist organizations existing at that time. Pancasila was declared as the one and only ideology of the press.
Accordingly, there was only one press organization set up by the government, namely the
Indonesian Journalists Association (PWI).
In 1974, after the bursting events of Malari (Saleh A. Djamhari: 1998), as many as 12 press
publications were banned by the revocation of their publication permits (SIT). They were
accused of weakening aspects of the national life by inflaming issues, such as foreign capital,
especially Japanese, corruption, the dual function of the Armed Forces, government officials’
dilapidation, and high-level power struggle, which were considered to have undermined public confidence in the national leadership (Lukas Luwarso, 2000). The press was also accused
of inciting people to take actions, disturbing the peace and security of the country, and creating opportunities leading to treason. The SIT revocation was fortified by the revocation of
their printing permits (SIC) issued by Laksus Kopkamtib Jaya. Several large public press publications, such as Abadi, Pedoman, Indonesia Raya, and Harian Kami, were closed down.
The muzzling of the press happened again in 1978 in relation to the rise of students’ protests against the nomination of Soeharto as president. Through a simple phone call, seven
newspapers in Jakarta (Kompas, Sinar Harapan, Merdeka, Pelita, The Indonesian Times,
SinarPagi, and Pos Sore) were temporarily suspended (Lukas Luwarso, 2000).
The government’s interference and control over the press continued. A statement formulated by the Press Council in a plenary session held on the 7 and 8 December 1984 stated that
the National Press was based on the National Ideology Pancasila. This conveyed a strong
message that press practices should be carried out in accordance with the sacred values of
Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution. The Press Council’s statement was elaborated further in
a seminar on the efforts to stabilize the position and role of the Pancasila Press organized by
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the Department of Information and PWI in Surakarta on 19 and 21 February 1985 (Sidang
Pleno XXV Dewan Pers).
1.3
Openness and Goenawan Mohamad
The spirit of openness in the New Order era was visible when Sudwikatmono, who had
a familial relationship with Soeharto, obtained the permit to operate Surya Citra Televisi
(SCTV) in 1990. Tutut, Soeharto’s eldest daughter, acquired a permit to launch Televisi Pendidikan Indonesia (TPI) in 1991. The government also issued a new permit for an Islam-based
newspaper, Republika, in August 1993. The birth of the Islamic daily newspaper marked the
shifting stand of the regime toward Moslem intellectuals. Agung Laksono, one of the prominent KNPI youth leaders, with his business group Hasmuda, obtained the permit for operating ANTV in 1993. The Salim business group, the closest ally of Soeharto, also obtained the
permit for launching Indosiar Visual Mandiri (IVM) in 1993 (Sudirman Tebba, 2013).
The Information Disclosure of the New Order era halted when, on 21 June 1994, the
permits of three major media in Indonesia, namely Detik, Tempo, and Editor, were revoked
by the Ministry of Information. Under Decree No. 123/KEP/Menpen/1994, the three media
were shut down because they did not exercise Pancasila press life soundly and with great
responsibility. Consequently, they were deemed to have disrupted national stability. Although
it was contrary to the Press Law applicable at that time, namely Law No. 21 of 1982, this
authoritative policy would lead to a disturbance of the information law.
This time Goenawan Mohamad (GM) decided to put up a serious resistance against the
New Order regime. He said:
“When I saw my friends being beaten and when I saw students being beaten was
when I decided the path I was going to take.”
“It was dramatically different,” Arief concluded. “Goenawan became very bitter
against the government. Before that, he was more compromising. [Afterwards] he
decided to oppose the government, whatever the cost.” (Janet Steele. Wars Within:
The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in Soeharto’s Indonesia, 2005, p. 244).
Goenawan Mohamad also said “Why did such arbitrariness occur? Why did the ruling
party impose severe sanctions on the powerless?” (Goenawan. “Persecution” in Catatan Pinggir 3. Jakarta: Graffiti, 2005, p. 79).
In Goenawan’s view, the closure was an indication of a bad symptom of a society whose
social capacity was slowly collapsing when people could no longer have a relationship with
one another guaranteed by the certainty of law and in good manners.
Therefore, Goenawan believes that “...without freedom of speech, and without freedom
of action, the collapse of the social capacity of the society will not be easy to deal with,
let alone inevitable” (Goenawan. “Introduction” in Alumni magazine Tempo. Whitepaper
Tempo: Banning That, Jakarta: Yayasan Alumni Tempo, 1994, p. ix).
Goenawan’s seriousness and courage to fight the abuse of power by the government in
banning Tempo were carried out through legal channels. In the lawsuit filed to the Chairman
of the Jakarta State Administrative Court on 7 September 1994, which was signed by, among
others, Harjono Tjitrosoebono, SH and Dr. Adnan Buyung Nasution, SH, Goenawan as the
plaintiff conveyed the losses due to the revocation.
After a lengthy court process, with each of the parties presenting witnesses to support their
case, it was decided that:
On Wednesday afternoon, the 2nd May 1995, the judges of the Jakarta Administrative Court (PTUN) led by Chief Justice Benjamin Mangkoedilaga, SH granted the
plaintiffs the entire lawsuit filed against the Minister of Information by Goenawan
on the license revocation of news magazine Tempo. In the trial in East Jakarta State
Administrative Court, the judge in his ruling believed that the revocation of this
license in accordance SK Tempo Menpen No. 123/Minister of Information/1994
was not in accordance with the law; therefore, by law, the ban must be revoked
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and its enforcement aborted. (Suara Pembaharuan: PTUN instructed Tempo license
restored, 3 May 1995).
On Tuesday, the 21st November 1995, the State Administrative High Court
(PTTUN) Jakarta upheld the verdict in the case of revocation of the license of
Tempo. In its decision, PTTUN Jakarta declared that the decree of the Minister
of Information on the revocation of the license was void and ordered the defendant (the Minister of Information) to revoke the decree. A press observer, Ashadi
Siregar, said whatever court decision and whatever the attitude of the Ministry of
Information in response with the decision of PTTUN, Jakarta should reinforce the
importance of the courts in cases related to the press. Furthermore, he said that
the journalist and the chief editor of a publication as a citizen, of course, could be
guilty. However, it is important to remember that, as the law states, every decision
can only be made after a court process. (Suara Pembaharuan: PPTUN reinforces
administrative court ruling regarding the license of “Tempo”, 22 November 1995).
After two consecutive wins of his case in court, on Thursday, 13 June 1996, the Panel of
Judges of the Supreme Court (MA) in its verdict on cassation rejected the lawsuit against
the revocation of the permit of Goenawan’s Tempo. Instead, the justices granted the appeal
filed by the Indonesian Information Minister on this permit revocation. According to the
Supreme Court, Goenawan had no authority and credibility to sue the Minister of Information because the constitution of PT Grafiti Pers, the publisher of Tempo, stated that Goenawan only served as the Editor-in-Chief, while the President Director of PT Grafiti Pers was
Eric Samola.
Goenawan’s persistence against the abuse of power by the regime did not stop. He took
other ways to uphold freedom of information.
Stepping outside the courtroom, Goenawan Mohamad was immediately thronged
by journalists. Wearing a white shirt, black armband, and peci (a fez-like hat),
Goenawan Mohamad raised his arms and declared, “For me, the struggle for freedom of the press by legal means ends here. Now the struggle must take another
form.” (Janet Steele. Wars Within: The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in
Soeharto’s Indonesia, 2005, p. 258).
In December 1994, Goenawan called a meeting at Koi restaurant in the Blok M
area of South Jakarta. He invited journalist and intellectuals, such as Fikri Jufri,
Aristides Katoppo, Mochtar Pabotinggi, M. Dahana, and Andreas Harsono, and
explained that he wanted to set up a foundation. The legal document creating ISAI
was signed in January 1995. The biggest funder of ISAI was the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID). (The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in Soeharto’s Indonesia, 2005, p. 260).
1.4
Resistance through the internet
Since 1995, the Internet has been playing an important role in the dissemination of information among activists and Internet users in Indonesia. Internet fever in Indonesia was sparked
by the presence of Apa Kabar, a mailing list managed by John McDougall of America. Apa
Kabar disseminated a variety of opinions, from the most radical to the purists and from prodemocracy activists to the military-intelligence apparatus. Besides various polemical opinions and views, Apa Kabar disseminated information from the mass media, at home and
abroad, with regard to the latest situation in Indonesia.
Apa Kabar’s success was then followed by the emergence of a variety of Internet sites and
mailing lists that were managed by activists in Indonesia. Ex-Tempo journalists managed
Tempo Interactive, followed by a number of mailing lists, such as SiaR, KDPnet, AJInews,
X-post, Demidemokrasi, and Indo-News.com. The information delivered via the Internet could
satisfy the people’s appetite for information. The material content from the Internet was
often downloaded and photocopied so that they could be read by those who had no access
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to the Internet. In addition, the regime’s censoring system that was operated by blocking
out the pages of foreign newspapers or magazines reporting the latest situation in Indonesia
cannot be applied to the Internet.
The New Order government was just starting to focus the development of the Internet in
the national agenda in 1996 through N21 Vision or Nusantara Vision program pioneered by
Jonathan Parapak, the director of the state enterprise Indosat. The program was expected to
coordinate the activities of various actors of the development of the Internet network and
to obtain a loan from the World Bank. However, the Internet-based network development
agenda of N21Vision faltered, and the loan from the World Bank could not be obtained
because of the economic crisis in 1997.
In the midst of the government’s failure to provide Internet services due to the lack of
facilities and availability of personal computers, the emergence of Warnet (Internet Café)
in 1996 was able to offer Internet services at a relatively low cost to the middle and lower
segments of the society. It had emerged into a democratic public sphere for the majority of
people where they could access information without any restriction from the government.
The Warnet had become a medium for freedom of expression and opinion spread across the
world. Meanwhile, various forms of information and messages whose content discredited the
regime could easily be accessed.
In January 1998, Soeharto accused press reports of triggering public panic. As a result, a
large number of people stormed stores and supermarkets to buy essential supplies. In February, after signing a memorandum of understanding with the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), Soeharto accused the Indonesian press of having made the situation in Indonesia
worse with regard to the financial crisis that was going on and caused rupiah to decline
sharply. The pressure on the press did not lead to any banning because Soeharto’s regime
started to get serious and massive resistance and began to undermine its legitimacy.
2
CONCLUSION
The New Order regime exercised its strategic values through tight control of information
media. They achieved this goal by making uncompromising regulations to restrict information, mainly concerning national security. They were also manipulative in their selection
of information to be published and made available to the public and the press. The regime
exercised freedom of expression “irresponsibly”, which was considered as destabilizing the
national development or, worse still, classified as a subversive action. There were links between
the press control policy and the ability of the regime to sustain power for more than 32 years.
For 32 years, the Indonesian press had been used by the regime to cover up scandals and
chaos in the state administration, to conceal true facts and to ignore the harsh reality or concerns. News coverage was based solely on what the government desired to convey. This led to
a condition where information media contained news and propaganda from the standpoint
of the New Order regime. Consequently, people could not obtain the true picture of what
was actually going on around them. They could not distinguish facts from fiction, truth from
lies, and national interests from the interests of a few elites.
With the emergence of the Internet, opposition groups could successfully eliminate the
New Order regime’s tight control of information media. Information about the dark sides
of the regime was revealed, resulting in a widespread fight against it throughout the country
and the world. The Internet boom in Indonesia during 1995–1998 significantly contributed
to the fall of Soeharto’s New Order.
REFERENCES
Abdullah, T. (2009) Indonesia towards Democracy. Singapore, ISEAS.
Bujono, B. (1995) Buku Putih Tempo, Pembredelan ITU (Tempo White Book, ITU Banning). Jakarta,
Yayasan Alumni Tempo.
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Bujono, B. (1995) Mengapa Kami Menggugat (Why We Pressed Charges). Jakarta, Yayasan Alumni
Tempo.
Casci, R.O. (2006) Organising and Sustaining Hegemony: A Gramscian perspective on Suharto’s New
Order Indonesia. Research Commons at the University of Waikato.
Hill, D.T. (2005) The internet in Indonesia’s new democracy. New York, Routledge.
Hill, D.T. (2011) Pers di Masa Orde Baru (The Press in New Order in Indonesia). David T. Hill; translator, Gita Widya Laksmini Soerjoatmodjol. Jakarta, Yayasan Obor Indonesia.
Hisyam, M. (2003) Krisis Masa Kini dan Orde Baru (The Crisis Today and the New Order). Jakarta,
Yayasan Obor.
Kasenda, P. (2013) Soeharto: Bagaimana Ia Bisa Melangengkan Kekuasaan Selama 32 Tahun? (Soeharto: How Could He Maintain Power for 32 Years?) Jakarta, Penerbit Buku Kompas.
Klin, A. & Volkmar, F.R. (2000) Treatment and Intervention Guidelines for Individuals with Asperger
Syndrome. In: Klin, A., & Volkmar, F.R., Sparrow, S.S., eds. Asperger Syndrome. New York, Guilford
Press, pp. 340–66.
Lehiste, I. (1970) Suprasegmentals. Oxford, England, MIT Press.
Lim, M. (2006) Lost in Transition? The Internet and Reformasi in Indonesia. In: Dean, J. & Anderson,
J.W. (eds.). Reformatting Politics: Networked Communications and Global Civil Society, 85–106. London, UK, Routledge.
Mallarangeng, R. (2010) Pers Orde Baru (New Order Press). Jakarta, Gramedia.
Robinson, R. & Hadiz, V.R. (2004) Reorganising Power in Indonesia: The Politics of Oligarchy in an Age
of Markets. London, Routledge Curzon.
Schwarz, A. (2000) A Nation in Waiting: Indonesia’s Search for Stability. USA, Westview Press.
Sen, K. & Hill, D.T. (2007) Media, Culture and Politics. Jakarta, Equinox Publishing Indonesia.
Soeharto. (1989) Soeharto: Pikiran, Ucapan dan Tindakan Saya/Soeharto (Soeharto: My Thought,
Speech and Action/Soeharto), as presented to G. Dwipayana dan Ramadhan K.H. Jakarta, Citra
Lamtoro Gung Persada.
Steele, J. (2005) Wars Within: The Story of TEMPO, an Independent Magazine in Soeharto’s Indonesia.
Jakarta, Equinox Publishing Indonesia.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Public reason and the rise of populism in post-reformation
Indonesia
G.C. Acikgenc & H.S. Pratama
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: One of the significant characteristics of the post-reformation era in Indonesia is the religion-based social morality that has been a dominant discourse in the public
sphere. The meaning of being moral is often perceived as an association between morality
and religiosity. A moral citizen is one who practices his/her religious teachings in their private space and in the public domain. Using the conceptual framework of Nadia Urbinati on
populism, this paper aims at analyzing how the current discourse of social morality shapes
the public sphere in the post-reformation era in Indonesia. This paper will contribute to the
contemporary theoretical discussion about the public reason and populism in general.
1
INTRODUCTION
The discussion about morality issues mainly focuses on the nature and the source of individual moral beliefs. One of the main debates is an assumption that there is an individual
autonomy in making a moral verdict that is confronted by communitarian critique arguing
that a morality source clings to the socials. “The socials” locus triggers arguments on how
every free individual with his/her own definitions of righteousness and kindness can live sideby-side with other individuals with different points of view. The concept of social morality
exists to respond to the deliberation by providing a foundation of life in unison (Gaus, 2011,
p. 56). In its development, this social morality concept will always form the basis for contestation of ideas about kindness and righteousness in the public sphere.
In the context of post-reformation Indonesia, this contestation is currently won by a point
of view according to which the religious teachings espoused by the majority are a valid basis
for determining normative criteria of what is moral and what is not. This view is reflected in
public policies at the regional level, verdicts of judicial reviews in the Constitutional Court,
and can also be found in the amendments of the national education curriculum design. This
victory comes from civil liberties gained after the post-reformation era in 1998. In the course
of 32 years under the authoritarian New Order government, morality ideas leaned on the
more nationalist principle of Pancasila. The individuals’ and groups’ space to express opinions that were related closely with a particular religious identity and symbols tend to be
limited.
After Suharto was ousted, the organization of the government was no longer centralistic.
Constitution regarding regional autonomy gave the head of city or district-level executive
agencies a more flexible authority to issue regulations according to the society’s needs and
aspirations in each district. The values that were carried by regional politicians during the
regional head elections also accentuate the religious side for the sake of gaining the majority vote (Aspinall, 2011). The recent dominance of religion consequently blurs the barrier
between religion (private domain) and country (public domain) in the society’s socio-political
life.
Meanwhile, a discourse on non-religious morality foundation has not been operating optimally when compared with the discourse of religion-based public’s morality views. The failure in conducting a rational open debate on this matter is inseparable from the repression
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of the New Order government that limited the civilians’ freedom of speech. This repression
shut down the principle of the importance of the rationality test in every public policy that
controls the life of the civilians. Thus, what happened in the post-reformation era in Indonesia was a democratization of the new public policy maker election instrument reaching the
institutional level. Culturally, Indonesia still holds on to the social life from the New Order
era, which is a principle that is not democratic; this tends to be close-minded on differences
in perspectives for the sake of maintaining “harmony” in their socio-political life. The transition that has not occurred during the post-reformation era in Indonesia is the application
of principles of the community that emphasizes the importance of commitment toward the
public use of reason/public reason in order to protect plurality values and facts in the process
of democracy.
In this study, we will discuss theoretical implications regarding the lack of commitment
toward a public reason that indirectly affects the continuity of populism practice in the postreformation era in Indonesia. First, technical terms such as populism and public reason that
form the theoretical framework of this study will be explained. Second, the importance of a
strict segregation between religion (private domain) and state (public domain) will be elaborated and the notion that the morality definition in the public sphere is a theme of conversation among citizens that needs to be sustained will be discussed. Then, the relationship
between religious dominance in the basic discourse of morality ideas in public policy-making
and the potential of majoritarianism that might be caused by the practice of populism will
be analyzed using the conceptual framework of populism.
1.1
Populism: Polarization of public opinion
The term populism used in this article does not refer to the grassroots movement that protests the elitist political practice in running a democratic state. Based on an illustration from
Nadia Urbinati in her book Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People (2014),
there are two distinctive differences between the grassroots movement and populism practice
that can be explained through political phenomena in the United States, namely the Occupy
Wall Street movement and the Tea Party movement. First, the Occupy Wall Street movement that mobilized the mass was not organized centrally to conquer political powers at the
government level, whereas the Tea Party movement was organized to look for leadership that
could win the majority and occupy a strategic position at institutional level in order to transform the United States, making it consentaneous with the Republican Party’s ideology. Second, the popular grassroots movement that is similar to the Occupy Wall Street movement is
still consistent with a representative democracy. This movement reflects antagonistic forms in
a democratic society as a critique to supervise the accountability of the chosen state administrators and protect constituent independence from elitist political interests. On the contrary,
the practice of populism considers representative democracy as an obstacle. Thus, in order
to win the majority support, populism practice polarizes public opinions and claims that it
represents a majority opinion as a materialization of the representation of people’s will.
Deviating from the moderation and compromise process in the representative democracy
system that can accommodate the minority’s opinion, Urbinati (2014) explained that populism practice runs the formation of consensus politics vertically through charismatic (Caesarist) leaders using a political rhetoric strategy that operates through the discourse of “we/
them.” Polarization becomes a means of formatting identity politics by creating two sides
that seem to contradict each other by raising an issue that will gain the majority’s sympathy
and support. This polarization reduces the role of the opposition party—that is an important
pillar in the democratic state system—to a meaningless entity that loses its role in political
dynamics in governing a democratic state. Polarization excludes opinions coming from outside the majority by positioning it as partisan-enemies. Consequently, symbolical erosion
happens to the institution of the representative democracy system that necessarily works as
a liaison medium as well as an arbiter between social needs (constituent) and country’s interests due to populism that actually makes the power of the country an extension of the major
constituent interests. This has an impact on the civilians’ political freedom as a result of the
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limitation of communication in the public sphere that is supposed to be open for every kind
of group existing in the society, including aspirations that do not intersect with the majority.
Besides posing a risk to the sustainability of the plurality of opinions in the socio-political
domain, the ambition of populism practice rules out the principle of the majority rule in the
democratic system into the rule of the majority that is, finally, prone to falling to majoritarianism (Urbinati, 2014, p. 139). At an extreme point, populism practice that is allowed can
risk transforming political communities into entities that are against ideological differences
for the sake of fulfilling the myth of a national totality and comprehensive society.
In order to contextualize the concept of populism in the socio-political situation in the
post-reformation era in Indonesia, the distinction concept of the public–private sphere and
rationality that works from within is inseparable from the main topic of this article. Differentiating the two aims to help us see how religion holds an important role in public discourse
and how it is related to the practice of populism in the post-reformation era in Indonesia.
The use of the term “public sphere” here refers to the location where those argumentative
interactions consisting of explicit political intentions, such as modifying the rule of law, take
place. These interactions that happen in the public sphere can be in the form of making
petitions, composing political speeches, protesting through peaceful rallies, and so on (Barthold, 2015). Referring to the distinction used by Richard Rorty (2003), the private sphere
is an individual’s sphere that does not need rational argumentation to justify his/her belief
or action—or it can also be called the irrational domain. The belief includes the individual’s
religious belief. The distinction of this public–private sphere is based on the belief that first,
as a doctrine, religion has a tendency to refuse argumentative justifications so that it has the
potential to close an open discussion in the public sphere (in other words, it is a conversationstopper); second, the personal individual agenda does not possess any relevance to the actions
taken in the public sphere; third, religious practices in the public sphere tend to be addressed
to establish political relations based on an essential and metaphysical humanity conception;
fourth, the religion form is organized hierarchically so that the process of argumentation
consists of appeal to authority logical fallacy and actually contradicts the equality principles
that are supposed to be upheld in the public sphere. The distinction between the public and
private spheres is a gateway for public reasons or the public use of reason that becomes a
meeting point between ideas about rationality and morality. Gerald Gaus in his book The
Order of Public Reason: a theory of freedom and morality in a diverse and bounded world
(2011) explained that the idea about morality in the public sphere or social morality is based
on the influence of the modern contractarian theory tradition pioneered by the philosopher
Thomas Hobbes. As an attempt to achieve a peaceable, sociable, and comfortable living that
is the best alternative to the nasty, poor, short, and brutish situations of human nature, a set
of moral norms becomes a necessity in order to achieve conditions of coexistence. Therefore,
the concept regarding social morality involves particular interpersonal relations, wherein our
requests to make other people agree with our own moral convictions can also apply when
other people ask us to agree with the values that they believe in. Gaus noted that in order to
materialize this relation without any coercion, the party, whose willingness to agree with our
moral convictions is requested, must have a sufficient and plausible reason. However, because
everyone is in an epistemic position with a set of different individual beliefs, which is where
public reason is needed in the dynamics of the aforementioned interpersonal relation, “the
moral demands we make on others must be justifiable to those others by appeal to reasons
they have, and not simply by appeal of truth as we see it” (Gaus, 2011).
1.2
Public reason in the dynamics of social morality discourse
The issue that will be elaborated in this part highlights the dynamics of social morality discourse in the post-reformation era in Indonesia. Ever since Suharto stepped down from his
autocratic presidency, there has been a significant change in the life of the civilians covering
the field of freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and the media. In addition, influential friction also occurred in the government system itself, which is the decentralization of the public
space governance. This is reflected in the figure of the regional head at a district/province
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level who obtains greater authority to issue regional regulations according to the needs of
each region. A problem occurs when the freedom experienced by the civilians is considered
absolute and does not go hand-in-hand with the constitutional mandate that is the foundation of the establishment of a country. The Constitution clearly states that Indonesia is not
a religious state (Assyaukanie, 2011). Proponents of this view blur a clear boundary between
religion and state by justifying that religious teachings are valid to be the cornerstone of
public policy-making. An example of this can be observed in a regional regulation in Serang,
Banten Province, No. 2/2010 concerning prevention, eradication, and alleviation of social illnesses that manages and gives state actors the legitimacy to limit food stalls’ business hours
during the Ramadhan, the holy month of the Moslems. This regulation is supported by the
majority and later turns to be an indicator of the Islamic government as a benchmark of
qualified governance (Tanuwidjaja, 2010). In other words, there is a misconception in comprehending the intention of the majority rule in the process of the public sphere governance
in the democratic state. The majority’s normative interpretation is used as a foundation of
legal regulations without considering the possibility of majoritarianism. Another misconception is the understanding of this segregation of state and religion as a manner of anti-religion.
Deliberation regarding this segregation actually does not lead to an understanding that the
segregation between the two is intended to avoid the country from being used as an extension for the interests of fundamentalist religious teaching groups. This segregation functions
to protect the principles of liberalism in order for them to continue to be present in the life
of the democratic state’s civilians. The principles of liberalism such as equality, freedom of
speech, and assembly are also what enables a proponent’s view that states that religious teachings can become the base of the formulation of policies for the voiceless, the right to always
be assured. In fact, this proponent’s voice gains sympathy and support from the majority
of people who do not yet understand the basic Constitution and urgency of segregating the
national and religious domains. The support is collected in various forms, such as political
parties, community organizations, social fund channeling institutions, educational institutions, and study groups (Mauleman, 2011). In general, this institutionalization uses religious
teaching principles that cannot be argued rationally as a standard to define morality—this is
why Rorty (2003) stated that religion is one of the conversation-stoppers. Consequently, the
temporary discussion on morality in the public sphere becomes final because the ideas are
based on divine kindness and righteousness criteria. As a result, the concept of social morality that is supposedly sourced from the consensus based on public reason is not materialized.
The institutionalization of ideas about social morality that is no longer flexible becomes
an effective means of changing its status from a norm into a rule of law. This can be illustrated through examples of regulations that are, in fact, discriminative and contradictive to
the principle of individual freedom, especially those implemented in the Aceh Province. This
phenomenon has flourished in the post-reformation era in Indonesia through the practice
of populism that is sustained through the use of the rhetoric of morality. Critiques regarding the proponent’s perspective that justifies religious norms to become the rule of law are
positioned as critiques that do not represent the majority. Populism practices work by polarizing the diversity of opinions regarding the definition of morality in the public sphere and
depoliticizing the constructive function of critiques and oppositional critiques. The plurality
of society’s opinions that may disagree with a proponent’s views should be freely expressed
without being positioned as an opponent of the will of the majority. However, the practice
of populism, in fact, desires the opposite because it has the ambition to occupy the strategic
position at a government level by achieving the support of the majority. This ambition is
basically facilitated by procedures in the representative democracy that opens up contestation of every kind of ideas. However, this process does not promise an outcome that can be
achieved instantly. Polarization is prone to resulting in a stigmatization of minority opinions
that should have a position in the public sphere. Polarization also has a contra-productive
potential to deliberative decision-making as expected through the process of rational argumentation. The practice of populism in a representative democracy system operates with an
approach parallel to Aristotle’s description of demagoguery in a direct democracy (Urbinati,
2014, p.138). He stated that demagoguery is an example of bad democracy because it replaces
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the consent-seeking process in an assembly by making the people’s minds conform to the
political intentions of an orator through rhetoric that is manipulated in accordance with his/
her interests. A sample case in Indonesia that can be used as an illustration is how an institution of a community organization conducts political campaigns in the public sphere consisting of racist contents toward the governor of DKI Jakarta Basuki Tjahaja Purnama who is
also a candidate in the next governor election in 2017. In this case, the organization acts on
behalf of Moslems as the majority that based on their group’s belief they cannot be led by
one who does not have the same religion as them. There is no process of reasoning proposed
in this type of campaign model. What is done is homogenization of the political position of
Moslems and justification of their claim on behalf of the majority. At a more serious level,
the practice of populism works through rhetoric morality, which reaches an official institution, i.e. Constitutional Court. The first case was a judicial review that attempted to increase
the minimum age of a girl in the Marriage Act that was declined by the judge of the Constitutional Court on the grounds that “it is better for a girl to get married rather than to open a
chance to commit adultery that is clearly forbidden by religious teachings.” The second case
was an attempt to make a constitutional amendment on decency that was recently proposed
by Aliansi Cinta Keluarga Indonesia, which encouraged the state to have a legal force in banning sexual orientations other than heterosexual. The panel of the judges responded to this
judicial review by giving the same argumentation as in the previous case, which is by bringing
in the basic argument of morality that leads to God’s teachings. In the trial, the Chief Judge
of the Constitutional Court himself stated that “the legal system in Indonesia has to be ‘illuminated’ with values of divinity.”
The lack of commitment to public reason that is supposed to be the base of the foundation of social morality influences the process of deliberation up to the realm of law. This
practice does not only use the majority as a single measure of the pseudo-will of the society,
but also turns a liberal democracy into an illiberal and unconstitutional one (Urbinati, 2014,
p.138). The application of democratic principles that respect individual freedom and guarantee plurality in Indonesia is obscured by the practice of populism that homogenizes the
society’s opinion by claiming to be a representation of the majority. In the short term, this
practice draws the public energy that is supposedly reserved to oversee more crucial issues
such as ensuring the government’s accountability, urging the transparency in the absorptions
of state budget (APBN), and especially pursuing social justice and realizing a democracy that
respects human rights. Meanwhile, in the long term, the worst-case scenario of populism
practice if it is allowed to continue is that the country will be used as an instrument of fascist
politicians who want to establish a living in a unison system that does not welcome differences in ways of life—in other words, this will open up a loophole for Indonesia to return to
be a country that is led by a totalitarian regime.
2
CONCLUSION
The spirit and efforts of the reformation desiring the civilians’ openness and freedom of
speech as the governing principle of a democratic country are facing the worst-case scenario
caused by the practice of populism. Today, the boundary between country and religion in
Indonesia is obscured by the practice of populism that brings out religious sentiments in
morality discourse concealing the urgency of the public use of reason as a basis for contestation of ideas about social morality. The polarization of public opinion translates opinions
as the majority’s will without considering the representation of the minority’s voice. As a
result, manifestation of the freedom of individual politics outside the voting booth that supposedly delivers plurality of opinions is violated by the practice of populism. The freedom
of individual politics is an important component in the representative democratic system
because it functions to supervise the accountability of state administrators and creates a gap
between individuals and the state. However, this component is missing when opinion formation is taken over by the practice of populism that does not give individuals an equal space to
speak. In addition, the power of ambition hiding behind the practice of populism that uses
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the rhetoric of morality has a potential to conceal urgent issues such as alleviation of poverty,
alleviation of corruption, equity of educational access, and improvement of the quality of
public facilities that should become priorities in the society.
The rampant practice of populism in the post-reformation era in Indonesia is related to
the lack of commitment to the public use of reason that is critical in responding to religious
sentiments in the discourse of social morality. The key role in this practice is played by politicians to gain support from the majority through polarization that undermines the process of
opinion formation. The benchmark for equal freedom of individual politics is stopped at the
maxim, “one man, one vote.” Outside the voting booth, individual opinions that do not intersect with the majority’s voice are depoliticized and considered as the antithesis of the citizens’
will. The individual political opinion outside the voting booth is also a means of social integration. It is a manifestation of a representative healthy opinion formation. Political opinions
are also a means of exchanging information, values, and knowledge that enable citizens to
have a conversation in the public sphere in order to stimulate public reason (Urbinati, 2014,
p. 36). The practice of populism using the rhetoric of morality through religious sentiments
is political personalization. This practice justifies the private agenda (faith) to penetrate the
public sphere, therefore preventing the proper function of the democratic state system. This
practice is prone to majoritarianism when public policies are not formulated for social engineering and to seek justice, but to gain support of the majority and use it as an electoral
machine especially in the conditions of economic inequality (Pepinsky, et al., 2012). Further
research is necessary to conduct a more thorough study on the strategic moves that can be
taken to put an end to the practice of populism in the democratic political system.
REFERENCES
Adimaja, M. (2016) Massa Hizbut Tahrir dan Barisan RT-RW Demo Tolak Ahok. Tempo. (Hizbut Tahrir and Neighbourhood Associations Demonstrating against Ahok) [Online] Available from:
https://m.tempo.co/read/news/2016/09/04/214801524/massa-hizbut-tahrir-dan-barisan-rt-rw-demotolak-ahok.
Aspinall, E., Dettman, S., Warburton, E. (2011) When Religion Trumps Ethnicity: A Regional Election
Case Study from Indonesia. South East Asia Research, 19 (1), 27–58.
Assyaukanie, L. (2011) Ideologi Islam dan Utopia: Tiga Model Negara Demokrasi di Indonesia (Islamic
Ideology and Utopia: Three Models of Democratic States in Indonesia). Jakarta, Freedom Institute.
Barthold, L. (2012) Rorty, Religion and the Public–private Distinction. Philosophy and Social Criticism,
38(8), 861–878.
Florene, U. (2016) Lanjutan sidang uji materi KUHP di MK. (Continued Session on the Judicial Review
of the Indonesian Penal Code in Constitutional Court) RAPPLER. [Online] Available from: http://
www.rappler.com/indonesia/145575-live-blog-uji-materi-kuhp-mk-aila.
Gaus, G. (2011) The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded
World. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Meuleman, J. (2011) Dakwah, Competition for Authority, and Development. Bijdragen tot de
Taal-, Land—en Volkenkunde, 167 (2/3), 236–269.
Pepinsky, T., Liddle, W., Mujani, S. (2012) Testing Islam’s Political Advantage: Evidence from Indonesia.
American Journal of Political Science, 56 (3), 584–600.
Policing Morality Abuses in the Application of Sharia in Aceh, Indonesia (2010) [Online] Available from:
http://www.hrw.org.
Rorty, R. (2003) Religion in the Public Square: A Reconsideration. Journal of Religious Ethics, 31 (1),
141–149.
Sahbani, A. (2016) Ketua MK: Sistem Hukum Indonesia Mesti ‘Disinari’ Nilai Ketuhanan. (Chief of
Constitutional Court: Indonesian Legal System Should be “Illuminated” by Divine Values) Hukum
Online. [Online] Available from: http://www.hukumonline.com/berita/baca/lt57e75880d9bc6/ketuamk--sistem-hukum-indonesia-mesti-disinari-nilai-ketuhanan.
Tanuwidjaja, S. (2010) Political Islam and Islamic Parties in Indonesia: Critically Assessing the Evidence
of Islam’s Political Decline. Contemporary Southeast Asia, 32 (1), 29–49.
Urbinati, N. (2014) Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth and the People. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Construction of grief in obituary texts in German (2012–2015)
S.P. Suganda
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study is to examine ‘death’ and other aspects evolving around this theme. The objective is acquired through a text analysis. Death itself is a
natural phenomenon related to a certain emotion, namely grief. While grief is a state of
mind, mourning is constructed by culture. Recent studies on German obituaries show that
on textual level, there have been attempts from the survivor’s side to reflect their perception
on death, but the aspect of emotion on texts is yet to explore. My preliminary observation
shows that in German obituaries the aspect of mourning is still more dominant than grief.
Using the framework of critical discourse analysis and psychological notions on emotion, a
final conclusion will be drawn. Valuable information regarding contemporary socio-cultural
context in Germany will also be elaborated and highlighted.
1
INTRODUCTION
The concept of life cycle is widely recognized in the society. Normally any society either
traditional or modern recognizes concepts of the phases of life undergone by mankind in
their worldly life, i.e. birth, marriage, and death. Crapo (2002, p. 298) and Miller (2004,
p. 304) suggest that several phases taking place in or undergone by humans are often marked
by rituals or ceremonies. These two cultural anthropologists base their ideas on the life cycle
concept initially introduced by Arnold van Gennep, a Belgian anthropologist in 1909 (van
Gennep 1960, pp. 2–3).
In this paper I will narrow down my study in death as part of a human life cycle. Data used
in this study comprise obituary texts published in various newspapers circulated in the Federal
Republic of Germany within the span of the last three years (2012–2015). The collected data are
divided into three perspectives, namely family, friend/colleague, and personal (self) perspectives.
In the context of the current German society, death is no longer connected with the mandatory traditional or ritual practices as previously performed in the past (Sörries 2012, p. 26).
Formerly, when a member of a family passed away, the other members had to don mourning
clothes (Trauer kleidung), normally traditional black-coloured clothes worn by the family as
a symbol of sorrow for the loss of their family member. In European culture, black is a colour that is identical with sorrow or death. This tradition is normally performed by the women
(widows), and beginning from the 20th century it has been forsaken as a result of women
emancipation movement (Sörries 2012, pp. 36–42). These days, sorrow due to the death of a
person is no longer symbolized by plain clothing or ritual performance.
One of the reasons of the fading away of this used-to-be mandatory tradition is demographic consideration (Sörries 2012, p. 26). At the moment, German population is dominated
by senior citizens. They are viewed as people who have undergone a great number of phases
in their lifetime. Some of these phases may be seen as a “farewell” (sich verabschieden) to the
ongoing life. Such phases include the point when one enters his or her retirement, the 60th or
65th birthday, or the transfer of senior citizens to an old people’s home. With these phases
of life, when a person passes away, the bereaved are not required to mourn his or her death
since the deceased has actually “bid farewell” to those who survive him or her and still continue living their lives (Sörries 2012, p. 26). Judging by the anthropological point of view, the
phenomenon of “death” in the society as described above constitutes an example of “social
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death” ‘sozialer Tod’, implying that the individual is biologically alive but considered “dead”
as he or she is no longer included in the category of productive people in the social order.
In the current German society, mourning has a different meaning. In the past the mourning process used to be closely connected with a certain span of time or phase (for instance 7
days, 40 days, or one year). Nowadays it is no longer marked by any particular ritual in any
particular span of time. The reason for this is because the duration of the grief or sorrow
caused by death can no longer be fixed, as it depends a lot on the person’s psychological state.
As such, it is possible for grieving to reappear after the end of a mourning period.
It indicates that at present people distinguish sorrow as an attitude (mourning) and sorrow as a psychological state (grief). ‘Mourning’ takes a more social nature, whereas ‘grief’ is
more personal as it is related to the psychological state of a person. This psychological state is
closely related to human characters, and thus it allows the possibility for ‘grief’ to go beyond
‘mourning’. With a commonly accepted view of ‘mourning’ lasting for 40 days, there is no
certainty that ‘grief’ discontinues on the 40th day. It all depends on the characters of the
bereaved, the person’s psychological and emotional states in general, and the relation between
the bereaved and the deceased in particular (Sörries, 2012, p. 28).
The fact that no ritual as formerly known in the society is performed by a bereaved by no
means suggest that he or she does not grieve or mourn. Basically every individual is entitled
to mourn. However, death rituals are beginning to lose their significance. How ritual practices
are performed nowadays depends a lot on the family, social, and work environments. On this
basis, various mourning behaviours that are emphasized more on the psychological state of
the bereaved rather than constituting mere rituals can be analysed (Sörries 2012, pp. 31–33).
Rituals recognized by the modern German society comprise, among others, the planting
of trees to commemorate a deceased (Erinnerungsbaum), the composing of obituary texts
and the publication in mass media, and the writing of letters (Trauerbrief) or the preparation
of a certain website containing the impressions or memories of the deceased and of what
he or she did during his or her life time, and the expressions of sorrow (Gedenkseite) in the
internet (http://www.bestatter-in-deutschland.de/informationen/trauersitten. Accessed on
Monday, 28th September 2015 at 15:03). Visitors to the website can write similar expressions
and light the virtual candle as an expression of condolences.
The formats of these examples indicate that death rituals performed by the Germans nowadays are simpler and more pragmatic. Many people make use of the technological progress
(internet) to express their sorrow. Those who intend to participate in expressing grief yet fail
or lack the opportunity to be present at the funeral should no longer worry about “breaching” the prevailing custom that is practiced in death rituals. People who are prevented from
attending the funeral can make use of the new media, for instance by writing messages or
lighting virtual candles in internet website (in the case of the surviving family announcing the
decease of their family member through the internet).
2
CONSTRUCTION OF GRIEF IN OBITUARY TEXTS
As mentioned before, an obituary text is also seen as an effort made by people to overcome
their sorrow. In psychology, sorrow is categorized as an emotion caused by, among others,
death. Paul Ekman is a psychologist that undertook numerous studies on non-verbal behaviours, facial expressions, and gestures. Ekman suggests that sorrow contains two emotions,
namely sadness and agony. He states that at the moment of death a deeply felt pain arises
resulting in a protest within a person. While agony is an active attempt made to overcome
human sadness by understanding what is actually happening (the source of loss), sadness is
more passive in nature (Ekman 2003, p. 85).
In terms of language, there are numerous ways of expressing grief. Examples provided by
Ekman in English comprise: distraught, disappointed, dejected, blue, depressed, discouraged,
despairing, grieved, helpless, miserable, and sorrowful (Ekman 2003, p. 85). However, Ekman
is also of the opinion that sometimes words that are familiar to us in expressing sadness turn
out to be insufficient in representing the sadness felt by the bereaved. Psychological explanation
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states that the grieving person may also feel a sort of anger. This anger may be addressed to life,
to God, to people, or things that are seen as the cause of the death, or even the deceased. The
latter mentioned anger is particularly caused by the death of a person who purposefully placed
himself or herself in a position susceptible to danger (Ekman 2003, p. 86).
This study proposes the manner of sadness as constructed in obituary texts. The term used for
such texts in German is “Traueranzeige”, which literally means ‘advertisement of sadness’. This
term contains the word “sadness”, and as such, the language users expect to find substantially
numerous elements in such texts that express sadness as an emotion (grief). To answer questions
in this study, I use a critical discourse analytical approach, i.e. by means of the tridimentional
analytical frame by Fairclough (1995) that is supported by a theory of emotion by Ekman (2003).
This study uses Fairclough approach (1995) as its main analysing frame. To analyse the
texts as discourses, three phases are proposed by Fairclough, as follows:
1. Description. This phase is related to the analysis of the formal characteristics of a text.
2. Interpretation. This phase describes the relation between a text and the social interaction
by viewing the text as a result of a production process, and the resources used in the interpretation process.
3. Explanation. This phase describes the relation between the interaction (text) and the
social context that affects it, namely the political, social, cultural, religious, and economic
contexts, etc.
3
3.1
SAMPLES OF OBITUARY TEXTS IN GERMAN
Text type A
Figure 1.
Rheinische Post, 14th July 2012.
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3.1.1 Descriptive analysis of text A
Death in this text is represented by the word gehen that lexically means go or move. The text
starts with a farewell greeting (Abschiedsgruß), “Tschüß”. This expression is a daily form
of language (umgangssprachlich) that has a meaning similar to “until we meet again” ‘auf
Wiedersehen’ (Wahrig 1986, p. 1302). The expression tschüß starts with the conjunction und.
In German, und as a conjunction is an equal conjunction (nebenordende Konjunktionen). The
function of this conjunction is to integrate or combine words or sets of words (Duden Band
4 1997, p. 373).
The conjunction und in this obituary is used as if to combine one statement with another.
In fact, the text shows that the conjunction und is not preceded by any statement, and as such
appears to be independent. In its relation to the above samples of forms in regard to how the
conjunction und is used, it may be concluded that the use of the conjunction und as a copulative conjunction relates more to the stylistic aspect.
The conjunction und is also used in the following sentence “...und dann ist es alles ganz
schnell gegangen” ‘...and then all too soon it all goes away’. The function und in this sentence is as a copulative conjunction, and the purpose is to provide an emphasis. This function also relates to the stylistic aspect of the text. Und appears to integrate two or more
statements. However, these statements are not there to be found existing in the text.
In this text, the name of the deceased is positioned at the centre of the text in a bigger
font compared to the others and is written in bold. The names of the surviving family
members are placed under the name of the deceased and are written in bold letters as
well.
This text also contains an expression of grief as stated by the phrase “in stiller Trauer”
‘in reverent grief ’, and is directly followed by the names of those who wrote the obituary text. This text ends with a part that contains the information of the farewell ritual
(Trauerfreier). Still lexically means ‘silent’ or ‘calm’ (Wahrig 1986, p. 1230). Furthermore,
still may also mean ‘secretly’ or ‘hidden’. The referential meaning of in stiller Trauer is ‘in
reverent grief ’. The person who wrote this obituary text implies that the feeling of sadness
that he or she feels is of personal nature that he or she does not wish to announce it to
the public.
3.1.2 Interpretative analysis of text A
The text about Günther Vieth contains an expression that uses a phatic function, namely
“und tschüß!” By placing it in the beginning of the text, this part quickly draws the readers’
attention. This part is a form of interaction between the writer of the text and the deceased.
The text writer seems to talk directly with the deceased. It indicates that there is sometimes
a two-way communication in an obituary text, between the text writer and the deceased, as
well as between the text writer and the text readers.
The information addressed to the text readers is matters related to the information regarding the deceased, for instance the name, the date of birth, and the date of death. Otherwise,
information related to the death rituals is also included in the communication between the
text writer and the text readers. Information regarding the death ritual is placed on the lower
part of the text and is stated in past tense (hat...stattgefunden), and as such functions are
more as an announcement rather than an invitation.
3.1.3 Explanatory analysis of text A
Based on this text, death for the surviving family is a private moment that does not have
to be part of the public domain. It is reflected in the expression of grief phenomenon, “in
stiller Trauer” ‘in reverent grief ’ and in the manner of how the death ritual is performed
“hat im engsten Familien-und Freundekreis stattgefunden”, or ‘conducted in the midst of
family and friends’. Contextually, “still” or ‘reverent’ does not only imply a situation that
is far from any outburst, anxiety, tumult, etc.; “still” also refers to the fact that the moment
was spent only by those who were really close to the deceased as they needed time and
privacy to mourn.
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3.2
Text type B
Figure 2.
Hamburger Abendblatt, 22nd–23rd February 2014.
3.2.1 Descriptive analyis of text B
This obituary text starts with a sentence that reads “wir hätten ihr mehr Zeit gewünscht” ‘if
only she had more time’. This sentence uses the second form conjunctive mode that functions, among others, to express some kind of hope. However, it is an unreal one (irrealer
Wunschsatz). In addition to the use of the second form conjunctive mode, this sentence also
uses past tense. This sentence is placed on the uppermost part of the text that has a phatic
function, i.e. to draw the attention of the readers.
This text also contains cultural rituals related to condolences. Normally condolences can
be expressed directly face to face, or in case of a situation that does not allow one to be
present at the funeral, it may be represented by funeral flower arrangements, and letters/cards
would be delivered to the surviving family. Through this text, the surviving family would
prefer that those who would express their sympathy could send their donation in the form of
money instead of flowers.
3.2.2 Interpretative analysis of text B
The sentence “if only she had more time” implies an unreal hope. It indicates that obituary texts
in German do not only express death but also hope. Usually the said hope relates to a future
after death. However, this text also indicates that such hope has an implication of the past.
This text contains an expression of grief as seen in the use of the sentence “wir trauern um
sie” ‘we, the bereaved’. Normally this part is followed directly by the names of the persons
who wrote the text. In this particular text, the names of the surviving family members are not
mentioned, and only their social status is mentioned in relation to the deceased, namely her
children, siblings, grandchildren, and so on.
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3.2.3 Explanative analysis of text B
This text includes a part that reads “instead of flower arrangements, we would appreciate your
donation to be transferred through the bank, Plan International, Bank für Sozialwirtschaft
IBAN, DE 92 251205100009444933 BIC BFSWD33HAN, password “Funeral/Astrid Hey”.
Appeal for donation in the form of money is often seen in obituary texts in German. This text
also contains such appeal. Unlike similar appeals that mention the donation being designated
to be distributed to charity foundations or community organizations, the appeal in this text
mentions that the fund is meant for a specific purpose, namely to cover the funeral costs.
It is mentioned in the Introduction that sadness nowadays has two facades, namely mourning and grief, as suggested by Sörries (2012, p. 187). Mourning is a process that is socially
arranged (sozial verordnet) and is conducted collectively, and hence it can be visible for others.
On the other hand, grief is an emotion (emotionale Befindlichkeit) that is felt privately by a
person; hence, it is not visible to others. With the possibility being open for participating in a
donation for the funeral of the deceased, there is an indication that the participants (the readers) can also take part in mourning together with the surviving family (die Hinterbliebenen).
In addition to the abovementioned description, another explanation can be made of this
phenomenon by taking a closer look at the German social and cultural context of today.
Gronemeyer (2010, p. 303) states that at the moment the theme of “death” in Germany is frequently related to institutional issues (Institutionalisierung), medical issues (Medikalisierung),
and economic issues (Ökonomisierung). The phenomenon that is particularly related to text
type B is an economic one.
According to Gronemeyer (2010, p. 305), death requires substantial costs (sterben ist teuer).
Based on an internet website (www.bestattungen.de/ratgeber/bestattungskosten. Accessed on
Monday, 20th October 2014 at 2:20 p.m), the cost for funeral varies, depending on the type,
execution, and venue of the burial. The largest cost to spend is for the funeral (Friedhof).
Other costs involved comprise costs for the service of the funeral parlour, funeral flowers,
the preparation and publication of obituary at the mass media, and the reception book.
Based on this website, we can have information that the cost of burial in Germany at the
moment would be at least 4,000 Euro, or around 60 million IDR using the current Euro-IDR
exchange rate of October 2014.
4
CONCLUSION
Obituary texts published in Germany contain emotional aspects. However, they are not
overly emphasized. The term Traueranzeige, which in the present standard German is more
dominantly used than the term Todesanzeige (obituary texts), led me to the assumption that
obituary texts written in Germany would highly emphasize emotions of sadness. My analysis
of this phenomenon has proven otherwise.
Expressions of sadness that are often found in these texts constitute a phrase that is followed
by the information about the writer of the obituary text (“in tiefer Trauer” ‘in deep grief’, “in
stiller Trauer”, ‘in reverent grief’). This phrase acts as an introduction that leads to the part that
describes the writer of the text. As such, the phrase that contains the noun “Trauer” ‘sadness’
actually puts more emphasis on “the person who feels” rather than “what is felt”.
In the analysed obituary texts in German, it is obvious that the aspect of ‘mourning’ is
more dominating than ‘grief’. The findings of the analysis of the three perspectives of the
whole obituary texts lead us to the conclusion that the mourning process that is constructed
in the texts can be divided into four categories, namely matters related to the execution of the
funeral rituals, those related to the expression of condolences, those related to the mourning
clothes, and those related to the donation.
The present trend shows that the surviving families opt for donation rather than flowers
or flower arrangements as tokens of condolences, which would be used to support the costs
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for the funeral procession or to be distributed to particular charity foundations. It indicates
the increasingly pragmatical attitude of the German people that leads to the appeal for forms
of condolences that may have a direct use in terms of the living ones (die Hinterbliebenen)
instead of the deceased (die Verstorbenen).
Privacy is also something of high significance to the Germans. In many obituary texts we
can see that the surviving family members explicitly state that the funeral ritual is conducted
only within a circle of closest family. This expression is implicitly understandable as death
is taken as an intimate moment that is expected to be experienced by the closest family and
friends. Mourning is not viewed as a public domain, and as such the surviving family does
not wish to involve other people in the mourning process.
REFERENCES
Crapo, R.H. (2002) Understanding ourselves and others. Cultural Anthropology. Boston, McGraw Hill.
Duden, B. (1997) Grammatik. Duden, Mannheim.
Ekman, P. (2003) Understanding faces and feelings. Emotions Revealed. London, Phoenix.
Fairclough, N. (1995) The critical study of language. Critical Discourse Analysis. London, Longman.
Gennep, A.V. (1960) The rites of passage. Chicago, the University of Chicago.
Gronemeyer, R. (2010) Hospiz, Hospizbewegung und Paliative Care in Europa. In: Elsas, Christoph. (2010). Sterben, Tod und Trauer in den Religionen und Kulturen der Welt. Berlin, EB-Verlag,
pp. 199–308.
Miller, B.D. (2004) Cultural anthropology. 3rd. Edition. Boston, George Washington University.
Sörries, R. (2012) Herzliches Beileid. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Trauer. Darmstadt, Primus.
Wahrig Deutsches Wörterbuch. (1986) Gütersloh, Bertelsmann.
http://www.bestatter-in-deutschland.de/informationen/trauersitten [Accessed on Monday, 28th September 2015 at 15:03].
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 194
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The political as the ontological primacy: On Ernesto Laclau’s
thoughts
D. Hutagalung & A.Y. Lubis
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Ernesto Laclau has opened up a new horizon in understanding the concept
of the political in a totalitarian system that constantly depoliticises the whole aspect of life
and treats all problems merely as administrative, bureaucratic and technocratic issues. Totalitarianism reduces the term ‘politics’ merely to ‘political interest’, which means that achieving these interests is different and determined in advance and separated from its possible
articulation among competing discourses. Therefore, according to this reasoning, the specific
characteristics of the political arena, namely conflicts, antagonisms, power relations, forms
of subordination and repression,, disappear from the equation. According to Laclau, the
political can be understood only through the logic of populism. Laclau viewed populism
as the best way to understand the ontological formation of the political. Laclau’s thought
originated from his dissatisfaction with the sociological perspective, which considers a group
only as a base unit of its social existence before its political construction or incorporates the
political subject and political construction into the functionalist or structuralist paradigm in
the social. He viewed populism from three perspectives: psychoanalysis, linguistic (rhetoric)
and politics (hegemony). Laclau concluded that popular subjectivity can only be formed
based on the creation of an empty signifier in a discursive way.
1
INTRODUCTION
In his article Glimpsing the Future, Ernesto Laclau concluded with the statement, ‘Rhetoric,
psychoanalysis, and politics (conceived as hegemony): in this triad I see the future of social
and political thought’ (Laclau, 2004, p. 36). This statement is the conclusion of Laclau’s
quest and thought that are heavily influenced by post-structuralism philosophy, Lacanian
psychoanalytic, Gramsci’s thought and critics on classical Marxism.
This paper analyses Ernesto Laclau’s thought on the political as the ontological primacy,
by tracking through the concept of rhetoric, psychoanalysis and politics, as well as populism, which Laclau believed as the royal way to understand the political. By reading some of
Laclau’s major works, we try to re-read the conceptualisation of the political in the political
arena.
1.1 Deconstruction, hegemony and discourse
In his theory, Laclau set the importance of deconstruction in analysing politics. Deconstruction, which is the highlight in the theory of rhetoric, according to Laclau, is fundamental in
analysing politics. He emphasised this in his argument:
Deconstruction is a primarily political logic in the sense that, by showing the structural undecidability of increasingly large areas of the social, it also expands the area
of operation of the various moments of political institution […] The central theme of
deconstruction is the politico-discursive production of society (Laclau, 1996a, p. 52).
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The question is: how can deconstruction work in analysing politics concretely? Is deconstruction an approach relevant to political analysis? To discuss this question, it is interesting
to see Laclau’s analysis on deconstruction in political analysis. Laclau believed that deconstruction approach is relevant to explain a political phenomenon. Laclau suggested two main
reasons to support his argument. The first is the idea of the political as an institutionalised
moment in a society. His argument is based on the situation encountered back then, which
tended to immerse the social life and then reactivate it by putting it back to the initial political condition. Such a situation does not foster understanding to the society as a whole, which
is based on the original logic. This situation also adds the contingency character to many
actions of political institutions. According to Laclau, the unfinished formation of social class
is essential in understanding how the logic of hegemony works (Laclau, 1996a, p. 47). Second, all political institutions are not developed completely. From this point of view, public
‘polarisation’ seems to experience double transitions; on the one hand, it is viewed as an
expansion of the political against social life; on the other hand, politicisation also comprises
contingency of social networking formation as a decentring of society (Laclau, 1996a, p. 48).
From Laclau’s point of view, the democratic politics is unable to do anything without
philosophical reflection. It is difficult for the democratic politics to understand the dynamics
within; therefore, it is critical to describe all consequences considering the fact that power
and antagonism are ineradicable things in society. This is the importance of deconstructive
approach in understanding the objectives of the consensus comprehensively.
Hegemony is one of the key factors in Laclau’s philosophy. This concept refers to Gramsci’s thought, with which Laclau has made the epicentre of all his theoretical analyses. The
concept of politics is inseparable from the concept of hegemony and discourse because all
Laclau’s political philosophies and theories refer to those two concepts in formulating the
political as the key to ontology.
From Lacan’s and Gramsci’s psychoanalyses, Laclau formulated his idea on hegemony.
Laclau borrowed the conception of jouissance from Lacan to explain how hegemonic discourses form in an empty signifier, which integrates various discourses into one hegemonic
discourse. Jouissance means excessive pleasures which can bring a very exciting feeling or
sickening, but simultaneously become the sources of charms (Fink, 1995, p. xii). According
to Laclau, the relationship between the lack of jouissance and fantasy in embracing a certain
image or picture that universalises both tends to transform them into an empty signifier,
which is the relationship between jouissance and repression in the notion of ‘social symptom’
(Laclau, 2004, p. 300).
According to Laclau, hegemonic relationship requires something asymmetrical between
universality and particularity. It means, every group is particular in the social and is created
around certain interests. Hegemony can only be created if the group takes some degree of
representation of universality from all of the community as a whole. The main argument
Laclau suggested is that the asymmetry between the universality of social agent’s task and the
particularity of social agent’s ability to accept tasks is the main condition to politics. Whenever certain particularity is able to lead the struggle against a regime, it can be considered a
‘common’ or ‘harsh’ crime because only the regime can have the power to do that. Laclau
formulated hegemonic relations as: ‘unevenness of power is constitutive of it’ (Laclau, 2000,
p. 141).
Laclau took democracy as an example by referring to Claude Lefort where democracy
assumed power as an empty place and is not predetermined by the structure of enforcer of
power that tries to occupy that empty place. In order to achieve democracy, the particular
power that occupies the empty room is needed, but not to be identified by it, which means:
democracy can only exist if the gap between universality and particularity is never bridged,
but has been reproduced. Laclau then emphasised that democracy can only be possible in a
hegemonic field.
In Laclau’s opinion, a hegemonic operation can only be possible as long as it never achieves
what it tries to achieve, that is, a total unification of universality from communitarian space
and the power that shapes universal moments. If total adhesion is made possible, then the
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universality will find its absolute body, and there will be no possible hegemonic variation anymore. However, according to Laclau, it also means that democracy is the only true political
society because it is the only room where the gap between universality of power and substantive power, which are contingent in nature, can occupy. Laclau defined hegemonic relations as:
[…] there is only hegemony if the dichotomy universality/particularity is constantly
renegotiated: universality only exists incarnating—and subverting—particularity
but, conversely, no particularity can become political without being the locus of
universalizing effects. Democracy, as a result, as the institutionalisation of this space
of renegotiation, is the only truly political regime (Laclau, 2000, p. 142).
In his early writings, Laclau developed and focused his attention strongly on the idea of
the political. This can be seen in the introduction of the second edition of Hegemony and
Socialist Strategy, which he wrote together with Chantal Mouffe, where he clearly stated
that the theoretical perspective he developed in that book could contribute to restore the
political as the centre point or centrality (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001). A number of Laclau’s
earlier works about the political are also related to this theme, especially his writing about
a debate between Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband, as well as his first important
book on politics and ideology (Laclau, 1975 and Laclau, 1987). In Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy, Laclau emphasised that the political identity is not something given, instead it is
something created and recreated through debates in public domain. The political does not
merely draw conclusions from the existing interests, but plays an important role in creating political subjectivity. At this point, there is a significant divergence between Laclau
and Habermas and the others, where Laclau stated, ‘the central role that the notion of
antagonism plays in our work forecloses any possibility of a final reconciliation, of any
kind of rational consensus. Conflicts and division, in our view, are neither disturbances
that unfortunately cannot be eliminated, nor empirical impediments that render impossible
the full realization of a harmony’ (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, p. xvii). According to Laclau,
we cannot achieve such harmony because ‘we will never be able to leave our particularities
completely aside in order to act in accordance with our rational self ’. Laclau then suggested that ‘without conflict and division, a pluralist democratic politics would be impossible’ (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, p. xvii). In the context of ‘divergence’, it is important to
add that in the ‘wars of interpretation’ it is needed to include the relation with struggle
against racial hierarchy and patriarchy, and therefore, feminist and post-colonial perspectives become very important.
In this context, Laclau thought that one of the main principles in his work is to underline the need to create the chains of equivalences among various democratic movements in
fighting against different types of subordination. For example, the struggle against sexism,
racism and environmental movement must be articulated together with labour movement in
every hegemonic project of the left-wing movement. Laclau drew a conclusion that the need
to create a chain of equivalences among the various democratic struggles against different
forms of subordination is to create a frontier and to define adversaries. The term ‘adversary’
is a deeper idea elaborated and developed by Chantal Mouffe to describe the idea of radical plural democracy she coined together with Laclau. According to Mouffe, adversary is
understood as the similarity and loyalty to the principles and values of democracy: ‘freedom
and equality for all’. However, a different opinion in the interpretation of those principles
and values exists. The adversaries fight with each other because they want their interpretations on those principles and values to be hegemonic, but they do not criticise the legitimacy
of their adversaries on their rights to fight and win their position (Mouffe, 2013, p. 7). On
another part, Mouffe also stated that ‘… an “adversary”, which refers to somebody whose
ideas we combat but whose right to defend those ideas we do not put into question’ (Mouffe,
2000, pp. 101–102). However, it is important to consider the form of society they want to
build, and in his analysis, Laclau emphasised that ‘this requires from the Left an adequate
grasp of the nature of power relations, and the dynamics of politics’ (Laclau and Mouffe,
2001, p. xix).
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1.2
Politics as the ontological primacy
In his theoretical approach, Laclau attempted to restore the subject omitted by the poststructuralism in his analysis and political theory. Laclau’s conception of subject is inseparable from politics, as Laclau stated:
‘Politics’ is an ontological category: there is politics because there is subversion and
dislocation of the social. This means that any subject is, by definition, political.
Apart from the subject, in this radical sense, there are only subject positions in the
general field of objectivity. But the subject, as understood in this text, cannot be
objective: it is only constituted on the structure’s uneven edges. Thus, to explore the
field of the subject’s emergence in contemporary societies is to examine the marks
that contingency has inscribed on the apparently objective structures of the societies
we live in (Laclau 1990, p. 61).
The subject in Laclau’s view arises from a movement that subverts symbolic order. Thus,
the subject is a distance between the undecidability from structure and decisions. Laclau
defined undecidability as a destructibility of social area where the political logic was previously questioned by an occurrence of dislocation. Therefore, according to Laclau, undecidability: ‘should be literally taken as that condition from which no course of action necessarily
follows. This means that we should not make it the necessary source of any concrete decision
in ethical or the political sphere’ (Laclau, 199b, p. 78).
The subject can arise from a dislocated structure, so this dislocated structure forms the
subject outside itself. In his conception of subject, Laclau observed that in hegemonic practice, the rise of political subjects is inevitable, whose task is to create structures in various new
forms. Laclau refused the essentialist approach on subjectivity that sees individual merely
pursues interests maximally, or the agents’ role is reduced to reproducing structures in the
making. According to Laclau, whenever human is formed as subjects in different discursive
structures, those structures inherently become contingent and pliable. Thus, when undecidability from a subject can be seen in dislocated situations, where structure cannot function
anymore to give identity, the subject becomes the political agent in a stronger term, as they
identify themselves with new discursive objects and act to reorganise various structures.
The concept of the political in Laclau is related to the ideas on the meaning and differences
in popular and democratic subjects’ positions. Through his observations, Laclau gave an
example about the important thing in terms of ‘differential characteristic may be established
between advanced industrial society and the periphery of the capitalist world’, and he illustrated that in the developed industrial society the number of antagonistic points enable the
formation of several democratic movements. However, such diverse movements tend not to
constitute the ‘people’, meaning that those movements tend ‘not to enter into equivalences
with one another and to divide the political space into two antagonistic fields’. The difference
between the Third World society, where ‘imperialist exploitation and the predominance of
brutal and centralised forms of domination tend to form the beginning to endow the popular
struggle with a centre, with a single and clearly defined enemy’, and here is that ‘the division
of the political space into two fields is present from the outset, but the diversity of democratic
struggle is more reduced’. The term ‘popular subject position’ is used ‘to refer to the position
that is constituted through dividing the political space into two antagonistic camps’, whereas
the term ‘democratic subject position’ refers to ‘the locus of a clearly delimited antagonism
limit, which does not divide the society in that way’ (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001, p. 131).
Laclau further disagreed with the opinion saying that democracy is an attempt to manage
the political space around the society’s communality by bringing unity to the people. On the
contrary, it can also be seen that democracy is understood as an expansion from the logic
of equivalence to a wider domain in social relations, such as socio-economic equality, racial
equality, gender equality, special equality and so on, which in this regard democracy also
means respect toward differences. Therefore, as Laclau once stated, ‘ambiguity of democracy’ can be formulated as ‘the need of unity but only when it is thought by differences’
(Laclau, 2001, p. 4).
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The concept of the political in Laclau’s idea is possibly influenced by Carl Schmitt’s notion,
which is written in his masterpiece The Concept of the Political published in 1932. However,
Laclau rarely mentioned or referred to Carl Schmitt in his works. Only in his article ‘On
‘Real’ and ‘Absolute’ Enemies’, Laclau reviewed Schmitt’s work Theory of Partisan. Even in
the book Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Schmitt’s name is never mentioned or referred to.
It was Lucio Colleti’s social antagonism that Laclau referred to. Schmitt influenced Chantal
Mouffe’s thought more, who set down the notion of plural and radical democracy in antagonism/agonism relation or friend–enemy/friend–adversary on ideas developed by Carl Schmitt. According to Schmitt, the political should be put in special criteria, which ensure the
autonomy of the political against other social domains, where Schmitt put the uniqueness of
the political in a distinction between friends and enemies. It means that the political should
always be about antagonism, the creation of the friend–enemy relation or the association–
disassociation relation. Schmitt described that: ‘The distinction of friend and enemy denotes
the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or disassociation’
(Schmitt, 1996, p. 26). As stated by Schmitt:
The political is the most intense and extreme antagonism, and every concrete antagonism becomes that much more political the closer it approaches the most extreme
point, that of the friend-enemy grouping (Schmitt, 1996, p. 29).
From the Schmitt’s concept, Laclau (also Chantal Mouffe) started the idea of the political in his thinking. Schmitt differentiated ‘the political’ from ‘politics’ exactly on the point
of antagonism, on the formation of friend–enemy relation. In Schmitt’s opinion, if friend–
enemy relations cannot be built anymore, then precisely at that point, the politics in a radical
meaning disappears automatically, and what is left is how to keep things in order and free
from rivalry, conspiracy or insurgency (Marchart, 2007, p. 43).
In fact, the distinction between ‘the political’ and ‘politics’ is never explicitly explained by
Laclau. The explanation on this appears mostly in the works of Mouffe, who was Laclau’s
intellectual partner almost for all his life. Through Mouffe, the explanation about the difference of both concepts becomes clear. Mouffe explained that:
By the ‘political’, I refer to the dimension of antagonism that is inherent in human
relations, antagonism that can take many forms and emerge in different types of
social relations. ‘Politics’, on the other side, indicates the ensemble of practices,
discourses and institutions which seek to establish a certain order and organize
human coexistence in conditions that are always potentially conflictual because
they are affected by the dimension of ‘the political’. I consider that it is only when
we acknowledge the dimension of ‘the political’ and understand that ‘politics’ consists in domesticating hostility and in trying to defuse the potential antagonism that
exists in human relations, that we can pose what I take to be the central question for
democratic politics (Mouffe, 2000, p. 101).
In another part, Mouffe added that, in order to differentiate ‘politics’ from ‘the political’,
as far as she is concerned, she further indicated the difference between the political science
approach, which limits itself within empirical domain, and the political theory approach,
‘which is the domain of philosophers, who enquire not about facts of “politics” but about the
essence of “the political”, or what Mouffe borrows from Heidegger’s vocabulary, which says
that politics refers to the “ontic” level while “the political” is to do with the “ontological”’
(Mouffe, 2005, p. 8).
With such understanding about it, the political will always relate to the dimension of
antagonism and conflictual. Dimension of antagonism in Laclau is part of the emancipation effort through democratic revolution. According to Laclau, in the classical idea about
emancipation, humans consider emancipation and power as two antagonistic conceptions.
This idea deals with the following paradox: the limit of the word freedom—or power—is also
a thing that makes freedom possible. Similar to the other two previous concepts where one
condition which enables something to happen is also the impossibility on that condition, in
explaining an undecidable domain, Laclau stated, ‘I am exercising a power which is, however,
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the very condition of my freedom’ (Laclau, 1996a, p. 52). Furthermore, the relation between
power and freedom is a permanent renegotiation and a shift from a contradictory situation.
According to Laclau, the political can be understood only through the logic of populism.
Laclau viewed populism as the most appropriate way to understand the ontological formation of the political (Laclau, 2005, p. 67). Laclau’s view originated from his dissatisfaction
with the sociological perspective, which considers a group only as a base unit of its social
existence before its political construction or incorporates the political subject and political
construction into the functionalist or structuralist paradigm in the social. Laclau understood
populism as part of democracy, which is an attempt to manage the political space around the
people’s communality to bring unity to ‘the people’.
Laclau built a populism theory, which focuses on the chains of equivalent creation between
various political and social demands that scatter, where political demand requires the result
of certain meanings of representation (i.e. floating signifier and empty signifier), which can
be presented as subjective identification points. In such a conception, populism is not a specific ideology, but rather it materialises in a set of rhetorical demands, and according to
Laclau, rhetoric is constitutive in all political practices. Discourses and populist practices are
directly aimed at the political dimension of social relations (Howarth, 2015, p. 13). Therefore,
when the political refers to contestation and institution from different social relations, the
logic of populism catches the practices through the society, which is divided into opposing
groups in an endless struggle to reclaim the hegemony. Populist politics involve the formation
of collective agency—the people—by constituting a political frontier between ‘we’ and ‘they’
in a social formation.
2
CONCLUSION
According to Ernesto Laclau’s view, the ontological primacy of the political against the social
is based on the claim that all social relations throughout history are basically antagonistic in
nature and part of the political history. Laclau articulated the idea of the political in the totalitarian system, with its mask of liberal democracy, which constantly depoliticises all aspects
of life and treats all matters as only administrative, bureaucratic and technocratic issues.
Totalitarianism reduces ‘politics’ into merely ‘political interests’, which means that achieving
these interests is different and determined in advance and separated from its possible articulation among competing discourses,. According to this reasoning,, the characteristics of the
political domain, namely conflict, antagonism, power relations, forms of subordinations and
repression, disappear from the equation. According to Laclau, the political can be understood only through the logic of populism. He viewed populism as the best way to understand
the ontological formation of the political. Laclau’s view originated from the dissatisfaction
with the sociological perspective, which considers a group as the base unit of its social existence before its political construction or incorporates the political subject and political construction into the functionalist or structuralist paradigm in the social. Laclau understood
populism as part of democracy which is an attempt to manage political space around the
society’s communality to bring unity to ‘the people’. He observed the political through three
perspectives: psychoanalysis, rhetoric and politics (hegemony). Laclau concluded that the
formation of popular subjectivity can only be made possible based on the creation of an
empty signifier in a discursive way.
REFERENCES
Fink, B. (1995) The Lacanian subject: between language and Jouissance. New Jersey, Princeton University Press.
Howarth, D. (2015) Discourse, hegemony and populism: Ernesto Laclau’s political theory. In David
Howarth (ed.) Ernesto Laclau: Post-Marxism, Populism and Critique. London, Routledge.
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Laclau, E. & Chantal, M. (2001) Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics.
London, Verso.
Laclau, E. (1975) The specificity of the political: The Poulantzas-Miliband debate. Economy and Society, 4 (1) (February).
Laclau, E. (1987) Politics and ideology in Marxist theory: Capitalism-fascism-populism. London, Verso.
Laclau, E. (1990) New reflections on the revolution of our time. London, Verso.
Laclau, E. (1996a) Deconstruction, pragmatism, hegemony. In Chantal Mouffe (ed.) Deconstruction and
Pragmatism. London, Routledge.
Laclau, E. (1996b) Emancipation(s). London, Verso.
Laclau, E. (2000) Power and social communication. Ethical Perspective, 7 (2–3).
Laclau, E. (2001) Democracy and the question of power. Constellation, 8 (1).
Laclau, E. (2004) Glimpsing the future. in Oliver Marchart and Simon Critchley (eds.) Laclau: A Critical Reader. London, Routledge.
Laclau, E. (2005a) On populist reason. London, Verso.
Laclau, E. (2005b) On ‘real’ and ‘absolute’ enemies. The New Centennial Review 5 (1).
Marchart, O. (2007) Post-foundational political thought: Political difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and
Laclau. London: Routledge.
Mouffe, C. (2000) The democratic paradox. London, Verso.
Mouffe, C. (2005) On the political. London, Routledge.
Mouffe, C. (2013) Agonistics: Thinking the world politically. London, Verso.
Schmitt, C. (1996) The concept of the political. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Roles and contributions of participants in broadcast talk
M.K. Wardhani & B. Kushartanti
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: As a public discourse, an interview in a talk show cannot be simply perceived
as an interaction between the host and the guest. Both parties contribute towards the
conversation; however, the audience also has a role in it. The televised interview is purposefully designed to appeal to the target audience. Thus, all utterances produced by both the
interviewer and the interviewee are designed not only for each other, but also for the audience. It means that the audience is also considered as one of the participants making a certain
contribution to the conversation. This article aims at highlighting roles and contributions of
participants in an American talk show, Late Show with David Letterman. The researchers
focus on the conversation between David Letterman as the host of the show and John Oliver
as the guest. This study employs Conversation Analysis (CA) approach, applying Clark’s
(1994/1996) theory on participation roles. The conversation is transcribed using a certain
transcription convention. The findings of this study show the designs of participants in a
broadcast talk that can lead to further development of research on conversation in talk shows.
1
INTRODUCTION
Talks that occur in a talk show may bear a remarkable similarity to everyday conversation
in terms of the involvement of the speaker and the addressee. However, the talks in TV talk
shows cannot be merely seen as an exchange of information between the two parties. The
audience in the studio is the third party that also has a role in the talk since the conversation
is a public discourse.
According to Hutchby (2005), as a public discourse, talk shows involve the audience
along with the host and the guest. It means that the audience is acknowledged as one of
the participants contributing to the conversation. It is also stated that talk shows are public
discourse because the fact that they are broadcast makes them accessible to the audience
outside of the studio (Hutchby, 2005). This shows that the conversation in a talk show is
purposefully designed to appeal to “a wider audience which is not co-present, invisible,
and (usually) unheard” (Tolson, 2001). In other words, the conversation in a talk show is
developed by the host and the guest by taking the ‘existence’ of the audience into account.
Since the ‘existence’ of the audience counts quite much in talk shows, the audience can
be considered as one of the personnel in the conversation. Clark (1994, 1996) states that
the personnel of a conversation have participation roles. There are some roles which can
be categorized as participants and non-participants or over-hearers. Participants consist of
speakers, addressees, and side participants. Meanwhile, non-participants or over-hearers
include bystanders and eavesdroppers. In a conversation, the participants involved make
some contribution. They give signals to ensure that they have “the mutual belief that they
have understood well enough for current purposes” (Clark, 1996).
In this article, we aim to elucidate the roles and the contributions of those involved in the
conversation in a talk show. The talk show studied here is Late Show with David Letterman, an
American comedy talk show broadcast on 29th January 2015. We focus on the conversation
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between David Letterman as the host of the show and John Oliver, who was invited as the
guest to be interviewed. Here, we address two questions: (1) what role each participant in the
conversation has and (2) how their contribution to the conversation shows the design of the
relationship between participants in the conversation. The content of this article is partly
based on the Master’s thesis of the first author (Wardhani, 2016) entitled Triggers of Laughter in Late Show with David Letterman: an Analysis of Humour in Conversation.
1.1
Short profiles of David Letterman and John Oliver
David Letterman is known as a senior comedian and talk show host in the USA. He graduated in radio and television from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana (“Bio”). He began
hosting Late Show with David Letterman in 1993, and he retired in 2015. The last episode of
the show he hosted was aired on 20th May 2015. During his time with this show, Late Night
Show with David Letterman won six Emmy Awards for Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Program (“Late Show”).
Meanwhile, John Oliver is a British stand-up comedian who is popular not only in Britain,
but also in America. He is known as a comedian who likes to bring up political issues in his
performances. He began hosting Last Week Tonight, a talk show “presenting a satirical look
at the week in news, politics and current events” (“Biog”) in 2014. His appearance in this
show has been considered to make a real-life impact on the United States (Luckerson, 2015).
John Oliver has won several awards including Writers Guild Award and Emmy Award.
2
METHODS
This is a qualitative study in which we employ the Conversation Analysis (CA) approach
and apply Clark’s theory (1994, 1996) on participation roles and contributions. As mentioned earlier, the data of this research is the conversation between David Letterman and
John Oliver in Late Show with David Letterman that was broadcast on 29th January 2015.
We obtained the video of John Oliver’s interview with David Letterman from YouTube since
the one on the official site (http://www.cbs.com/shows/late_show/) was not available for some
regions including Indonesia. In order to make sure that the video contained the full interview,
we compared the content of the video to the summary of the interview on http://www.cbs.
com/shows/late_show/wahoo_gazette/.
After obtaining the video, we transcribed the interview using Discourse Transcription, a
transcription convention from Du Bois (2006). It is the revised version of Du Bois (1991).
We then divided the conversation into five segments: opening, topic of tasing (TS), topic of
childhood (CH), topic of Super Bowl (SB), and closing. Then, the sentences in each topic
were divided into some series of exchanges. The segment of TS consisted of 13 exchanges,
CH contained six exchanges, and SB had two exchanges.
After grouping the utterances, we did the analysis using Clark’s theory (1994, 1996). We
started by identifying the roles of those involved in the conversation. The purpose was to
find out how each partaker in the conversation in the talk show was positioned. Here, we
also tried to explain the relationship between partakers. It was done by analyzing their contributions to the conversation. This analysis would show how the speakers designed their
utterances to reach a certain purpose and what kind of interaction participants create in the
conversation.
3
ANALYSIS
As for the data, there are four partakers in the conversation that can be identified, namely
David Letterman (DL), John Oliver (JO), studio audience (SA), and television audience (TA).
They have different roles in the conversation. Based on Clark (1994), a conversation includes
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at least two participants whose participation roles can “change from one action to the next”.
These participants are the speaker and the addressee. In the data, DL and JO become the
speaker and the addressee interchangeably. Take the following example:
CH3
[…]
DL; And then you moved to a: home of the Beatles,
Liverpool?
JO; I never—I never lived there.
DL; Never lived there?
JO; Yeah.
[…]
When DL asks and then you moved to a home of the Beatles, Liverpool in (312)–(313), DL is
the speaker and JO is the addressee. However, when JO says I never lived there in (314), JO
becomes the speaker and DL is the addressee.
As the speaker and the addressee, both DL and JO are responsible for making each other
understand what they utter, and they have the rights to take part in the conversation and get
adequate signals, “any actions by which one person means something for another person”
(Clark, 1996), from their interlocutor. When DL and JO become speakers, they do not just
speak. They design their utterances in a way that can be understood by the addressee. When
DL and JO become the addressees, they not only listen to the speaker’s utterances, but also
take up the speaker’s signals, try to comprehend them, and prepare themselves to give evidence
that they understand what the speaker means. In other words, both participants make some
efforts to contribute to the conversation; they work together to make sure that both of them
believe that the signals they present have been understood well enough for current purposes.
Contributions to the conversation include presentation and acceptance phases that function in this way (Clark, 1996):
Presentation phase. A presents a signal s for B to understand. He assumes that, if B gives
evidence e or stronger, he can believe that B understands what he means by it.
Acceptance phase. B accepts A’s signal s by giving evidence e that she believes she understands what A means by it. She assumes that, once A registers e, he too will believe she
understands.
In the earlier example, DL and JO can reach the mutual belief that they understand each
other through the two phases. The utterances of DL and JO can be classified under those
two phases:
Presentation phase
DL; And then you moved to a: home of the Beatles,
Liverpool?
Acceptance phase
JO; I never—I never lived there.
DL; Never lived there?
JO; Yeah.
In the presentation phase, when DL asks JO his question in (312)–(313), DL designs his
utterance in a way that he believes JO can comprehend. He takes their common ground, the
mutual knowledge, into account. Since DL knows that both DL and JO are native English
speakers, and he knows that JO is from Britain, he assumes that JO must know who the
Beatles is and what Liverpool is. Thus, DL thinks that he has presented all JO needs for recognizing what he means, and he expects JO to understand it.
JO gives evidence of understanding by uttering I never, I never lived there in (314). This
utterance shows that JO really understands what DL means in (312)–(313). According to
Clark (1996), the reasons can be explained as the following:
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1. JO passes up the opportunity to ask for clarification. He thereby implies he believes he
understands what DL means.
2. JO initiates an answer as the next contribution. He thereby displays that he has construed
DL as having asked a question.
3. JO provides an appropriate answer. He thereby displays his construal of the content of
DL’s question.
Although JO has presented the evidence through (314), DL does not immediately accept it.
He may not be sure that JO never lived in Liverpool; thus, he confirms JO’s answer by asking
never lived there in (315). He gets the evidence of JO’s understanding of his utterance when
JO answers yeah in (316). Clark (1996), using Jefferson (1972)’s term, calls this question and
answer a side sequence, the device used by the two participants for resolving problems that
may appear in the acceptance phase.
The example above shows how two participants contribute to the conversation—how DL
and JO complete their signals and construal in the conversation. When there is a problem
hindering their understanding, they can take an action to clear it up. This indicates that the
speaker and the addressee build direct interaction in the conversation. Figure 1 below provides the illustration.
Figure 1 shows the design of the relationship between the speaker and the addressee in the
conversation in Late Show with David Letterman. When DL becomes the speaker, he directs
his utterance toward JO, presents some signals to make JO as the addressee understand what
he means, and expects JO to display his construal. When JO becomes the speaker, he also
does the same thing. It means that the two participants here can express things and respond
to each other immediately. In other words, they interact directly in the conversation.
Meanwhile, studio audience (SA) and television audience (TA) have different roles and designs.
The role of SA in the interview between DL and JO in Late Show with David Letterman is as a
bystander. Bystanders can access the speakers’ utterances (Clark, 1994), and they “are openly
present but not part of the conversation” (Clark, 1996). Here SA can access what DL and JO
utter since they are in the same studio as DL and JO. They are openly present—their presence is
fully recognized by the speakers, but they are considered non-participant or over-hearer because
they are not given an opportunity to speak in the conversation. Moreover, since strangers have a
higher possibility to be bystanders (Clark & Schaefer, 1992), SA can be categorized as bystanders.
We also view TA as bystanders because of two reasons. First, they have access to what
the speakers say through television. Second, although they are not present in the same place
as the speakers, the speakers are fully aware of their presence too. It happens because both
DL and JO know well that their conversation is purposefully broadcast; there will be some
audience who watch and listen to what they say. We do not categorize TA as eavesdroppers, for the characteristic of eavesdroppers does not match TA. Clark (1996) mentions that
“eavesdroppers are those who listen in without the speaker’s awareness”. Here the speakers
are completely aware that TA watch and listen to the conversation.
Figure 1.
The design of the relationship between speaker and addressee.
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DL and JO’s awareness of the existence of SA and TA can be viewed from the example
below:
TS1
[…]
(55)
(56)
(57)
(58)
(59)
(60)
(61)
(62)
[…]
TS3
(80)
(81)
(82)
(83)
(84)
(85)
(86)
(87)
(88)
(89)
(90)
(91)
(92)
[…]
DL; I was told [that:]
JO;
[Ya.]
DL; recently I believe you’re performing for troops at the USO function...
JO; Ya.
DL; that you: took a taser…
JO; Ya.
DL; to yourself.
JO; I did.
DL; Is this recent?
JO; This is—this is like a year ago.
I was in Afghanistan,
and the—so I was doing gigs for the troops,
and all you wanna do…
all you wanna do is make’em laugh.
DL; Mhm.
JO; And whatever..whatever it takes you wanna make’em laugh.
So I finished one gig,
and I walked off stage and this guy said,
<VOX > I really enjoyed that,
do you wanna tase yourself ?</VOX>
SA; @@@@@
When DL produces his utterances in (55), (57), (59), and (61), he directs them not only toward
JO as the addressee, but also toward SA and TA as bystanders at the same time because of
two different purposes. First, at the mention of you took a taser to yourself in (59) and (61),
DL shows his intention of asking JO about the tasing occurrence. He gives brief information
on it by saying you’re performing for troops at the USO function in (57) and you took a taser
to yourself in (59) and (61) to lead JO to tell his story about the tasing occurrence in detail.
Second, DL wants to present the initial background information of what he wants to talk
about with JO to SA and TA. He expects SA and TA to be able to follow and understand his
conversation with JO. Here, DL chooses an attitude of disclosure toward SA and TA. When
the speaker discloses his utterances, he designs his utterances in a way that over-hearers can
comprehend (Clark & Schaefer, 1992).
JO gives evidence that he understands what DL means through his two types of contribution. He makes continuing contribution, displaying his understanding by giving background acknowledgement (Clark, 1996), in the first acceptance phase which can be seen
in (56), (58), (60), and (62). When DL is talking, JO is giving acknowledgements like ya
in (56), (58), and (60) and I did in (62). With those acknowledgements, JO asserts that he
has understood DL’s utterances in (55), (57), (59), and (61). Next, he provides concluding
contribution, displaying his understanding by making his contribution “at the same level”
as the interlocutor’s contribution (Clark, 1996). The acceptance phase of DL’s presentation is in (55), (57), (59), and (61) includes utterances (82)–(85) and (87)–(91). What JO
utters in (82)–(85) and (87)–(91) is a story about the tasing occurrence since it contains the
background of place (I was in Afghanistan in (82)) and situation (I was doing gigs for the
troops in (83)) and also the sequence of events (I finished one gig in (88), I walked off stage
in (89)). JO’s utterances show that he has understood that DL wants him to tell his story
about the tasing occurrence.
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Figure 2.
The design of the relationship between speaker, addressee, and bystanders.
JO’s utterances can also show that he is aware of the presence of SA and TA, he directs his
utterances toward SA and TA, and he anticipates their response. He purposefully designs his
utterances to make SA and TA laugh. When he mentions all you wanna do is make’em laugh in
(85) and whatever it takes you wanna make’em laugh in (87), he actually indicates that his story
will be funny, for he mentions the word laugh two times. Then, when JO utters (89)–(91), he
expects SA and TA to grasp the context in (89)–(91) based on their understanding of the previous utterances and their background knowledge and understand the soldier’s request that
JO tases himself is for making JO feels the pain he felt and making him entertained due to
JO’s action. SA’s laughter in (92) becomes the evidence that they understand what JO means,
for SA present the response that JO anticipates.
JO can get the evidence that SA comprehend his utterances since he can see and hear SA’s
response immediately. However, he cannot see and hear TA’s reaction to (89)–(91). He cannot check whether TA gives the response he anticipates, for TA is not present in the same
place as he is. This makes SA and TA different, although they are all bystanders. Since SA
has the capacity that TA does not have as bystanders, we can call SA ‘first bystanders’ and
TA ‘second bystanders’. We coin these two terms as they are not available in Clark’s theory
on participation roles.
Although SA and TA have different capacity, they have the same type of interaction with
the speakers. The speakers interact indirectly with SA and TA. Their relationship can be
illustrated in Figure 2 below:
While speakers directly interact with their addressees, they have indirect interaction with
first bystanders and second bystanders. It means that when speakers produce their utterances and direct them toward their addressees, they also direct their utterances toward both
first bystanders and second bystanders. Through their utterances, they have certain goals
that they want to reach, such as giving adequate information to allow bystanders to follow
the conversation and making them produce some responses that they expect, like laughter.
Speakers can get immediate response only from the first bystanders; however, they can gauge
whether they succeed in making the second bystanders give the response they want by checking the response of the first bystanders.
4
CONCLUSION
This research illustrates how each participant in a conversation in a talk show is positioned.
We view audience, both studio audience and television audience, as bystanders with different
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capacity in contributing to the conversation. Television audience should be seen as bystanders
since a talk show is designed with the purpose of making people watch so that speakers are
fully aware of the presence of the audience, although they cannot directly see them. We feel
that it is necessary to conduct follow-up research on the roles of participants in a talk show.
Carrying out a study of other talk shows with different formats will provide varied results of
the roles of participants in conversations.
REFERENCES
Bio. http://www.biography.com/people/david-letterman-9380239. [Accessed on 28th February 2016].
Biog. http://www.iamjohnoliver.com/Late Show. [Accessed on 28th February 2016]. http://www.cbs.
com/shows/late_show/. [Accessed on 28th February 2016].
Clark, H.H. & Schaefer, E.F. (1992) Dealing with overhearers. In H.H. Carlson (Ed.), Arenas of
Language Use, 248–274. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
Clark, H.H. (1994) Discourse in production. In M.A. Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook of Psycholinguistics,
985–1021. California, Academic Press.
Clark, H.H. (1996) Using language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Du Bois, J.W. (2006) Transcription in action: Representing discourse. [Online]. Available from http://
www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/projects/transcription/representing. [Accessed on 19th January 2016].
Hutchby, I. (2005) Media talk: Conversation analysis and the study of broadcasting. Berkshire, Open
University Press.
Luckerson, V. (2015) How the ‘John Oliver Effect’ is having a real-life impact. Available from http://time.
com/3674807/john-oliver-net-neutrality-civil-forfeiture-miss-america/. [Accessed on 20th January
2016]
Tolson, A. (2001) Talking about talk: The academic debates. In: A. Tolson (Ed.), Television Talk Shows:
Discourse, Performance, Spectacle, 7–30. New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Wardhani, M.K. (2016) Pemicu Tawa dalam Gelar Wicara Late Show with David Letterman: Sebuah
Analisis Percakapan Humor. [Thesis]. Depok, FIB, Universitas Indonesia.
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Representing nation/homeland, gender, and religion
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Foreword by Melani Budianta
Nation-states towards the second decade of the 21st century face a world that is growingly
globalized – with the capitalist system entrenched – and also more interconnected, with the
internet, social media, waves of migration and the random spread of terrorism. Scholars have
discussed the contradictions of this global complexity which can engender an inward looking, tightening of national security and surveillance of borders (Sabanadze, 2010; Kuortti &
Dwivedi, eds., 2012).
This section addresses this issue of nation in flux, examining citizen’s sense of belonging in a permanent transit space, and discussing how identity politics, religion and gender
are implicated in this process. The papers, coming from the field of social and humanities,
are diverse not only in their methods and approaches, but also in the kinds of data they are
looking at. Discourse analysis, speech act, critical theories of hegemony and ideology, corpus
linguistics, philology, ethnography, historical analysis, are used to analyze manuscripts, epics,
rituals films, novels, magazine, speeches, blog writings, social media and also diaspora and
online communities. Different in their methodologies and disciplines, these papers share a
similar perspective that the texts, expressions, policies, teachings and praxis are all historically and socially constructed. Another common thread that binds these papers together is
the focus on representation of national identities or gendered and religious subjectivities in
a transnational context.
Nation in Transnational Connection
The first 13 papers in this section examine the representation of identities in relation to a
nation/homeland in transnational, colonial, pre-national or transnational contexts. Khusna’s
paper shows how the colonial heritage, that serves as a central focus of the National Museum
of Indonesia in Jakarta, is at present put in negotiation by the two flanking wings with a
more nationalistic orientation. This paper underlines the presence of the looming colonial
past in the official representation of the cultural identity of a Nation-state. Sunarti’s paper
on “Javanese Malay identities in Malay Peninsula takes us back to the pre-national era of
the Malay peninsula in the 18th and 19th century to see the porous cultural borders between
the Malay and the Javanese world. Her paper illustrates how the Javanese-Malay diaspora
culture contributes to the construction of the heritage of the Malay Peninsula – that is now
the territory of a nation-state called Malaysia. Sunarti’s paper serves as a contrasting historical backdrop to two other papers. Limanta and Kurnia’s, and Kurnia’s, which examines the
filmic representation and condition of the Malaysia-Indonesia borderlands in the 21st century. Both papers address the social gap between the developed Malaysian side of the border
and the less governed side of the Indonesian side. While the film discussed by the first paper
show the multiple identities and loyalties of the people inhabiting the Indonesian border
zone, the second paper discusses management problems of a community radio in facilitating
the need of the people isolated in the periphery of the Indonesian nation state.
The way people in the border zone negotiate their national loyalty is comparable to the
way diaspora communities juggle their attachment to their old/new or in between homeland.
Widhiasti and Budianta’s discussion of the works of second and third Turkish German film
makers, and Setyaningrum and Hapsarani’s paper on the first-generation Indian-American
film maker adaptation of the second-generation Indian American novelist discuss the way
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cultural homeland is constructed. While these papers discuss the perspective of the immigrants, Baga and Budianta’s paper on the contested representation of the Dutch American in the history of New York – like Sunarti’s on the Javanese in Malaysia – reminds us
of the forgotten, marginalized or misrepresented Other in the mainstream historical writing. The interaction between the Others within a nation state, or the cross-cultural mingling
and encounters of diverse ethnic groups – not free from power relations – is the subject of
Triadnyani’s paper.
The papers above clearly show that the nation cannot be isolated from its transnational
network that is colored by power relations shown in capital competition, political influence
and cultural politics. Three papers highlight the connection of the transnational influence
on identity: Ihwany and Budiman’s paper on funding politics of European film festivals,
Hadi and Budiman’s analysis on China’s cultural diplomacy through the China Radio International, and Qian and M. Budiman’s discussion on the way Chinese Indonesian position
themselves through Mandarin education. The 21st century is also marked by the heyday of
the East Asian transnational popular culture – a realm where popular culture industries and
youth culture reign – almost independently within the nation-state. Two papers, Tambunan’s
and Arisun, and M. Budiman’s, illustrate how Indonesians insert their cultural perspectives
in appropriating East Asian popular culture.
Gendered Dimension
What occurs in the transnational flow of popular culture and social media is not merely
locally negotiated appropriation of the global, but also the reconstruction of gendered subjectivities. Three papers in this section, Wuri and Tambunan’s positive body image activism in
Instagram, Azizi and Tambunan’s female football fans’ social media use, and Angajaya and
Tambunan’s analysis of video games, show how consumers creatively and critically deconstruct dominant gender ideology – albeit not free from ambivalence.
Some papers in this section problematize the way the nation state, often acts as the embodiment of Patriarchy through militaristic oppression and violence. From the department of
criminology, Sari uses Nussbaum’s standard of central capabilities to measure the data of
violence against women in Indonesia, while Agustina and Suprihatin reflect on Afghan’s
women’s repression through a novel. Sukham and Hapsarani’s work on Catherine Liem’s
novel argues that memory of oppression offers a double-bind function of both liberating and
constraining the female subjects. Albeit women’s susceptibility to be victimized by Patriarchy, Akun and Budiman point out that women could also participate in the corrupt system
around them. Further problematizing the dichotomy is Hapsarani and Budianta’s paper on
Hillary Clinton’s memoir, with its representation strategies to negotiate with the dominant
gender ideology of the U.S. politics.
The papers on gender also provides a diachronic, historical dimension to show that gender
construction is not static, but develops through time, and in terms of space, contextually
situated. Five papers particularly deal with the development and local construction of gender
through magazines, manuscripts and ritual in local languages (Sundanese magazine, Javanese
manuscript, Butonese ritual). The methodology of corpus linguistics serves as a handy tool
to provide statistical and collocation mapping of various words denoting women – with different connotations (Yuliawati and Hidayat, Alkautsar and Suhardijanto, Bagasworo and
Suhardijanto). Philological method is employed in showing the different gendered versions
of one Javanese manuscript (Sudarmadji and Prasetiyo), while ethnographic account gives
a vivid rendering of the gendered dimension of a Butonese ritual (Ibrahim and Budiman).
These papers, compared to the previous discussion of patriarchy, offers a hopeful view,
that linguistic, philological and ethnographical evidences show a diachronic progress towards
a more emancipative concept of women. Papers by Agus and Budianta and Hodijah and
Suprihatin show how women – within the religious space – and in transnational journeys, can
creatively and critically engage with their existing cultural resources and the cross-cultural
knowledge gained from their travels to empower themselves.
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Religion: Deconstructing fundamentalist radicalism
The final part of this section deals with the issue of religion as a transnational force that has
played its role even before the nation-state came into being, and that still exerts significant
influence upon the lives of the people in the 21st century. Ten papers in this section pay
attention specifically to the way diverse Islamic ideologies are socialized through popular
religious self-help book (Altiria and Muta’ali), film adaptation of a novel to film (Jinanto
and Tjahjani), German on line mass media (Liyanti), and education (Wibowo and Naupal).
Using speech act theory and discourse analysis, some papers read speeches to show main
ideas in asserting peace and justice (Lu’lu and Wastono), or deconstruct the Wahabi moral
teaching to critique its tendency towards fundamentalism and radicalism (Mardliyati and
Naupal, Naupal).
Philological reading of an Islamic classical text from 18th century copied and kept in
Ambon shows a local interception in “de-Shiazation” and influence of Ambonese language.
At the same time, the text functions as a bond for heterogenous Muslim population in the
area (Karmadibrata). Liyanti examines articles written by three German Muslims. Using
Van Dijk’s ideological square, she finds shifting positions of the writer in the Us-Them relations between German and Muslim migrants. Syarif and Machmudi’s paper examine the
biography of an influential Sufi kiyai (religious leader) in Banten, who was detained by the
New Order regime in 1977 for standing up against the coercion for Islamic leaders to vote for
Golkar, then the state sanctioned party.
The above papers construct, first of all, not a monolithic ideology of Islamism, but a plural
Islamic expressions and ideologies. Secondly, Islam as a transnational religion complicates the
internal dynamics of the nation state, between different Islamic tarekats or mazhabs, between
the liberal and the more conservative Moslem, between the host society and the Islamic
migrants in Europe, between the government and religious leaders and groups, between the
locally grown Moslem groups and the transnational fundamentalism. Third, these positions
cannot be reduced in a dichotomy. Instead, there are shifting positions, border or mediating
bridges between different orientations, or third spaces that mix or go beyond the differences.
With all their different topics and themes, these papers agree on one thing: the importance of
socializing a more tolerant religious attitude that embraces difference and dialogue.
Compiled together, the papers in this section engage with the dynamics of nation states in
transnational era, when capital, information, popular culture, social media messages, migrating people, religious ideologies, activism, flow seamlessly across borders. During the time
where nation states reacted to global terrorism by looking inward and building walls against
the unwanted Others, these papers pose their humanistic critique. Using various methodologies and approaches, they deconstruct dichotomies, unfold complexities, unpack ideologies, show the way texts, citizens, praxis discursively negotiate and continuously transform
identities and positions. Coming from the disciplines of social and humanities, the papers all
point at the central role of the media – in various forms and genres – to construct and shape
realities. At the same time, the papers also show the contingency of such representation to
multidimensional forces of capital and politics. As conference papers, the questions that the
papers pose are still open to further inquiry. This proceeding, therefore, serves as an invitation to future scholarship.
Melani Budianta
Universitas Indonesia
References
Kuorrti, J. & Dwivedi, O.P. (2012) Changing World Changing Nations: The Concept of Nation in Transnational Era. Jaipur, Rawat Publications.
Sabanadze, N (2010) Globalization and Nationalism, The Cases of Georgia and Basque Countries.
Budapest, Central European University Press.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Beyond the collections: Identity construction at the National
Museum of Indonesia
M.K. Rizqika
Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The National Museum of Indonesia is one of the products from the long
history of the Dutch colonial ruling in the Indonesian archipelago. This is the first and biggest museum established in 1778 by the Dutch East Indies government in Indonesia. Based
on the collections, the museum was initially set out to educate the local people in the context
of colonial history. The colonial government’s practice of acquiring objects reflects the colonization of the local people. Following the independence of Indonesia in 1945, the museum
changed its discourse. The postcolonial reinterpretation of imperial history affected and
changed curatorial practices in the museum. Through museums, Indonesia can construct a
new identity that is free from the shadow of the colonial government. Today, the museum is
changing and focusing on how to represent the cultural diversity of Indonesia, which is an
enriching and the most important element in showing the new identity of Indonesia. Museums can connect the past and the present for a better future. This article aims to address the
underlying and interrelated aspects that bring all of these elements to reveal the complexity
of today’s identity.
1
INTRODUCTION
Postcolonial studies challenge the outdated view about colonies (Eastern world), which is full
of stigma, biased, and narrow. In Indonesia, a nation which was formerly a Dutch colony,
traces of colonialism can still be found. One of them is the National Museum of Indonesia.
This article is aimed at comparing two permanent exhibition rooms in the National Museum
of Indonesia, namely the Room of Historical Relics in Building A (old building) and the
Room of Gold Ethnography Repertoire in Building B (new building), from the viewpoint of
the postcolonial theory. The exhibition’s arrangements of both rooms are compared to show
how the Indonesian Government strives to liberate itself from the identity as a former colony
and how it has started to build its own identity. A qualitative approach is used in writing this
article. In order to obtain data for this article, the author conducted direct observation in the
Room of Historical Relics in Building A and the Room of Gold Ethnography Repertoire in
Building B of the National Museum. The author also conducted bibliographical studies and
unstructured interviews with several museum staff. The data were enriched by the author’s
own experience as a curator in the National Museum of Indonesia.
1.1
Museum and construction
Etymologically, the word “colony” originates from the Latin word colonia, meaning a land
for cultivation or habitat (Sutrisno and Putranto, 2008). Loomba (2003) described that originally the term colony referred to the Romans who lived outside their country, but were still
registered as citizens of Rome and related to their homeland (Lubis, 2015, p. 127). Afterward,
the term developed, and it was associated to the concept of power and conquest, that is, the
settlers who wished to conquer and dominate the colonies. This incited problems, such as
oppression and control of human and natural resources. Said (1993) indicated that this view
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motivated the Western people to dominate distant Eastern countries. They considered the
natives of the colonies as barbaric and primitive; thus, they had to be civilized according
to the Western culture. This view was legitimized in several ways by Western academics, for
example, by producing numerous writings about Eastern world and by establishing museums
to fortify the Western power over the colony.
In this regard, Bouquet (2012) described that several ethnographic museums started to
be founded in the 19th century in Europe. One of them was the Royal Danish Ethnographic
Museum, established in 1825. Collecting unique objects from distant colonized countries was
a prestigious matter among European elites. The collections were exhibited and interpreted
in the national context of European countries. Most of them were daily appliances from
Asia, Africa, Australia, and America. They represented the superior values of the Western
culture over the colony’s culture.
Afterward, the natives actively fought against the colonists. Said (1993) wrote that physical confrontations broke out in the 19th century in countries such as Indonesia and Algeria,
which resulted in their independence. Much effort was also made in defending the national
culture and reinforcing the national identity. Such situations were the focus of postcolonial
academicians. Lubis (2015) divided the postcolonial concept into two main aspects. The first
aspect regards the postcolonial as a period after the colonial era (colonialization). One of the
important accounts during this period was the introduction of cultural elements or the system
by the colonists to be imitated or applied as new elements by the natives. The postcolonial
is a study about the effects of colonialism after the colonial period. In addition, new forms
of colonialism practices were studied, for example, the colonization of minority groups by
dominant groups. Academicians of this theory include Frantz Fanon and Gayatri C. Spivak.
The second aspect of postcolonial theory is considered as the continuation of the discussion on the previous aspect. Postcolonialism is a form of confrontation against the domination of colonists’ thought by the Western world over colony culture. This study criticizes
the inequality of Western-dominated knowledge, social, and cultural matters—Western
hegemony—resulting in a bias in viewing the Eastern or colony culture, particularly in early
modern centuries. Edward Said is one of the figures who avidly expressed his view about the
conspiracy of colonists’ or orientalists’ power and knowledge over the Eastern world.
With regard to identity in the present time, Maunati (2004) highlighted that the concept
of identity and identity itself are viewed as the result of dynamic interaction between context
(history) and construction. Identity might change in different time and space. Identity is continuously formed and transformed, which is related to how it is represented or highlighted in
the surrounding cultural system. With regard to nationality, Woolf (1996) wrote that national
identity is an abstract concept, which combines individual sense with a socio-political unit
(Graham, Ashworth, Tunbridge, 2005).
It is very interesting to relate the arrangement of the exhibition in the National Museum
of Indonesia to Said’s thoughts about orientalism, as indicated by King (2001), which are
related to three phenomena (Lubis, 2015, p. 139). First, an orientalist taught, wrote, and
examined the Eastern world. An orientalist can be an anthropologist, archaeologist, historian, philologist, or anyone from other disciplines. In its early period, members of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen (the pioneer of the National Museum
of Indonesia) were the elites from diverse professions, such as bureaucrats, anthropologists,
historians, and missionaries, who were interested in studying cultures in various parts of the
Dutch East Indies.
Second, orientalism refers to the Western and Eastern thoughts, which are based on different ontology and epistemology. Therefore, articles on research results or expedition reports
written by members of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen (hereinafter referred to as BG) were said to be bipolar in nature and were divided into two perspectives, namely Eastern and Western. Third, orientalism can be seen as a legal institution,
which was established to conquer the East; to have interest, power, and authority to make
representations about the East; to justify the view about the East; and to describe, teach,
publicize, position, and master it. BG was the institution to facilitate the various interests of
the orientalists in the past.
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Pearce (1994) indicated that the collections in a museum are the results of the process
of collecting. There is always a relationship between collections and the ideas that museum
administrators want to convey, as Impey and Macgregor (1985) pointed out “... the nature
of the collections themselves and the reasons and the more obscure psychological or social reasons” (Pearce, 1994, p. 194). The collections are bound with various elements in the history
of their former owners and in how they are acquired by the museum. Pearce (1994) wrote
that a curator must comprehend aspects of history and the nature of the collections, as well
as their background information, in order to have better assumptions about the value and
knowledge inherent in them. The collections have their own initial contexts, and the museum
can provide new contexts to them. Mullen (1994) explained that museums play a critical role
in constructing cultural knowledge. He wrote:
“That role needs not be confined to preserving and disseminating established, legitimated cultural knowledge; it can also be one of the facilitation for the social construction of a broad range of cultural knowledge, and so contribute to the cultural
empowerment of a broad range of people.”
1.2 National Museum of Indonesia from time to time
Since its establishment on 24 April 1778, Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen or the Batavia Society for Arts and Sciences started to gather collections, which
were mostly donations from its members. The collections are full of historical values. They
were also gathered from scientific and military expeditions, religious missions, and purchases
(Soebadio, 1985; Hardiati, 2005). The members of the Society were categorized into four
groups, namely administrative officers (pamong praja), church clergymen (Bible missionaries), military officers, and academicians (Jonge, 2005).
Initially, the Society occupied a building owned by J.C.M. Radermacher in Kalibesar
Street, Oud Batavia. Later, during the British administration in Java (1811–1868),
Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles provided a building (Societet de Harmonie) for this institution, located on Majapahit 3 Street (currently the State Secretariat/Sekretariat Negara
building). In 1862, the construction of the museum building in Koningsplain West Street,
currently Medan Merdeka Barat Street, began. The museum was opened for public in 1968
(Rufaedah et al., 2006).
A change in the museum administration also brought a change in the name of the institution. In 1933, the Society was awarded the title “koninklijk” (royal); thus, its name was
changed to Koninklijk Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen. Then, on 26
January 1950, the name of the Society was changed to Lembaga Kebudayaan Indonesia (the
Cultural Institute of Indonesia). On 17 September 1962, Lembaga Kebudayaan Indonesia
consigned the museum to the Indonesian Government and thus its name was changed to
Museum Pusat (the Central Museum). The last change of the name to Museum Nasional (the
National Museum) occurred on 28 May 1979 (Rufaedah et al., 2006).
The National Museum consists of two main exhibition buildings: Building A and Building B. The construction of Building A began in 1862. Documentation photos of the building
show that its exhibition pattern did not undergo crucial changes, for example, in the ethnography room and the rotunda. The collections were arranged by applying quite an unclear
approach, which is based on regional classification (ethnographic), chronological classification (prehistoric, archeologic, historic), material classification (stone, bronze, gold, terracotta, ceramics), and scientific discipline (numismatics, geography). The collections were
placed systematically similar to what has been applied since the colonial era. Substantially,
they did not experience much change although the textile and ceramics rooms were renovated
several times. Meanwhile, in Building B, the collections are exhibited thematically based on
the concept of universal elements of culture. The purpose of this type of arrangement is to
portray the history and diversity of the nation’s culture (Museum Nasional Indonesia, 2013).
This arrangement will also be applied in Building C, which, at the time of the writing, is
under construction.
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1.3
Western domination in the room of historical relics
The Room of Historical Relics is located in Building A, which was constructed in 1930.
The architecture of the building is strongly dominated by the European Neoclassicism style
with a mixed touch of Dutch and Greek. In the National Museum building, the style was
materialized in the cylindrical pillars (in the front part of the building), cascading roofs, large
windows, and white-painted walls to portray grandiosity (Fahnoor & Furihito, 2007). The
position of the Room of Historical Relics is very strategic, and its interior design appears to
be the most exceptional one compared to other rooms. An atmosphere of colonialism is evident in the front part of the room. Its door together with the frame has an interesting history
regarding colonialism because parts of this interior were formerly parts of Toko Merah (Red
Store). Entering the room, elements of Western domination are more noticeable. The room’s
floors have a chessboard-like pattern, but the colors are black and dark red.
Toko Merah was present during the heyday of old Batavia on the banks of the Muara
Ciliwung River, which was precisely located at Kali Besar Street No. 11, West Jakarta. The
building was once used as the residence of the VOC Governor General, Baron van Imhoff
(1705–1751). It also underwent several transfers of ownerships, ranging from Phillippine
Theodore Mossel (the son of Governor General Mossel), Governor General Petrus Albertus
van der Parra, and Renier de Klerk to Nicolaas Hartingh and many others. During 1813–
1851, there had been some changes of the building ownerships before it was later owned by
Oey Liauw Kong who turned it into a taka (toko/store); thus, there came the popular term
“Taka Merah” (Toko Merah, 2015).
In 1898, a retired member of KNIL who was also a member of BG called H. D. H. Bosboon initiated the relocation of several interior components of Toko Merah to the museum.
It was an effort to protect and preserve the building with the characteristic of the era. It also
served as an example of the grandeur residential style of the elites. The components included
doors, windowsills, ceilings, window panes, the balcony, and the stairway (Hardiarti et al.,
2014). In the museum, the interior components were placed in a compagnie kammer (Toko
Merah, 2015). Currently, the room functions as the Room of Historical Relics, at the Auditorium of Building A, which was formerly the Numismatic Room.
During the BG era, the room was used as the director’s room. Thus, it is not surprising
that its interior architecture was made meticulously, by paying special attention to the artistic
aspect and displaying the domination of the Dutch East Indies Government in the past. It
can also be perceived that they had the legitimacy to present symbols of Dutch glory in its
colonies. The interior architecture and furniture in this room displayed the domination of
the colonist government. This is the grandiosity of the Western-styled building displayed
without any regard to elements of Indonesia and its cultures.
All collections exhibited in the room were material cultures made by the colonists. This
is allegedly to confirm that the specially designed room was only for goods produced by the
Western culture, which were considered special. The collections were related to the arrival of
other Western countries, such as Portugal and England. For example, there is a half-body
bust of Raffles on the right side of the entrance. England dominated Java in 1811–1816, when
Sir Stamford Raffles took over the leadership of the society. Other collections are the two
padrao (inscription related to the arrival of the Portuguese), exhibited on the left side of the
entrance, a cannon, a display cabinet, and a banquet table.
The arrangement of the exhibition in this room is collection-oriented, without displaying
the context of the collection. For years, the exhibition’s arrangement in Building A, including the one in the Room of Historical Relics, has not experienced any change (Hardiati et al.,
2014). One of the examples is a text on collection label of Padrao Lonthoir, which reads as
follows:
“This padrao was the legacy of the Portuguese as seen from the writings which can
still be vaguely read, although they have faded. In 1705, someone named Jan Van de
Broke inaugurated the establishment. Jan Van de Broke was appointed by the Dutch
government to be in charge of the garden.”
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The above narration highlights the existence of the Portuguese and neglects the present
context of Indonesia. The exhibition’s arrangement of the room shows that the present
museum administrators cannot fully liberate themselves from the domination of the Dutch
who administered the museum in the earlier period.
1.4 From Nusantara to Indonesia
The second permanent exhibition room analyzed in this study is the Room of Gold Ethnography Repertoire located on the fourth floor of Building B, which was constructed in 2006.
Physically, the appearance of the building is different from that of Building A. The exhibition
room can only be accessed by visitors through two available elevators. This is different from
the rooms on the second and third floors, which can be accessed using both the elevator and
the escalator. This is due to stricter security procedures applied to the Room of Gold Ethnography Repertoire. The interior design of this room looks more modern. Large vitrines are
attached on every wall of the room. Some unattached vitrines are placed in several corners.
A roomy and spacious impression is present when entering the room. The various shining
exquisite gold objects can instantly amaze the visitors.
The gold collections exhibited in the room are classified into repertoire groups because
they are highly valued, particularly in terms of material, shape, and function. The collections
of gold ethnography repertoire originated from the 17th century to the 20th century. Most of
them are objects originating from monarchs or sultanates, and some others are ethnographic
objects related to the identity of an ethnic group. Royalty regalia objects are symbols of
grandeur and social status of the king or ruler, while also possessing outstanding artistic values. Some distinguished collections in the room include the Mahkota Banten, Keris Si Gajah
Dompak from North Sumatra, various pieces of jewelry from Cakranegara Castle Lombok,
spears from Kalimantan, treaty scriptures from Sulawesi, and Puputan keris (traditional dagger with a wavy pattern) from Bali. In addition to those are the talam (inscripted slabs) from
Madura and jewelry from Aceh. All these objects possess rich historical values, particularly
regarding the past relation of Indonesia and the Dutch colonies.
These objects are presented in the National Museum as a result of the distressing incidents
in the past. Some of the objects were loots from the war between the Dutch and various local
monarchs or rulers in Nusantara. In the annual minute books (Dutch: jaarboek) and the collection inventories, it was mentioned that the Dutch conducted military exhibition to expand
their colonies and to overthrow the local rulers. One of the examples is a collection from
Aceh, a sunting (crown worn on women’s head embellished by gold) (E.151/11750), which
was obtained from a raid carried out by the Dutch colonists on the house of Teuku Umar’s
wife before 1905. This object was then accorded and became the collection of BG.
In the context of the exhibition’s arrangement of this room, many lessons can be learned
from the past. What needs to be encouraged and passed on to the visitors is the spirit of being
productive and proud of the country. For example, one of the values worth to be maintained
is the one inherent in the sunting. The sunting functions as a hair adornment for women
placed above the ears. Its shape is inspired from the cempaka flower (Magnolia champaca/
Aceh: bungong jeumpa). For the Acehnese, the meaning of jeumpa goes beyond simply a
flower. Philosophically, this flower inspires Aceh people to have good morals and personalities; thus, it is worth being remembered. This positive value can be universally understood
within the framework of the current Indonesia.
The enthusiasm to bring out and assert national identity is also seen in the text on group
labels and collection labels. In the group label of “Ekspedisi Militer Lombok” (Lombok Military Expedition) vitrine, for example, it is assertively narrated that the Dutch was the colonist
and that the Indonesian government currently has equal power with them. It is precisely
stated as follows:
“During the aggression, the Dutch took away royalty heritage which was gold jewelleries and other prized possessions. The properties looted by the Dutch army were brought to
Batavia and divided into two groups. The first group was stored in Bataviaasch Genotschap
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Museum, and the second one was brought to Rijkmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden. In
1977, the Indonesian government and the Dutch government entered into an agreement to
repatriate some of the Cakranegara Castle heritage which was taken away by the Dutch to be
returned to the Indonesian government. In 1978, the agreement was successfully fulfilled by
the return of the Lombok repertoire which consists of 243 gold and silver collections to be
surrendered to the National Museum in Jakarta.”
In terms of the exhibition’s arrangement, the regalia objects in this room are displayed
by emphasizing the majestic side of the objects. The light beams on the objects accentuate
the glittering gold and the various precious stones as embellishments from the past. These
show the artists’ expertise in creating numerous masterpieces during the Nusantara period.
In addition to their highly valuable material, i.e. gold, the objects look even more exceptional
due to their marvelous designs and the highly complicated craftsmanship. The arrangement
of the exhibition in this room is expected to promote the pride of Indonesians visiting the
museum and understanding that Indonesia has always been culturally rich since the past.
2
CONCLUSION
From a historical point of view, the National Museum is indeed a legacy from the Dutch
colonists. It was established with the aim of displaying the Dutch’s power, glory, and greatness over their colonies. This aim is still evident in the Room of Historical Relics in Building
A. The administrators still maintain the arrangements and collections of the exhibition that
date back to several years ago. However, as the museum’s development took place with the
construction of Building B beginning in 2006, the administrators have more opportunities
to make new arrangements of the exhibition that are tailored to the current circumstances
to express the pride of being an Indonesian. The exhibition’s arrangement endued with a
new atmosphere and spirit can now be seen in the Room of Gold Ethnography Repertoire
in Building B.
To strengthen the national identity as Indonesians, a new exhibition room (Building C)
is under construction. This exhibition building, which is expected to be completed by 2018,
will present a new storyline concerning Indonesia’s culturally rich national identity, including
various themes such as Pusaka Indonesia (Indonesian Heritage), Menjadi Indonesia (Becoming Indonesia), and Lestari Indonesia (Sustainable Indonesia) (Museum Nasional Indonesia,
2016). These themes are the results of several focus group discussions conducted in 2013 and
2014 between the museum staff and several interviewees from various backgrounds such as
academicians, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, and communities.
The cultural diversity of Indonesia is a source of national identity that should be strengthened in the current era of globalization. This can be done through the narration of museum
collections used as the medium of communication. The narration of museum collections
highlights the values of the people’s dignity and equality in a community. Therefore, it is
important that the narration of the negative past inherent in the collection be revised to
reflect a sense of pride in this culturally rich country. This conforms to the postcolonial ideas
that ex-colony countries can free themselves from the shadow of their past as colonies and
that they have the right to be equal with other countries. It is expected that this exhibition in
the museum will act as a channel for visitors to understand the values of pride of Indonesia,
make self-interpretation of museum collections, and be inspired.
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Soebadio, H. (1985) Studies and documents on cultural policies, cultural policy in Indonesia. France,
UNESCO.
Sutaarga, A. (1990) Studi museologia. (The study of museology). Proyek Pembinaan Permuseuman
Jakarta, Direktorat Jenderal Kebudayaan, Jakarta, Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan.
Sutrisno, M., & Putranto, H. (2008) Hermeneutika pascakolonial: soal identitas. (Postcolonial
hermeneutics: a matter of identity). Yogyakarta, Kanisius.
Toko Merah. (The red store). (n.d.). [Online] Available from: http://www.jakarta.go.id/web/encyclopedia/detail/3429/Toko-Merah [Accessed 13th November 2015].
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Formation of Javanese Malay identities in Malay Peninsula between
the 19th and 20th centuries
L. Sunarti
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This paper aims to explain the cultural ties between Indonesia and Malaysia by examining the diaspora or migration of Indonesian people across the archipelago,
especially the Javanese to the Tanah Melayu peninsula (Malaysia), from the early 19th century to the early 20th century. It focuses on searching the traces of Javanese diaspora in the
states of Selangor and Johor (two areas in Malaysia with the largest population of Javanese
descendants) and the culture they brought and developed in their new places in that period.
This paper also seeks to discuss how they adapted, assimilated and formed their identities in
the new environment. This study uses a historical approach involving both qualitative and
quantitative data as well as a literature review. Qualitative data were obtained by interviewing
cultural actors in both Indonesia and Malaysia. Malaysians who were interviewed were Indonesian descendants, academics and so on. Quantitative data were obtained through questionnaires completed by a group of young people in Indonesia and Malaysia. A literature review
was conducted by tracing written sources, especially archives, documents, newspapers and
books in both countries. These data were analysed using a historical method which includes
several steps, namely heuristics, criticism, interpretation and historiography.
1
1.1
INTRODUCTION
The arrival of the Javanese in Malaya
The Javanese are an ethnic group that has high mobility and has spread widely across the
globe. According to Lockard (1971, p. 43), the Javanese diaspora had begun before the 19th
century, but they migrated on a large scale between 1875 and 1940. The large migration of the
Javanese was caused by various factors. In the land of the Malays, the arrival of the Javanese
has a long history that makes it an interesting phenomenon. Malaya region, in this case, covers
the entire territory of the Federation of Malaya, including Singapore, as depicted in Figure 1.
Although Singapore and North Borneo were also included in the Federation of Malaya, the
researchers limit the scope of the discussion to the country of Malaysia. The number of the
Javanese who immigrated to the Malay Peninsula reached approximately 190,000 in the 1960s. It
shows that the Javanese diaspora in Malaya was larger than that in Suriname and New Caledonia, where there were 43,000 and 3,600 Javanese migrants, respectively (Lockard, 1971, p. 42).
Although it is difficult to know precisely when the first Javanese migrated to the Malay
Peninsula, with the establishment of the strait settlements by the British colonial government, the arrival of the Javanese in Malaya was written in the civil records. In Singapore, for
example, Kampong Jawa was established in 1836 in the western part of the Rochore River.
The growth of Javanese population in the region continued to increase slowly but significantly from 38 in 1825 to 5,885 people in 1881. In Malaya, Penang and Malacca regions, it
was recorded that the number of ‘Indonesian’ residents, mostly from Java, reached 4,683 in
1871 (Bahrin, 1967a, p. 269). Most of the Javanese migrants were workers and traders working in various sectors ranging from the plantation to services. The above situation illustrates
that the Javanese had migrated before the introduction of the contract labour system.
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Figure 1. Malaya Federation under British colonial administration (Bahrin, 1967a, p. 268).
Javanese people were familiar with emigration. As previously mentioned, the mobility of
the Javanese began to increase rapidly in the late 18th century. In that period, there were several factors that encouraged the Javanese to migrate, one of which was the condition in rural
Java where access to various basic amenities was difficult. Therefore, many of the inhabitants of Java were driven to migrate to various areas in search of livelihood that would allow
them to be prosperous, either temporarily or permanently. Clifford Geertz (1966) described
the situation in Java in his book Agricultural Involution that there was a scarcity of land, an
exploding population and poverty that hit most areas of Java. This condition encouraged
people to migrate to other areas. Hardjosudarmo stated that in 1930 there were 1,200,000 or
approximately 2.9% of people living outside Java (Lockard, 1971, p. 44).
The migration of the Javanese was not always done voluntarily. Some people migrated
because of the demands of work as labourers in various business sectors. The growth of
the plantations in Java and Sumatra, which was driven by the so-called ‘liberal policy’ in the
second half of the 19th century, led the Javanese to search for work as labourers in plantations operated by the Europeans (Lockard, 1971, p. 45). The opening of the plantation in the
eastern part of Sumatra in the early 1860s also required a lot of labourers from Java, but they
were still less competitive than the plantation workers coming from China.
Most Javanese were under pressure to sign a contract and work in different areas. The
workers, who came from Java, were sent to different areas of the European colonies, belonging mostly to the British. The Javanese were then sent to Suriname, New Caledonia and the
Federation of Malaya, including Sabah and Sarawak. The distribution of Javanese labourers
in Malaya can be seen in Figure 2.
Malaya was the first region to receive the Javanese as workers, as well as the biggest destination for the Javanese migrant workers. Previously, there were thousands of Chinese brought
to Malaya to work in tin mining. Then, the expansion of the sugar and coffee industries in
the late 19th century accompanied by the rising demand for labourers in the rubber industry
caused the Europeans to bring many Javanese to work in Malaya.
In the late 19th century, the Europeans needed Javanese workers. In general, the labourers
in Malaya originated from India and China. However, the Europeans feared that they would
be too dependent on Chinese labourers. Moreover, the Chinese workers were considered to
work optimally only under the supervision of the Chinese people themselves. In addition,
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Figure 2. Distribution of Javanese labourers in Malaya (Bahrin, 1967b, p. 235).
the competition for Chinese labourers was quite tough, and so was the competition for the
Indian workers. The Europeans preferred Javanese workers because they could easily assimilate with the locals (Lockard, 1971, p. 46). It can also be said that since the living environment
in Malaysia is similar to the environment in Java, the Europeans found it easy to open new
plantations by employing Javanese workers.
In the migration process of those workers, recruitment procedures were carried out by
the Europeans by using agents to collect workers in Java to be sent to various regions. The
recruitment agents initially had difficulties in collecting workers from Java because the Dutch
East Indies Government at that time did not allow the Javanese to migrate from the Dutch
East Indies as enacted in the regulations in 1887 that prohibited the Javanese to work outside
the Dutch East Indies (Lockard, 1971, p. 48).
However, after 1900, there was a rising argument from the colonial administration that
outer Indonesia (Geertz, 1966) (Sumatra, Borneo and others) had a population deficit. Therefore, those regions required labourers from Java. In practice, the workers who came from Java
were sent not only to other regions in Indonesia, but also to Suriname, New Caledonia and
Malaya.
The recruitment centre of the Javanese workers was located in Central Java. Although
many people were sent via Batavia, many companies and recruitment agencies were located in
Central Java, especially Semarang (Lockard, 1971, pp. 48–9). There were private recruitment
firms operated by the Europeans, and they received high commission for their recruitment
services. The recruitment firms had to obtain permission from the government to recruit
workers. According to Yusuf Ismael, in the works of Lockard, recruitment firms promised
a prosperous life abroad. Sometimes, the agents were forced to cheat and conspire with the
village heads. They would do anything to collect a commission worth 80–100 rupiah for each
recruit (Lockard, 1971, p. 49).
In the case of workers in Malaysia, the Javanese were generally recruited by the Chinese
agents in Singapore. Once registered as workers, they were sent to Singapore and then worked
in plantations in Malaysia. After 1902, the planters in Malaya were allowed to bring a large
number of the Javanese to work there. The number of Indonesian workers in the early 19th
century is given in Table 1.
Before 1902, the Javanese had dominated the total population of Indonesians in Malaya.
Based on the data from the civil registry between 1891 and 1901, the Javanese accounted
for more than 70% of the total population of Indonesians, and most of them were workers. Then, after 1902, the population of the Javanese was reported to have increased drastically. The population census conducted in 1937shows that there were more than 100,000
people in Malaya Java, especially in the cities mostly settled by Indonesians, such as Johor
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Table 1. Indonesian population in the Federation of Malaya, 1891–1901 (Bahrin,
1967a, p. 272).
1891
1901
Community
Total
Male
Female
Total
Male
Female
Achinese
Batak
Boyanese
Bugis
Javanese
621
228
3,161
2,168
14,239
456
124
2,223
–
–
165
104
938
–
–
1,485
228
3,509
1,133
17,578
1,301
–
2,307
600
12,557
181
–
1,202
533
5,025
Table 2. Indonesian immigrants in Malaya 1947: by year of first arrival (Bahrin,
1967a, p. 273).
Year
Number
Percent
1900 and earlier
1901–1910
1911–1920
1921–1930
1931–1935
1936–1940
1941–1947
Not stated
Total
3,369
9,931
26,247
27,472
8,515
13,211
10,238
3,371
102,454
3.3
9.7
25.6
26.8
8.4
12.9
9.9
3.3
99.9
and Selangor. Then, in the following years, the number of people in Malaya Java continued
to grow, as outlined in Table 2.
1.2
Javanese Malay: Adaptation and assimilation
Like most immigrants from Indonesia, the Javanese in Malaya settled in various coastal areas.
Banjarnese and Bugis people were among the many ethnic groups who settled in Malaya,
apart from the Javanese. Most of them lived in coastal areas (Ramsay, 1956, p. 124). The
distribution map of the Javanese in Malaya until 1947 is shown in Figure 3.
There were three areas with the largest Indonesian population. Among the cities with the
highest number of immigrants from Indonesia, Johor was the most important because there
were more than 80% of the Indonesian population, which increased every year since 1911, followed by the cities of Selangor and Perak (Bahrin, 1967a, p. 276). Immigrants from Java dominated the number of Indonesian immigrants, and they had a tendency to settle permanently in
Malaya. The Javanese in Malaya formed a new identity, which is known as Javanese-Malays.
The process of adaptation and assimilation carried out by the Javanese in Malaya later
gave birth to a new group of Malay society called the Javanese-Malays. The Javanese-Malay
groups can be defined as the residents of Malaya who have a legal status but still have a close
relationship with the cultural roots of origin in Java (Miyazaki, 2000, pp. 76–7). In this case,
the Javanese differentiated themselves from other immigrants who came from the other parts
of Indonesia. Despite their large number, the Javanese-Malays were included under the category of ethnic Malays, which means that they were not a separate ethnic group among the
three major ethnic groups in Malaysia: Malay, Indian and Chinese.
A study conducted by Koji Miyazaki in Batu Pahat, Johor, in 1991 explains that migrants
from Java have much in common with the local residents of Malay. Unlike the Chinese and Indians or ‘migrants of difference’ who had a different cultural background from that of the Malays,
the Javanese were considered ‘migrants of similarity’. One of the similarities among others was
the religious background of Islam, which is the religion adhered to by both ethnic groups. In
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Figure 3. Distribution of the Javanese in Malaya until 1947 (Bahrin, 1967b, p. 245).
addition, the Javanese and Malays also had language and cultural proximity. It was easier for the
Javanese to be accepted in Malaysia compared to immigrants from China and India.
One area where the Javanese-Malays settled in large numbers is Johor. Most Javanese people, who had arrived in the early 20th century, came from Ponorogo, East Java. Johor is
the region where most Indonesian descendants inhabit, especially in Batu Pahat, which was
occupied by the majority of the Javanese and Bugis. In this region, the Bugis and the Javanese
lived in coastal areas and worked in palm plantations. However, there were also some Javanese who lived in hinterlands working in rubber plantations. This was parallel with a moderate rise in the rubber industry from 1911 to 1930, so there were many Javanese workers who
were brought by the British colonial government to become workers in rubber plantations.
The term ‘Javanese’ refers to the Javanese living in Malaya who are considered different
from the Javanese people of Indonesia. The Javanese immigrants who came to Malaysia before
the Indonesian independence in 1945 refer to themselves as Javanese, not Indonesians.
Javanese-Malays can be identified by their language for they use the Javanese language
as their everyday language. In addition, the Javanese-Malays can be identified through their
names. Although the second and third generations of the Javanese-Malays and Malay-Arabs
have names similar to most Malays in general, their parents still have names that possess the
distinctive character of Javanese names of having the suffixes such as -man or -min in the last
syllable of their names. The identification is more visible through the use of the parent’s surname in a Javanese-Malay’s name.
Although the Javanese-Malays spoke Javanese in their everyday life as a marker of identity,
they were capable of speaking Malay fluently. This was because Malay was the lingua franca
among people in the Archipelago. The similar structure between both Javanese and Malay also
made it relatively easy for the Javanese to learn Malay. However, the majority of the new generation of Javanese-Malays have difficulties in understanding Javanese and only speak Malay.
Furthermore, in general, the Javanese were associated with various mystical beliefs. Among
the Malays, the Javanese were believed to have magical ‘powers’, which made them capable of
curing diseases or solving health problems. This stereotype was in line with the fact that the
Javanese-Malays considered themselves as having the ‘capability’ in dispensing medicine and
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performing spiritual rituals. The Javanese-Malays were often seen as medicine men (dukun) as
they were able to make herbal medicine (jamu) in a village.
In addition to having the skills of dispensing medicine, the Javanese-Malays introduced the
Javanese calendar, which was later implemented in Malaya. The dating system does not exist in
any other areas throughout Southeast Asia, except in Java. They use a cycle of 5 and 7 days and
they can determine which day would be good or bad for certain activities. The dating system and
herbal medicines introduced by the Javanese are sometimes affiliated with the Islamic science.
A lot of knowledge and culture derived from Java produced a new culture in Malaya.
Besides the language, they kept parts of the Javanese cultural heritage. For example, the Javanese-Malays in Johor have made a great effort to maintain the music and dance they brought
from Java. Several groups of the horse dance (Kuda Kepang) are still active in the district of
Batu Pahat. Another Javanese dance, Barong dance (Barongan), is often performed in a local
festival. Notably, Kuda Kepang played by the Javanese-Malay girls is now included in the
‘traditional arts’ in the state of Johor, despite its Javanese origin. The dance groups are often
invited to perform in various occasions as the representative of the whole of Johor.
2
CONCLUSION
Malaysian culture is made up of various elements of ethnic groups. The Javanese-Malays
play an important role in establishing the identity of the Malays, despite being considered
by the Malays as the ‘outsider’. Both Malay and Javanese cultures have become increasingly
intertwined. This means that the Javanese-Malays are becoming Malays not only by discarding their cultural heritage, but also by incorporating their cultural elements into the Malay
tradition which is continuously shaped and reshaped.
In addition to adapting and assimilating their own culture with the local community, the
Javanese in Malaysia are known as a strong community in maintaining their customs. This cultural maintenance is realised through the use of the language, food (nasi ambeng), clothing, the
way of life (tradition of ‘gotong royong’ like Rewang, Pakatan and Kondangan) and art.
REFERENCES
Bahrin, T.S. (1967) The Growth and Distribution of the Indonesian Population in Malaya. Bijdragen tot
de Taal-, Land—en Volkenkunde (Brill), Deel 123, 2de Afl, (1967), 267–86.
Bahrin, T.S. (1967) The Pattern of Indonesian migrations and settlement in the Malayan. Asian Studies
Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, 5 (2), 233–257.
Blust, R. (1981) The Reconstruction of Proto-Malay-Javanic: An Appreciation. Bijdragen tot de Taal-,
Land—en Volkenkunde (Brill), Deel 137, 4DE Afl, (1981), 456–69.
Ferawati, L.E., Syed, Md Md A. & Hamzah, A. (2016) Television Consumption and the Construction
of Hybrid Identity among the Female Javanese Descendants in Malaysia. Retrieved from https://
umexpert.um.edu.my/file/publication/00001218_121472.pdf.
Geertz, C. (1966) Agricultural Involution. Berkeley, University of California.
Lockard, C.A. (1971) The Javanese as emigrant: Observations on the development of settlements
Javanese overseas. Indonesia, 11, 41–62.
Miyazaki, K. (2000) Javanese-Malay: Between adaptation and alienation. Journal of Social Issues in
Southeast Asia, 15 (1), 76–99.
Ramele, R.B. & Yamazaki, J. (2013) A study on traditional Javanese-Malay Kampung structure, culture
and community activities in Kampung Sungai Haji Dorani, Selangor, Malaysia. Official Conference
Proceedings in the Asian Conference on Asian Studies, (2013), Kobe University, Japan, 65–73.
Ramsay, A.B. (1955) Indonesians in Malaya. Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,
29 (1), 119–124.
Sekimoto, T. (1994) Pioneer settlers and state control: A Javanese migrant community in Selangor,
Malaysia. Southeast Asian Studies, 32 (2), 173–96.
Sekimoto, T. (1994) Preliminary Report on the Javanese in Selangor Malaysia. Southeast Asian Studies,
26 (2), 175–90.
Tirtosudarmo, R. (2005) The Malays and Javanese in the ‘Lands below the Winds. Centre for Research
and Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity, Paper 14.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The representation of national identity in the film
Tanah Surga Katanya
L.S. Limanta & L. Kurnia
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Identity is central in steering people’s life. However, it is not something that
is fixed and solid. As Hall states, identity is more of a process than a product or a fixed
entity. National identity is a more sophisticated construction that involves a positioning.
It becomes more complicated if it concerns those who live in the border areas. Drawing on
the concepts from Anderson, Hall, Kolakowski, Smith, and Edensor on identity, national
identity, and representation, this paper analyses how national identity is represented in the
film Tanah Surga Katanya… (Heaven on Earth, They Say...). From the analysis it can be
concluded that the representation of national identity in the film Tanah Surga Katanya...,
which is carried out through the usage of symbols (flag and currency), memory, and rituals,
has been successful in showing that people who live on the border areas may have multiple
and competing national identities, and that national identity is a construction that cannot be
solidified into a single meaning.
1
INTRODUCTION
Everybody needs an identity. It gives a sense of security for someone to play out his/her role
in society. A lack of identity can lead to confusion. However, identity is not something that
is fixed and easy to determine. As Hall (1990) argues, identity is a production, not a product,
and it is “never complete, always in process, and is always constituted within, not outside,
representation” (as cited in Rutherford, p. 222). The key point of this identity construction
within representation is positioning. Hence, according to Hall, there is always “a politic of
identity, a politic of position” (p. 226). Identity is very important since, as Castells (2010)
defines it, it is “the people’s source of meaning and experience” (p. 6). By this definition,
identity gives a sense of direction to people’s behaviour and an orientation of their values.
Furthermore, in line with Hall’s idea, Castells sees identity as “the process of construction
of meaning” (ibid.).
Thus, identity is always constructed in a certain social context. This paper analyses how
national identity is represented by the characters in the film Tanah Surga Katanya... (2012),
their struggles, experience, and the positioning of themselves as Indonesians.
1.1
The context of the film
This film was produced in 2012 and won five awards in the 2012 Indonesian Film Festival,
namely the Best Film, the Best Director, the Best Original Screenplay, the Best Supporting Actor, and the Best Art Direction (Siregar, 2012). It tells a story of an ex-volunteerfighter of the 1965 Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation, Hasyim, who lives in the border area
between West Kalimantan (Indonesia) and Serawak (Malaysia) with his two grandchildren,
Salman and Salina. Meanwhile, Haris, Hasyim’s son, prefers to live in Serawak as it promises a brighter future. Haris is already married to a Malaysian woman and is quite established economically. One day, Haris comes home to take his father and two children to go to
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Serawak with him. However, Hasyim fervently declines Haris’ invitation in a spirit of heroism, as he fought against Malaysia in the 1965 confrontation, and nationalism.
From a superficial view, the conflict between Hasyim and Haris can be interpreted as
nostalgic and nationalistic attitudes against pragmatic and realistic ones. However, this film
presents a more profound, subtle, and complicated positioning of each side. The setting in
the film is the border area between West Kalimantan (Indonesia) and Serawak (Malaysia).
Historically speaking, Indonesia and Malaysia have had a long history of tensions beginning with the Confrontation from 1961 to 1966 (Omar, 2010). Although the relationship
was restored under the late President Suharto, the conflict between the two countries continued over territorial disputes, particularly Ligitan and Sipadan Islands, and the Ambalat sea
block. While this short historical survey does not emphasize the practical political tensions
between the two countries over territorial disputes, it provides a background to understand
Hasyim’s attitude and self-positioning towards Malaysia.
Another aspect relevant to the discussion of the construction of national identity and
its representation is the borderland itself. As the characters move in and out of the border
between Indonesia and Malaysia, the borderland plays an important role in how they position themselves. The border area is actually not natural and difficult to determine. As Diener
and Hagen (2010) state, “Professional geographers soon conclude that all borders are arbitrary, subjective, and the result of human decisions, not forces of nature” (p. 8). Furthermore,
Diener and Hagen emphasize the cultural perspective of border and conclude that recent
studies view border areas “as sites of cultural interaction, exchange, and possibly hybridity”
(p. 10). In this connection, Puryanti and Husain’s study (2011) on the negotiation between
people and the state in the borderland of Indonesia-Malaysia in Sebatik Island is important
for the discussion:
“The relationship with Malaysia, for example, cannot only be viewed in terms of
‘us’ and ‘them’, as is suggested when people talk about national identity. ... It would
be illusive to measure their nationalism only from their use of the Ringgitin their
daily life. ... A focus on borders can show how citizens relate to their nation-state in
which loyalties are competing and multiple identities are managed on a daily basis,
especially when there are economic disparities between two neighbouring countries
like Indonesia and Malaysia in their border areas.” (p. 117)
From this quotation, it is clear that someone’s identity cannot be determined easily on
the surface from what one does. However, as in the case of Haris in the film, he can position
himself in such a way as to form multiple identities or to contain the contestation of identities within him.
1.2
Nation and national identity
Before analysing the representation of national identity in the film Tanah Surga Katanya ....,
it is necessary to clarify the idea of nation and national identity. Anderson (2006) defines a
nation as “an imagined political community” (p. 6). Furthermore, he explains that it is imagined because each member of the community has the idea that s/he belongs to a community
in which most of its members very likely never meet each other. Thus, her/his membership to
the community practically exists in her/his mind. The effect of this idea is that people might
sometimes adhere to the idealization of the imagined community (its values, norms, rules),
but at some other time they might contest it and prefer to live her/his concrete and practical
daily life without necessarily complying with the idealization. This will be elucidated further
in the analysis of the film, particularly in the case of Haris.
The next clarification needed is the idea of national identity which is more difficult to
define. Some theorists have tried to identify the elements that construct national identity.
For Stuart Hall, national identity is “an example and, at the same time, a form of national
cultural identity” (as cited in Wodak, Celia, Reisigl, & Liebhart, 2009, p. 23). Furthermore,
Hall defines national culture as
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“a discourse—a way of constructing meanings which influence and organize both
our actions and our conceptions of ourselves ... National cultures construct identities by producing meanings about ‘the nation’ with which we can identify; these
are contained in the stories which we are told about it, memories which connect its
present with its past, and imaginings which are constructed of it.” (ibid.)
Thus, it can be said that national identity enables people to identify themselves with the cultures of a nation through common stories, memories, and imaginings. However, the identification process might be experienced differently by members of the community since national
culture is a discourse that “represents differences between social classes, between ethnic
groups, or between the sexes” (ibid.).
Moreover, Kolakowski identifies five elements that characterize national identity, namely
the national spirit or ‘Volksgeist,’ as expressed in the collective manners of behaviour, historical or collective memory, anticipation and future orientation, and the national body concerning the national territories, landscapes, and nature, and a nameable beginning, referring
to the story of the ‘founding fathers’ or the beginning of time (ibid., p. 26). The relevant
elements for the discussion in this paper are the first, second, and the third elements of
Volksgeist, especially in Salman’s attempt to project the image of Indonesia based on his life
experiences and in the conflict experienced by Hasyim and Haris. Furthermore, Anthony D.
Smith (1991) explains that members of a community or nation identify themselves as a part
of it since they are united in a bond through “the use of symbols—flags, coinage, anthems,
uniforms, monuments and ceremonies”, and thus they are “reminded of their common heritage and cultural kinship and feel strengthened and exalted by their sense of common identity
and belonging” (p. 16–17).
While it is true that national identity can be clearly represented in the use of symbols and
in ceremonies, according to Edensor (2002), it is also “grounded in the everyday, in the mundane, details of social interaction, habits, routines, and practical knowledge” (p. 17). What
happens in daily social life does not always go smoothly in parallel with the ideals of national
culture. As Edensor further states, what is called “national” can even be “constituted and
reproduced, contested and reaffirmed in everyday life” (p. 20). The analysis of the characters
in the film especially Haris elucidates this point clearly.
1.3
The representation of national identity in Tanah Surga Katanya...
The film Tanah Surga Katanya... (Heaven on Earth, They Say...) represents the national
identity in the quotidian life experiences of Indonesians who live in the borderland between
Indonesia and Malaysia. The representation is done through the symbols (usage of national
flag and currency), ceremonies (singing national songs, welcoming of the state officials), and
the characters’ actions (the position and choices they take), and memory (shared memories).
The analysis in this paper shows that the representation contains contestation of meanings
produced by the film characters.
First of all, the national identity is represented through the use of the Indonesian national
flag or the Red-and-White flag. The flag is a common signifier for the Indonesian national
identity, but in this film the use of the flag is applied to represent contested meanings. On
the one hand, the Red-and-White flag represents a spirit of pride and heroism. This is shown
through the characters Hasyim and Salman. The emotional attachment to the national flag is
clearly shown first by Hasyim, and he passes it down to Salman later on. Hasyim is the only
person in the village who still owns and keeps the national flag. For Hasyim, a former fighter
in the conflict between Indonesia and Malaysia, the flag signifies the dignity and greatness of
Indonesia. Therefore, he keeps the flag in a special box as a symbol of such dignity and greatness, almost like a sacred object (Figure 1). When the local officials come to the village and
for the first time the Red-and-White flag is hoisted again after the Dwikora operation, i.e. the
confrontation era, Hasyim attends the ceremony and stands in reverence while looking up at
the flag from a distance (Figure 2).
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Figure 1. The Red-and-White flag.
Figure 2. Showing reverence to the red-white flag.
Hasyim’s attitude towards the flag and his memory of fighting against Malaysia is passed
down to his grandson Salman who reveres it almost as sacred too. Thus, Salman strongly
protests to an Indonesian salesperson (the second owner of the Red-and-White flag in the
film) when he goes to the market in the Malaysian territory and sees the salesperson using
the Red-and-White flag casually as a mat for his goods (Figure 3). Later on, when Salman
has succeeded to collect some money and buys two pieces of sarong (intended formerly for
his grandfather, Hasyim) and sees the same salesperson, he offers one piece of sarong to the
salesperson in exchange for the Red-and-White flag. Salman’s attitude clearly shows how he
reveres the Red-and-White flag as a representation of dignity and greatness of the Indonesian national identity.
Ironically, the state elementary school, the representation of official educational institution in the village, and the village head, the extension of the government, do not own a
national flag. The state’s failure to provide even a single flag in the village, which is a symbol
of national sovereignty and dignity, and the salesperson’s ignorance and indifference towards
the flag represent a contrasting meaning attached to the flag. In this case, the same object
that symbolizes a national identity is presented as an unimportant or irrelevant object in people’s daily life. The teacher, students, and people in the village are not aware of the need or
the existence of the Red-and-White flag until the local government officials visit the school.
Hence, although the Red-and-White flag is used in the film as the representation of a national
identity imbued with pride and heroism, it is presented as an insignificant object without the
weight of those meanings.
The next representation of the national identity in this film is done through the usage
of currency. The Malaysian ringgit is depicted to be used within the Indonesian side of
the borderland, and Dr. Anwar, the volunteer doctor in the village, finds this outrageous.
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Figure 3. Contrasting meaning construction of the national flag.
He attaches the Indonesian national identity to the usage of currency and considers the
use of the Malaysian ringgit in Indonesian land by Indonesians intolerable and dangerous
because it can threaten the Indonesians’ national identity. In this case, Dr. Anwar represents
the superficial and ideal identification between the use of the Indonesian rupiah and national
identity. While for Lized, an Indonesian boy who helps him bring his luggage and is tipped
with rupiah, and for other people who live on the Indonesian borderland, the ringgit is the
common currency they use for daily trading practices because they rely on doing business
with their Malaysian neighbours.
As cited by Puryanti and Husain previously, it is “illusive to measure their nationalism
only from their use the ringgit in daily life”. This film thus represents competing ideas of
what it means to be Indonesians. On the one hand, the usage of rupiah may signify the pride
of being a part of Indonesia, but on the other hand, for the people who live in the borderland
and rely on doing business with their Malaysian neighbours, the use of the ringgit is the only
available meaningful economic practice since they depend on their neighbour’s more bustling
area. Meanwhile, competing and multiple identities are formed among the students who have
never seen the rupiah and just learn that they are Indonesians from their teacher, Astuti, but
still rely on their Malaysian neighbours. They may realize that they are Indonesians, but they
use the ringgit to be part of Malaysia on a daily practical basis. In this case, the film shows
that there are contested meanings of being a part of Indonesia through the national identity
represented in the use of currency.
A further contestation of meaning in terms of national identity is represented through the
ceremony of the singing of the national song. The Indonesian anthem, Indonesia Raya, is
usually sung in official occasions like during a flag ceremony or welcoming government officials. In this film, the students in the elementary school only know one song, which is Kolam
Susu (Pool of Milk), which tells the wealth and prosperity of Indonesia that is so abundant
that anyone could ‘turn sticks and rocks into plants’. While the song captures what is believed
to be an image of the reality of the wealth of Indonesia’s nature which has become a collective memory, the prosperity, in reality, is not enjoyed evenly by most of the Indonesians, especially those who live in the border area as presented in this film. Thus, this song is mainly used
as an irony to criticize the government for not paying enough attention to the borderland.
The image of reality presented in this film is that the village suffers from severe inadequate facilities. The students only know the song Kolam Susu instead of the national anthem
because they have forgotten it since the last teacher who taught the song has been replaced
for a year, and the substitute teacher to teach the anthem has not been provided. The awareness of the importance of singing the national anthem emerges when the government officials
visit the village. When welcoming officials, a flag ceremony is usually held, and the local
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students also perform in a talent show. In this occasion, Salman reads a poem which presents
a counter-meaning to the construction of the belief and ideology built in the song Kolam
Susu. In his poem, Salman tries to provide an image of reality he and his grandfather have
experienced in their daily life. Table 1 shows the comparison between the song and Salman’s
poem to clarify this point.
Salman illustrates the big gap between the image of his grandfather’s nationalism and
sacrifice in defending his country and the image of reality that he and his grandfather experience. Hasyim has a serious heart problem, and it is very difficult to get proper health treatment for him due to many constraints, namely lack of financial capability, the long distance
to the nearest hospital, and inadequate transportation. For Salman, the imagining of Indonesia in the song Kolam Susu is not translated in his daily life. Salman has to work hard after
school and sometimes has to skip lessons to collect 400 ringgit to take his grandfather to the
hospital. The only transportation available is a motorboat passing through the forest. This
everyday fact of life that Salman experiences forces him to challenge the common myth about
Indonesia as represented in the song Kolam Susu and construct a different meaning as represented in his poem. Salman tries to project a new constructed meaning of Indonesia. In other
words, the imagined common myth about Indonesia as represented in the song is challenged
with a different projected meaning based on the everyday reality.
The next representation of the national identity in this film is carried out through what the
characters do and remember. In this case, there is a contrasting representation as shown in
the choices and position that Hasyim and Haris take. As Kolakowski suggests, one element
of national identity is the existence of the national spirit or volkgeist which is expressed in
collective behaviour especially in the moment of crisis (as cited in Wodak, Celia, Reisigl, &
Liebhart, 2009, p. 25). Hasyim represents this element. Despite his poor health and financial
conditions, and also his unfulfilled expectation of the common myth of the prosperity of
Indonesia, he still chooses to stay and live in the borderland of Indonesia. Even towards his
death, Hasyim is still proud of being an Indonesian and urges Salman to be proud as well.
Hasyim still believes in the common myth of the Indonesian prosperity as represented
in the song Kolam Susu. This is expressed when Haris presents a different construction of
meaning regarding prosperity. Haris says that Malaysia is more prosperous proven by the real
condition of which he himself attests. The portrayal of the physical condition between the
border area in Indonesia and that in Malaysia helps to build Haris’ construction of meaning. Even the differences of the border road condition between the two countries shown
in the film support this construction of meaning. The road on the Malaysian side is wellpaved, whereas on the Indonesian side, it is rocky (Figure 4). Nevertheless, although Haris
insists on choosing to stay in Malaysia and becoming a Malaysian citizen by marrying a
Table 1.
Comparison between the song Kolam Susu (Pool of Milk) and Salman’s Poem.
The Song: Pool of Milk
Salman’s Poem: Heaven on Earth They Say...
No seas but pools of milk
No seas but pools of milk ... they say
But my grandfather says, only rich people can drink milk
Fishing rod and net provide you
Fishing rod and net provide you with means of living
with means of living adequately,
adequately, no storms, no typhoons will you meet ... they say
no storms, no typhoons will you meet But my grandfather says, the fish are taken by foreign fishermen
Fish and shrimps will come to you
Fish and shrimps will come to you...they say
But my grandfather says, hush... there is an axe to grind
People say our land is heaven land
People say our land is heaven on Earth ... so they say
But dr. Intel says only the officials have it
Sticks and rocks turn to plants
Sticks and rocks turn to plants ... they say
But dr. Intel says our logs are sold to neighbouring countries
They say our land is heaven land,
People say our land is heaven on earth,
Sticks and rocks turn to plants
Sticks and rocks turn to plants ... they say
But my grandfather says, not all people have prosperous life,
many officials sell logs and rocks to build their own heaven
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Figure 4. Contrasting infrastructure.
Malaysian woman, he is still emotionally attached to his Indonesian family (i.e. Hasyim and
Salman). This can be seen from his expression when he learns about the death of his father.
He becomes emotionally disturbed and experiences a moment of loss. Thus, even though
Haris positions himself politically and practically as a Malaysian and chooses to stay in
Malaysia, he cannot completely sever his cultural identity as an Indonesian. In this sense, he
forms multiple identities and undergoes a contestation of identities.
2
CONCLUSION
National identity is a social construction of meaning related to the nation which people
can identify with. This meaning construction is not fixed once for all, but it is a process
that is ongoing in people’s life. Furthermore, Edensor (2002) contends that what is called
“national” is “constituted and reproduced, contested, and reaffirmed in everyday life” (p. 20).
Moreover, Puryanti and Husain’s study (2011) highlights the negotiation that the people living in the borderlands can do in relation to “their nation-state in which loyalties are competing and multiple identities are managed on a daily basis” (p. 117). Since people who live in
the borderland go in and out of the border, they may form multiple identities. This is what
happens to Haris who becomes a Malaysian citizen in order to gain a better living, but who
is still culturally attached to his Indonesian family and heritage. Moreover, from the analysis
of the film, it can be concluded that the representation of national identity does not only
provide a single construction of meaning.
In conclusion, the film Tanah Surga Katanya ... has been successful in representing multiple and competing national identities and raising the awareness of the viewers that although
Indonesia has been represented through a myth as a prosperous country in the song Kolam
Susu, the reality of life in the borderland presents a contrasting picture. This film raises the
awareness that the state needs to pay more attention to the people in the borderland and that
national identity is a construction which cannot be encapsulated into a single meaning, but it
involves anticipation and future orientations which may contest the present one.
REFERENCES
Anderson, B. (2006) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.
London, Verso.
Castells, M. (2010) The Power of Identity. Singapore, Wiley-Blackwell.
Diener, A.C. & Hagen, J. (2010) Borderlines and Borderlands: Political Oddities at the Edge of the NationState. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Edendor, T. (2002) National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life. Oxford, Berg.
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Hall, S. (1990) Cultural identity and diaspora. In: Rutherford, J. (eds.) Identity: Community, culture, difference. London, Lawrence & Wishart. pp. 222−237.
Novianto, H. (Director), & Mizwar, D., Brajamusti, G., & Nawawi, B. (Producers). (2012) Tanah Surga
Katanya ... (Heaven on Earth, They Say...) [DVD]. Indonesia: Demi Gisela Citra Sinema.
Omar, S. (2010) The Indonesian-Malaysian Confrontation. [Online] Available from: http://eresources.nlb.
gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_1072_2010-03-25.html.
Puryanti, L., & Husain, S.B. (2011) A people-state negotiation in a borderland: A case study of the
Indonesia-Malaysia frontier in Sebatik island. Wacana: Jurnal Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya, 13,
105−120.
Siregar, A.S. (2012) Daftar Pemenang Festival Film Indonesia 2012 (The List of the 2012 Indonesian
Film Festival). [Online] Available from: http://www.flickmagazine.net/feature/1511-daftar-pemenang-festival-film-indonesia-2012.html [Accessed December 2012].
Smith, A.D. (1991) National identity. London, Penguin Books.
Wodak, R., Cillia, R. de, Reisigl, M., & Liebhart, K. (2009) The discursive construction of national identity (A. Hirsch, R. Mitten, & J. W. Unger, Trans.). Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Building national identity in the border areas: The critical success
factors analysis in the management of community radio in
Sintang, West Kalimantan
L.H. Kurnia
Department of Indonesian Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: National broadcasting services in the border areas are the primary means
of information dissemination that emphasize Indonesian values and develop a sense of
national identity in the border areas. Despite all the efforts, citizens living in the vicinity of
the national border areas continue to face challenges in accessing the national radio broadcasts. This situation indicates that there are still some issues in the management of broadcasting and information distribution processes in the border areas. Given the situation, the
Ministry of Communication and Information (Kemenkominfo) initiated the Community
Radio Program (Radio Komunitas or Rakom) as an effort to overcome those issues. However, this program could not be implemented properly due to some obstacles. Therefore, this
study was conducted to identify the problems and to examine and evaluate the existing policy
implementation of Rakom in the border areas. This study uses qualitative research methods.
The data were obtained from field observation and a study of existing literature on this subject. The study demonstrates that the main problems in the management of the Community
Radio Program in Sintang are: (1) the lack of coordination between institutions; (2) the lack
of planning and supervision of the program’s implementation; and (3) the lack of qualified
personnel to manage Rakom. These issues are reviewed by using the Critical Success Factors
Analysis.
1
INTRODUCTION
In 2012, the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia or KPI)
informed the media about the difficulty of accessing Indonesia’s national broadcasting and
the domination of the Malaysian broadcasting in Indonesia’s border areas in Kalimantan,
Riau, and Natuna Islands. There is an assumption that this condition would disrupt national
order, including the identity and nationalism, of Indonesian people in the border areas.
Dadang Rahmat Hidayat, as the KPI commissioner at that time, highlighted the importance
of content information delivered through the national broadcasting system. The information
received by the people in the border areas should be correct, decent, and able to maintain
national integration and pluralism of the Indonesian society. If the reality does not meet
these needs, and the Indonesian people living in the borders still receive improper information, their nationalistic spirit could be undermined. The socio-cultural integrity of the
communities living in the border areas could be impacted by the exposure to incorrect information. The nation’s cultural values are contained within the socio-cultural aspects of the
community, and these values could evoke the spirit of nationalism. This is important so that
the nation could remain resilient in the face of foreign influences (Lemhannas RI, 2013).
KPI’s press release in 2012 stated that it had found eighteen radio stations and three television stations from Malaysia broadcasting daily in Indonesia’s border areas in Kalimantan. The
Malaysian shows even became the favourite shows for Indonesian people in those areas (Tempo.
co, 2012). KPI also stipulated in the “Profile and Dynamics of Broadcasting in Border Region”
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in 2012, that KPID (the Indonesian Regional Broadcasting Commission), which served in the
border regions, complained about: (i) why TVRI/RRI and LPS had no broadcasts in the border
areas; (ii) why foreign broadcasts had higher quality broadcasts compared to the local ones; (iii)
why there was a lack of foreign investment; (iv) why the broadcasting commission was located
so far away; (v) why there was a lack of support from the local government; (vi) why the parties
concerned with broadcasting in the border regions had not been able to work together; (vii) why
there were blank spot areas; and (viii) why foreign broadcasts became the favourite shows for the
people in the border areas. As an attempt to overcome those issues, the Ministry of Communication and Information launched the Information Village Program in the Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJM) of 2010–2014 and the ministry’s five-year program, which is reinforced by
the Minister’s Instruction No.1 Year 2011 regarding the implementation of the Information
Village Program in the border areas. Some of these programs are the empowerment of the Community Information Groups (Kelompok Informasi Masyarakat), allowing citizens owning TV
sets to be able to receive subscription broadcasts from the Community Broadcasting Institution
(Lembaga Penyiaran Komunitas).
This study focuses on assessing the implementation of the Community Radio Program
as an effort to meet the needs for access to information and to strengthen national identity for people living in the border areas in Sintang, West Kalimantan. This study was conducted to evaluate the existing policy implementation, which was reviewed by the program’s
management, with the purpose that the policies’ and programs’ objectives can be achieved
successfully.
2
2.1
LITERATURE REVIEW AND GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF SINTANG
Literature review
Critical Success Factors. The use of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) is needed to define the
things that must be done for a system, program, or project of an organization to achieve its
objectives. CSFs can be used in all aspects of the organization or management, ranging from
the highest management to the most technical position. By using the CSFs analysis, organizations can make changes internally and prepare for external changes that will affect how the
main objectives of the organization are achieved.
Since 1961, organizations have relied on critical-to-success factors (CSFs) to define the
things that must go right—either a system, program, project, process, or job—if their organizations are to achieve their purpose, mission, or objective (Howell, 2010: 1).
In the analysis of CSFs, the data are grouped according to the major themes that are
often stated in the source statement. These themes are known as Key Result Areas or KRAs.
Based on KRAs, we can determine which CSFs affect the achievement of the objectives. Not
all KRAs are CSFs, but only those that play a critical role in the achievement of goals are
crucial. KRAs play an important role in the formulation of strategic planning. KRAs statements should be made as simple and short as possible, without the use of verbs. The statements should reflect the results (output or outcome), not the actions.
Prior Research. Research about community radio has been published in the proceedings of the National Seminar “Branding Based on Local Wisdom” held by Universitas
Jenderal Soedirman in 2012, which was written by Dede Lilis Ch and Nova Yuliati in their
article titled “Carrying the Community Radio as a Base for Local Wisdom,” as well as by
Mochamad Rochim in his article “The Role of Community Radio in Community Empowerment.” These writings focus on the Community Radio’s role in the community in general, but
do not discuss the role of Community Radio in border areas and its organization management.
2.2
Overview of the region
Sintang. West Kalimantan has five districts that share borders with Malaysia. These are
Sambas, Bengkayang, Sanggau, Sintang, and Kapuas Hulu. Sintang is the second largest
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border district after Kapuas Hulu with a total area of 21,635 km2, or 14.47% of the West
Kalimantan area. Sintang is located at 1005 'N – 0046' LS and 110 050 'BT – 113 020' BT, and
in the north it is bordered by Sarawak, Malaysia (BPS Sintang, 2015, p. 5). Sintang’s regions
which share borders with the bordering country are Ketungau Hulu and Central Ketungau
Subdistricts (Sintang BPP, 2014).
The discussion on broadcasting in the border areas cannot be separated from the supporting infrastructure, i.e. the availability of electricity in border subdistricts in Sintang. Based
on the data from the Sintang Border Management Agency in 2016, there are 29 villages in
the Ketungau Hulu Subdistrict, six of which are border villages, and only two border villages
have access to electricity, namely Jasa Village and Riam Sejawak Village. As for the Central
Ketungau Subdistrict, it has 29 villages, three of which are border villages, and they have no
access to electricity.
Community Radio and Kimtas. Community Radio or Rakom is one of KPU/USO programs initiated by the Ministry of Communication and Information to support infrastructure development and dissemination of information in the border areas. Under the Law No.
32 Year 2002 on Broadcasting, on the sixth part of Article 21, it is stated that the Community
Broadcasting Institution is the official broadcaster, which is a legal entity in Indonesia. The
Community Radio program is established by a particular community, independent, not commercial, has low transmitting power and limited coverage areas, and is established to serve
the interests of the community. The purpose of the establishment of a community radio is
to educate and improve the community’s well-being by implementing programs that include
culture, education, and information that define the identity of the nation. The establishment
and management of Community Radio in each region in Indonesia have different backgrounds and purposes. For example, the Community Radios “Angkringan” in Yogyakarta
and “Cibangkong” in Bandung were established to meet the needs of socialization and problem solving for their communities and to monitor the local governments’ policies. Meanwhile,
the Community Radios “PASS” in Bandung and “Panagati” in Yogyakarta were established
because of the support of the local government (Masduki, 2007).
Community Radio is also supported by the instruction of the Minister of Communication
and Information Number 01/INST/M.KOMINFO/03/2011 on the implementation of the
Information Village in the border areas. Community Radio is managed by the Society Information Group (KIM) and consists of local communities. The Community Radio Sintang
and Border Society Information Group (Kimtas) are located in Senaning Village, Ketungau
Hulu Subdistrict, with a radio transmitter device of 100–500 watts.
3
3.1
DISCUSSION
Stakeholders and management of community radio in Sintang
Central Government. The Ministry of Communication and Information as a central government’s body is the leading actor in infrastructure development and provision of information and communication facilities in the border regions through the program Universal
Service Obligation or KPU/USO. In 2015, there was an evaluation which resulted in a new
policy, which was to redesign the concept of KPU/USO. The main essence of the redesigning
of KPU/USO is to continue the existing programs by changing the mechanism, which was
adjusted from a top-down one to a mechanism that served local needs and was based on the
needs of the ministry, institutions, and communities. In addition, the KPU/USO program in
the future is expected to focus not only on infrastructure development, but also on the development of programs such as community empowerment, and the development of content and
application. In monitoring and evaluation, the redesigning of KPU/USO involves participation of all stakeholders in planning, implementation, and supervision (Kominfo.go.id, 2015).
Local Government. The government of the West Kalimantan Province, represented by
the Governor and Dishubkominfo of West Kalimantan, is one of the stakeholders in the
management of broadcasting at the border regions. Agustinus Edi Sukarno (the Head of
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Division of Communications and Information in West Kalimantan) said that until 2015, for
the development of infrastructure of information and communication, the Dishubkominfo
of West Kalimantan had only enough budget for human resources development in communication and broadcasting, including in maintaining Kimtas.
The Local Government of Sintang just combined the Department of Communication and
Information with the Department of Transportation in 2015. The Sintang’s Department of
Communication and Information is still in the stage of studying and coordinating with other
districts, so it has not yet run any programs related to Rakom and broadcasting in the border
areas of Sintang. The Department of Communications and Information does not even have
information with regard to assistance and central government programs in the previous years
that were carried out in the district of Sintang.
Community and Kimtas. Basically, people in the border areas have a high curiosity about
the information regarding the central government in Jakarta. It can be seen from their enthusiasm to have parabolic antennas and cable TV as well as to listen to RRI (the Radio of the
Republic of Indonesia) as a means to obtain information and a medium of communication
in the villages. People’s role as actors in information dissemination is facilitated by Kimtas.
Kimtas functions together with Community Radio as part of the Information Village Program KPU/USO run by the Ministry of Communication and Information, which was inaugurated by the minister for the entire border districts in West Kalimantan on 11th December
2010, in Jagoi Babang, Bengkayang (Press Release Kominfo 37, 2010).
Problems in the Community Radio and Kimtas Management in Sintang. Based on the results
of interviews with various institutions at the provincial, district, and sub-district levels, all of
them stated that assistance from the central government for the Community Radio program
through third parties is received directly by the public without coordinating with the local
government. The Rakom program is considered unsustainable because it did not consider the
equipment needed for the program’s operation, such as generators. It also did not consider
the difficulty of finding diesel fuel for local people. Operators received devices to broadcast
from subdistrict offices or other appointed places, but there was no further monitoring from
the central government. The operators did not receive any further training and guidance if the
devices were broken. There was only one training in the form of technical assistance by the
ministry, which was given at the start of the program. After that, both the ministry and third
parties had never conducted further monitoring or coordination of the program. This led the
operators not to have a sense of belonging with the program or the call to assist if there were
problems. As a result, the program could not be continued.
The operators also did not know how to process the license, so the legal aspect of their
Community Radio was still abandoned. Operators refused to continue to take care of the
assets because there was no budget to pay for electricity and diesel fuel. The district government was not able to provide any assistance to it because those were not the assets of the
district government, and the ministry went directly to communities without consulting with
the district government. Problems like these were found in Kimtas management in all border
districts in West Kalimantan, including Sintang. Six Kimtas which had previously been in
six border districts now were no longer in operation, including the ones located in Senaning,
Ketungau Hulu Subdistrict, Sintang.
According to the Head of the Department of Communication and Information,
Edi Sukarno, one of the causes that make Kimtas in the border areas unsustainable is that its
operators do not get financial compensation or salary. The Community Radio operators are
social workers who do not receive rewards. The Provincial Government of West Kalimantan
cannot provide such compensation because they think this is the central government’s program and not their responsibility, so they cannot use the provincial budget to help.
Besides, the implementation of Rakom and Kimtas also faced challenges in the social
and cultural aspects. Public awareness of the importance of Kimtas is still low, and Rakom
operators do not have broadcasting capability. People in the border regions do not think
that Kimtas is important because they still prioritize meeting their daily basic needs. They
are not aware that with Kimtas they could receive and distribute information that is useful to support the economy and needs of the community. The challenge of implementing
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the program is to be able to educate people in the border regions about the importance of
broadcasting as a medium of information dissemination that can be useful for their everyday
life. The issuance of Presidential Decree No. 96 Year 2014 on Indonesian Broadband Plan
2014–2019 made Kemenkominfo currently focus more on building internet networks in the
border regions. The Information Village Program initially had no supervision, but with the
publication of the new presidential regulation, it is now becoming abandoned even more.
This is a challenge for the local government, operators, and program managers from the ministry to be able to remain consistent in developing the Rakom and Kimtas programs which
are part of the Information Village Program.
According to Gambang (the Head of Ketungau Hulu Subdistrict), the Community Radio
in the Senaning Village, Ketungau Hulu, ran for one year and people received benefit from
it. In the second year, the Community Radio devices started to malfunction, and subdistricts
did not have both the budget and capability to fix these tools. In addition to the problem
of devices’ durability, the lack of human resources also became an obstacle in managing
Community Radio. Operators did not have the competence in broadcasting, so Rakom ran
without ordinances and broadcasting agenda. Gambang also said that the ministry did not
make it clear or make an agreement at the beginning of the program about the local government’s responsibility and the standard operating procedures (SOP) of the management of
Community Radio.
Community Radio should be an asset that can support broadcasting in the border regions.
The Rakom program that has run for one year in Sintang, and in other border regions, reflects
the desire of the community to manage and develop community radio. Unfortunately, the
government that initiated Rakom did not use this program to its maximum potential.
Critical Success Factors Analysis in the Management of Community Radio in Sintang.
The main determinant of success, or Critical Success Factors, is a concept in management
to determine what things should be done so that organizations can successfully reach their
goals. As mandated by the law, the objectives and duties of the state are to provide access to
information, which is the right of all citizens, including citizens in the border regions. This
section discusses the internal institutional factors that affect the realization of the objectives
of broadcasting in the border regions. Based on the results of the field observation and indepth interviews with stakeholders, we obtained five Key Result Areas in the management of
Community Radio in Sintang:
Planning. Planning is an important aspect in strategic management and implementation of
the program. Without careful planning, programs and plans cannot run well or can even fail.
Although the Ministry of Communication and Information has redesigned the KPU/USO
program in order to be more bottom-up, comprehensive, piloting, and synergistic, in practice
the concept of the redesign does not work properly. In the presentation of the concept of
redesigning KPU/USO, there is no explanation on how to improve the coordination system.
Therefore, it is necessary to have a specialized management system design that integrates all
stakeholders in order to carry out the functions of coordination and supervision properly.
Planning is also needed in the management of broadcasting assets in Sintang, such as Community Radio. Long-term planning is not only about the execution of the program, but it
also considers maintenance, monitoring, improvement, and development of assets. Planning
that is not long-term can lead to failure of the program and a waste of time, devices, cost,
and labour force.
Coordination. The core issues learned from the in-depth interviews is a lack of coordination between the central and local governments that resulted in the failure of the Rakom program. Therefore, the action that needs to be taken is building the coordination between the
Ministry of Communication and Information and the local government, as well as coordination with other related ministries or institutions that are in charge of managing infrastructure, such as electricity-supplying facilities. In the implementation of the program, the local
government as the land owner also should play an active role, and not simply wait for the
initiative of the central government. The central government should state clearly the division
of tasks and responsibilities of the Community Radio asset management, so that the local
government is able to carry out their responsibilities and duties properly and not scapegoat
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each other anymore. The weakness of the KPU/USO program that was launched by the Ministry of Communication and Information is that asset management was handed over entirely
to a third-party service provider.
The central government also needs to coordinate with third parties during the implementation of the program because discontinuation and poor coordination with the central government are the result of the third parties’ action of going straight to the communities without
any supervision from the ministry. Thus, the program seems like short-term programs without the possibility of sustainability and long-term benefits. In fact, the management of
broadcasting, the construction of identity, and the development of border areas are longterm programs that cannot be realized only within one or two years, and then abandoned.
Implementation and Program Monitoring. The process of granting assets from the central
to the local governments is also one of the main critical factors that must be dealt with immediately. Assistance that is directly provided by the central government through a third party
to the communities has caused problems in the management of broadcasting assets, which in
this case is Community Radio. A lack of budget is a major constraint on the sustainability
of the program in the border regions, not only in the Rakom program case, but also in almost
every program organized by the central government. Rakom devices provided by the central
government are still owned by the central government, so the Sintang and West Kalimantan local governments cannot manage and follow up on the Rakom program. If the West
Kalimantan or Sintang local government takes over the management of assets without the
grants from the central government, it would be something illegal and could be investigated
by BPK (the Audit Board of the Republic of Indonesia) (Asmidi, the Head of Department
of Communications and Information, Direct Interview, 4th February 2016).
Maximizing Broadcasting Agency. The existence of the Rakom program is a capital that
should be used for the management of broadcasting in the border regions. One of the weaknesses of this program is the lack of qualified personnel in broadcasting. Kemenkominfo as
the leading actor should cooperate with existing public broadcasters which have experience
in the management of broadcasting, namely RRI Sintang. The realization of cooperation
between Rakom and RRI Sintang could bring about a reciprocal positive relationship and
synergy to meet the needs of access to information for people in the border regions.
The Rakom operators could increase their capacity in broadcasting by getting guidance
from RRI Sintang, both in broadcasting management and in device maintenance. RRI
Sintang could put a relay transmitter in Rakom to reach areas that are not covered by RRI.
In addition, if Rakom operators are not able to broadcast, operators could broadcast relays
from RRI, and it will keep Rakom running even without operators. Another benefit gained
from this cooperation is that RRI Sintang could overcome the problem of lack of journalists
in border regions. The Rakom operators in the border regions could become citizen journalists for RRI Sintang. If RRI Sintang and Rakom could work synergistically, it can help solve
the problems faced by RRI Sintang, namely limited human resources and limited capability
of operators in broadcasting management and maintenance of broadcasting devices.
Regulations. Kemenkominfo’s consistency in regulating broadcasting in the border regions
is necessary. Despite the new directives from the president, it does not mean that the old
programs should stop right away, and the new program becomes the only priority. Based on
the interview with the Head of Ketungau Hulu Subdistrict, the main problems of the Community Radio are malfunctioned devices, the lack of capability of operators in broadcasting, and the discontinuation of the program. The Community Radio licensing issues can be
resolved over time, as long as there is a continuity of the Community Radio broadcasting.
4
CONCLUSION
Planning, coordination, implementation, and monitoring of programs, maximizing of
broadcaster agencies, and regulations are the five Key Result Areas in the management of
the Community Radio in Sintang. Communication and coordination are the key determinants of success in the implementation of broadcasting programs from Kemenkominfo. Poor
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communication and coordination in the implementation of the program among the central
government, local governments, and service providers are an internal problem in organization that needs to be fixed, focusing specifically on the coordination line and division of
responsibilities. As one of the strategies to support the implementation of management and
broadcasting in the border regions, it is necessary to set up a special team consisting of the
stakeholders.
REFERENCES
Badan Pusat Statistik Kabupaten Sintang (2015) Kabupaten Sintang dalam Angka 2015 (Sintang District in Numbers 2015). Sintang, Author.
Hidayat, D.R. (2012) Hak Informasi Bagi Masyarakat Perbatasan. Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia. Profil
dan Dinamika Penyiaran di Daerah Perbatasan Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia. (Rights to Information for Border Societies. Broadcasting Profile and Dynamics of the Border Areas of the Republic
of Indonesia) Jakarta, Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia.
Howell, M.T. (2010) Critical Success Factors Simplified, Implementing the Powerful Drivers of Dramatic
Business Improvement. New York, Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
Instruksi Menkominfo No.1 Tahun 2011, on Pelaksanaan Desa Informasi di Daerah Perbatasan (The
Decree of the Minister of Communication and Information Technology No. 1 Year 2011 on the
Implementation of Information Village in Border Areas).
Kominfo. (2014) Redesign Program USO Didukung Dinas Kominfo Seluruh Indonesia (USO Program
Redesign Supported by Communication and Information Technology Services in Indonesia). [Online]
Available from: https://kominfo.go.id/index.php/content/detail/4204/Redesign+Program+USO+Did
ukung+Dinas+Kominfo+Seluruh+Indonesia/0/berita_satker [Accessed on 17th October 2014].
Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia. (2012) Profil dan Dinamika Penyiaran di Daerah Perbatasan Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia (Broadcasting Profile and Dynamics of the Border Areas of the Republic of
Indonesia). Jakarta, Author.
Lemhannas. (2013) Meningkatkan Bela Negara Masyarakat Perbatasan Guna Mendukung Pembangunan Nasional dalam Rangka Menjaga Keutuhan NKRI (Strengthening the Nationalism of the
Border Societies to Support National Development and Maintain the Unity of the Republic of
Indonesia). Jurnal Kajian Lemhan nas RI, Edisi 15, 88–104.
Lilis Ch, D. & Yuliati, N. (2012) Mengusung Radio Komunitas sebagai Basis Kearifan Lokal: Prosiding
Seminar Nasional Menggagas Pencitraan Berbasis Kearifan Lokal (Supporting Community Radio as
the Basis of Local Wisdom: Proceeding of National Seminar on Formulating Imageries based on Local
Wisdom), Purwokerto, 26 September 2012, 197–231.
Masduki. (2007) Radio Komunitas: Belajar dari Lapangan (Community Radio: Learning from the
Field). Jakarta, The World Bank.
No.11/PIH/KOMINFO/3/2015 tentang Suspensi (Penghentian Sementara) Layanan Kewajiban Pelayanan Universal/Universal Service Obligation (KPU/USO) (on Suspension (Temporary Suspension)
of Universal Service Obligation). Kementerian Komunikasi dan Informatika.
Rencana Pembangunan Jangka Menengah (RPJM) 2010–2014 and Program 5 Tahun Menkominfo.
(Medium-Term Development Plan 2010–2014) and (Ministry of Communication and Information
Technology 5-Year Program).
Rochim, M. (2012) Kiprah Radio Komunitas dalam Pemberdayaan Masyarakat: Prosiding Seminar
Nasional Menggagas Pencitraan Berbasis Kearifan Lokal, (The Achievements of Community Radio
in Community Empowerment: Proceeding of National Seminar on Formulating Imageries based on
Local Wisdom) Purwokerto, 26 September 2012, 565–574.
Tempo, (2012) Siaran Radio TV Malaysia Favorit Warga Perbatasan (Malaysian TV Radio Broadcasting Popular for Border Societies). [Online] Available from: http://nasional.tempo.co/read/
news/2012/06/22/058412297/siaran-radio-tv-malaysia-favorit-warga-perbatasan [Accessed on 22nd
June 2012].
Undang-undang Nomor 32 Tahun 2002 on Penyiaran (Broadcasting). (Law No. 32 Year 2002 on
Broadcasting).
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Heimat for three generations of immigrants in Germany:
An analysis of Turkish–German films
M.R. Widhiasti & M. Budianta
Department of German Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Turkish immigrants have been residing in Germany for three generations
since the 1960s. The immigrants’ different social, political and economic backgrounds have
shaped the way the German society treats them. Their relationships with the host society have
influenced the way they construct their idealised imagination of their home (Heimat), which
could be a Turkish, a German or an in-between space of Turkish–German imaginary. This
study aims at examining how each generation of Turkish immigrants conceptualises their
Heimat and the contexts for their different Heimat. The objects of this study are three films
directed by Turkish–German immigrants in the early to mid-21st century. They are Gegen
die Wand and Auf der anderen Seite directed by Fatih Akin and Almanya—Willkommen in
Deutschland directed by Yasemin Samdereli. At that time, the issue of integration became
highly prominent in the public space and the media in Germany.
1
INTRODUCTION
The concept of borderless Europe championed by the EU is facing its biggest challenge in the
21st century. In two decades, the number of immigrants in Europe has increased by 21 million
people. According to the data compiled by the United Nations, DESA, Population Division
(2011), there were approximately 28 million immigrants in Europe by 1990, and the number
rose by 8 million to 36 million immigrants in 2000. The next 10 years saw a spike of 13 million additional immigrants moving to Europe, totalling to 49 million immigrants living in the
continent by 2010. In 2015, more than 1 million people entered Europe, or increased four
times than a year earlier (280,000 immigrants). The number continues to increase, with more
than 135,000 people coming to Europe only within the first two months of 2016. Germany is
one of the countries in Europe that has become one of the main destinations of immigrants
from across the world. In 2015, 1.1 million asylum seekers immigrated to Germany, the highest among the EU countries. As a country with a large number of immigrants, Germany
(together with other European countries) is facing challenges in integrating these newcomers
into the labour market and the society because most of them have minimum working and
language skills. Immigrants are in fact an important part of German history. Before the wave
of immigrants had hit Germany and Europe in general in the past few years, Germany has
already had a long immigration history. One of the big waves started in the 1960s, when the
country signed an agreement with several countries, including Yugoslavia, Italy and Turkey,
to recruit manpower to meet the demand for labour in the informal sector. Among the million workers who came to Germany, those from Turkey dominated (Gökturk, 2007).
The migrant workers who came to Germany based on the bilateral agreements are known
as Gastarbeiter or guest workers. After more than three decades since the arrival of the Gastarbeiter in Germany, the Turkish immigrants have become the largest migrant group in Germany. According to a census in 2014, 3 million immigrants from Turkey lived in the country.
After more than 50 years of living in Germany, the Turkish immigrants have reached their
third generation. These three generations have been facing different problems with their identity issues as immigrants. One of the most significant issues of their identity construction
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is the concept of home (Heimat). This issue is closely related to a sense of belonging: these
immigrants no longer live in their place of origin, but do not feel completely at home in the
country where they have immigrated.
For several years, Turkish immigrants have become part of the German population, and the
experiences of the three generations are represented in several media, such as literature and
film (Adelson, 2005). Through the portrayals in films, we can see the complexity of the Turkish
immigrants’ situations in Germany, being a Turk and a German at the same time. Although
Turkish film directors have been making films since the 1980s, it is the (second generation of)
Turkish immigrants who play an important role and mark the re-awakening of the German cinema in the 2000s. The filmmakers of this generation like Fatih Akın, Kutluğ Ataman, Thomas
Arslan, Ayşe Polat and others reflect their own cultural background in a far more relaxed way
than the generation before them did. This certainly has to do with the fact that they grew up
in the country where they started their professional filmmaking career (Yeşilada, 2008, p. 74).
Among the films produced by the second generation of Turkish immigrants in Germany,
there are three films that show the struggle of the Turkish immigrants in interpreting their
presence in Germany: Gegen die Wand (2004) and Auf der anderen Seite (2007) by Fatih Akın,
and Almanya—Willkommen in Deutschland (2011) directed by Yasemin Şamdereli. Fatih
Akın and Yasemin Şamdereli are Turkish–German directors. They were born in Germany
in 1973 and started directing German films since the mid-1990s. These three films represent
issues on identities faced by the three generations of Turkish immigrants in Germany and
their imagination of Heimat. In its simplest sense, Heimat means home or homeland. However, the term Heimat carries a burden of references and implication that is not adequately
conveyed by the translation of homeland or hometown. For almost two centuries, Heimat
has been at the centre of a German moral and, by extension, political discourses about place,
belonging and identity (Applegate, 1990).
Berghahn (2006) examined three films by Fatih Akin (Kurz und Schmerzlos, Solino and
Gegen die Wand) to see the significance of the protagonists’ homecoming journey. She concluded that the homecoming journey reflects the longing for home and the feeling of displacement. By focusing on these films and connecting them to Akin’s migrant experience,
Berghahn limited her study to the second generation of Turkish immigrants in Germany,
whereas this study aims to examine how the three generations of Turkish immigrants in Germany articulate their closeness or connection, both with Turkey and Germany. It also aims
at examining how these films produce Heimat visually by examining the language used in the
films as well as the daily practices and mobility.
In the three films, the Heimat concept of each generation is shown in their daily social
practices such as language use, food, clothing and mobility. The analysis of the films—which
become the data corpus—shows that the Heimat concept in the films is different for each generation because each generation of Turkish immigrants in Germany faces different situations
over three decades. For the first generation, the question regarding their sense of belonging is
an accumulation of homesickness. For the second generation, it is closely related to dualism
in their lives. They still carry the influence of Turkish cultural practices from their upbringing
and, at the same time, experience German cultural practices in their daily lives. Meanwhile,
born and raised in Germany, most of the third-generation immigrants no longer have any
connection with Turkey. Although they never visit the country nor speak the language, they
are still considered Turkish.
1.1
Heimat in language
Language is one of the ways people articulate their identity or connection to a culture.
In the films, we can see different language behaviours of the three generations. The firstgeneration immigrants almost always use the Turkish language because they have not
acquired the German language. The second-generation immigrants have equally good skills
in both the Turkish and German languages, so the dominant use of one language is decided
by their choice and not by force. Meanwhile, the third-generation immigrants are depicted
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to have better skills of the German language instead of the Turkish language, and there is a
tendency of declining use of the latter among them.
Ali Aksu (in Auf der anderen Seite) and married couple Hüseyin and Fatma Yilmaz in
Almanya—Willkommen in Deutschland use only Turkish in their conversations. The three
characters have been living in Germany for years, but grammatically it is apparent that they
are not German natives. Fatma is unable to use German in the entirety of the film, and there
are two scenes that show Fatma’s inability to communicate with German people when she
just recently arrived from Turkey. Their lack of ability to communicate in the German language is also underlined by the portrayal of the domestic setting. Meanwhile, in the public
space, the characters continue to use Turkish (because the other characters are also Turks)
or are altogether silent.
The second-generation immigrants are portrayed to be equally fluent in Turkish and German. They switch between the languages, and we can see their preference in using German
and their conscious choice to stop speaking Turkish. There are two characters that represent
the language behaviour of the second generation: Cahit Tomruk (in Gegen die Wand) and
Nejat Aksu (in Auf der anderen Seite). In both films, they use German as their main language
in their daily lives in Germany. However, there is a difference between the two characters.
Cahit deliberately chooses not to speak Turkish. This decision is apparent when Cahit visits
Sibel’s parents. In that scene, Sibel’s brother questions Cahit’s poor Turkish skills, and Cahit
openly explains that he no longer uses Turkish in his life. This choice shows that he feels
uncomfortable with his identity as a Turk and thus consciously decides to neglect all cultural
markers of Turkish identity.
The second character that represents the second generation of Turkish immigrants is Nejat
Aksu. Unlike Cahit Tomruk, Nejat does not oppose the use of Turkish, but he chooses to
always use German, even when he meets Turkish people who speak Turkish. One of the
scenes that clearly shows Nejat’s attitude is when he is having dinner with his father (Ali
Aksu) and Yeter Özturk, his father’s female partner. During that meal, Ali and Yeter converse
in Turkish, while Nejat always replies in German. Nejat’s choice correlates with his occupation as a professor in a German university, which puts him in an equal position with other
Germans. By speaking German in a Turkish environment, Nejat marks his difference from
other immigrants.
Unlike the first-generation immigrants who are more fluent in Turkish, the third-generation
immigrants are more fluent in German. Although their Turkish language skills are portrayed
to be not completely erased, immigrants of this generation are more fluent in German than
in Turkish. This domination of the German language over Turkish poses a question for the
third-generation immigrants: whether they can still be called Turks when they can no longer
speak Turkish. Such question arises in a dining scene in Almanya—Willkommen in Deutschland, when Cenk Yilmaz asks all of his family members, ‘was sind wir den jetzt, Türken
oder Deutsche?’ (So, what are we? Turks or Germans?). The question is answered simultaneously by Cenk’s parents. Cenk’s father, who is a Turkish descendant, answers ‘Turks’, while
his mother—a German woman—replies ‘Germans’. The two answers prompt Cenk to fire
more questions: ‘wenn Oma und Opa Türkensind, warum sind sie den hier?’ (If Grandma and
Grandpa are Turks, why are they here?) and ‘warum kann ich eigentlich kein Türkisch?’ (Why
can’t I actually speak Turkish?). In Cenk’s understanding, they are not Turks because they
are in Germany. Meanwhile, if Cenk is part of a Turkish family, he questions why he cannot
speak Turkish. For the third-generation immigrants, who were born and raised in Germany,
Turkish culture is no longer part of their daily lives. However, as Turkish descendants who
live in Germany, the third generation continuously face questions about their identities.
While they no longer feel the connection with the Turkish culture, the identity as Turk is still
embedded within them.
By showing differences in using languages, Gegen die Wand, Auf der anderen Seite and
Almanya—Willkommen in Deutschland show that each generation has different attachment
towards Germany and Turkey, which also reflects their attachment towards the German and
Turkish cultures.
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1.2
Heimat in daily practices: Clothes and food
In daily lives, that ‘at home’ feeling is represented by parts of daily routines, such as clothing
and variety of food. Choices of clothing represent the comfort of being part of a certain culture. Fatma Yilmaz, the main character in Almanya—Willkommen in Deutschland, who came
to Germany in her 20 s in 1963, always wears clothes with similar models and colour worn by
her fellow female villagers, a long-sleeved blouse with a small floral pattern, in Germany in
the present as well as in scenes showing her past in Turkey. Fatma’s clothing (that she wears
until her old age) shows the dominant Turkish culture in her life. In this case, clothing is a
signifier for Fatma’s lasting connection with her hometown. Fatma’s clothes, which function
as identity markers, are also used to show identity change in a hyperbolic dream scene. Fatma
and her husband, Hüseyin, are applying for German citizenship, which has caused Hüseyin’s
anxiety. In a dream, he saw Fatma wearing dirndl, German’s traditional clothes, exposing
her neck and breast. Similarly, Hüseyin’s moustache style changes into that of Hitler’s. In
Almanya—Willkommen in Deutschland, moustache is the characteristics of Turkish men. In
a scene when the boys of the Yilmaz family arrive in Germany, they are confused to see that
German men do not have a moustache. This signifier is then used in the film to heighten
Hüseyin’s fear of identity change as they become German citizens.
Hüseyin’s uneasiness regarding their citizenship change is related to Fatma’s role as an
immigrant woman who preserves Turkish culture by passing the values and tradition to her
children (Levitt, Lucken & Barnett, 2015). Hüseyin’s fear that stems from his wife’s wish to
have a German passport represents the fear and anxiety of immigrants about the loss of their
cultural roots amongst the future generation.
In addition to clothes, food represents the Turkish culture. Having meal together at home
is one central scene in the films, and the meals always consist of Turkish delicacies, such as
börek or lahmacun. Symbolically, these films use food as a factor that brings together all the
members of the immigrant families. As David Morgan stated, the food served in a family
represents strong connection to the past (Bell & Valentine, 1997).
In this case, through food, immigrants ‘preserve’ their Heimat in a foreign place. However,
there is also a portrayal of rejection of Turkish food. Ali in Almanya—Willkommen in Deutschland is the youngest son of the Yilmaz family. Born and raised in Germany, he develops an
allergy to spicy Turkish dishes. There is a scene that shows Ali bringing a bag full of medicine
before leaving for Turkey, to anticipate possible food allergy he may suffer there. Compared
to the first-generation immigrants who always eat Turkish dishes (even though they have
lived in Germany for many years), the portrayal of Ali as a Turkish descendant who is allergic
to Turkish food shows a detachment to his parents’ cultural roots.
Through the visualisation of Hüseyin’s fear and the depiction of Ali’s allergy to Turkish
food, we can conclude that the films show differences among generations of immigrants in
their daily lives. In terms of food and clothing, for example, the first generation of immigrants still cling to their homeland. They continue to practice the habits from Turkey in their
lives in Germany. Meanwhile, the second generation (who were born in Turkey and moved
to Germany in their childhood) receive German cultural influences from the environment
outside their domestic lives. German influence is reflected from their clothing. If we connect
this with comfort and sense of belonging, it can be seen that the first generation continues to
feel comfortable living their lives in Germany, a place they do not consider their Heimat, in
the same way as they lived in Turkey. The second generation, on the other hand, have started
to feel some distance with the Turkish culture, but at the same time are not entirely at home
with the German culture.
1.3
Heimat in mobility
The concept of Heimat in the three films can also be seen from the mobility of the characters from Turkey to Germany and then to Turkey again. The mobility can be translated as a
search for a place that gives them a sense of belonging. Almost all of the main characters in
the films were born in Turkey and moved to Germany at a certain age. The first-generation
immigrants moved to Germany in their 20 s, whereas the second generation moved when they
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were children. Several decades later, when the first generation entered their pension age (or
in their 60 s) and the second generation were in their productive age (in their 30–40 s), they
moved back to Turkey. The moves by the two generations were for different reasons and thus
resulting in different situations.
The mobility among the first generation of Turkish immigrants can be separated into two
categories. The first category, which shows that the immigrants return to Turkey on their own
choice, is represented by Hüseyin Yilmaz (of Almanya—Willkommen in Deutschland). The
second category is represented by Ali Aksu (from Auf der anderen Seite), who has to return
to Turkey by force. In both cases, they do not find their Heimat in Turkey.
Hüseyin’s and Ali’s return is prompted by nostalgia in their retirement age. Coming to
Germany as guest workers, they no longer have a meaningful activity when they retire, and
they start to reminiscent their home villages. Hüseyin realises his desire to return to his village by taking all of his family members to visit. However, he dies on the return trip from his
village. Hüseyin’s death depicts how he never reaches his destination. Hüseyin is a representation of the first-generation immigrants who do not have home (Heimat) in both Germany
and Turkey and occupy an in-between space.
As a retiree with much free time on his hand, Ali Aksu spends most of his time betting at
horse race tracks or visiting brothels. At one time, Ali causes the death of someone and has to
be deported back to Turkey. After he returns to Turkey, we can see notable differences in his
character through close-up shots. Ali’s character is never shown in close-up shots during his
time in Germany. It suggests that in Germany his feelings are unimportant because he is only
part of that place. When Ali is in Turkey, the film focuses on his emotional state. However,
the close-up depicts Ali’s sad expression, looking morose with glassy eyes, his long, greying
moustache suggesting a much older-looking person.
Ali’s sadness is also shown symbolically in the scene where he looks outside the small window of his dark prison cell. The small window lets rays of sunshine in. The rays of light that
shine through the window symbolise a better condition outside. Ironically, after he is released
from prison and returns home to Turkey, Ali remains as an unhappy person. The final scene
of Auf der anderen Seite shows Ali going fishing. Fishing is a tranquil activity usually done
in places far from noisy crowd. The ending suggests loneliness and a sense of estrangement
that Ali feels since his return to Turkey.
The portrayal of Ali and Hüseyin who do not find their Heimat in Turkey contradicts with
what happens to Nejat Aksu (in Auf der anderen Seite) and Cahit and Sibel (from Gegen die
Wand). These characters, who represent the second-generation immigrants, find their Heimat
in Turkey. Nejat moves back to Turkey in an aim to ‘repent’ against what his father has done.
Nejate leaves a very comfortable life in Germany, and his journey to Turkey is shown in a
lengthy manner. This can be interpreted as a symbol of the difficulties of Nejat’s search for
his Heimat. The clearest change that happens after he moves to Turkey is Nejat’s face that
turns brighter. Nejat is shown to be happier after he lives in Turkey. In spite of this, there is
something that does not change, which is Nejat’s love for the German literature. During his
stay in Germany, Nehat is a professor in the German literature. After he lives in Turkey, he
becomes an owner of a German bookstore in Istanbul. This shift shows Nejat’s efforts to
continue his link with Germany within him. Although he moves to Turkey, he still brings the
German side in him and bases his new life on that. With his move, Nejat finds his Heimat in
Turkey with a strong German element in it.
Other representations of the second-generation immigrants who find their Heimat in Turkey are Cahit and Sibel. Similar to Nejat, Cahit and Sibel start new lives in Turkey. However,
unlike Nejat who lives a better life in Germany, Cahit and Sibel say goodbye to their awful
lives there. During their stay in Germany, Cahit and Sibel’s lives are portrayed to be full of
troubles. They are hospitalised because of suicidal tendencies. Cahit is also once imprisoned
for murder. Thus, their move can be seen as their efforts to secure better lives, and they find
that in Turkey. By moving to Turkey, Cahit and Sibel are portrayed as two persons who are
calmer and live better lives. The two characters are depicted as people who want to detach
from the Turkish culture during their stay in Germany, but then move back to Turkey for
better lives.
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2
CONCLUSION
This study examined the portrayal of the lives and problems of Turkey immigrants for three
generations in Germany. It shows that each generation has a different idea about Heimat.
The differences, for example, in language, clothing and food preferences are shown through
the portrayal of the immigrants’ daily lives. The films show the immigrants’ relationships
with Heimat using the mobility of characters. The first generation lose their Heimat in Turkey and do not see Germany as their home, while the second generation are influenced by the
cultural practices of both Turkey and Germany. However, they are facing challenges because
they do not have the closeness to the Turkish culture, unlike the previous generation, nor do
they feel completely at home in Germany. The third generation is no longer associated with
Turkish culture but cannot free themselves from being identified as Turks. This in-between
space represents the symbolic Heimat of the three generations of Turkish immigrants in
Germany.
REFERENCES
Adelson, L.A. (2005) The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature. Toward a New Critical
Grammar of Migration. New York, Palgrave Macmillan.
Applegate, C. (1990) A Nation of Provincials. The German Idea of Heimat. Berkeley & Los Angeles,
University of California Press.
Bell, D. & Valentine, G. (1997) Consuming Geographies: We Are where We Eat. Psychology Press.
Berghahn, D. (2006) No Place Like Home? Or Impossible Homecomings in the Films of Fatih Akin.
Journal of Contemporary Film, 4 (3), 141–157. New Cinemas.
Gökturk, D., Gramling, D. & Kaes, A. (eds.) (2007) Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration 1955–
2005. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, University of California Press.
Levitt, P., Lucken, K. & Barnett, M. (2015) Beyond home and return: Negotiating religious identity
across time and space through the prism of the American experience. In: A.C. Russell King, Links to
the Diasporic Homeland: Second Generation and Ancestral ‘Return’ Mobilities, 17–32. Routledge.
Yeşilada, K.E. (2008) Turkish-German Screen Power—The Impact of Young Turkish Immigrants
on German TV and Film. German as a Foreign Language Journal, 1, 72–99. Available from: http://
ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statisticsexplained/index.php/Migration_and_migrant_population_statistics.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Representation of India as the root of identity in the film
adaptation of The Namesake
R.A. Setyaningrum & D. Hapsarani
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the different points of view in seeing India as the root
of identity portrayed in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake (2003) and its film adaptation that goes by the same name directed by Mira Nair (2007). Both the author and director
of the two works are of Indian descents, but they come from different generations. Lahiri
belongs to the second generation immigrants, whereas Nair comes from the first generation.
By using essentialist and non-essentialist perspectives on the concept of identity, the analysis
denotes that while the novel stresses identity as a fluid notion that always undergoes changes
and transformations which suggest the non-essentialist point of view, its film adaptation
accentuates India as the essence of identity that is unchanged, timeless, and stable from time
to time, reflecting the essentialist point of view. By comparing on how the author and the
director make use of two different media in portraying the same story, this paper highlights
the difference of loyalty toward India as the root of identity for each diasporic generation.
1
INTRODUCTION
In 2015, a Bengali-American writer, Jhumpa Lahiri, published her memoir written in the Italian language titled In Altre Parole (In Other Words). Lahiri herself considered the book as
her efforts to detach herself from her given languages, Bengali as her mother tongue and English which she acquired from her upbringing. The book is about her linguistic journey in the
pursuit of a language that she feels she can identify herself with, a language that she chooses
instead of choosing her. Lahiri, known to be eloquent in deciphering the immigrants’ experiences, illuminates themes, such as estrangement, belonging, uprooting, and identity through
this memoir as well as in her other successful fiction books and short story anthologies.
The urge to find roots, an origin point where someone feels a sense of belonging, is an
unending journey for second generation immigrants like Lahiri. The desire of finding roots
arises because second generation migrants were born in two—or more—different cultures;
the culture of their parents and the dominant culture they grew up with. Being born in such
a condition brings at least two cultural internalisations. First, they obtain the culture of their
ancestors mediated by the parents. Second, along with the first internalisation, they also
absorb the dominant culture of their everyday lives. The possible result is that their loyalty
is more pronounced to the culture of their birth country and distanced them from their
ancestral culture (Grewal, 1996). Nevertheless, it does not make them a complete person
regarding identifying themselves to one of the cultures. In Lahiri’s case, she can neither claim
as a Bengali as much as her parents nor assert herself as fully an American. She is eager to
find something that can represent herself as a whole, and she chooses a language as her first
experiment in a journey to find her true self, as said in one of her interview “I waited a very
long time to go away from the world I knew,” she says. “Rome has given me a sense of belonging” (Pierce, 2015). Her attempts to master Italian is her way to liberate herself from the
other two languages she has been familiar with, to give her a chance to feel that she belongs
to something completely new to her.
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The idea of liberating one’s identity from two different cultures is depicted in one of Lahiri’s
renowned novel, The Namesake (2003), which tells a story of a Bengali immigrant family in
America, the Gangulis. The novel problematizes the conflict of cultural identity experienced
by the characters who represent different generations. Gogol Ganguli, the main character of
the story, represents the portrayal of the second generation migrant, while Ashima Ganguli,
the mother, stands as the representation of the first generation migrant. Each generation
deals with the different conflicts caused by cultural differences which require different ways
in the effort to solve the problems.
Cultural identity, according to Hall (1990), can always undergo some changes depending
on the space and time inhabited by the individual. Hall criticizes the essential point of view
that assumes the identity as a fixed entity based on a set of characteristics that is unchanged
throughout time. According to his non-essential point of view, identity is seen as something
that is unstable and as an ongoing transformation, “cultural identity is not a fixed essence at
all, lying unchanged outside history and culture. It is not once-and-for-all” (Hall in Woodward,
1997, p. 53). The Namesake is regarded as a novel that depicts the spirit to celebrate the transformation of cultural identity shown through the development of Gogol and Ashima who
in the end adopt a flexible sense of belonging to more than one culture (Friedman, 2008).
In 2007, The Namesake’s film adaptation directed by Mira Nair hit the box office. Some
of the previous studies that examined this film adaptation focused on the intertextuality
between the two works (Mani, 2012; Nagajothi, 2013). Another study (Das, 2013) examined
this film adaptation through the lens of Roman Jacobson’s inter-semiotic translation to show
that Bengali culture is used by the film as the strategy to translate the novel into moving
images. This study aims to fill the gap in the discussion about The Namesake film adaptation by focusing on the generational differences between the two makers, the author and the
director. Lahiri belongs to the second generation immigrants, whereas Nair comes from the
first generation.
Because Nair directly internalized India as part of her cultural identity in most of her
adult life before she moved to America, her loyalty to India presumably will be different from
Lahiri’s. This will lead us to the question, whether the adaptation shows a different portrayal
of India as the root of identity and changes the idea of the novel regarding its view on cultural identity. The changes in film adaptation are likely influenced by the generation gap
spans between the author and the director. To support the hypothesis, the analysis will focus
on the visual and audio use, as the specificity of a film as a medium that converts words into
moving images, in order to show how different generations have different points of view in
seeing India as the root of identity by comparing the novel and its film adaptation.
1.1
Visual specificity: Indian cultural icons
The film makes use of several Indian cultural icons to stress on India as the root of identity.
The first visual cultural icon that appears in the film that is unwritten in the novel is the statue
of the goddess Saraswati. The statue appears in scenes that depict Ashima’s important stages
of life. The statue shows up three times in the film, and I assume that since it appears as a
recurring image, it must have an important meaning regarding the film’s portrayal of India
as the essence of Ashima’s identity. The first one appears when the film introduces Ashima as
an Indian classical music singer in which the novel provides no such information right before
the scene that shows her arranged marriage with her then husband, Ashoke. By portraying
Ashima as a traditional singer, the film created an allusion between Saraswati and Ashima
through arts, specifically through music. The allusion is obvious because Saraswati is widely
known as the goddess of knowledge, arts, and music. The film also constructs the allusion
through their similar appearances through the use of the same icon, which is Veena. Veena
is one of Indian’s traditional music instruments, the same instrument that is attached to the
popular depiction of Saraswati which symbolizes her as the goddess of arts and music.
The second appearance of the statue occurs in the scene that shows Ashima who is about
to deliver a baby (Gogol). The statue itself is shown in the film as being moved on a cart,
crossing the road. The movement of the statue functions as a metaphor of Ashima’s current
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role from being a wife to a whole new role of being a mother and entering motherhood. The
third appearance is the most important of all because it concludes the whole idea of the
film in presenting the goddess statue. The statue emerges in the last scene of Ashima who is
back in India and once again resumes her first position as an Indian classical music singer
as shown at the beginning of the film. This last scene is rather different from the description given in the novel which shows Ashima’s identity transformation, “she is not the same
Ashima who had lived in Calcutta” (Lahiri, 2003, p. 276). By putting Ashima back to her first
appearance, the film asserts its goal in showing Ashima’s loyalty toward her ancestral culture.
The appearance of the goddess Saraswati statue in the film itself can be concluded to represent several things. Firstly, it represents India’s dominant spiritual identity that is Hinduism.
Secondly, it functions as an allusion between Ashima and the goddess. Thirdly, it represents
Ashima’s loyalty to the Indian’s culture as the essence of her identity because the statue
remains the same, neither changed nor shattered until the end of the film. The meaning of
the goddess Saraswati statue in the film also hints the desire of the first generation migrant
to return to its cultural root.
Taj Mahal is the second Indian cultural icon used by the film to replace the influence
of Yale buildings on Gogol, who decides to pursue his career as an architect. The novel
elaborates the buildings, which were built in the style of European Gothic architecture, as the
source of inspiration for Gogol and had affected his decision to be an architect,
For his drawing class, in which he is required to make half a dozen sketches every week,
he is inspired by the details of the buildings: flying buttresses pointed archways filled
with flowing trace, thick rounded doorways, squat columns of pale pink stone. In the
spring semester, he takes an introductory class in architecture. (Lahiri, 2003, p. 108)
In the novel’s depiction, it is clear that Gogol’s attachment to the buildings brings him a
sense of belonging to a particular place. According to May, a sense of belonging can be
constructed through someone’s attachment to a place which eventually makes him identify
himself with such a place, “we build sense of belonging in the world based on the meanings we
give our environment by moving through and engaging with it” (2011, p. 371). Gogol’s comfortable feeling, familiarity, and a sense of root that he feels toward America—or in a broader
sense, Western culture—can be seen from this following description, “but now it is in his room
at Yale where Gogol feels most comfortable...He has fallen in love with the Gothic architecture
of the campus...that roots him to the environment in a way he had never felt growing up on Pemberton Road” (Lahiri, 2003, p. 108).
The film replaced the function of place related to Gogol’s sense of belonging by changing
the building with one of the most famous Indian’s cultural icons, Taj Mahal. Although the
film could not escape from showing Gogol’s tourist-gaze when he stares dazzlingly at the
building, the heart of the matter is that the film replaced the Gothic Western architecture
with the Indian’s ancient Mughal architecture which in the film is depicted as a strong influence on Gogol’s further education. The film shows more that Gogol, who is wearing his
American football shirt and a Jansport backpack, is pulled back to his ancestor’s civilization
rather than shows the superiority of Western culture that affects Gogol as portrayed in the
novel.
The positive effect of Taj Mahal toward Gogol in the film also reversed the novel’s description to illustrate Gogol’s distance feeling against the building,
Their second day at the Taj he attempts to sketch the dome and a portion of the
facade, but the building’s grace eludes him, and he throws the attempt away. Instead,
he immerses himself in the guidebook, studying the history of Mughal architecture,
learning the succession of emperors’ names: Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah
Jahan, Aurangzeb. (Lahiri, 2003, p. 85)
The above quotation shows how Gogol reacts while he is surrounded by the building. Indeed
Taj Mahal inspires him to draw some sketches, but the word ‘eludes’ implicates something
that Gogol fails in achieving. This may be interpreted as the lost connection between Gogol
and his ancestral cultures in which Gogol fails to identify himself with. Moreover, the
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distance is strengthened by the novel as it describes Gogol’s position as a tourist, by making
him drawn to the guidebook. The novel also shows a contrasting attitude in the description
of each building. For Gothic architecture, the novel describes it meticulously, such as ‘flying buttresses, pointed archways filled with flowing trace, thick rounded doorways, squat
columns of pale pink stone’, while in describing the Mughal architecture, the novel does not
touch the details of the building. Instead, it only mentions prominent figures of Mughal
emperors, such as Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aungrazeb.
Taj Mahal does not only affect Gogol’s future career but also influences him to express his
personal feeling toward his wife, Moushumi. Taj Mahal itself is known as one of the symbols
of eternal love. The symbolism inspires Gogol to name his dream house design after the
building, ‘Moushumi Mahal’, as a wedding anniversary gift. On the other hand, the novel
clearly states that the gift is “a lilac pashmina shawl” (Lahiri, 2002, p. 247). A house and a
shawl might implicate the same meaning of protection and warmth. However, as a material
object, pashmina shawl represents one’s social status. Meanwhile, the film replaces the shawl
with ‘Moushumi Mahal’, a direct reference to the symbol of love, Indian national symbol,
and the pride of the nation.
Another cultural icon used by the film is the tradition of tonsure, a ritual of head shaving after the death of someone’s father. The film shows Gogol practicing this tradition, an
act that is not mentioned in the novel. The novel only stresses that “Gogol had learned the
significance, that it was a Bengali son’s duty to shave his head in the way of parent’s death”
(Lahiri, 2003, p. 179). Even so, the novel gives no further information whether Gogol shaves
his head or not. It is only implied that Gogol recognizes the ritual but does not mention that
he does it. Meanwhile, in the film, the ritual is depicted elaborately soon after Gogol learns
about his father’s death. The ritual is chosen by the film to emphasize Gogol’s spiritual identity. Other than that, the ritual also enables the film to visualize Gogol’s pivotal moment that
marks his homecoming to his Bengali identity.
In the scene where the film shows the process of the tonsure, it is interesting to notice how
the film uses a mirror to symbolize the transformation of Gogol’s cultural identity. In one
of the scenes at the beginning of the film, little Gogol is shown looking through a window
glass. The textured glass of the window makes Gogol’s reflection seen as scattered pieces as
if indicating Gogol’s fragmented cultural identity as it is divided between India and America.
Meanwhile, when the adult Gogol shaves his head, the mirror reflects Gogol as a whole indicating his new found complete self-identity.
Each picture also uses different points of view. The scene with Gogol’s scattered reflections is shown from the audience’s point of view. It means the others see Gogol as having
a fragmented identity. On the contrary, the scene with Gogol’s reflection on the mirror uses
Gogol’s point of view. It can be interpreted that Gogol sees himself having a whole identity.
The mirror also functions as a symbol of Gogol’s awareness of himself as a Bengali descent.
It also reflects the way he wants other people to see him.
Based on the differences between the novel and the film adaptation, it can be concluded
that the film uses its visual specificity to stress its goal on displaying India as the essence of
Ashima and Gogol’s identity. The film uses Indian cultural icons as the strategy to illuminate
the meaning of India as the root of identity to each aforementioned character. The goddess
of Saraswati and Taj Mahal are two powerful cultural icons that bind Ashima and Gogol to
their ancestors’ culture. The ritual of tonsure, which is elaborately depicted in the film, serves
as the film’s strategy to show Gogol’s spiritual identity and his acceptance of his Bengali
identity.
1.2
Audio specificity: Language, Indian classical music, and Bengali ethnic music
The audio department also takes an important role in the film’s accentuation of India as the
essence of each character’s identity. The aforementioned Indian classical music is one of the
examples of how the film utilizes audio as its strategy in portraying Indian culture that binds
Ashima with her ancestral culture. Another type of music that the film used is Bengali ethnic
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music. Ashima sings a Bengali lullaby to soothe Ashoke’s feeling in a scene when Ashoke
is hysterical because of a nightmare caused by the traumatic train incident he experienced
when he was young. This scene is strongly intertwined with Indian’s culture that posits Indian
women as the source of love, care, sacrifice, creation and life-giver in the family and elevates
them to the level of a goddess-like, “in the Aryan home, a woman stands supreme. As the wife
in the West—lady and queen of her husband—as a mother in the east, —a goddess throned in
her son’s worship—she is the bringer of sanctity and peace” (Nivedita in Bagchi, 1990, p. 68).
The scene discussed above is in contrast to the description given in the novel. Ashima’s
reaction toward Ashoke’s trauma about the accident described in the novel as “polite newlywed sympathy” (Lahiri, 2003, p. 29). The quoted description creates a sense of obedience
from a wife to a husband. Meanwhile, in the film, the lullaby that Ashima sings has created
an intimacy between her and her husband. Moreover, Ashoke’s reaction in the film appears
to be powerless and in need of help from his wife, while the novel describes him to be “suddenly pensive, aloof” (Lahiri, 2003, p. 29). Compared to the description given in the novel, it
can be concluded that the film attempts to show the ability of Ashima in bringing peace and
in purifying her husband from his trauma. Through the use of Bengali lullaby, this scene
emphasizes Ashima’s portrayal as goddess-like, a social construction of Indian women being
placed at the same level as a goddess, the bringer of sanctity, love, and peace in the family.
The film also makes use of the audio when it comes to a scene that shows Gogol’s acceptance with his Bengali identity. After having his head shaved, Gogol comes up to his mother’s
surprise seeing the bald son. In this scene, Ashima speaks in Bengali saying “you didn’t have
to do this” followed by Gogol’s answer which also speaks in Bengali “I wanted to”. The dialog
marked the first time Gogol speaks in Bengali, in which the novel does not give such illustration. At this point, it can be seen that the film makes use of the audio to point out that Gogol
starts to openly embrace his Indianness, either visually (with the bald head) and aurally (by
speaking Bengali). Through this scene, the film accentuates that the trauma of loss caused by
the parent’s death becomes a bigger sentimental force for the second generation immigrants
to start respecting and embracing their ancestral culture.
Based on the comparison above, the film uses its audio specificity to fill the gap that cannot
be obtained through words written in the novel. The addition of music, especially Indian classical music, to Ashima’s portrayal in the film interweaves her with Indian’s culture. It can be seen
through her position in the beginning and in the ending of the film which emphatically shows her
as a traditional Indian singer. Bengali ethnic music is another kind of music used by the film to
depict Ashima as the manifestation of a goddess. The film seems to use India’s social construction
of women that posits them as the mother goddess to highlight Ashima’s essential identity. Bengali
native language also serves to stress Gogol’s willingness to accept his Bengali identity.
2
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, The Namesake’s film adaptation shows that the portrayal of India as the root
of identity is shown more boldly. It shifts the allegiance of the film, so to speak, as it is
inclined to embrace India as the origin of identity for Ashima and Gogol. For Ashima’s case,
the film stresses that she is the manifestation of India’s ideal woman based on the social construction of the mother goddess permeated in India. The film also shows her as the bearer of
Indian culture by modifying her role as a traditional singer. On the other hand, Gogol, who
represents the second generation immigrants, is portrayed to be closer and more comfortable
with his ancestral culture compared to the description given in the novel. The analysis discussed above shows that the novel and its adaptation have different points of view in translating India as part of the diasporic identity. It can be said that the differences reflect the views
of the author and the director who come from two different generations. The director of the
film adaptation shows her subjectivity as an immigrant of the first generation who tends to
see India as her origin culture. Meanwhile, the novel, which is written by an immigrant of the
second-generation, perceives cultural identity as fluid and more flexible.
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REFERENCES
Bagchi, J. (1990) Representing Nationalism: Ideology of motherhood in colonial bengal. Economic and
Political Weekly, 25 (42), 65–71.
Das, S.K. (2013) Bengali diasporic culture: A study of the film adaptation of jhumpa lahiri’s the namesake (2003). [Online] Available from: http://www.academia.edu [Accessed 17th August 2017].
Friedman, N. (2008) From hybrids to tourists: Children of immigrants in Jhumpa Lahiri’s the namesake”. Critique-Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 50 (1), 111–126.
Grewal, G. (1996) Indian-American literature. In Knippling, A.S. (ed.) New immigrant literatures in
the united states: Sourcebook to our multicultural literary heritage. Westport, Greenwood Publishing
Group. pp. 91–108.
Lahiri, J. (2003) The Namesake. Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
Mani, B. (2012) Novel/cinema/photo: Intertextual reading of the namesake. In: Dhingra, L., & Cheung,
F. (ed.). Naming jhumpa lahiri: Canons and controversies. United Kingdom, Lexington Books.
pp 75–96.
May, V. (2011) Self, belonging and social change. Sociology, 45 (3), 363–378.
Nagajothi, N. (2013) Transposal from fiction to motion picture: Creating jhumpa lahiri’s the namesake on celluloid. Language in India. [Online] 13 (3). Available from: www.languageinindia.com/
march2013/nagathinamesake.pdf [Accessed 17th August].
Nair, M. (2007). The Namesake. New York, Mirabai Films and Cine Mosaic.
Pierce, S. (2015) Why Pulitzer Prize-winner Jhumpa Lahiri quit the US for Italy. [Online] Available from:
https://www.ft.com/content/3b188aec -f8bf-11e4-be00-00144feab7de [Accessed 23rd August 2016].
Woodward, K. (1997) Concepts of identity and difference. In Kathryn Woodward (ed.). Identity and
difference. London, SAGE Publications. pp. 8–50.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Contested representation of Dutch Americans in Washington
Irving’s A History of New York
M. Baga & M. Budianta
Department of Literature Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This study aims at analyzing the representation of Dutch Americans in New
York in Washington Irving’s (1809) historical text entitled A History of New York. It argues that
Irving’s text engages in the spatial and cultural dispute between the Dutch and English colonies
in America in the 17th and 19th centuries. The study shows how the historical depiction of the
early Dutch colony in the 17th-century America in Irving’s text serves as a political critique of
the 19th-century America. It also shows the reassertion of Irving’s text about the contribution
of Dutch culture to American history, which was not acknowledged in any of the historical
writings of his time. Furthermore, this study shows that Irving’s multilayered strategy of using
Dutch colonists both for portraying a more inclusive and pluralist America and for a political
parody complicates his representation of the Dutch ethnic community and thus results in their
stereotypical caricatures. The study uses the concept of representation and the New Historicism method to reveal the connection between the depiction of the 17th century and the context
in the 19th century and to unmask the underlying ideological biases in the text.
1
INTRODUCTION
The American society experienced what was known as Holland Mania in the late 19th century and the early 20th century (Goodfriend, 2008: 17). The term Holland Mania is labeled
by Annette Stott in her book as the time when a craze about Dutch things colored New York
life. Literary works, paintings, and advertisements reflected the popularity of the Dutch and
their antique cultural characteristics (Stott, 2005: 14–15; Bradley, 2009: 41–46). This craze
was attributed to the publication of A History of New York (AHONY) in 1809 by Washington Irving. Ironically, the same book ignited anger of the Dutch community in New York
because of its negative stereotypical descriptions of the Dutch (Bowden, 1975: 159).
In the opening paragraph of chapter III, Irving, through his narrator named Knickerbocker, criticized the literati in the New York Historical Society (NYHS) who only highlighted
warfare while failing to notice the role of the Dutch community in writing the history of
New York (AHONY, 475). Through AHONY, Irving reminded the English people in his contemporary works in the 19th century that New York was once a Dutch colony in the past.
In the 21st century, the United States has transformed into a large and established country
dominated by white people. The arrival of the European immigrants to the land around 400
years ago recast the Indians as Native Americans through a struggle for space. In practice, the
spatial struggle took place not only between the European immigrants and the Indian tribes,
but also among the European immigrants. However, the history of territorial dispute among
the Europeans is rarely discussed in American history. The history of the United States begins
invariably from a territorial dispute among white people in the New England colonies despite
the fact that there were other European colonies that existed before the New England colonies.
The problem that arises in this study is that AHONY attempts to reconstruct that very critical
part of colonial history—the spatial competition between the Dutch and the English—that has
been forgotten. However, Irving used a parody to deliver the historical reconstruction in AHONY.
In many cases, the use of parody is associated with sheer wisecracking; thus, it obfuscates
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the purpose of reconstructing the history of the Dutch in AHONY. Therefore, on the one
hand, Irving offered “advocacy” for the Dutch society, being one of the forgotten communities
in the American colonies in the writing of history after the nation’s declaration of independence; on the other hand, he staged the problem in a wisecracking manner by making the Dutch
ethnic group in New York as the object of ridicule. Irving’s wisecracking refers to stereotypes
of the Dutch ethnic group that are shared in the mind of the dominant Anglo-American society. At the same time, he used caricature and jokes about the Dutch society in his characters
to criticize the New American government in the 19th century, particularly the presidency of
Thomas Jefferson. This study seeks to address the ambivalence of AHONY by pointing out
how the comical depiction of the Dutch historical figures from the 17th century was used as a
means to criticize the 19th-century America in a complex and multilayered narrative strategy.
Stuart Hall’s concept of representation (1997) is used as a basis in this study to see how Irving brought back the past of New York throughout the 17th-century Dutch society, to generate a certain image representation of this ethnic group. The method used in this research is
New Historicism, whereby the AHONY is read against the historical background of the 19th
century, to see how Irving’s contemporary context feeds into his writings. In the framework
of New Historicism, authors constructed reality through their works as a means to respond
to issues of their time (Gallagher and Greenblatt, 2000).
2
THE STRUGGLE FOR SPACE
AHONY tells the story of the territorial dispute between the English and the Dutch. In
AHONY (498–499), the English, who came from the New England colonies and were nicknamed the “Yankees”, performed systematic expansion toward the Dutch colonies (New
Netherland). They cut down trees to open up new areas and settled there for a while before
moving westward by selling their land. This arrangement was continuously repeated. From
another historical source (Michael Kammen, 1975: 43–44; Van Rensselaer, 1909: 128–129),
we obtain a detailed description about how the Yankees gradually infiltrated the New Netherland colonies. They took over the unoccupied areas near Fort Goede Hoop, which belonged
to the Dutch but were not turned into settlement areas. Fort Goede Hoop, which was both
a fort and a trade post, was located on the banks of the Connecticut River (Fresh River) and
bordered by the New England colonies. Today, the area is named Hartford.
AHONY described how the vast New Netherland populated by a small number of Dutch
inhabitants was brought to bay by the more populous English who came from the East, who
were constantly moving toward the Dutch colonies (see the left map in Figure 1). The Dutch
colonies at that time owned several unoccupied areas in North America. The three governors
who presided over New Netherland were described to be helpless in preventing the flow of
immigrants from New England into their territory. For the English, the area of New Netherland was considered to belong to England. Territorial dispute began when Governor Wouter
van Twiller was in office and continued until the administration of Governor Willem Kieft.
During the administration of the second governor, Fort Goede Hoop fell into the hands
of New England and the area became known as Hartford. The Dutch lost many more of
their territories during the administration of the last governor, Governor Peter Stuyvesant.
Fort Goede Hoop was not the only landmark that was captured by the English. Other territories that were rich in wampum (traditional shell beads that were the currency used by the
Indian tribes) in Oyster Bay, Long Island, were captured by the English (see the right map
in Figure 1).
In historical records about New Netherland, the treaty signed by Governor Stuyvesant with
the New England confederation addressed the East border that had been a problem since the
administration of Governor Wouter van Twiller, or known as the Hartford or Fort Goede
Hoop matter. Governor Stuyvesant wanted to resolve the border dispute; thus, the Hartford
Treaty was signed in 1650 (see the map for comparison). This treaty made New Netherland
lose a large part of its territory in the east (Van der Zee, 1978: 219–221). From the English’s
side, the entire east coast of America belonged to the English. The presence of the Dutch
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Figure 1. Left map: The New Netherland map. As seen on the map, the Hudson River stretches
out from the north to the south and flows into New Amsterdam, the capital city of New Netherland.
In the north, we can see Fort Orange, and in the east, we can see Fort Goede Hoop that is located
near the Fresh River or the Connecticut River (source: Tim McNeese. New Amsterdam, 2007), 2.
Right map: The New Netherland map after the Treaty of Hartford in 1650. As seen on the map, the
borders are established based on the Treaty of Hartford (Hartford Treaty Line) and the former territory
of New Sweden (source: Evan Haefeli 2012, 97).
there was disregarded and as a territory it was not acknowledged by the English. In AHONY,
Knickerbocker mentioned the treaty, although he did not refer directly to its name.
In the 17th century, the dispute between the Dutch and the English could be traced beyond
territorial issues. From the claiming of Fort Goede Hoop, one can infer that there were economic motives behind the struggle for space. The English took over the Dutch’s trade route,
because Fort Goede Hoop was the Dutch’s trade post in the east of mainland North America. Economically, a large population requires a strong economy as well. New England colonies were required to expand their territories because of the population growth, as well as to
increase their economic capacities. At the same time, their neighbor owned unoccupied areas
with a small population.
In AHONY, Irving showed that the dispute which was originally about territories in the
17th century became a struggle for space for cultural representation when territories were
no longer the issue because the ethnic groups became one new nation, the American nation.
However, the competition did not end there. The struggle for space for cultural representation
in the 19th century of New America is illustrated in AHONY, but the complicated structure
of the text made the spatial struggle for representation not easily picked up by the readers.
The 19th-century background in AHONY illustrates the situation in the United States that
was about to hold an election marked by full-blown competition from two parties (Republican
and Federalist), as narrated through the stories told by Knickerbocker. This character is the
one who later tells the story of New Netherland in the 17th century. However, in the story, this
character disappeared and was reported to have died. Stories about New Netherland were only
found in his notes. Thus, there is a skip in the story of AHONY, which initially attempted to tell
the story of the early 19th-century America in the narrative frame to the story of New Netherland in the 17th century.
In AHONY, Knickerbocker is described as a member of the American congress and
served as the Dutch New York representation after the declaration of independence. His
opinions were never considered and he always lost debates in the US congress. By mentioning
this, AHONY shows how marginalized the Dutch were in American politics. Not recognized
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by the congress, Knickerbocker was determined to rewrite the history of the Dutch power
in North America in the 17th century so that their history would not be forgotten. Knickerbocker sought to enter the space of representation that was controlled by the dominant
society to demonstrate that a small community within the American nation once had a role
in the formation of the United States. AHONY aims to remind its readers that the presence
of the Dutch minority community was prior to any other communities in mainland America,
and they also played a part in the American revolutionary war. Because of their role in the
formation of the nation-state, they should be given space in American history.
Knickerbocker’s writing about Dutch Americans—according to AHONY—was found by
the character Seth Handaside, the owner of the hotel where Knickerbocker stayed in, after
Knickerbocker disappeared and was reported to have died. In telling this imagined character
and his mysterious death, Irving symbolizes the end of an era. The death of Knickerbocker
is a symbol of the end of the Dutch ethnic group’s role in the life of the New America.
The publication of AHONY in 1809 is a form of resistance toward the forsaking of Dutch
history by bringing a different representation about the Dutch in New York. Judith Richardson (2008) in her article “The Ghosting of the Hudson Valley Dutch” proposed that the
ghost stories are always related to Hudson Valley where the Dutch community lived. According to Richardson, the ghost stories circulated in the Dutch community in the United States
were probably originally from the mother country. Richardson interpreted that on a different
level it was the Dutch society themselves (which according to Richardson were set aside as
“the second native people” after the Indians”) who haunted the Anglo-Americans.
Richardson’s interpretation shows that the competition and dispute between the English
and the Dutch were no longer about territorial matters. Even after becoming part of the
American nation, the Dutch are still considered a threat by the dominant Anglo-American
society. In reality, the territory that belongs to the Dutch in the United States does not exist
any longer, and it has already been integrated into the territory of the United States, but the
assumption that the Dutch are a threat remains.
3
IRVING’S AMBIVALENCE
The use of parody by Irving in writing AHONY is a strategy in the writing of a literary
work. Irving had intentions behind his choice of strategy. Irving found the moment to use his
strategy when a book that was published by NYHS did not include a detailed history of the
Dutch who once occupied New York. Thus, he chose to parody this book.
According to Bradley (2009, 24; 2008, xviii), Irving parodied the book by Dr. Samuel
Latham Mitchill because the book “removed fifty years off the Dutch’s power over New York
(New Netherland)”. Mitchill only mentioned the warfare that led to the English’s victory over
New Amsterdam (the capital city of New Netherland), which was under the administration of
the Dutch Governor Stuyvesant. After a transition of power, New Netherland was captured
by the English who was represented by Richard Nicholls in 1664. The period when New Netherland became a Dutch colony was not described at all, particularly the part related to governance, society, and culture. For this reason, Irving published AHONY in December 1809.
Bradley (2008, xvii) also argued that AHONY was a direct attack toward NYHS. The
organization was founded in 1804 to gather every bit of information related to the history of
America. However, information about the settlements in New Amsterdam was not brought up.
Irving sought to reveal New York’s past that has been forgotten. The publication of AHONY
is one of Irving’s reactions toward NYHS for what the organization did. NYHS, whether
they realize it or not, indirectly approved the action of one of their members who annulled
the history of New Netherland from the collection of notes. This is the same as covering up
America’s history and annulling the foundation behind the rise of America as a new nation.
The contested representation that Irving sought to show could be considered quite successful.
He presented a piece of work that contradicted from the dominant perspective in a history that
remained very much influenced by the concept of WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), or in
other words the history of the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants. However, at the same time,
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Irving had another purpose, that is, to criticize the arena of the 19th-century American politics.
To achieve this, he used characters from the history of the Dutch colonies in the 17th century as
a vehicle to quip the leaders and criticize the American government’s policy in the 19th century.
Characterization of the Dutch in a caricature manner in Irving’s work reaffirms negative stereotypes about the Dutch that circulated in that period. The three New Netherland governors and
the important figures surrounding the governors are portrayed with physical stereotypes and
dressed in funny attire. They are also depicted to lack intelligence as leaders, because the decisions that they made always end in mistakes and failures. These New Netherland characters are
a mockery of the New America government, particularly the presidency of Thomas Jefferson,
who Irving considered, like the New Netherland government, incompetent and a failure.
One cannot deny that the parody used by Irving implicates the representation of the Dutch
ethnic community in his work. Instead of showing appreciation to the Dutch colonies as the pioneers of American history, he resonated stereotypes of the Dutch ethnic community within the
American society and turned them into a joke. The Dutch New York representation in AHONY
has become ambiguous because, on the one hand, their existence and role in the formation of
the New America are acknowledged, but, on the other hand, they are mocked and ridiculed.
In “The Author’s Apology” written by Irving in 1848 at the same time when the revised
edition of AHONY was published by the publishing house G.P. Putnam and Sons around 40
years after the first edition in 1809 (Bowden, 1975: 160; Bradley, 2008: xxii), Irving told why
he chose the Dutch as the subject of his book. It turns out that Irving himself lived in a neighborhood inhabited by descendants of the Dutch. Irving also had a brother-in-law who was
of Dutch descent. Thus, he had been in contact with Dutch culture since a very young age.
The struggle for spatial representation had been apparent since the publication of AHONY
when Irving tried to attract attention through advertisements in newspapers. Irving used the
clever strategy to draw the attention of not only the group of American historians that are the
subject of his criticism but also the American people. Irving succeeded in doing so as AHONY
became popular in the 19th century, and the Dutch community began to receive some attention.
The announcement of the missing person, who was Knickerbocker the character and the narrator in AHONY, was in fact a hoax. The purpose was to promote the publication of AHONY.
Not only did Irving promote fabricated news about a missing person in Evening Post, but he
also wrote a fictional response about the missing person in Traveller. He also calculated the time
of publication of these advertisements that was a month after the commemoration date of the
discovery of Manhattan by Henry Hudson, which was marked by the annual NYHS meeting
on 4 September 1809. In addition, he also chose 6 December 1809 as the publication date of
AHONY. This date is also the anniversary of the NYHS meeting (Bowden, 1975: 161).
The American public’s attention toward this minority group rose through the writing of
AHONY. This was acknowledged by Irving in “The Author’s Apology” on how since the
publication of his book the attention of the American people toward the Dutch ethnic group
increased. Therefore, AHONY shows the struggle for not only territorial space in the history
of America but also representation space. This struggle is in fact apparent in the AHONY
text, which reflects the ethnic bias of the writer. One the one hand, Irving believed that it was
necessary to fight for acknowledgment of the Dutch ethnic group’s presence in New York
within American history; on the other hand, he was entrapped in the negative stereotypes
constructed by the dominant American society toward the Dutch so that his noble purpose
to attain equality between the Dutch and the dominant American society at that period of
time became buried by his own ethnic bias.
4
CONCLUSION
History has always been written from the perspective of the conqueror. Apparently the 19thcentury American history was always written from the perspective of Anglo-Americans. As
a young American in the 19th century, Irving appeared to be anti-mainstream. He strived to
remind others that the American country and nation were created by various ethnics and cultural communities. As a creative youth, Irving used unconventional methods to deliver his point.
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In the 19th century, books or reading materials were the fastest way of influencing people;
therefore, Irving adopted a different way to reintroduce the contribution of the Dutch community to American history. He used literary works to provide information about what took
place in the past and placed it side-by-side with the contemporary situation of his time.
Narrations about the early history of America always began from Puritan England. However, Irving shattered this paradigm by demonstrating that there were other European nations
in addition to the Native Americans. Irving wanted to show that the Americans were not the
only English-speaking people. He asserted that before the declaration of America’s independence, the society in America was already multiethnic. Irving showed in AHONY that the
Dutch community in New Netherland did not move anywhere since the area was taken over
and turned into an English colony. They remained in the former area of New Netherland and
changed the name into New York, even though the nation remained a defeated one.
The contested representation demonstrated by Irving can be considered “successful”
because the Dutch ethnic community in New York, which had almost been forgotten, became
the center of attention after the publication of AHONY. Ironically, at the same time, Irving also “succeeded” in othering the Dutch ethnic community through his parodical style
and caricatured characterization. Although the Dutch ethnic community was brought into
memory, it was remembered as failed and incompetent.
The contribution of the Dutch ethnic community to American history is one of the aspects
revealed by Irving about minority communities. However, there are also other ethnic communities in addition to the Europeans that came and became part of the American nation,
including Chinese, Korean, Indian, and Egyptian ethnic communities, that settled in the
United States earlier than predicted. The Islamic culture that is today propagandized as a
foreign entity in the United States could have existed in the land hundreds of years ago. Their
history could serve as the very site for the struggle for representation. This study contributes
to the existing scholarship of American and Dutch immigration history by highlighting the
complexity of a historical narrative. Similar studies can be carried out to reveal the strategies
for representing other minorities in the US literature and history books.
REFERENCES
Bowden, M.W. (1975) Knickerbocker’s History and the ‘Enlightened’ Men of New York City. American
Literature, 47 (2), 159–172.
Bradley, E.L. (2008) Introduction and Notes. History of New York by Washington Irving. New York,
Penguin Books.
Bradley, E.L. (2009) Knickerbocker: The Myth behind New York. New Jersey, Rutgers University Press.
Goodfriend, J.D., Schmidt, B., & Stott, A. (Eds.). (2012) Going Dutch: The Dutch presence in America 1609–
2009. Leiden Boston, Brill.
Haefeli, E. (2012) New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty. Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hall, S. (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London, Sage Publication Ltd.
Irving, W. (1983) A History of New York: From the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty.
In: Washington Irving: History, Tales and Sketches. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.
Irving, W. (2004) The Author’s Apology. The Project Gutenberg eBook of Knickerbocker’s History of New
York. Retrieved from: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13042/13042-h/13042-h.htm.
Kammen, M. (1975) Colonial New York: A History. New York, Charles Schribner’s Sons.
Mc Neese, T. (2007) New Amsterdam. New York, Infobase Publishing.
Richardson, J. (2008) The Ghosting of the Hudson Valley Dutch. In: Joyce D Goodfriend, Benjamin
Schmidt & Annette Stott (eds.), Going Dutch: The Dutch Presence in America, 1609–2009, pp. 87–107.
Leiden-Boston, Brill.
Stott, A. (2005) Inventing Memory: Picturing New Netherland in the Nineteenth Century. In: Joyce D. Goodfriend (ed.), Revisiting New Netherland: Perspectives on New Netherland. Leiden Boston, Brill. pp. 13–39.
Van der Zee, H. & Barbara (1978) A Sweet and Alien Land: The Early History of New York. New York,
The Viking Press.
Van Rensselaer, S. (1909) History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century Vol. 1. New York,
MacMilllan Company.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Indonesian novels’ phenomenon of mingling and competing
with cultural exposure
I.G.A.A.M. Triadnyani
Department of Indonesian Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Udayana University, Bali, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Although the interaction among literary works has in fact been one of the significant areas to study Indonesian novels, it is still little known due to the way a phenomenon
of mingling and competing is developed to expose cultural differences. This study discusses this
phenomenon by using an interaction analysis to investigate the potential or actual problems
of the communication experienced by characters in three novels, namely Api Awan Asap (from
Dayak’s cultural view), Lampuki (from Aceh’s cultural view) and Puya ke Puya (from Toraja’s
cultural view). Furthermore, the methodology of the interaction analysis, which was developed
by Bateson (1958, 1970), Foster (1979) and Stephen (2001), provides an empirical basis for any
claims on the problems or conflicts of communication. By conducting a corpus-based analysis
of the interaction among the characters’ different cultural backgrounds in those novels, this
study will show the types of conflicts displayed through their communications. Interestingly,
conflicts do not take place among characters from different social backgrounds, such as profession, age, sex and education, but among those from the same background. This study also
applies Deutsch theory (2000) to conduct competition and establish cooperation, and Meyer’s
cultural scale (2015) to help analyse the cultural differences among those characters.
1
INTRODUCTION
Indonesia is a big country with a large population of almost 260 million people. It is also
endowed with natural and cultural diversities together with complexity. The existence of various ethnicities, such as Aceh, Toraja, Dayak or Sunda, which are different from one another,
proves the condition. Each ethnicity is unique because of its own characteristics that often
generate cultural pride and dignity. Differences among the ethnicities can be viewed from
many angles, starting from the nature and local community to the characteristics of the individuals. Indonesian natural landscapes, for example, also vary and are often characterised by
mountains, valleys, seas and forests. These natural differences certainly shape the way of living of those ethnic groups. Because of different environmental conditions, people who live in
mountain areas will show different characters from those living near the beach, where there is
an easy access to crowds. In other words, nature moulds cultural characteristics of the people.
When two groups of people coming from different natural landscapes and cultures mingle
to do things together, it is likely that there would be conflicts caused by miscommunications
and controversies. The condition can grow worse when the conflicts are rooted in the different personalities of individuals. Indeed, individual personalities could actually be the trigger
of the confusing and complicated pattern of communications. However, Meyer (2015, p. 11)
stated that, in fact, difference, controversy and misunderstanding occur because of cultural
differences. Specific cultural patterns have great effects on an individual’s perception of what
s/he sees, the cognition of what s/he thinks and the action of what s/he does (Meyer, 2015,
p. 12). For example, the Balinese believe in the law of Karma that brings consequences to
human attitudes. An event may occur; be dealt with individual differences, about where he/
she was born, grew up, went to school and works; by individual interactions leading to a particular situation, either tensed or relaxed and by cultural contexts that would help to shape
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situation. The Javanese appear shy and softly speaking compared with the Batak people. In
general, children reconstruct their cultural identity in the community in which they live, such
as family and friends. This may include religion, language, customs and traditions. Similarities in blood, language, homeland and beliefs affect emotional coerciveness (Kemmel, 2000,
p. 456). All of those factors mould an individual with cultural characteristics and uniqueness.
The world of literature is different from the world of reality, because each has its own notion
of truth. Literary work has figures and events created by the author to represent thoughts,
experiences and knowledge about his/her struggles in life. Therefore, actions experienced by
the characters of the story form specific patterns that can be investigated and observed. This
study aims to identify the pattern of interactions among the characters in the novels Lampuki,
Puya ke Puya and Api Awan Asap, especially those leading to the types of cooperation and
competition. Through this study, the way traditional culture contributes to the global culture
can also be observed by exposing the aspect of competition, which is better than the aspect
of cooperation. Those three novels are selected because they represent the local wisdoms of
the Indonesian culture. The novel Lampuki is locally characterised by traditions of Aceh in
Sumatra, the novel Puya ke Puya (Puya to Puya) depicts the community of Toraja in Sulawesi
and the novel Api Awan Asap (Fire Cloud Smoke) raises the issue of the ethnicity of Dayak
in Kalimantan.
2
THEORY
This study applies a structural approach by conducting an interaction analysis of the characters in each novel and then identifying the types of competition and cooperation in accordance with Deutsch theory. The analysis of social interaction is conducted as it commonly
occurs in communication sciences. According to Anderson (1972), power is a formulation
of patterns of social interaction that can be investigated. The existence of power is real in a
situation in which a person or people obey another person or people, either consciously or
unconsciously and willingly or unwillingly. Power is shown in the form of a causal relationship between the command and implementation. By employing the concept of duality that
emphasises interaction, we can see pairs of characters together with their actions.
The character interaction model contains two relationships: complementary and symmetrical (Bateson, 1958, p. 176). The complementary relationship implies a hierarchical relationship, that is, individuals or groups with one individual or group dominating the other. The
relationship between teacher and student or between husband and wife exemplifies this kind
of relationship. Meanwhile, symmetrical relationships occur between individuals or groups
that are equal, like among peers or fellows. In dealing with the element of complementary
relationship, Deutsch called it asymmetry (2000, p. 23). Asymmetry exists with regard to
interdependence, which means someone has a greater power and influence than the others.
2.1
Model of interaction
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The above interaction scheme shows that Rante explains the custom that must be maintained. Allu agrees with the custom but doubts that it would be a burden on the family. After
more explanation, he becomes silent. Thus, there is no increasing conflict in the interaction
and the conflict is terminated.
Mary Foster (1979) applied the principle of unity and conflict to analyse the events in
Balinese rituals based on Bateson’s (1970) argument that Balinese people do not have the
characteristic of schismogenesis. Foster conducted anthropological studies on the rituals of
the Balinese traditions (such as tajen, pawiwahan and med-medan) by using the concept of
Bateson’s schismogenesis. The conclusion shows that the third tradition is the climax. Meanwhile, Stephen (2001) revealed that one of the characteristics of Balinese people is to live in
peace. Foster (1979) and Stephen (2001) seemed to have opposite opinions on the nature of
the Balinese. In my dissertation, I suggest that this difference occurs because the climax in
Foster’s research might not be supplied by the idea of competition but merely by the idea of
harmony (Triadnyani, 2014, p. 18).
Theories about cooperation and competition built by David W. Johnson (Deutsch, 2000,
p. 22) are associated with two things: the type of dependence of people’s interest involved in
a given situation and the type of actions carried out by them. Deutsch then combines the two
into three social psychological processes when someone does cooperation and competition,
which are substitutability, attitude and inducibility. Deutsch (2000, p. 23) defined substitutability as ‘how a person’s actions can satisfy another person’s intensions is central to the functioning of all social institutions (family, school, industry), the division of labour, and to the role of
specialization.’ Substitutability allows someone to accept the actions of others in fulfilling his/
her needs. Furthermore, ‘attitudes refer to predisposition to respond evaluatively, favourably or
unfavourably, to the aspects of one’s environment or self’ (p. 23). Humans have the capacity to
respond positively to stimuli that are beneficial and negatively to those that are not good. Those
responses appear through the natural selection, which is the convincing evolutionary process.
Inborn tendency of this (about the actions of both positive and negative) is the basis for human
potential to cooperate and compete. Inducibility refers to our attitude to accept the influence of
others. Negative inducibility is an attitude of rejection towards one’s desire.
In order to examine the interpretation of cultural interest in the interaction, the parameters built by Erin Meyer can be applied. Meyer (2015, p. 14) described eight cultural scales
to see how people from different cultural contexts interact, that is, communicating, evaluating, persuading, leading, deciding, opposing, trusting and scheduling. In this study, the
scale of the culture is elaborated and adapted with an interaction interest, which leads to
the competition and cooperation. Thus, the parameters that will be used are communicating (explicit–implicit), criticising (direct–indirect), being a leader (egalitarian–hierarchical),
deciding (negotiation–individual), confronting (direct–dodge), competing (principle–envy)
and collaborating (because of task or kinship).
3
3.1
INTERACTION ANALYSIS
The novel Puya ke Puya
The novel Puya ke Puya depicts the character of Allu Ralla who has a dilemma of whether
or not to perform a ceremony for his father’s funeral. He is described as a young man who is
obedient, brave and does not like to be indebted. He is a student at a university in the city of
Makassar. Unfortunately, he easily gets carried away when he fails to marry Malena. He has
stolen a dead baby and is forced to sell it to the owner of foreign companies in order to hold
the funeral ceremony ‘Rambu Solo’ that requires a huge cost.
His father is Rante Ralla, a nobleman from Toraja who has a large inheritance, such as
land, buffalos and paddy field. Rante is described as being very strict in upholding customs
and traditions, although he also likes gambling and drinking tuak (a kind of local alcoholic
drink). He is eventually poisoned by the village head because he refuses to sell his land. Allu’s
mother, Tina Ralla, is a quiet and compassionate woman. She witnesses her husband’s death
and tries hard to defend their land. Marthen Ralla is Allu’s uncle. From the beginning, he
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has been hostile to Rante’s family members who do not want to join their group. Marthen is
described as rough and willing to maintain prestige.
Maria is Allu’s sister, who dies when she was just 5 months old. She is buried at the top of
a big tree, called Tarra, which is a passilirian tomb. Malena is Allu’s former lover who returns
from Java after finishing her Master’s degree program. Malena is the village head’s daughter.
She pretends to marry Allu upon his father’s persuasion. At the end of the story, Allu and the
villagers are against the presence of a company.
Based on the interaction analysis of figures, all show some types of interaction that lead to
forms of cooperation and competition. Allu, as the son, and Rante Ralla, as the father, do not
have any conflicts because they agree to continue the tradition. However, Allu imposes a requirement that they would not burden the family. Meanwhile, there is a conflict between Allu and
Marthen, the uncle, because of the strong principle each of them holds. However, when Marthen
finds out that his brother is poisoned by the village head, he changes and joins Allu’s group.
Allu and his mother do not have any conflicts, but their interaction intensifies when Allu insists
on marrying Malena. Because of this problem, Allu’s mental attitude changes. He dares to steal
dead bodies to be sold to cover his wedding costs. There is no conflict between Allu and Malena
because Malena only pretends to marry Allu. Interactions between Allu and a group of foreign
companies worsen as both are uncooperative. Interactions between Allu and his relatives also
end with a conflict because both parties hold strongly to their individual principles. Meanwhile,
between Rante and the village head, there is an intense conflict, which causes the death of Rante.
This event shows what Bateson states about the phenomenon of schismogenesis.
3.2
The novel Api Awan Asap
The novel Api Awan Asap illustrates the struggle of the Dayak Benuaq people who live in the
downstream of Nyawatan River. They fight to defeat the invasion of capitalism. Logging
operations on a large scale, ignorance of the law and ownership, as well as the exploitation of
natural resources and agricultural products are the issues raised in this environmental novel.
Environmental problems that occur in the Dayak community are sharply disputed without
any disturbance against the idea of beauty in describing the characters and their actions.
Figures like Jepi and Nori are examples of leaders who articulate the idea of preserving the
environment. The novel also highlights the strong bond that exists in the community as a
form of expression of solidarity that characterises traditional societies.
Based on the interaction analysis of the characters in the novel, it can be found that there are
some attitudes that lead to compliance and the tendency to cooperate. The interaction between
Nori and her father (Petinggi Jepi) is described without any conflicts. Both could work together,
especially when Nori expresses her desire to clear the land. Although Nori is a woman, she is given
the power to execute her plan. The interaction between Nori and her mother shows no conflicts
because her position as a child causes her to be obedient. Meanwhile, there is a symmetrical relation between Nori and Sakatn because both are equally stubborn. In the next interaction, Nori
dominates and Sakatn seems submissive. Sakatn is always ready to help Nory because he wants to
marry her. The interaction between Sakatn and his parents shows no conflict. His parents understand Sakatn’s intention to marry Nori. Jepi and the community could work together. Jepi as a
person who has a position at the village is able to calm the people and provide solutions. The residents are obedient. Between Sakatn and Jue an indirect conflict occurs. Sakatn holds a grudge for
a long time against Jue who successfully steals the heart of Nori. Sakatn finally takes an action to
kill Jue.
3.3 The novel Lampuki
The interaction of the characters in the novel Lampuki begins with the existence of Aku. He
is concerned about the situation in the village where there is fear of war between the government and a rebellious group. He plans to open a religious school in the village while Ahmadi
is fond of inciting people to revolt. Although Ahmadi is very stubborn and always creates
problems, Aku could control himself. There is no negative response to Ahmadi’s actions.
Musa is one of the students who has come to the village to learn the Holy Scripture. Musa
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Table 1.
Cultural identification.
Cultural scale
1. Communicating
2. Confronting
3. Criticising
4. Collaborating
5. Competing
6. Deciding
7. Being a leader
Puya ke Puya
(Toraja)
Api Awan Asap
(Dayak)
Lampuki
(Aceh)
to parents: implicit
to uncle: explicit
to relative: explicit
to friend: explicit
to parents: dodge
to uncle: direct
to relative: direct
to friend: direct
to parents: direct
to uncle: direct
to relative: direct
to friend: direct
to parents: kinship
to uncle: task/kinship
to relative: kinship
to friend: task
to parents: -to uncle: principle
to relative: principle
to friend: envy
to parents: negotiation
to uncle: individual
to relative: negotiation
to friend: negotiation
to parents: hierarchy
to uncle: hierarchy
to relative: hierarchy
to friend: egalitarian
to parents: explicit
to couples: explicit
to relative: explicit
to friend: explicit
to parents: -to couples: direct
to relative: direct
to friend: direct
to parents: direct
to couples: direct
to relative: direct
to friend: direct
to parents: kinship
to couples: kinship
to relative: kinship
to friend: task
to parents: -to couples: envy
to relative: -to friend: envy
to parents: negotiation
to couples: negotiation
to relative: negotiation
to friend: negotiation
to parents: egalitarian
to couples: egalitarian
to relative: hierarchy
to friend: egalitarian
to parents: -to couples: explicit
to relative: explicit
to friend: implicit
to parents: -to couples: direct
to relative: direct
to friend: dodge
to parents: -to couples: direct
to relative: direct
to friend: indirect
to parents: -to couples: kinship
to relative: kinship
to friend: task
to parents: -to couples: principle
to relative: -to friend: envy
to parents: -to couples: individual
to relative: individual
to friend: individual
to parents: -to couples: hierarchy
to relative: hierarchy
to friend: hierarchy
finally decides to join Ahmadi’s followers because he feels lost after his father was killed by
the government soldier. Karim and Aku have a close relationship, although the former is a
marijuana dealer. The interaction between the two characters is like an interaction between
friends. According to the common view, a teacher should not be friend with a vendor of
illicit goods. Sulaiman is a friend of Aku who was once a foreman. The relationship is based
on a shared bad luck. The characters Aku and Waluyo have a complementary relationship.
Waluyo is the commander of government troops sent to safeguard Lampuki village. Aku has
to ask permission to Waluyo in dealing with reopening the recital at the hall. Ahmadi does
not like this action and feels jealous.
The interaction between the people of Lampuki and Ahmadi is complementary. This can be
seen when people easily follow Ahmadi’s instruction to return home. The interaction between
Ahmadi and the army is caused by the constant uprising carried out by Ahmadi’s group.
Ahmadi thinks that the soldiers are occupiers who have to be destroyed. On the contrary, the
soldiers assume that, because Ahmadi and his followers are rebels, it is reasonable for them to
be obliterated. Ahmadi’s hatred to the soldiers can be seen in the following citation:
‘Colonizer! Colonizing dog! Damn you all, the evil colonizer!’ (p. 72)
‘We just need to wait a moment, then all will be freed, and we are independent from
those uncivilized, greedy, and closed-hearted people,’ Ahmadi said loudly (p. 405).
Competition occurs between Ahmadi and Waluyo. Ahmadi who hates army personnel gets
irritated because Aku prefers to ask for permission to Waluyo to himself. The interaction
leading to the competition is also shown by Jibral and Aku. Aku feels jealous because the
students seem to like Jibral more and be happier to be taught by him.
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4
CONCLUSION
Communication is one of the ways through which one can interact with others. The success
of communication depends on some factors, including an individual’s behaviour towards his/
her acts of communication. An individual’s personality is generally molded by a certain cultural system where s/he lives. Therefore, it is important for everyone to understand better the
cultural aspects of a place in order to minimise the possibility of miscommunication.
Indonesia is home to many local cultures. This cultural diversity is Indonesia’s strength,
as established by many Indonesian literary works. From the discussions on the three novels,
Puya ke Puya, Api Awan Asap and Lampuki, an interesting and important conclusion can be
drawn, which will allow us to better understand the interaction among those local cultures.
It can be concluded that the communication experienced by the characters from the cultures
of Toraja, Dayak and Aceh is explicit. It means those characters openly speak face to face
without hiding the true intention of speaking. Nevertheless, in Puya ke Puya, the communication between Allu and his parents is implicit because Allu does not want his parents to know
his plan. Regarding confrontation, generally, the characters try to avoid conflicts except when
confronting a strong principle, such as Allu’s case against his uncle. Uplifting criticism is usually
direct and straight. Negative feedback, however, is delivered with explicit words, such as ‘evil’.
The interaction of working together is based more on a duty or purpose than on kinship.
For example, the village head would work together for the sake of money or for the inhabitants who are obedient to the government. Meanwhile, the competition among characters is
shown to occur due to jealousy rather than a strong desire to maintain one’s principle. Competition is stirred by envy and revenge. Concerning decision-making, the novel Puya ke Puya
shows that it is based on consensus. However, in Lampuki, decision-making is influenced by
the leader (the top). Regarding the act of leading, the Toraja and Aceh cultures still hold
the tradition that puts the leader at the top of the hierarchy. However, the Dayak culture is
depicted to be more egalitarian, where the leader and the people have the same responsibility
to participate in decision-making. This could have been the author’s idea to impose the role
on Dayak women.
REFERENCES
Anderson, B.R.O’G. (1972) The idea of power in Javanese culture. In: Holt C. et al. (eds.) Culture and
Politics in Indonesia. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press.
Bateson, G. (1958) Naven: A Survey of the Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of
a New Guinea Tribe Drawn from Three Points of View. California, Stanford University Press.
Bateson, G. (1970) Bali: the value system of a steady state. In: Jane Belo (eds.) Traditional Balinese culture. New York, Columbia University Press.
Deutsch, M. (2000) Competition and cooperation. In: Morton, D. & Peter, T.C. (eds.) The handbook of
conflict resolution: theory and practice. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass. pp. 21–39.
Foster, M. (1979) Synthesis and antithesis in Balinese ritual. In: Becker, A.L. & Aram, A.Y. (eds.) The
imagination of reality: essays in Southeast Asian coherence systems. New Jersey, Ablex Publishing
Corporation.
Kimmel, P.R. (2000) Culture and conflict. In: Morton, D. & Peter T.C. (eds.) The handbook of conflict
resolution: theory and practice. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass. pp. 453–473.
Meyer, E. (2015) The Culture Map. (S.N. Verawaty, Trans). Jakarta, KPG (Kepustakaan Populer
Gramedia).
Nur, A. (2011) Lampuki. Jakarta, PT Serambi Ilmu Semesta.
Odang, F. (2015) Puya ke Puya (Puya to Puya). Jakarta, KPG (Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia).
Rampan, K.L. (2015) Api Awan Asap (Fire Cloud Smoke). Jakarta, Grasindo.
Stephen, M. (2001) Barong and Rangda in the context of Balinese origin. Review of Indonesian and
Malaysian Affairs, 35, 137−194.
Triadnyani, I G.A.A.M. (2014) Fenomena Rangda dalam Teks Calon Arang dan Janda dari Jirah: Kajian
Hermeneutik Ricoeur (The Phenomenon of Rangda in Calon Arang and Janda dari Jirah: A Ricoeur
Hermeneutics Study). [Dissertation]. Indonesia, Universitas Indonesia.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Funding politics in European film festivals and its impacts
on the development of Indonesian cinema
R. Ihwanny & M. Budiman
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Nowadays film festival is no longer a mere showcase for films; it also engages
in production and distribution. It all began with the Rotterdam film festival with its Hubert
Bals Fund, where Indonesian filmmakers began to receive funding from European film festivals. This raised a number of issues, which become the focus of this paper. Two of such issues
are the suspicion about hegemony practices which operate between the funding providers
and the receivers, and whether the funded films contribute to the development of Indonesian
cinema, and, if so, what the contributions are. This study reveals that a funding program is
like a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the hegemony practices have brought some
impacts on the representation of Indonesia. Funded films tend to perpetuate the stigma
of Indonesia as a third world country. On the other hand, the funding also brings positive
impact to the development of Indonesian cinema. The funding becomes a training ground
to sharpen the skills of filmmakers, as well as an arena to improve, develop, and promote
themselves. As a result, the Indonesian cinema has been enriched by a significant number
of experienced filmmakers, a condition which will ultimately make a positive impact to the
development of the cinema itself.
1
INTRODUCTION
Film festival nowadays is not only an exhibition site; it also engages in producing and
distributing films (Iordanova, 2015). These two aspects are apparent in programs which are
intended to fund the production and distribution of films. Such programs began in 1988 with
the Rotterdam film festival under the Hubert Bals Fund. Indonesia is one of the countries
whose many of its filmmakers have benefitted from the funding. They include names such as
Riri Riza, Ismail Basbeth, Yosep Anggi Noen, Mouly Surya, Ravi Bharwani, Kamila Andini,
and Edwin, to name a few. These names are usually associated with independent cinema.
The common issue around independent cinema is the fact that these films are successful
in international film festivals, yet they are not shown in their own country. Mainstream
Indonesian films become the centre of public attention and have established their position
in the domestic market, while independent films are pushed aside into the periphery and
become known only on the international stage (Aartsen, 2011).
The study will focus on the following European film festivals: Cannes (France), Berlin
(Germany), and Rotterdam (the Netherlands). Cannes and Berlin film festival have been
chosen because they are the biggest film festivals in Europe. Meanwhile, the Rotterdam film
festival has been chosen because it is the first film festival which grants funding to independent
filmmakers. Funding schemes offered by those film festivals are; the Berlinale Residency and
World Cinema Fund (Berlin), the Residence (Cannes), and Hubert Bals Fund (Rotterdam).
The Berlinale Residency and the Residence are fellowship programs. They are the forums
where new talents in cinema can train and meet professionals in the field. The Residence was
established in 2000; it is a program for twelve filmmakers from all over the world who are
selected to develop their first or second film scripts. This program is intended for young filmmakers who have directed one or a few short films or one feature film and are working on
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their new feature film (Cinéfondation, 2016b). They are given the opportunity to stay in Paris
for four and a half months. During that time, these filmmakers will be assisted in preparing
their film scripts. A cultural session will be given at the beginning of the program, where the
participants will be shown several cultural objects around Paris. They will get a place to stay
in Paris, as well as personal assistance in writing their scripts; they will also be given an allowance to the amount of eight hundred Euros a month, free access to all film theatres in Paris,
and a French language class (Cinéfondation, 2016a).
The Berlinale Residency, one of the programs of the Berlin film festival, was initiated in
2012 for the purpose of providing support to filmmakers from all over the world who have
gained success in their first film festival to develop their new project. Unlike the Residence,
Berlinale Residency only accepts a film project that already has a producer. Three filmmakers are selected annually and will receive a fund to the amount of one thousand five hundred
Euros a month. The program provides mentoring sessions with renowned scriptwriters and
social gatherings with other filmmakers.
The World Cinema Fund (WCF) and the Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) were initiated to
provide financial assistance to films that could not be produced without additional funding.
Each year WCF provides funding for filmmakers from Latin America, Central America,
the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, South East Asia, Bangladesh, Nepal,
Sri Lanka, and countries from the Caucasus region. Meanwhile, HBF provides funding
for filmmakers from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and a few East European countries. The countries receiving this funding are also referred to as the ‘third world’
countries.
WCF was established in 2004. WCF is divided into production and distribution funding.
The maximum amount of production funding for one film is eighty thousand Euros, while
ten thousand Euros is allocated for distribution (Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, 2016).
The production funding must be used in the recipient’s country. As for distribution, only a
German distributor may apply. WCF launched an additional program in 2015 called WCF
Europe. There is no significant difference between the two programs, except for the partners.
If WCF requires a German partner, WCF Europe allows for cooperation with other European countries outside Germany.
The Rotterdam film festival was the first festival that offers funding for film. HBF, which
was established in 1988, provides two types of funding: (1) script and project development support and (2) the fund for post-production works (IFFR, 2016). The fund allocated for script
and project development may be used for developing film scripts, including for conducting
the necessary research, script writing, and translation, or for hiring a script consultant. The
fund provided for this purpose shall not exceed ten thousand Euros. The post-production
funding can be used for covering expenses during post-production stages, such as editing or
dubbing. The maximum amount is twenty thousand Euros.
HBF also has another program called NFF+HBF, which was established in 2006. This
program is a collaboration between HBF and the Netherlands Film Fund. The program is
intended to promote cooperation between Dutch producers and film projects from the countries funded by HBF. Only a Dutch producer is allowed to apply for funding and select a film
for the collaboration project, and also will receive the funding not exceeding fifty thousand
Euros. The selected film must be a project that is already receiving script and project development funding.
2
METHOD
The funding is one of the key factors in the continuity of independent cinema. Nonetheless,
funding is not the last solution, because the conferring of the funding is followed by a suspicion regarding hegemony practices operating between the fund providers and the receivers,
which will in turn have an impact on the representation of Indonesia. Another issue that
concerns films which are funded by this funding and their acceptance in their own country is,
do they make significant contribution to the development of Indonesian cinema? And if they
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do, what is their contribution? This paper seeks to investigate these two main issues: (1) the
hegemony practices that operate within the funding and (2) the impact of the funding on the
development of Indonesian cinema. This paper will answer those questions using Gramsci’s
theory of hegemony.
Aeron Davis (2008) mentions three approaches that can be used to examine the production of culture, namely political economy, textual analysis, and sociological/ethnographic.
Political economy is used to analyze the economic, political, and industry influences to the
production of a cultural product, while the textual approach analyzes the code, ideology,
discourse, and individuals that affect the production of cultural products. The sociological/
ethnographic approach focuses on observing and documenting the production process and
the people involved in a cultural product (Davis, 2008). This paper uses the textual approach
because it focuses on analyzing the discourses and individuals that affect the funded film
production.
In this paper, funding refers to the fund provided by European film festivals. Europe is
picked for a number of reasons: the continent is the birthplace of film festival and has now
become the dominant venue in festival film circuit. Europe is also picked for its long history
of colonialism and orientalism. Scholars have long expressed their concern with regard to
the funding provided by European film festivals. Shaw (2015) suspects that funding from
Europe is a form of post-colonialist intervention and an effort to perpetuate a Eurocentric
worldview. Halle (2010) suspects that it is a new form of orientalism.
3
RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
Antonio Gramsci, the scholar who popularized the theory of hegemony, stated that popular culture is the arena where the battle for hegemony occurs (Procter, 2004). Hegemony is
described as a process for creating an effective domination by using culture instead of physical force—a domination which is achieved through voluntary processes involving negotiation
as opposed to oppression (Procter, 2004). A film festival is part of popular culture that serves
as the arena for hegemony between the provider and receiver of the funding. A funded film
becomes the product of hegemony, which is the end result of a process of negotiation and
intervention.
At a glance, there is nothing dangerous about the funding provided by these festivals.
Terms of agreement consist of nothing more than technical requirements of a film or a script
to be funded. However, some of the conditions could potentially be seen as hegemony practices. The fund provider requires two things as the conditions for submitting a proposal: the
script or the rough cut of the film. Because script and rough cut are an unfinished form of
film, there is an opening for negotiations or even interventions by the fund provider to make
some fundamental changes to the project, specifically through the script writing assistance
program and an explicit request that the content, topic, and location of the project must be
kept open.
A number of filmmakers and scholars have spoken about this intervention. Gaston Kabore, a film director from Burkina Faso, said that the danger from accepting the funding is the
attached condition that African filmmakers must depict Africa only to the extent the Europeans are willing to accept. He said, “When you write a script to please European producers,
you take their expectations into consideration. Our films can become unbalanced; we are so
weak that we are turning like this and like that. The danger is forgetting your own people,
your own fundamental vision, and presenting Africa only as Europe is prepared to receive
it. The danger is we will lose our souls” (Turan, 2002). Falicov (2010) talks about a compromise made during the script and idea development to fulfil the wishes of the fund provider,
“In some cases, global south filmmakers are asked to change their scripts and ideas to curry
favour with international funders.” De Valck made an important note about the compromise:
“Many festival films nowadays demand a say in which films are artistically interesting, before
they are made, and with these funds the festivals, in fact, influence which films will be realized” (Falicov, 2010). These interventions can be seen in the themes of the funded films. Some
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of them picked war, terror, or occupation as their themes, or any other themes that depict the
horrible living condition in a country without a good democracy.
Darmawan (2015) is infuriated because more than a few Asian films are portraying a
lonely individual wandering all over the world without purposes and often the films end with
the death of the character. She went on as far as questioning this phenomenon in a forum, “Is
this how the West perceives the East?” Chalida Uabumrungjit, Thailand filmmaker, answered
the question, “Blame the festival’s programmer, especially the Western, because they always
choose films of that sort. I always submitted films with happy themes with a lot of dialogues
and they hardly ever noticed them” (Darmawan, 2015). Such an intervention raises the concern on the rise of new orientalism, “The dynamic of Orientalism at work here supports the
production of stories about other peoples and places that the funding source wants to hear.”
(Halle 2010). The new orientalism is different from the one in the past. The “old” orientalism
provides an image of the East as depicted by Western scholars, but now the depiction of the
East is provided the filmmakers from the East through their films, which are funded by the
West. Hence, the new orientalism may be defined as a depiction of the East as presented by
Easterners, with Western intervention and involvement in it.
Within the context of hegemony, the subordinate group will have a strong bond and association with the values and ideals proposed by the dominant (Jones, 2006). If we were to
apply this concept on the dynamics of funding, these filmmakers are the subordinate, and
they share the values and ideals of the fund provider. The simplest way to instil a value is by
involving those filmmakers in a cultural program. Those filmmakers receiving the fellowship
will be enrolled in French language classes, participate in field trips to cultural heritage sites
in Paris, and be given free access to watch films at film theatres in Paris.
Baumgärtel (2011) sees these ‘third world’ filmmakers as being in an ‘imagined world’.
They are entering a space where they are not bound by the regulations that restrict them in
their own countries (Baumgärtel, 2011). One of the spectres that haunt these filmmakers is
the censorship. For instance, in Indonesia, LSF (Lembaga Sensor Film) or the Film Censorship Board is the state’s representative that controls what the audience can or cannot see in a
film. The Indonesian filmmakers also have to deal with UU Pornografi (Pornography Law),
which is considered as a limitation of their movement and freedom of expression. Meanwhile, the European film festivals are offering a forum where these filmmakers can freely
express their opinions. These are the conditions that ultimately provide the justification for
the ‘imagined world’ and the similarity of values and ideas between independent Indonesian
filmmakers and their European funders.
Throughout its twelve years of existence, only two Indonesians filmmakers have received
funding from WCF; they are Edwin and Ravi Bharwani. Kamila Andini is the only Indonesian filmmaker receiving fellowship from the Residence. These three filmmakers also received
funding from HBF. Five other Indonesian filmmakers have also received funding from HBF
in the last five years. Below is the list of them and their works.
This paper specifically focuses on Jermal. Jermal means a fishing platform in the open sea.
The film tells a story about Jaya, a boy who, after the death of his mother, went to look for his
father working as a foreman on a jermal. In his quest, Jaya had to confront the harsh life on a
jermal. Not only did his father refuse to acknowledge him as his son, Jaya also had to deal with
the abusive treatments by jermal child workers. This film clearly highlights the issue on child
labour, mixed with an exotic background of Indonesian seascape. Those poor children have to
work on a jermal without any opportunity to attend school; they are also unable to read or write.
Issues on exploitation are presented with a depiction of the miserable living conditions on
a jermal. Drinking water is rationed, while the child workers are wearing tattered clothes and
are often bare-chested. They live in a wooden hut without any partition or bathroom, and
they sleep on a thin sheet. Smoking and alcohol consumption are common among them. The
film also deals with violence. Jaya had to face physical and verbal abuse not only from his
father but also from the child workers. The harsh life on a jermal ultimately turns these child
workers into violent and aggressive adults.
Films funded by these festivals raised the darker side of human life—a child that has to
deal with loneliness, abandonment, father and child conflict, poverty, child labour, women
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Table 1.
Funding recipients.
Title
Theme/Issue/Story
Director
Year
Funding
The Seen and
Unseen
Jermal
Loss, loneliness
Kamila Andini
A father who does
not acknowledge
his own child; child
labour and poverty
Child abandonment;
women trafficking
A lower class female
worker supporting
her husband
Ravi Bharwani
2011
2012–2013
2005
2007
2008
HBF
The Residence
HBF
NFF + HBF
WCF
Yosep Anggi Noen
2011
2012
2012
HBF
WCF
HBF
Riri Riza
2012
HBF
Mouly Surya
2012
HBF
Putu Kusuma
2012
HBF
Ismail Basbeth
2014
HBF
Postcards from
the Zoo
Peculiar
Vacation
and Other
Illnesses
Atambua 39
Derajat
Celsius
What They
Don’t Talk
about When
They Talk
about Love
On Mother’s
Head
Another Trip
to the Moon
Day to day struggle
of the people in
Atambua
A love story between
disabled teens
A story about three
women confronting a
hard life in Bali
A story about two
women who live in the
forest
Edwin
trafficking, exploitation, adultery, frontier life, and alienation. Locations selected for the
scenes are situated far from modern city environment: in Bali, on the open sea, at a zoo,
in Yogyakarta, in Atambua, in a School for Children with Special Needs, and in the forest.
Halle (2010) states, “The coproduced films must tell stories that offer to European audiences
the tales they want to hear.” The other thing the European moviegoers want to see is a confirmation that Indonesia is a third world country with an exotic and beautiful landscape and a
widespread poverty, ignorance, and weak enforcement of human rights. It is an obvious sign
of orientalism-romanticism that is still deeply rooted in European minds.
According to Lent (2012), a film is classified as independent when it is not bound by government regulations or censorship, or not produced by a big production house, or not adhering to the style or method of conventional filmmaking. The films funded by the film festivals
can be classified as independent because they reject government’s censorship, are funded by
several sources, and are made unlike commercial films. Aartsen (2011) states that Indonesian
films can be classified into two groups, i.e. national commercial films and independent films.
Commercial films become the centre of public attention and have established their position
in the domestic market, while independent films are pushed aside into the periphery and
become known on the international stage.
The funding program became one of the saviours for an independent filmmaker who has
a financial problem. For example, the film entitled The Seen and Unseen by Kamila Andini.
Andini received funding to the amount of ten thousand Euros from HBF, a fellowship program from the Residence, and funding from APSA Children Film Fund. However, this has
also brought in new problems, due to suspicions about the presence of hegemony practices
and the way Indonesia is represented in the film. A film can carry a strong symbolic message with a powerful impact, especially when it comes to an image of a country (Herold
2004). Considering the fact that an independent film is enjoyed by international moviegoers,
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the issue of representation becomes a crucial one. The theme and story of the funded film
highlighted a darker side of Indonesia with its widespread poverty and daily hardships. Ultimately, these films are perpetuating the stigma of Indonesia as a ‘third world’ country. A
film funded by such programs becomes a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it promotes
Indonesia to the international world; on the other, it may be considered as creating a problematic representation.
Some of independent filmmakers later went on making commercial films. Ismail Basbeth
directed a commercial film entitled Mencari Hilal (2015). The film Ada Apa dengan Cinta 2
(2016), which was seen by more than three million moviegoers and distributed to Malaysia
and Brunei Darussalam, was directed by Riri Riza. These achievements show that the funding programs provided by European film festivals have actually made positive contributions
to the development of Indonesian filmmakers, as well as the Indonesian cinema. The funding from European film festivals becomes the training ground for Indonesian filmmakers to
sharpen their talents and skills. The festivals also serve as an arena to improve, to develop, and
to promote themselves on the international stage. The Indonesian cinema has been enriched
by a significant number of experienced filmmakers, a condition which will ultimately make a
positive impact to the development of the cinema itself.
4
CONCLUSION
The provision of the funding from European film festivals has become a problematic issue.
No one would argue that such funding programs can boost the skills and establish the career
of the filmmakers who are receiving the fund and promote the Indonesian cinema on the
world stage. However, the hegemony practices related to such programs are also perpetuating
the image of Indonesia as a land burdened with problems. In other words, the funded films
tend to propagate the stigma of Indonesia as a third world country. De Valck voiced her
suspicion by stating, “It may not be a representation; maybe it is a repression” (Mubarak &
Ageza, 2015). Such problematic representation also raises a new concept of orientalism or,
“self-exoticization” (Taymuree, 2014).
Mubarak and Ageza (2015) said that there are only few studies that examine the relationship between Indonesian films and the taste of foreign film festivals. They asked whether
the Indonesian films, which are often shown and admired by the programmers at European
film festivals, belong to the “self-exoticization” group. They were also concerned that there
could be an attempt to erase the diversity of world’s independent films, one of which was
through the politics of providing funding that would steer the direction of the films receiving
those funds. This study seeks to fill the gap in the study of Indonesian films and the taste
of European film festivals by trying to answer those above questions using Gramsci’s theory
of hegemony. This study can be expanded even further by, among others, using the ethnographic and political economy approach, namely by interviewing the recipients of the fund,
film critics, observers, and other players in the film industry and festivals.
REFERENCES
Aartsen, J. (2011) Film World Indonesia the Rise after the Fall. [Online] Available from: http://dspace.
library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/205138/thesis_filmworldindonesia_jv_aartsen.pdf ?sequence=2.
Baumgärtel, T. (2011) Imagined communities, imagined worlds: Independent film from South East Asia
in the global mediascape. Transnational Cinemas. 2, 57–71.
Cinéfondation. (2016a) Presentation. [Online] Available from: http://www.cinefondation.com/en/
generalinformation.
Cinéfondation. (2016b) Rules and Regulations. [Online] Available from: http://www.cinefondation.com/
en/rrules
Darmawan, A. (2015) Festival film, pendanaan film, dan ideologi ber-film (Film festivals, film funding,
and the ideology of filmmaking). Cinema Poetica, 15th December. [Online] Available from: https://
cinemapoetica.com/festival-film-pendanaan-film-dan-ideologi-ber-film/.
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Davis, A. (2008) Investigating cultural producers. In: Pickering, M. (eds.) Research methods for cultural
studies, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press Ltd. pp. 53–67.
Falicov, T.L. (2010) Migrating from South to North: The role of film festivals in funding & shaping
global South film & video. In: Elmer, G., Davis, C.H., Marchessault, J. & McCullough, J. (eds.)
Locating Migrating Media, Lanham, Lexington Books. pp. 3–22.
Halle, R. (2010) Offering Tales They Want to Hear: Transnational European Film Funding as NeoOrientalism. In Galt, R. & Schoonover, K. Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories. New York,
Oxford University Press. pp. 303–319.
Herold, A. (2004) EU Film Policy: Between Art and Commerce. EDAP: European Diversity and
Autonomy Paper 3, 1–21. [Online] Available from: http://aei.pitt.edu/6160/1/2004_edap03.pdf.
IFFR [International Film Festival Rotterdam]. (2016) About HBF. [Online] Available from: https://iffr.
com/en/professionals/iffr-industry/hubert-bals-fund/about-hbf.
Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin. (2016) World Cinema Fund. [Online] Available from: https://www.
berlinale.de/en/branche/world_cinema_fund/wcf_profil/index.html.
Iordanova, D. (2015) The Film Festival as an Industry Node. Media Industries Journal [Online] 1 (3),
7–11. Available from: http://www.mediaindustriesjournal.org/index.php/mij/article/view/98/123.
Jones, S. (2006) Antonio Gramsci. Oxon, Routledge.
Lent, J.A. (2012) “Southeast Asian Independent Cinema: Independent of What?” In: Baumgärtel, T.
Southeast Asian Independent Cinema, 13–19. Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press.
Mubarak, M. & Ageza, G. (2015) Agenda politik selera dalam festival film dunia (The political agenda
of tastes in the world’s film festivals). Cinema Poetica [Online] Available from: http://cinemapoetica.
com/agenda-politik-selera-dalam-festival-film-dunia/. [Accessed on 30th September].
Procter, J. (2004) Stuart Hall. London, Routledge.
Shaw, D. (2015) European Support for Latin America Cinema. Mediating Cultural Encounters through
European Screens. [Online] Available from: http://mecetes.co.uk/european-support-latin-americancinema/. [Accessed on 6th February].
Taymuree, Z. (2014). Self-exoticization for the film festival. Avicenna: The Stanford Journal on Muslim
Affairs [Online] 4 (1), 26–29. [Online] Available from: http://stanford.edu/group/avicenna/cgi-bin/
wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/4.1-Self-Exoticization.pdf.
Turan, K. (2002) Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made. Berkeley, Los Angeles
& London, University of California Press.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The Lunar New Year and Guanggunjie
tradition:
The representation of China in the Lentera broadcast
by China Radio International
R.P.S. Hadi & M. Budiman
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The cooperation between China Radio International (CRI) as the official
radio of the PRC with the Indonesian national private radio began in 2010. One of the broadcast programs, known as “Lentera,” is an on-air talk show that discusses various aspects of
social life, politics, economy, history, and culture. This research specifically examines two
broadcast topics in the cultural section, titled “the Lunar New Year celebration” and the
“Singles Day/Guanggunjie”. Through these two topics, the representations of China will be
analysed, especially for the listeners in Indonesia. The Lunar New Year is also celebrated in
Indonesia as a cultural festival and a tradition, particularly by the Chinese ethnic group. This
research examines the correlation between the Lunar New Year celebration in China and
the same celebration in Indonesia, in the context of the Indonesia-China relationship. This
study also examines the cultural celebration emerging in this era of globalisation, which is the
celebration of the “Jomblo (Singles’) Day,” or Guanggunjie. This festivity is held specifically
for the youths who are yet to find a life partner. Through the celebration of traditional and
modern festivities, the representation of China presented in the radio program in “Lentera”
by CRI for the Indonesian listeners will be observed.
1
INTRODUCTION
Globalisation has enabled countries around the world to communicate and interact regardless of time and distance. One important tool to communicate a message from one country to
another is the media. Through the media, messages can be delivered easily and directly from
one place to another. Media may take different forms including the classic forms of media,
such as the radio and television, as well as the media of mobile phones, computers, and the
Internet.
As explained by Medeiros (2003), the People’s Republic of China (PRC) began to undergo
a transformation process by opening up to various countries in the world in the late 1970s, as
) introduced by
a realisation of the “Reform and Opening up” Policy (Gaige Kaifang
the leader of PRC at that time, Deng Xiaoping
. This transformation was followed by
China’s policies to open more bilateral relations aggressively in the 1990s. In this era of globalisation, China, as the most populous country in the world, also makes use of the advances
in technology through the medium of CCTV4 and CCTV9 TV stations to broadcast news
on China to the world community. Besides television, China also utilises radio programs to
disseminate information through the China Radio International (CRI) or Zhōngguó Guójì
Guăngbō Diàntái
network, the official radio station of the government
under the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television or Guojia Guangbo Dianying
Dianshi Zongju
. This radio station is dedicated to establish cooperation with foreign radio stations and is used as a soft-power tool for the PRC to promote the
country’s economic, political, social, cultural, and defence aspects to the world. The CRI
broadcasts are designed using the language of the destination country and present programs
related to PRC’s particular interests in a country. China affirms its presence in each country
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by establishing cooperation with local radio stations. Through this medium, China disseminates information on the situation, condition, and transformation in China from the past to
the present, the economic growth, infrastructure development, lifestyle, international relations, and even the political situation of PRC. This is part of China’s development process,
emerging from a regional force to become a global force.
By observing the topics of the programs broadcasted in 2011–2013, the author analyses a
variety of topics covering social, cultural, economic, and political themes which were aired
in the 30-minute talk shows or interviews. These themes were broadcasted in fluent Bahasa
Indonesia. Besides that, the CRI also hosts a website that is run in parallel with the radio
broadcast to provide virtual information, supplementary articles and visuals such as photographs and pictures. Through this media, China enters its target countries by exposing various aspects of China to be more widely known and understood by the world community.
As mentioned by Storey (1996), the media provides information that can be interpreted
ideologically because the media serves as an arena for various symbols dominating other
symbols to represent a certain ideology. Since the media is a powerful tool to deliver messages, the cooperation between PRC radio stations and the Indonesian private radio stations
can be interpreted as a means to convey certain messages related to the interests of China
toward the Indonesian public. This study, therefore, is aimed to further investigate the representation of China in the selected topics broadcasted in CRI’s “Lentera” program.
2
METHOD
The broadcast programs are selected by sorting out topics into the categories of celebrations/holidays/festivals throughout 2011–2013. The selected topics as the study focus are the
Chinese New Year festivity and the newly celebrated “Jomblo (Singles’) Day” or Guanggunjie
. The reason behind the selection of these two celebrations is to observe the messages
delivered through CRI’s “Lentera” program in relation to both the traditional and modern
celebrations. However, this study is not intended to examine the link between the two celebrations, but to observe the ideology conveyed by each broadcast program, representing the traditional culture and the modern development in China. In this research, the dynamics behind
the delivered message are observed and then followed up by a study on the representation of
the two broadcast topics.
3
RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
The “Lentera” radio program of the Indonesian CRI generally presents topics related to
culture. For instance, the topics of the Spring Celebration and the Cap Go Meh festivals
are among the topics of discussion featured in the radio programs. These celebrations are
known as typical Chinese celebrations that have long been known since the days of the dynasties. Nevertheless, aside from the discussion on traditional celebrations, several broadcasts of
“Lentera” also presented other interesting celebrations that are considered a novelty, including celebrations adopted from outside of China and celebrations that are created in this
globalisation era. Considering the popularity of the traditional Chinese celebrations in Indonesia, this research focuses on the topic of the Spring/New Year/Lunar celebration, which
represents the traditional celebrations, and the Guanggunjie festivity that represents one of
the new celebrations in this era of globalisation.
Broadcast programs featuring the theme of Chinese traditional celebrations generally focus
on the Chinese traditional values as a cultural heritage that has long been known since the
days of the dynasties. Until this day, these traditions are still upheld as part of the Chinese
culture in Indonesia. The celebration to welcome the spring and herald the arrival of a New
Year is known as the Chinese Lunar New Year which is specifically celebrated by the Chinese
ethnic group, while the Solar Calendar New Year that falls on 1st January is also celebrated
in Indonesia. However, the celebration of the Lunar New Year in Indonesia was just recently
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recognised openly, after the revocation of the Inpres (Presidential Decree) No. 14/67 of 2000
that previously restrained the activities related to the Chinese Culture. This policy annulment
can be traced back to the history of the diplomatic relationship between Indonesia and China
that has experienced ups and downs and has affected the freedom to openly express the Chinese culture in Indonesia. The impact from the annulment of Inpres No. 14/67 is indicated by
the resumption of the public celebrations of Chinese culture in Indonesia. The Chinese ethnic
group in Indonesia welcomed this freedom by exhibiting the performance of the Barongsai
(Lion Dance) and openly displaying red-colored ornaments to celebrate the Lunar New Year
day. These festivities gained popular attention from the Indonesian people in general, especially
after the government officially designated the Lunar New Year day as a national holiday in
Indonesia. As an intrinsic but exotic culture from outside of Indonesia, the celebration of the
Lunar New Year has earned significant recognition involving the general public of Indonesians in expressing their respect toward the celebration of the Lunar New Year. This development has obviously made it easier for “Lentera” to present this topic to the radio listeners in
Indonesia. The broadcast on the topic of the Lunar New Year is selected based on the similar
cultural codes of China and Indonesia to identify the comprehension patterns and the renewed
relationship between China and Indonesia. In binding the cultural pattern between China and
Indonesia, this broadcast aims to revive the native culture of the Lunar New Year celebration,
associated with the Chinese culture in Indonesia. The tracking of the Chinese cultural traces in
other countries would also make it easier for China to “recall” the originality and the origin of
their culture. By applying this method, the once disrupted relationship between Indonesia and
PRC could be gradually restored through the power of culture. The influence of the Chinese
culture is evidence of China’s success in employing its soft power introduced to Indonesia. The
representation of China through these radio programs carries the meaning of re-presentation
or to reintroduce China to Indonesia. Thus, the dominant ideology disseminated through these
radio programs is aimed to restore China’s cultural power in Indonesia.
Unlike the traditional celebrations, the Guanggunjie festivity, which is a relatively new celebration, provides a different cultural angle. Guanggunjie is a special celebration for people
who do not have a partner or, in other words, who are single. As elaborated in the “Lentera”
program, this celebration is a fairly new festivity initiated by a group of university students.
Guanggunjie is translated as “Hari Jomblo” – a slang word in Indonesian language which is
used as a lingua franca among Indonesian youths—by the radio announcer of “Lentera”.
The use of an informal term shows that “Lentera” not only serves as the source for official
news, but also presents trivial and current trends. This topic has gained wide attention, as it
shows China’s new paradigm of becoming more open to new and trivial issues and current
trends, which are quite contrary to the conventional, closed and traditionally strict attitude,
which is closely associated to the past era of the Chinese. This topic provides a contrasting
view toward China that is commonly perceived as a closed culture. In regards to this phenomenon, the broadcaster stated:
“...Khususnya di kalangan muda, banyak sekali festival-festival. Ada Halloween,
Thanksgiving, Valentine. Pertama kali itu trend-nya dari Amerika.... dan banyak
makanan. Mengajari kita untuk bersyukur. Kalangan muda di China membuat
trend sendiri, ada suatu perayaan yang menetapkan tanggal 11 bulan November
dimulai dari kalangan mahasiswa. Kalau
sebagai hariJomblo. Guānggùn Jié
di Jakarta namanya jomblo, artinya belum punya pasangan. Kalau Jumat Sabtu di
rumah, pasti jomblo. Banyak sekali kota besar di dunia, banyak orang tidak berhasil
menemukan pasangan...”
(“..Particularly among the young people, there are a lot of festivals. There are the
Halloween Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Valentine’s Day. Initially, this trend comes
from America.... and lots of food is involved. They teach us to be grateful. The
young people in China created their own trend. There is a celebration that is set on
11 November as the day for single people. The Guānggùn Jie
was initiated
by university students. In Jakarta, the singles are known as jomblo, meaning not
having a partner. On Fridays or Saturdays, if young people stay at home, they are
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definitely single. In many major cities in the world, many people are unable to find
a partner...”).
This statement illustrates how the Chinese younger generation of today is influenced by globalisation, where the celebrations of the western world have penetrated the young people in
PRC. These celebrations have inspired the young Chinese people to create their own unique
celebration, the Guanggunjie celebration every 11th November. The following statement
explains why the broadcast program on the 11th day of the 11th month has been selected:
“... Dulu festival ini diciptakan oleh mahasiswa Universitas. Di Universitas banyak yang belum pacaran. Satu satu itu kan sebelas. 11 itu kan satu satu. Tanggal
11–11 mewakili satu satu satu satu. jadi 4 – 1. Perayaan paling meriah itu tahun
2011. Jadi ada 6 angka 1....”
(“...This festival was initiated by university students. At the time, the university students were not dating anyone. The number eleven is formed by two number “1”s.
The date 11–11 represents one, one, one, and one. So, there are four digits representing “1”s. The most festive celebration was in 2011 because the date was formed by
six digits of “1”s.”)
As explained in the broadcasted program, the date of 11 November was selected based on the
Roman numerical characters of “1111” that represents 11 November, and according to the
young generation in China, these numbers symbolise four people standing in a row. The four
people standing in a row are associated to the idea of four people standing with no partner.
The broadcaster also explained that the most celebrated occasion was in 2011, at which the
date was 11th November 2011 represented by “111111”. Therefore, in their opinion, the more
numbers that are lined up in a row (there are six “1”s), the “more single people” there are.
In the following segment, the broadcast program discussed the activities of some of the
young people during the Guanggunjie festival which included online shopping as a spare time
activity for those that do not have a partner. The discussion about online shopping used
two out of the total three broadcast segments. The shift of topics from the celebration to
the lifestyle of shopping by the sender or the encoder shows that the delivery of messages is
completely controlled by the encoder. What is produced through the media is a construct of
the message sender (encoder) to be delivered to the message receiver (decoder). The following
is the narration from the broadcaster:
“...Semua orang bisa masuk internet dan ikut promosi ini, dimulai jam 24.00. Promosi ini sangat sukses. Karena 1 bulan sebelumnya sudah ada iklan. Mereka kasih
diskon 50%, jadi kasih separuh..... Saya sudah lama memperhatikan satu brand, dia
hari itu bukan saja kasih diskon, tapi juga kasih kupon. Hampir 2000 yuan. Jadi,
hematnya 2000 juga, ya. Ada banyak kupon dan memilih item-item yang kamu
suka sebelumnya. Mulai jam 12 bisa beli, bisa bayar. Saya, semuanya, sudah mempersiapkan. Saya udah rebut kupon, sudah pesan, jam 12 tinggal klik di online...”
“...Everyone can get on the Internet and join this campaign, starting at midnight.
This promotion was very successful because it has been advertised since the previous month. They are giving 50% discounts, so we are given half the price. I have
long observed a brand which, on that day, did not only give a discounted price, but
also offered coupons nearly worth 2000 Yuan. So, the customer can save 2000 Yuan.
There are plenty of coupons and you could select the items you like. You can just
buy and pay for the items, starting at midnight. I have prepared everything. I”ve
managed to get a coupon and made an order, and at midnight I just need to click...”
From this statement, it is apparent that there is an opportunity to promote bargain shopping via the internet during the celebration of Guanggunjie. The vendors took advantage of
this opportunity to reap profitable results and they gained a huge amount of profit from the
Guanggunjie special offer, as reflected in the following statement:
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“... Hasil promosi kali ini menurut statistik 19.1 milyar yuan. Bisa dibandingkan
dengan toko-toko lain. Hampir sama dengan 1400 toko McDonald. Keuntungannya berapa kali lipat dari McDonald. Hampir sama dengan 130 perusahaan
bisnis di Tiongkok. Dimulai pada tahun lalu. Gaobao ini sudah belajar banyak
dari tahun lalu. Internet macet sekali. Dua sifat yang utama, harga benar-benar
murah, item-nya bener-bener buat orang biasa. Bukan yang mewah-mewah.
Tetapi barang-barang bermerek juga ada. Ada, tapi jumlahnya kecil. Yang rebutan itu Ferragamo. Cuma ada 1 tas. Harganya 10.800 yuan. Tapi harga nya saat
itu cuma 1111...”
“... The profit from the promotion this time, based on the statistics, was 19.1 billion
Yuan. Comparing it with other businesses, this is almost equal to the amount from
1,400 McDonald outlets. The profit was several times higher than that of McDonald’s. It is almost equal to 130 business enterprises in China. Since last year, Gaobao
has learned a lot. The website became jam packed or overcrowded for two main
reasons: either the price was really cheap, or the items were really popular for the
common people. Not too fancy. However, the designer goods were also available
although in limited quantity. The most wanted item is the Ferragamo goods. There
was one bag which is usually priced at 10,800 Yuan, but the special price was only
1111 Yuan...”
The above statement of the CRI announcer shows that online shopping via the internet
has become a profitable business in China. Besides that, it reflects how the Guanggunjie
event is considered a worthy opportunity to promote online businesses because it is a good
opportunity to double the profit. “Lentera” even compared it to the sales of 1,400 outlets
of a well-known American franchise restaurant. Apparently, in addition to featuring the
Guanggunjie festivity every 11 November, “Lentera” also shows another aspect of the
celebration, namely the business aspect as indicated by the increase in the sales turnover
and the profit reaped by the online entrepreneurs. Hence, the Guanggunjie celebration
discussed in the “Lentera” radio program was described as a stimulating celebration. Nevertheless, the reason for this celebration is actually linked to the historical background
of the cultural phenomenon, which is signified by the surplus number of single people
in China in the 1990s. This phenomenon only appeared after the 1990s at which time the
Chinese government enacted the “One Child Policy” to limit the population growth in
China which is one of the highest in the world.
The Guanggunjie celebration that emerged in the 1990s in PRC was an after-effect of the
growing number of single people which was prompted by the rapid economic growth, creating a fully busy work force of today’s Chinese society. The cultural background of this issue
started in 1979 when the PRC government implemented an economic reform. This economic
reform was a major progress for China after experiencing stagnancy due to the Cultural
Revolution (1966–1976). Hesketh et al. (2005) state that:
“...At the time, China was home to a quarter of the world’s people, who were occupying just 7 percent of world’s arable land. Two thirds of the population was under
the age of 30 years, and the baby boomers of the 1950s and 1960s were entering
their reproductive years. The government saw strict population containment as
essential to economic reform and to an improvement in living standards. So the
one-child family policy was introduced...”
However, the success in controlling the population growth was not matched by overcoming the social inequality. This inequality particularly refers to the psychological problems
arising from this policy. When the children that became the only child of the family had
grown up, the population of men and women became unbalanced. This ratio imbalance
has resulted in a greater number of males compared to the female population. Thus, the
broadcast of Guanggunjie basically represents the impact of the government’s One Child
Policy.
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4
CONCLUSION
The CRI represents China in its every broadcast and reflects China’s interest for the Indonesian listeners. The traditional Lunar New Year celebration, which was illustrated through the
broadcast of “Lentera”, refers to an important celebration in the traditional Chinese society
to welcome the Lunar New Year. The hope for happiness and prosperity as part of this tradition has also become part of the Lunar New Year celebration in Indonesia. The broadcast
of “Lentera” transmitted the cultural codes through the features of the Lunar New Year
celebration that can be directly and clearly adopted by the Indonesian listeners. This research
has revealed the significance of this broadcast for the Indonesian listeners, which is to reconnect the traces of the once lost Chinese culture in Indonesia and to recall the originality of
this Chinese celebration.
Meanwhile, the broadcast topic of the Guanggunjie celebration illustrates the openness
toward the Chinese non-traditional and contemporary celebration that exhibits a festive
mood and describes how exciting the situation is, which is associated with the increasing
number of people “that do not have partners.” The festivity is depicted by those single
people going out to the cinema, with no partner, and doing online shopping via the internet
as featured in the general overview in this broadcast. The fact that there is an increasing
number of young people in China who are single has roused the curiosity to understand
the background of this event. This research found that the significant increase of the young
people that do not have partners is closely related to the “One Child Policy” implemented
since 1979. The impact of this policy has led to the emergence of social problems, such as
the unbalanced ratio between women and men, the rising number of abortion cases, the raising age of people getting marriage, and other social issues. The problems of this generation
of singles began in the 1990s, when the children born in the 1980s became teenagers or were
at the “marrying” age.
Thus, this research shows that the representation of China in the broadcast programs
reflects a modern China that is respectful of both the traditions and the new trends. The
relations between countries such as China and Indonesia can be improved through the exposure of the same cultural codes in celebrating the Chinese tradition in Indonesia, such as the
Lunar New Year celebrations. Therefore, the radio can be an effective instrument to convey
the Chinese representation to the Indonesian listeners. Nonetheless, China’s representation in
the broadcast of “Lentera” cannot be separated from the events behind it. The relationship
between China-Indonesia that once was deranged should be restored by sharing a common
understanding of traditional celebrations, such as the Chinese New Year festivity, and the
excitement of modern celebrations such as the Guanggunjie, which actually represents a social
issue in China”s progress in this era of globalisation.
REFERENCES
China Radio International Indonesia. (2011) Profil Lentera (The profile of Lentera). [Online] Available
from: http://indonesian.cri.cn/481/2011/05/10/1s118255.htm.
China Radio International Indonesia. (2012) Hari Jomblo (Singles’ Day). [Online] Available from:
http://indonesian.cri.cn/201/2012/12/10/1s133678.htm.
Hall, S. (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London, Sage
Publications Ltd.
Hesketh, Li Lu, M.D. & Zhu Wei Xing. (2005) The Effect of China’s One-Child Family Policy after
25 Years. [Online] Available from: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMhpr051833.
Medeiros, E.S. & Fravel, M.T. (2003) China’s New Diplomacy. Foreign Affairs, 82(6), 22–35.
Storey. (1996) Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture: Theories and Methods. Edinburgh,
Edinburgh University Press.
Zlatar, A. (2003) The role of media as an instrument of cultural policy: An inter-level facilitator and
image promoter. Bucharest: Policies for Culture—European Cultural Foundation, Amsterdam &
ECUMEST Association.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Mandarin education and contemporary Chinese-Indonesian
identity repositioning: Between recinicization and cosmopolitanism
Q.Q. Luli & M. Budiman
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Over the last few years, Indonesia has witnessed the booming of Mandarin
schools in its major urban settings. This emerging phenomenon is especially obvious among
Chinese-Indonesian parents who were born after the 1966 ban on communism in Indonesia.
Children aged 6–13 years are sent to modern Mandarin-based international schools that use
not only the Indonesian language as the instructional language, but, more importantly, Mandarin and English as well. This cultural trend in contemporary Indonesia has raised a question:
are we seeing the reassertion of ‘Chineseness’ among Chinese-Indonesians, which is oriented
towards the ‘ancestral homeland’ (mainland China), or is it based more on a cosmopolitan
urban outlook, which does not consider cultural boundaries as an essential part of their identity markers? This paper seeks to address this issue based on field research conducted in two of
the largest cities on Java Island, the primary island of Indonesia. The concepts of Chineseness
and cosmopolitanism developed by Ien Ang and other Chinese diaspora scholars will be used
as the main framework to discuss the issue. This paper argues that the kind of ‘Chineseness’
constructed by contemporary Chinese-Indonesian identity tends to be less closely related to the
essentialist concept of ‘recinicization’ but more closely related to a fluid idea of cosmopolitanism, which, in turn, helps redefine nationalism in the specific Chinese-Indonesian context.
1
INTRODUCTION
This study is based on field research conducted in the cities of Jakarta and Surabaya. The criteria of target schools in the chosen cities are those with primary and secondary schools that
use international curricula, in which the teachings are carried out in three languages, namely
English, Mandarin and Indonesian language, with a significant number of students.
This type of schools began to emerge not long after the collapse of the New Order regime
in 1998, which had ruled the country for 32 years and strictly prohibited the teaching and
dissemination of the Chinese language and culture. The end of the authoritarian rule in
Indonesia was quickly followed by a brief political turmoil, which included the lootings and
burnings of Chinese-Indonesian properties, as well as the infamous and controversial cases
of mass rape of Chinese descent women.
The tragedy left a scar in the collective memory of the nation, particularly among the Chinese-Indonesian communities across the archipelago; however, as Melani Budianta suggested, it
also serves as a sort of ‘blessing in disguise’ (2003) because, for the first time after 32 years of discrimination and restriction, the Chinese-Indonesians have found a determination to voice their
political views and urged the government to lift the ban on the Chinese language and culture.
The ban was eventually lifted by former President Abdurrahman Wahid in 1999, and there
has been a booming interest among the Chinese-Indonesian communities in learning the Mandarin language and revitalising their cultural traditions ever since. Wahid took a step further by
officially recognising Confucianism as one of the major religions in Indonesia. The reintegration process of Chinese cultural tradition into the Indonesian socio-cultural system culminated
with the release of a presidential decree in 2003 by former President Megawati Sukarnoputri,
which regulated that the Chinese New Year (Imlek) is celebrated as a national holiday.
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One of the consequences of the lifting of the ban on the Chinese language and culture
is the proliferation of kindergarten, primary and secondary schools that offer classes using
Mandarin—along with other languages. This is viewed as the revival of the enthusiasm and
curiosity to understand more about many aspects related to the Chinese culture both among
Chinese-Indonesians and the indigenous population of Indonesia. In addition to formal
schools, informal private institutions also offer courses of Mandarin that caters to different
groups and needs, ranging from young children to housewives to professionals. Furthermore,
Chinese-language newspapers and magazines also began to be published widely (Hoon,
quoted in Tsuda, 2012, p. 192). At the international level, as Kitamura (2012) suggested, the
‘rising China’ factor, which refers to the rise of China as a new superpower of the world, also
plays a part in the promotion of Mandarin in Indonesia.
The significant surge of interest in the Chinese language and culture since the Reform
period raises a few questions: What is actually happening in the socio-cultural context of
Chinese-Indonesians regarding their positioning in terms of their status as ‘Chinese diaspora’
in Indonesia? Does the renewed interest in the culture of their ancestors signify an emerging
phenomenon of ‘recinicization’ (the formation of ‘Chineseness’ that is primarily oriented
towards the mainland China) or is it part and parcel of a larger, global phenomenon of cosmopolitanism as a result of globalisation (individuals no longer see themselves as defined by
national boundaries and identities but transcending those traditional borders and claiming a
global citizenship)? Furthermore, if a search for ‘Chineseness’ indeed takes place, this study
tries to investigate what kind of ‘Chineseness’ that is evolving in the Indonesian context in
the post-New Order era.
In a research published in 2012, Koji Tsuda asked what motivated Chinese-Indonesian
students in the town of Rembang, Central Java, to attend Chinese-language classes and if
‘Chineseness’ had anything to do with it and whether it was part of the attempt to acquire
more ‘authenticity’ in terms of their Chinese identity. Tsuda’s research results were ambiguous. The results in the sense point towards a possibility of ‘recinicization,’ but nothing was
conclusive because learning the language at that point was simply part of the students’ effort
to gain experience.
2
METHOD
On the basis of the field research done in trilingual schools in Surabaya and Jakarta through
interviews with the students’ parents, almost two-thirds of whom were born after 1967; when
communism and anything related to the Chinese culture were banned, this paper develops
the results of Tsuda’s research further by connecting the emergence of international schools
offering Mandarin courses not only in the efforts to rediscover ‘Chineseness’, but also with
the aim of becoming global citizens of the world, in which ‘Chineseness’ is just one out of
many building blocks.
Similar research has been done by Lee and Chen (2007), who interviewed 29 parents and
students of elementary and secondary schools to find out whether Chinese-Indonesian
parents preferred sending their children to ‘internationally oriented’ schools or ‘Chineseoriented’ schools. The results show that only two respondents chose ‘Chinese-oriented’
schools because they wanted to better prepare their children for further studies in Western
countries and, if possible, to settle down there afterwards. Our research aims to explore more
in-depth and reveal the complexity of the process to avoid any simplistic generalisation in our
understanding of the situation.
3
RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
This paper sets out to find if the growing interest among Chinese-Indonesian parents to
send their children to trilingual schools with international curricula is related to the rediscovery of ‘Chineseness’ (‘recinicization’) oriented towards mainland China or whether it is an
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indication of a cosmopolitan lifestyle as a result of globalisation. The two surveys conducted
in Surabaya and Jakarta provide some interesting insights into how Chinese-Indonesians
growing up in the New Order era envision themselves in three different worlds: Indonesia,
China and the global world. Some important observations regarding these parents that can
be explored and discussed further are as follows:
1. They send their children to quality schools with international standards not only to master Mandarin but also to learn English;
2. They are proud of their ‘Chineseness’ and view the ability to speak Mandarin as an added
value to it;
3. Many of them have travelled to China and some other countries;
4. Most of them consider Indonesia as their permanent homeland;
5. Many of them could no longer speak or write in Mandarin, but they want their children
to be able to do so;
6. Respondents in Jakarta come from lower middle-class background and are more proud
of being Chinese than being Indonesian, whereas those in Surabaya come from middle
to upper-middle-class background and are more proud of being Indonesian than being
Chinese;
7. Two respondents in Jakarta accuse the contents of the questionnaire to be too racist and
prejudiced against the Chinese, but none in Surabaya.
There are similar patterns that create a coherent picture of urban middle-class ChineseIndonesians living in the two major cities in Indonesia. As such, how they perceive themselves in a cosmopolitan setting is also shaped by the rise of China in Asia and the world, as
well as by globalisation. At the same time, there is also a contradiction and perhaps, some
ambivalence, with regard to their positioning within the Indonesian context. The importance
of mastering the Mandarin language is seen as an absolute necessity, and while not all of
them are able to speak Mandarin, they want to ensure that their children are able to acquire
the language. Not only do they think that Mandarin has become one of the global languages,
but also they believe that it is part of their cultural identity, an identity that has temporarily faded, but can be regained by the next generation of Chinese-Indonesians who are now
attending trilingual schools. The mastery of Mandarin then serves a dual purpose: on the one
hand, it serves as one of the success factors and an important skill in the future global setting,
while functioning as a marker of their cultural identity on the other.
Fransisca Handoko even drew a more local and pragmatic conclusion in her study on why
there has been a boom of Mandarin informal schools after the end of the New Order era.
She argued that the mastery of the Mandarin language is considered strategically important
by not only the Chinese-Indonesians but also Indonesians with non-Chinese background
of all age groups. Their primary motivation, according to Handoko, is basically economicdriven, in the sense, that the ability to speak Mandarin would enhance their opportunity in
the job market rather than having anything to do with, say, a yearning for the fatherland or
rediscovery of the ancestral traditions (2010, pp. 368–369). Such a pragmatic motivation
is naturally triggered also by the rising economy of China, and as a result, the mastery of
Mandarin language becomes one of the requirements in many vacancies in Indonesia. The
study conducted by Handoko indicates a fundamentally different type of conclusion from
what this research discovers.
Travelling seems to have opened up the parents’ horizon of the world. They see that America, Europe and Australia still offer good living standards; therefore, many of these parents
prefer living in those places to living in China, although a significant number of the parents
still seriously consider Indonesia as their permanent home country. The parents certainly
have an expectation that their children would later be able to survive and succeed living
overseas in a very competitive atmosphere alongside higher standards of living. This could
be the reason why, in addition to Mandarin, English appears to be highly important. They
strongly believe that it is essential for their children to master these two international languages in order to make a good living, whereas non-Chinese-Indonesian parents seem to have
taken that issue for granted. It happened because, after all, their home base would still be in
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Indonesia no matter where their children would decide to live in the future. China is not the
favourite option as a permanent home country for most of the Chinese-Indonesian parents.
Even though the rise of China has brought awe and praise and helped boost their pride in
having Chinese ancestral background, they seem to be fascinated more by the achievements
of the Western world.
The fact is that many of the parents do not speak or write Mandarin (except, perhaps, their
own Chinese names), but they still feel proud of their Chinese origin, especially those living in
Surabaya, and this speaks volume of the Chinese-Indonesians’ unique identity construction.
This is certainly different from the kind of experience with the ‘Chineseness’ that Ien Ang discussed in her celebrated book, On Not Speaking Chinese (2001), in which she recounts her feeling of being categorised as an ‘overseas Chinese’ who looks Chinese, but was unable to speak
Chinese during her visit to China as a tourist. Ang wrote that she considers the experience
as an ‘embarrassment’. Ang is the daughter of a peranakan (of Chinese descent) family who
was born in Indonesia and whose family has embraced fully the local traditions of their new
homeland and has practically cut off any connection they had with their land of origin. Thus,
the loss of language and cultural knowledge for Ang’s family and perhaps for many other
peranakan families is not the result of the repressive policy of the New Order towards ChineseIndonesians. Such disconnection, in fact, was largely spurred by an imperial policy in China in
the 18th century, which prohibited Chinese from leaving or re-entering China, and this strict
regulation was even reinforced with a death-penalty sanction (2001, p. 26). This is probably
why, after they have left their homeland, the Chinese people who have migrated to other parts
of Asia typically no longer dream of being able to come back or hope to still belong to China.
Much of the literature about the loss of ancestral knowledge and traditions experienced by
Chinese-Indonesians puts the blame on the New Order’s 32 years of rule (among others, see
Thung, 2010 and Dawis, 2010). The most frequently referred to is the infamous Presidential
Instruction issued in 1967 on the ‘Chinese Problem’, which stipulated that Chinese-Indonesians
had to assimilate fully into the Indonesian culture. This means they had to practically abandon or hide the language and traditions of their ancestors. This policy may have had a much
greater impact on the totoks, the Chinese who had only left China in the late 19th century,
more than on the peranakan. The Chinese-peranakan, judging from their history of migration that Ien Ang retells, might have already lost much of their collective memory regarding
China even long before the New Order came into power. For many of them, that Indonesia
is now their homeland is accepted as a fact. This probably explains why most of the respondents of this research, particularly those living in Surabaya, claim that they felt more proud
of being Indonesian than being Chinese. However, by contrast, why do the respondents in
Jakarta claim that they are more proud of their ancestral land?
The May 1998 riot, followed by the alleged mass rape of Chinese-Indonesian women, was
unequalled in Jakarta, where hostility towards Chinese-Indonesian communities during the
transition period was considerably strong, compared with the other major cities. In Jakarta,
more than 1,000 people died during the lootings and burnings of mostly Chinese properties,
and the joint-fact finding team (TPGF) formed by the government to investigate the sexual
assaults on Chinese-Indonesian women found at least 100 confirmed victims of mass rapes
in Jakarta area. The Chinese-Indonesian communities’ experience of the riot is extremely
traumatic, and the ‘collective scar’ among them, as Aimee Dawis referred to in her study
(2010, p. 35), is significantly deeper. This is especially true among the lower middle-class
Chinese-Indonesians who were vulnerable and weak because they received very little protection from the security apparatuses compared with those wealthy Chinese-Indonesian families
living in gated communities that were heavily guarded during the riot. The 1998 riot would
serve as a reminder, particularly for those living in North or West Jakarta, that—as ChineseIndonesians—they would always be viewed as outsiders, estranged from their own homeland
far away in China. This probably also explains why the questionnaire received some negative
responses and being labelled as ‘racist’ as the ethnicity issues seem to be highly sensitive to
them, even more so than to their fellow respondents in Surabaya.
We believe that the trauma caused by the riot plays an instrumental role in the perception
among lower middle-class parents in our survey, who mostly come from the surrounding
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riot-hit areas in Jakarta. Although they feel prouder of their ancestral land than Indonesia,
they share the same sense of attachment to Indonesia as those in Surabaya, and have motivation to send their children to trilingual schools that teach that Mandarin has little to do with
the nostalgic sentiment towards China. In fact, more than 50% of the parents stated that they
want their children to continue living in Indonesia after they finish school, and only 11%
would identify themselves as Chinese (instead of Indonesian or Chinese-Indonesian when
travelling to other countries). Moreover, even though many of them come from the lower
middle-class background, they have developed a cosmopolitan tendency towards envisioning the future of their children. More than 50% of the respondents have travelled abroad
despite their claim of low income in the questionnaire. This shows that either they might not
have been completely candid when answering the questionnaire or they may not have fully
regained their trust in others outside their in-group and are still concerned with their safety.
The most important factor is the lack of the essentialists’ attitude about the Chinese
cultural identity among the respondents. Although they openly claim to be proud of their
‘Chineseness’, they definitely do not see such ‘Chineseness’ in a deterministic sense. It is the
kind of ‘Chineseness’ that will only begin to make sense when understood as rooted in their
adopted homeland of Indonesia. The data obtained from both sites of our research show
the focus of attention as ‘selective Chineseness’ that takes into account the relationship of
hybridity with their ‘Indonesianess’ that is also distinct from what would be taken for granted
by non-Chinese-Indonesians. This is the sort of ‘Indonesianess’ that has been seeped historically, politically and economically into the psyche of our Chinese-Indonesian respondents.
Ien Ang wrote, ‘If I am inescapably Chinese by descent, I am only sometimes Chinese by consent. When and how is a matter of politics’ (2001, p. 51). The Chinese-Indonesian respondents in our research would have no problem in understanding what Ang was talking about.
Their answers to the points in the questionnaire clearly indicate that they take full advantage
of the flexibility provided to them by their hybrid identity. For certain issues, they would
without a doubt identify themselves as Indonesians; however, for some other issues, they
would quickly ‘shift’ to their Chinese identity. Their cultural identity, in short, is extremely
fluid and versatile.
Gergen (quoted in Dawis, 2010, p. 36) referred to such an ability to switch from one aspect
of cultural identity to another, which appears to be incompatible to each other, as ‘pastiche personality’—a chameleon-like feature that enables one to draw resources from various
identities to take as much advantage as possible from the situation. However, we think that
‘pastiche’ and ‘chameleon’ are not the accurate terms to describe our respondents. ‘Chineseness’ and ‘Indonesianess’ in their cultural identity are visible and in action simultaneously,
instead of showing only one identity, while the other is hiding and vice versa. Their hybridity
creates a bridge that connects the two aspects of their identity and allows them to blend as
well as synergise with each other. The respondents may have sounded very nationalistic, but
at the same time they are willing to transcend any national boundaries to embrace the world.
Traumatic experience and years of discriminatory practices against them have not weakened
their sense of being Indonesians, and the ‘rising China’ phenomenon has not blinded them
with infatuation with their ancestral land.
The question of language remains a central one in this study. What role does language
really play in the whole scheme of things of Chinese-Indonesians’ self-positioning? The
growing interest among parents in sending children to schools that offer not just any foreign
language but particularly Mandarin may give an impression that ‘recinicization’ is occurring,
especially as the mastery of Mandarin is associated with the sense of pride regarding their
‘Chineseness’. Nevertheless, on other points in the questionnaire, the responses do not show
any indication of a consistent pattern that would otherwise reinforce such initial impression. English is equally deemed important, and the number of parents wanting to send their
children to developed countries in the West is significantly higher than those wanting their
children to continue their education in China or live in China. Similarly, on whether these
parents have totally embraced the cosmopolitan sensibility by not shying away from revealing
their wish for their children to be able to go and live in other countries, we find that while a
cosmopolitan outlook is visibly present, the majority of the respondents remain convinced
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in their choice of Indonesia as their permanent homeland. The readiness to cross-national
boundaries is there, but they are not ready to leave for good. English becomes instrumental,
yet that does not mean they undermine the importance of the Indonesian language. For
them, the Indonesian language is the mother tongue, but Mandarin and English are foreign
languages that need to be mastered with some extra effort.
4
CONCLUSION
As this is an ongoing research, our qualitative interpretation of the data will need to be further verified through other means such as interviews and closer observations. At this stage,
we are likely to prove that the growing phenomenon among Chinese-Indonesians who send
their children to trilingual schools, with Mandarin as one of the languages being taught, need
not be interpreted as part of a ‘recinicization’ process together with the rise of China lately.
It should also not be regarded as a wholesale cosmopolitanism as a result of encounters with
globalisation, for Indonesia remains a pivotal point in the lives of our Chinese-Indonesian
respondents. We hope that with the additional data obtained from two other cities, Medan
and Pontianak, some coherent patterns may come up, which will help us to draw our conclusions in a reliable manner. If, at this point, identity positioning among the respondents can
be detected from an ambivalent standpoint, we do not view it in the negative light because we
believe that, in terms of hybridity, such ambivalence serves as a resource rather than a weakness or constraint. In the next stage of our research, we may even have to pay more attention
to this ambivalent positioning in order to reveal the complexity of such a positioning process, which may be key to understanding contemporary Chinese-Indonesian cultural identity.
REFERENCES
Ang, I. (2001) On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West. London, Routledge.
Budianta, M. (2003) The blessed tragedy: the making of women’s activism during the Reformasi years.
In: Heryanto, A. & Mandal, S.K. (eds.) Challenging Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia: Comparing
Indonesia and Malaysia. London & New York, Routledge Curzon, pp. 145−176.
Dawis, A. (2010) Orang Indonesia Tionghoa: Mencari Identitas (Chinese Indonesians: Searching for Identity). Jakarta, Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Gergen, K.J. (2000) The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of identity in Contemporary Life. New York, Basic
Books.
Gudykunst, W. & Ting-Toomey, S. (1990) Ethnic identity, language and communication breakdowns.
In: Giles, H. & Robinson, P. (eds.) Handbook of Language and Social Psychology. New York, Wiley,
pp. 309−327.
Handoko, F. (2010) Perjalanan bahasa Mandarin dalam dunia pendidikan di Indonesia (The journey
of Mandarin in the education sector in Indonesia). In: Moriyama, M. & Budiman, M. (eds.) Geliat
bahasa selaras zaman: Perubahan bahasa di Indonesia pasca-orde baru (The twists and turns of languages according to the eras: Language changes in post-new order Indonesia). Tokyo: ILCAA, Tokyo
University of Foreign Studies, pp. 355−371.
Hoon, C.Y. (2008) Chinese Identity in Post-Suharto Indonesia: Culture, Politics, and Media. Eastbourne,
Sussex Academic Press.
Kitamura, Y. (2012) Chinese in the linguistic landscape of Jakarta: Language use and signs of change.
In: Foulcher, K., Moriyama, M. & Budiman, M. (eds.) Words in Motion: Language and Discourse in
Post-New Order Indonesia. Singapore, NUS Press, pp. 191−211.
Lee, M.H. & Chen, Y.L. (2007) Identity and educational choices: Middle-Class Chinese Indonesians in
the Post-Suharto era. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 4(2), 25−52.
Thung, J.L. (2010) Orang Cina dalam bahasa politik orde baru (The Chinese in the New Order’s Political
Language). In: Moriyama, M. & Budiman, M. (eds.) Geliat bahasa selaras zaman: Perubahan bahasa
di Indonesia pasca-orde baru (The twists and turns of languages according to the eras: Language changes
in post-new order Indonesia). Tokyo: ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, pp. 275−305.
Tsuda, K. (2012) Chinese-Indonesians who study Mandarin: A quest for ‘Chineseness’? In: Foulcher,
K., Moriyama, M. & Budiman, M. (eds.) Words in motion: Language and discourse in post-new order
Indonesia. Singapore, NUS Press, pp. 191−211.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Appropriating South Korean popular culture: I-pop and K-drama
remakes in Indonesia
S.M.G. Tambunan
Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The dynamic flow of South Korean popular cultural products has transformed the way “East Asia” is perceived in Indonesia. Consumption of these products
greatly influences consumers’ imagination, as argued by Appadurai, which becomes an arena
of negotiation as well as contestation in the sites of individual and communal agency. On the
one hand, consumers in Indonesia perceive these products as a representation of “East Asia,”
which is considered a well-known entity that is often used as a strategic defense mechanism
(i.e., against Western cultural domination). On the other hand, consumers are seeking for
more familiar goods in the form of mimicking products, such as I-pop’s boy/girl band or
Indonesian television sinetron copying plots from K-dramas. This paper investigates how
cultural borrowing and/or appropriating are strategically used in the meaning-making process of the new global and the modern portrayed by South Korean popular cultural products
and their copycat versions. The author argues that, instead of focusing on the authentic and
inauthentic cultural products that oversimplify the debate, this phenomenon should be analyzed as a form of pastiche, which reveals the repetitive nature of popular culture flows in
Asia as well as of cultural borrowing and/or appropriating.
1
INTRODUCTION
On April 28, 2014, RCTI, one of the biggest television stations in Indonesia, broadcast a
local television soap opera, also known as sinetron, entitled “Kau yang Berasal dari Bintang,”
which can be literally translated to “You who Came from the Star.” Within the first week of
its release, there was a massive outcry accusing the television soap opera as a plagiarized version of a South Korean soap opera, “Man from the Stars” (SBS), which was very popular in
2014. The outcries came from Indonesian fans as well as those from other Asian countries
who claimed that the Indonesian version had copied the storyline, the characters, and even
the opening scenes. SBS, who had the official intellectual property right of the television
show, threatened to take legal actions, which made RCTI decide to withhold the broadcast
and finally change the storyline.
Indonesia has been accused, even by Indonesians themselves, as a country that plagiarized a large variety of popular cultural products from many countries, especially East Asian
countries. This reflects how the flow of East Asian cultural products in Indonesia has not
only ignited the rapid rise of Korean/Japanese wave in Indonesia but also the scandalous
production of these plagiarizing products. Besides sinetron, the rising popularity of I-pop,
which could be seen as the Indonesian version of South Korean idol girl/boy bands, is also an
indication of how the popular culture industry in Indonesia constantly reworks and remakes
products from South Korea as a ripple effect of K-wave global invasion. Therefore, claims
and accusations of Indonesia as a copycat nation have always been the main narration to
make meaning out of these recent cultural phenomena.
As an end result of the popular culture traffic in Asia, plagiarizing products reflect an
ambiguous meaning-making process, as consumers, while longing for the real products,
are actually seeking for more familiar goods, such as I-pop’s boy/girl band or Indonesian
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television sinetron copying plots from K-dramas. In this study, the author argues that the
copycat texts could be seen as a pastiche revealing the repetitive nature of popular culture
flows in Asia. Furthermore, I-pop and K-drama remakes in Indonesia have strategically used
the means of cultural borrowing and/or appropriating. As I-pop, for example, replicates the
K-pop industry, the mimicking act is no longer a work of plagiarism, as it becomes a way for
the Indonesian music industry to rework the already successful formulae. By analyzing these
mimicking cross-cultural products, the study reveals that there is a continuous negotiation
between the actors involved in the invasion of K-wave and the process of reinscribing these
cultural products.
1.1
Conceptualizing and contextualizing South Korean pop culture in Indonesia
It is of utmost importance to see how the flow of South Korean products, or other East
Asian countries’ products, such as those from Japan and Taiwan, actually works in the Indonesian context. Intra-Asian cultural traffic, which has intensified in the last decade, does not
imply that the emerging regional connection between Asian countries is happening because
of its geo-cultural connection. The regional dynamics occurs because “Asia” is considered
a depository of in-betweenness. There has been a capitalization of Asian cultural affinities
in order to create a suppositious network of intra-Asian cultural traffic. Chen Kuan-Hsing
argued that historical memories within Asia have shaped the redefinition of Asia in each
context. “Inside the region itself, anxiety over the meaning of Asia arises from the politics of
representation” (2010, p. 215). The term Intra-Asia, in the case of Indonesia, actually emphasizes the construction of a bordered imagined space of “Asia” in order to ensure the flow of
unthreatening cultural products. It reflects not only the geographical space of the flow itself
but also the setting of the boundaries in the distribution and consumption of East Asian
cultural products in Indonesia to separate clearly what is considered “Asia” and not “Asia.”
During the time when Indonesia’s social and political condition is overpowered by escalating
politics of morality and anti-West rhetoric, East Asian television series, for example, is used
as a strategic defense mechanism, creating a bordered imagined space of “Asia” to ensure
the flows of unthreatening cultural products (Tambunan, 2013). Furthermore, East Asian
popular culture should not be seen as an essentialized materialization of Japanese/Taiwanese/
Korean culture. Iwabuchi argued that:
“These popular culture are undoubtedly imbricated in U.S. cultural imaginaries,
but they dynamically rework the meanings of being modern in Asian contexts at
the site of production and consumption. In this sense, they are neither ‘Asian’ in
any essentialist meaning nor the second-rate copies of ‘American originals.’ They
are inescapably ‘global’ and ‘Asian’ at the same time, lucidly representing the intertwined composition of global homogenization and heterogenization …” (Iwabuchi,
2002, p. 16)
East Asian cultural products are the embodiments of global and Asian, so they could not
be simply categorized as an antithesis of Western cultural products. In other words, these
products, including the television dramas or idol bands, are already hybridized products.
To theorize and make sense of these copycat idol bands or television series remakes are a
complicated task. Most research mainly deals with
“… a superficial point-by-point, pluses-and-minuses kind of analysis. Often this
kind of discussion employs a common strategy: the critic treats the original and
its meaning for its contemporary audience as a fixity, against which the remake is
measured and evaluated. And, in one sense, the original is a fixed entity” (Horton &
McDougal, 1998, p. 15).
In previous research, the original text is often considered a fixed authentic text and then
the researcher would analyze and evaluate the remake or the copycat text based on the original text. Therefore, even though it is significant to refer to the original text, as argued earlier
to say that something is original or not is contestable, it would be more fruitful to analyze the
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remake/copycat text as an entity in itself. In other words, the analysis needs to go beyond the
superficial level of what is original and what is not to see how the new text has reworked the
formulae or structure of the original text. Therefore, the research will explore the underlying
agency in response to the original text’s overbearing recognition.
1.2
I-pop: Mimicking K-pop cross-bordering characteristics
The first case study to be explored in this study is I-pop, which is an amalgamation of the
word Indonesia and K-pop. I-pop has become a significant part of the Indonesian music
industry, although there is a strong resistance from Indonesian consumers. As reported by
Arientha Primanita in a Jakarta Globe article (2012), the Tourism Minister, Mari Elka Pangestu, speaking at the Indonesia Creative Products Week (PPKI), pointed out that Indonesia’s
creative industry would be able to craft I-pop as an innovative commodity.
There are two main developments of I-pop to be highlighted in this discussion, which are
the earliest wave in 2010–2011 (SM*SH and Cherrybelle) and the latest ones, which would
be categorized as the made-in-Korea version of I-pop (S4 and SOS). The four boy/girl bands
mentioned are examples from each stage of development. They are considered the most representative in terms of popularity and recognizability. The first two, SM*SH and Cherrybelle,
are the earliest K-pop “look and sound-alike” groups, which receive a lot of resistance from
Indonesian consumers. Local media entertainment companies produce these two groups.
Meanwhile, S4 and SOS are groups formed, trained, and produced by a local entertainment
company in cooperation with a South Korean music agency, emphasizing the made-in-Korea
distinctiveness. The discussion will now focus on the characteristics of these two waves of
I-pop as they resonate K-pop’s global and cross-bordering characteristics.
A palpable characteristic of SM*SH and Cherrybelle, which enunciates a K-pop zest, is
the standardized practice of idol fabrication. Soon after they release their debut singles, both
groups could be seen in all kinds of media format. They became spokespersons for a number
of products. SM*SH members starred in their own television drama (Cinta Cenat Cenut,
2011), and Cherrybelle had a television reality show (Chibi Chibi Burger, 2012). By using
all of these media formats as promotion and marketing tools, there is a process of image
fabrication. Group members are made into idols through how they look, which highlights
the similarities to K-pop idols. The necessity to make them look like K-pop idols is shaped
through the aforementioned multiple media formats. Furthermore, the image of a group is
kept accentuated as most of these media promotion strategies focus on the group and not on
individual members.
One of the most identifiable characteristics of K-pop is the “idol-making system and global marketing strategies” (Shim, 2008), as well as the “star manufacturing system” (Shin,
2009). These strategies integrate the production process, such as in the training of talents,
as well as the management system. “The recent success of K-pop acts in Japan exemplifies the typical idol-making strategies of Korean entertainment companies, which is mainly
driven by capitalist desires. They do this first by adopting globally popular cultural elements
from Japan and the United States, then repackaging and manufacturing culturally hybridized
products” (Jung & Hirata, 2012, p. 6). It is through this idol-making system that entertainment companies, driven by capitalist desire, manufacture and repackage K-pop products
before circulating them to other parts of the world. In the production process, these entertainment companies train future idols in long training periods, which last from 5 to 7 years.
They are not only trained in singing and dancing, but also on how to be multiskilled entertainers. Therefore, an analysis on recent development of I-pop must not only scrutinize the
aspect of plagiarism because it would only pore over what is considered as authentic and
local in I-pop. Seeing that I-pop is a reaction and reproduction of K-pop, what needs to be
examined is the elements that constitute I-pop, which could also be identified in K-pop.
The latest development of I-pop, S4, and SOS could be considered as made-in-Korea
I-pop products, taking the mimicking process into a different level. The boy band, S4, was
formed from the winners of Galaxy Superstar, a reality show in one of the local television
stations in cooperation with a South Korean music agency. The reality “talent” show was
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produced by the Indonesian YS Media Entertainment and the winners of the show were sent
to Seoul to go through an 8-month training camp run by Rainbow Bridge Artist Agency, one
of the K-pop training agencies in Seoul, South Korea. S4 became one of the first Indonesian
boy bands trained in South Korea, who underwent an excessive training process like K-pop
idol groups but within a shorter period of time than K-pop groups. The members also experienced physical transformation. For instance, one of the members lost 20 kg in the training
camp. They dyed their hair and changed their fashion style, which makes them look exactly
like K-pop idols, even though they are Indonesians.
Besides their appearances, S4 members were trained to sing in Korean and learned basic
Korean phrases. As reported by Budi Suwarna in a Kompas article (27 January 2013), the
four members would use the Korean greeting style when they met reporters or fans. They
would bow down and say “Annyeong Haseyo!” This intensification of Korean-ness in their
greetings and how they learned to sing in Korean echo a different form of articulating K-pop
elements in this newest I-pop product. Compared with earlier I-pop groups, S4 amalgamates
the actuality that they are made in Korea. The idol-making system in which each boy/girl
band is fabricated through multiple media activities resonates with the K-pop idol-making
system, even though the Indonesian version is done within a shorter time period. It is not
only about the music, but, more importantly, about the process of making the members as
idols as well. What makes up the complete idol package is their songs and dancing ability,
fashion style, and even their manner of greeting people, such as that of S4.
It could be concluded that there are two different yet comparable ways in mimicking K-pop
highlighting different aspects of the cross-bordering characteristics. Earlier waves of I-pop
have reproduced K-pop products by making carbon copies of the songs, dance movements,
and the construction of idols. However, for its later predecessors, it is more significant to
enhance the Korean-ness of their products. As entertainment companies fabricate different
ways of mimicking K-pop, it also reflects the elements that constitute K-pop as a new global
product. Frederic Jameson (cited in Dyer, 2007) proposed that, in the postmodern era, the
world is starved of new ideas. The most palpable option is to attempt to recreate and reinvent
already existing products, especially those coming from the past, even if this past is not our
own, which could explain the repetitive phenomenon of replicating products just like I-pop.
1.3
Remaking/appropriating Korean trendy drama narrative elements
Besides I-pop, Indonesian sinetron or soap operas, which are remaking K-dramas, are another
way to mimic Korean popular cultural products in Indonesia. Indonesian sinetron throughout its development since the early 1990s has always been considered a product of plagiarism,
even though it has been one of Indonesian television prime time shows. These sinetrons,
copying either Korean, Japanese, Indian, or, recently, Turkish television soap operas, are very
successful and widely accepted, while, at the same time, they are also receiving criticism as
plagiarizing products. One of the reasons why these sinetrons are copying the storylines from
other countries’ television dramas is:
“Only high demanded sinetron will be prolonged by the TV station. This situation made producers of production houses seek proven saleable drama series from
abroad. The successful TV series from Japan, Taiwan, India, Hong Kong, and nowadays Korea becomes their target. It is not because those countries have a similar
cultural background as Asian, but also because those series have proved themselves
as a money maker in their own country and even abroad.” (Gunawan, 2011, p. 4).
These sinetrons produce a lot of money for the production house and the television station.
The different ways in which television drama production is done in Korea and Indonesia have
greatly influenced the process of remaking/appropriating. For example, the original usually
consists of 25 episodes, while the remakes could have more than 50 episodes or could even
reach 100–200 episodes if the sinetron is successful.
To see how these remakes actually work on the narrative structure and elements from
the original television dramas, the author looked at one sample of data, which has already
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been mentioned at the beginning of this article. The Indonesian sinetron entitled “Kau yang
Berasal dari Bintang” (KYBDB) is a remake of a K-drama, “You who Came from the Stars”
(YWCFTS). The remaking elements can be seen even from the opening scenes. The title itself
is a direct translation from the Korean version. Watching the first few episodes of KYBDB,
one would directly notice that there are a lot of similarities between the Indonesian and
Korean versions. For example, in the first episode, almost all of the scenes are similar in both
the narrative sequence and the cinematography (e.g., the choice of setting). Every scene looks
and sounds similar; however, KYDDB actually made some significant changes.
As mentioned earlier, Indonesian sinetron has specific characteristics in the narrative elements that have become a formula even in remaking K-dramas. In KYDDB, the core of the
story is the male protagonist’s romantic journey to get his “wings” back by finding the one
girl who can teach him how to love. He was depicted as an angel who fell from the sky 364
years ago and lost his wings. This is entirely different from the male protagonist’s back-story
in YWCFTS, who was an alien whose space ship landed on Earth 400 years ago during the
Joseon Dynasty. His job is to wait until a meteor hits or arrives on Earth at a particular time
in the future. The completely dissimilar way of representing the male protagonists as an alien
and an angel could be seen as how the Indonesian sinetron industry appropriated the narrative elements in the Korean version to fit its own formulae.
Research findings reveal that these sinetrons, as they remake K-dramas, are appropriating
their narrative elements in order to fit into the Indonesian sinetron structure and, in doing so,
reconstructing the K-dramas’ formulae. The narrative structure of sinetron usually revolves
around the representation of black and white characters. The protagonist is usually portrayed as the good character experiencing bad things in his or her life. The antagonist is bad,
manipulative, and causes many difficulties for the protagonist. Rarely are there characters
outside these two categories. Most of the sinetron films focus and evolve around this kind of
story … The message mostly explained in such sinetron story is that “patience and goodness
will get one to happiness” (Udasworo, 2013, p. 159–160). In KYDBD, the female protagonist
is represented as a snobbish actress just like the protagonist in YWCFTS. However, in the
Indonesian version, there are some scenes portraying her as someone with morals. As she
was introduced as a snobbish actress, she was also depicted as a woman with compassion.
In one scene, she stepped off her car unexpectedly when she saw an old lady eating leftover
food from the trashcan. This scene does not exist in the Korean version. She then gave her
money and went back to her car. The story then moves on to other similar scenes that could
be found in YWCFTS.
The addition of that short scene to portray a protagonist, who, in spite of being snobbish,
actually has a sense of compassion, in fact shows there is a conscious effort to emphasize
the sinetron formula that the protagonist is a nice person. This actually encourages K-drama
enthusiasts to reflect upon this deliberate wandering from the original version. The sharp
characterization of the snobbish actress as the protagonist was temporarily disturbed when
she did that particular act of kindness. The different core stories of the alien and the angel
are also a form of appropriation, as the idea of an angel seems to fit the cultural framework
of the Indonesian sinetron. The storyline of an angel trying to find his wings back by finding
his one true love is parallel with most Indonesian sinetron romantic storylines. Meanwhile,
the back-story for the protagonist in the Korean version is completely different, even though
a romantic storyline is still the main narrative pattern, just like any other Korean trendy
dramas.
Looking at the remaking process as a form of cultural borrowing as in borrowing the
narrative structure and cinematographic elements as well as appropriating some of these
elements to fit the sinetron formulae, we can see that there is more to this moment of pastiche. The remakes offer a way of enjoying, understanding, and accessing these foreign texts,
K-dramas, while conforming to a specifically sinetron language. “…the act of pastiching can
also affirm the position of the pasticheur and may consequently form part of a politics of
undermining and overthrowing the original” (Dyer, 2006: 157). On the surface, it looks like
any other acts of pastiche, while at the same time producing a commercially successful sinetron hit while de-authenticating and deconstructing K-dramas in the process.
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2
CONCLUSION: “COPYCAT” PRODUCTS AS THE GLOBAL PASTICHE
Copycat products are viewed by some as a symptom of creativity collapse of the Indonesian
popular culture industry, especially in the wake of globalization, creating multiple opportunities for cross-cultural amalgamation. I-pop and sinetron that remake K-dramas are appropriating Korean cultural products in such a way that this cross-cultural appropriation allows
the translation of East Asian cultural flow into the Indonesian context. The remake texts,
especially in music and television, alter the original version to better suit the Indonesian
consumers. It is clear that the Indonesian remakes offer the consumers a unique pleasure that
could not be produced by the original.
REFERENCES
Bhabha, H. (1984) Of mimicry and man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse. October, 28, 125–133.
Chen, K.H. (2010) Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham, Duke UP.
Cho, Y. (2011) Desperately seeking East Asia amidst the popularity of South Korean pop culture in
Asia. Cultural Studies, 25(3), 383–404.
Chua, B.H. (2010) Korean popular culture. Malaysian Journal of Media Studies, 12(1), 15−24.
Dyer, R. (2007) Pastiche. London, Routledge.
Gunawan, E. (2011) Against Imperialism of Bourgeois Image. [Online] Available from: http://s3.amazonaws.
com/academia.edu.documents/37597300/makalah_imperialism_bourgeois.pdf ?AWSAccessKeyId=A
KIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1467559224&Signature=wZEt2Egs69UsDLRx9ysa4bz9p6
A%3D&responsecontentdisposition = inline%3B%20filename%3DAgainst_Imperialism_of_Bourgeois_
Image.pdf. [Accessed 2nd July 2016].
Horton, A. & McDougal, S.Y. (1998) Play It Again, Sam: Retakes on Remakes. Berkeley, Univ. of
California Press.
Iwabuchi, K. (2002) Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Trans-nationalism.
Durham, Duke UP.
Jackson, J. (2014) More TV Dramas Accused of Plagiarism. Korea Herald. [Online] Available from:
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud = 20131224000709. [Accessed 10th July 2016].
Jung, S. & Y. Hirata. (2012) Conflicting desires: K-pop idol girl group flows in Japan in the era of Web
2.0. Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies. 12: (2).
Morris, M. (2004) On Trans-Asian cultural traffic (participating from a distance). In: Iwabuchi, K.,
Muecke, S. & Thomas, N. (eds.) Rogue flows: Trans-Asian cultural traffic. Hong Kong, Hong Kong
University Press.
Primanita, A. (2002) Can ‘I-Pop’ Emulate the Success of K-Pop? Indonesian Tourism Minister Says
Yes. Jakarta Globe. [Online] Available from: http://jakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/archive/can-i-popemulate-the-success-of-k-pop-indonesian-tourism-minister-says-yes/.[Accessed 28th July 2016].
Sen, K. & Hill, D.T. (2007) Media, Culture and Politics in Indonesia. Jakarta, Equinox Publishing.
Shim, D. (2008) The growth of Korean cultural industries and the Korean wave. In: Huat, C.B. &
Iwabuchi, K. (eds.) East Asian Pop culture: Analysing the Korean wave. Hong Kong, Hong Kong
University Press. pp. 15−31.
Shin, H. (2009) Have you ever seen the rain? And who’ll stop the rain? The globalizing project of Korean
pop (K-pop). Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 10(4), 507−523.
Stam, R. (2000) Beyond fidelity: The dialogics of adaptation. Film adaptation, 54−76.
Tambunan, S.M.G. (2013) Intra-Asia cultural traffic: Transnational flow of East Asian television dramas in Indonesia [Dissertation] Hong Kong, Lingnan University. Available from: http://dx.doi.
org/10.14793/cs_etd.18.
Udasmoro, W. (2013) Symbolic violence in everyday narrations: Gender construction in Indonesian
television. Asian journal of social sciences & humanities, 2(3), 155−165.
Wright, N.S. (2009) Tom Cruise? Tarantino? ET?... Indian!”: Innovation through Imitation in the CrossCultural Bollywood Remake. Cultural borrowings: Appropriation, reworking, transformation, [Online]
194–210. Available from: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/scope/documents/2009/culturalborrowingsebook.pdf. [Accessed 15th August 2016].
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Positive body image activism in collective
(@effyourbeautystandards) and personal (@yourstruelymelly)
Instagram accounts: Challenging American idealized beauty
construction
D.M. Wuri & S.M.G. Tambunan
Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Women who have been exposed to the construction of idealized beauty
standards have suffered from distorted ideals of body image. This leads to multiple psychological and physical disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, or dangerous cosmetic surgeries and
harmful diet regimens. The idealized beauty standard is, at first, disseminated through traditional media such as magazines, newspapers, televisions, movies, videos, and advertisements.
The emergence of social media, especially those with a photo-sharing feature, has affected
the pattern of dissemination, thus becoming a new area for spreading idealized beauty. Social
media provides their users with various features and opens new spaces for interaction and
discussion. Instagram, a photo-sharing-based application, has been used to challenge the
idealized beauty standard by its users. @effyourbeautystandards, a collective account, and @
yourstruelymelly, a personal account, are the subjects of this research, as both accounts are
promoting positive body image through Instagram. Using a textual analysis, this research
examines the two accounts to reveal the complexities of positive body image activism through
their posts and comment sections. Furthermore, it also analyzes the similarities and differences of the body image issues that have been brought up by these accounts.
1
INTRODUCTION
Since its launch in October 2010, Instagram has grown as one of the most popular social
media platforms that specializes in sharing pictures and videos (Salomon, 2013). With its
“conversational” features, which mean every feature that enables interactions among Instagram users, such as comment column, direct message, tag people, and mention, Instagram has
created a virtual discussion space. One of the much-discussed issues in Instagram is positive
body image. Instagram users who are concerned with idealized beauty construction started
a positive body image campaign by making accounts and dedicating them to challenge the
dominant discourses. Among the excessive number of studies about body image, there has
not been much scientific discussion on positive body image accounts in Instagram as a form
of social activism. By using two Instagram accounts promoting positive body image, @effyourbeautystandards, a collective account, and @yourstruelymelly, a personal account, this
article examines the complexity of the positive body image in the social media campaign, and
such accounts challenge the idealized beauty construction.
Researchers have argued that social media users are more vulnerable to the dominant
discourse of body image resulting in body dissatisfaction (Andsanger, 2014, Tiggemann &
Slater, 2013). Instagram, which offers interactions through pictures and comment sections,
has been said to bring a more significant impact on body dissatisfaction among women
because the users can easily compare their pictures with others (Ghaznavi & Taylor, 2015,
Fardouly & Vartanian, 2016). Although social media is associated with the increasing body
dissatisfaction among women, it is also believed that social media could play a critical role in
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spreading messages of body positivity (Rice & Atkin on Perloff, 2014). Positive body image
means positive attitude toward our own body. It could briefly say that positive body image
includes body acceptance, body appreciation, confidence, and filtering negative information
about our body (Wood-Barcalow, Tylka, & Augustus-Horvath, 2010). Related to the previous statement, some Instagram accounts are found promoting positive body image. Thus,
there has been a shift, as Instagram is no longer merely a photo-sharing application, but it
has become a tool to spread contesting ideals. For example, by using the comment sections,
users are able to discuss the ideas of positive body image and even spread such ideas.
The main data for this study have been taken from the two aforementioned Instagram
accounts. Although both collective and personal accounts have similar idealism in promoting
a more positive body image, there are some complexities that could be further investigated.
This study focuses on how both accounts cover issues about body image and how they deliver
their views to the followers or to the public audience, as both accounts can be accessed by
non-followers. The comment section on each post is analyzed to see how other users react
on the issues. By contrasting those two different accounts, research findings reveal that each
account chooses different issues they would like to bring up and how other users or followers also choose the issues they would like to support or oppose. As a collective account, @
effyourbeautystandards chooses to cover more issues related to positive body image, whereas
@yourstruelymelly as a personal account chooses to focus on the body size issues.
1.1
Body size and health issues
Ideal beauty is contextual because it depends on the context of time and place in which the
ideals are constructed (Calogero, Borough, & Thompson, 2007). As both @effyourbeautystandards and @yourstruelymelly originated from the United States, we can argue that it is
the American beauty standard being challenged by both accounts. However, their campaign
might still be significant for Instagram users outside the United States, because currently the
American or Western beauty standard is still dominating the perspective of most women in
the world (Evans and McConnell, 2003; Bissell & Chung, 2009). In order to be considered
beautiful, women are required to have certain physical characteristics, such as being slender,
thin, and having a flat stomach and a narrow waist. These characteristics are generally called
as “thinness ideal” (Groesz, Levine, & Murnen, 2002; Harrison, 2003). The pressure of achieving an idealized beauty standard among women often puts them in danger. Some will suffer
from anorexia and bulimia, or they will do dangerous diet regimens and even risky plastic
surgeries (Tiggemann & Miller, 2010; Tiggemann & Slater, 2013, 2014, Cash & Roy, 1999).
When talking about idealized beauty, one must also talk about body size because it has
become one of the most important indicators to determine whether someone is considered
beautiful or not. In the United States, most women are struggling to achieve the ideal body
according to Western beauty standards (Jackson, Hodge, & Ingram, 1994). The perception
of ideal woman’s body in Western culture has been changing throughout time. An ideal shape
of female body from each era could be seen through the fashion at that particular time, for
example, the popularity of corsets for providing the illusion of the hourglass body on females
in the 19th century (Kunzle, 2004). Although the ideal shape of female body keeps shifting,
being thin is one of the characteristics still used in the society. The pursuit of the thinness
ideal also often leads women to various health problems like bulimia or anorexia. Thinness
ideal also becomes a major factor for women to suffer from distorted body image. What both
@effyourbeautystandards and @yourstruelymelly try to challenge, among others, is thinness
ideal. Body size becomes an important issue for both accounts because most women are
obsessed with unrealistic goals on body weight (Bordo, 1993).
As with the ideal body standard, US culture has gone through a long history concerning plussize body. It has been told that plus-size body nowadays is “associated with laziness and low
self-discipline” (Puhl & Brownell, 2003) and people with plus-size bodies deserve to be targets
of body shaming and hate speech because they have violated the thinness norm (Eller, 2014).
Even though plus-size body is considered a sign of wealth in some cultures, there are perceptions
about plus-size body in the US society nowadays that plus-size women are “ugly, dangerous, or
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unhealthy” (Farrell, 2011). It is believed that the US culture is now suffering from fat phobia by
how they react toward plus-size people (Wann, 2009). Related to the previous statements, the
effort of @effyourbeautystandards on campaigning positive body image through the body size
issues is often confronted by health issues. On several posts that show pictures of plus-size-figure
women, which are intended as messages to other women not to be ashamed of their body size,
some followers who are in a negotiating position criticize @effyourbeautystandards’ point of
view by bringing up health issues. Although there are many supports from the followers of this
account, there are many criticisms among the supportive comments, as quoted below:
@carleyito: “that much extra mass around your middle IS NOT HEALTHY use
your brain and stop hiding behind ‘body confidence’ it’s just lazy”; @isabelginiguez:
“yes I agree fuck your beauty standards but this is overdoing it, it’s not even about
beauty anymore it’s about putting your life at risk”; @laurie_doyle: “I also didn’t
call her names or fat. I said obesity is unhealthy...”; @brpsd: “I just hate shit like this,
being fat isn’t something you should adore. It’s unhealthy...”.
The above responses show us that other users instantly connect plus-size body pictures
with unhealthiness. They also refuse to look at plus-size body as one of the issues that should
be acknowledged in the positive body image campaign. It is implied that even though they are
aware of positive body image issues, they are still using the dominant perspective to plus-size
body issue portrayals with health issues. The media in the US society has constructed that
plus-size body is associated with unhealthiness and laziness.
On the contrary, @yourstruelymelly rarely receives rebuttals concerning health issues on
her posts that display plus-size woman’s photographs. In the comments, she is being praised
because of her bravery and confidence on showing her stance toward body size and body
image issues through her self-photographs, as quoted by the users:
@esther1092: “there should be more people like you in the world [...] and teach
young girls about the importance of positive body image”; @carriane80: “beauty
and confidence in one amazing package! I love your account”; @msquigley: “so
incredibly well-written & moving, thank you for sharing”.
Although both accounts have the same positive body image issue, which is embracing plussize body, responses from other users are very different. In other findings, there is one case
which clearly shows different responses from Instagram users when @effyourbeautystandards
reposted @yourstruelymelly’s picture of her standing in front of a full-body mirror wearing a
tank top and a tight knee-length skirt. Melissa received supportive comments and no criticisms
for that picture. For example, @biggygrosscommented:“wonderful”, while @ohmerrguhr_its_
jesscommented:“omg, I love that top! You look great in it!”. However, when it was reposted by
@effyourbeautystandards, they received criticism by bringing up health issues:
@clobo_yo: “[...] I’m all for loving yourself and curves but being morbidly obese
is not something to teach people to ‘love yourself’ about”; @devil_neville: “I’m all
about body positivity but this is just as bad as the starving underweight ‘Victoria
Secret’ models. Let’s promote HEALTHY individuals. Not somebody that clearly
will have health issues in the near future”.
The above comments show us about other users’ stance in the issues of positive body image.
Both users agree with the positive body image campaign, as they said, yet they do not share the
same idea about the body size issues. One of them clearly stated that being “morbidly obese”
cannot be part of the positive body image campaign, while another said that the picture is “as
bad as the starving underweight Victoria Secret models as it is promoting unhealthy body that
will have health issues in the near future”. In short, they both disagree with the plus-size body
on the positive body image campaign as they associate plus-size body with health disturbance.
On the basis of the findings, both accounts are promoting the same idea on issues of positive
body image, which are self-acceptance in terms of body size and being confident in having a
plus-size figure. Moreover, some pictures posted by them are similar. However, they received different responses from other Instagram users over the same issues and similar pictures. Observing
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from each comment, the followers of those positive body image accounts could be categorized
into two: users who concur with positive body image and those who are still in a negotiating
position, which means they are, on the one hand, trying to accept the positive body image campaign while still being trapped in the dominant construction of ideal body image in the society.
1.2
Personal and collective activism in the positive body image campaign
The involvement of @effyourbeautystandards and @yourstruelymelly on the positive body
image campaign could be seen from almost every aspect of both accounts. It is crucial for
activism accounts to clearly show their standpoint to other users as Erving Goffman (1959)
stated that ones who enter the presence of others will tend to seek information about them.
Furthermore, he also wrote: “information about individual helps to define the situation,
enabling others to know in advance what he will expect of them and what they may expect
from them” (p. 1). Both @effyourbeautystandards and @yourstruelymelly put brief information about their main purposes and ideas on the front-page so that other Instagram users
who visit their page could see the overviews and it will be easier for users who are interested
in their campaigns to follow, to raise other’s awareness, or even to join their activism.
Even though the idea of movement comes from an individual, to build a collective movement,
one should construct a collective identity that is distinct from a personal identity. As argued by
Polletta and Jesper about a collective identity, “although it may form part of a personal identity”
(2001: 285), it has to be different from one’s personal identity. In the @effyourbeautystandards
front page, it is stated that this account initially belonged to Tess Holiday from Mississippi, but
it is currently managed by eight administrators. Polletta and Jesper also stated that “collective
identities are expressed in cultural materials—names, narratives, symbols, verbal styles, rituals,
clothing, and so on” (2001, p. 285), which, in this case, @effyourbeautystandards expresses it
through its name, profile picture, account bio, captions, and every picture it posts. From the
name of the account, @effyourbeautystandards makes a strong statement that it is made to
challenge the idea of beauty standards in society. Word “eff” on that name is a refined term
from the word “fuck”, which refers to their annoyance or anger. The word “eff” that follows
by “your beauty standards” indicates that the account would like to express their annoyance
and anger to the concept of beauty standards to other Instagram users who visit their page.
Moreover, to build their collective identity, @effyourbeautystandards uses a “neutral” profile
picture that only contains their account’s name. On their account bio, they directly inform that
they “will not tolerate hate/body shaming” to warn other Instagram users who visit or follow the
account. They also put a fist symbol to emphasize the purpose of challenging beauty standards.
@effyourbeautystandards raises their sense of collectiveness by reposting other women’s photograph or illustrations, which represent their stance on issues of body image with a general point
of view for the captions, instead of a personal point of view. For example, when they reposted
one’s picture, they often directly quoted what the person said and put it on their caption section,
instead of making their own caption. Moreover, they also often put motivational quotes as captions, instead of their personal expressions about such a particular issue.
On the other hand, @yourstruelymelly is a personal account directly maintained by the
account’s owner, Melissa. There are signs signifying that this is a personal account, such as
Melissa’s profile picture, and the account’s name. Furthermore, this account puts an explicit
pronouncement on its bio saying that the owner is a “body positive feminist”. The use of
word true on @yourstruelymelly is to convince the followers on her authenticity and the fact
that she is showing her true self through this account (explained in one of her posts). In order
to deliver the campaign about positive body image, she often uses her own photographs or
illustrations. Melissa posted a statement on a caption section when she decided to dedicate her
personal account to promote positive body image, and how she defines positive body image.
Other than building a collective identity, @effyourbeautystandards as a collective account
also covers more body image issues compared to @yourstruelymelly. From the findings, body
image issues that appear in @effyourbeautystandards are body size, body diversity, body diversity, and liberation of female body, while @yourstruelymelly only focuses on the issue of body
size. The nature of collective movements is collecting participants and supporters. People are
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naturally more interested to join collective movements because of a sense of solidarity (Taylor
and Whittier on Polletta & Jasper, 2001) and as humans, they tend to get emotional satisfaction from a collective identity (Jasper on Polletta & Jasper, 2001). Thus, covering many issues
by reposting various women’s photographs is a strategic move by @effyourbeautystandards to
“mobilize more participants”, or in this case, other Instagram users, to join the positive body
image campaign. It is feasible because Instagram has several features to connect people, such
as the “repost” feature. As someone reposts pictures from other accounts, more notifications
will automatically appear on others’ news feeds and indirectly promote the account to other
users. However, the large number of followers also results in more complexity, as each of them
shares different perspectives about positive body image and some of them are in the negotiating position, as explained in the previous section. As a result, the followers who disagree with
some issues, such as plus-size figure and liberation of female body (including growing armpit
hair, bare-chested, free the nipple), raise debates in the comment sections. On the contrary, as
a personal account with selected issues, users who follow @yourstruelymelly are aware of the
account’s stance and tend to share the same perspective with the account. Furthermore, like any
other personal accounts on Instagram, some of the comments came from Melissa’s friends or
social circle, reducing the possibilities of opposing arguments.
The nature of social media activism, as stated by Merlyna Lim, requires several characteristics for an issue to strive through society successfully. She argues that:
“... they have to embrace the principles of contemporary culture of consumption:
light package, headline appetite, and trailer vision. Beyond that, the activism must
neither be associated with high-risk actions nor ideologies that challenge the dominant meta-narratives” (Lim, 2013, p. 18).
Therefore, to successfully convey the activism, the issues must be in a light package and
associated with low-risk actions. According to the findings of this research, body size issues
could be categorized as a high-risk activism because it challenges the dominant meta-narrative as people believe that plus-size body is a result of laziness and is related to unhealthiness.
Thus, the issue of body size in the positive body image campaign received harsh criticism
from Instagram users. However, the result of this analysis also found that the issue and the
package do not determine the success of the activism. The medium of the activism could
affect the success because both personal and collective accounts bring up the same issue but
receive different responses.
2
CONCLUSION
Instagram is one of the most popular social media that has played a role in the emergence of the
positive body image campaign. The research on two Instagram accounts, @effyourbeautystandards and @yourstruelymelly, that actively promote positive body image reveal the complexities
of the positive body image campaign in terms of other users’ responses to the issue, which are
either supporting or negotiating about the campaign’s purpose. The extensive coverage of body
image issues on the collective account @effyourbeautystandards apparently raises more debates
among Instagram users than the personal account @yourstruelymelly that focuses on only a few
body image issues. Some findings from @effyourbeautystandards reveal that even users who
seem to take sides in the positive body image campaign are actually still in a negotiating position.
It means that although they agree with positive body image, they are still opposing some of its
issues that are unfit for their constructed idealism. Although the collective account is more effective in spreading the positive body image campaign as it is seen and followed by more number
of users, it has come under several criticisms for the body size issues, unlike @yourstruelymelly
that also covers the same issues.
Furthermore, according to other users’ responses to the presentation of the positive body
image by both accounts, the supporters of the positive body image could be categorized into
two types: (1) those who agree with the positive body image campaign, including any issues
it conveys, and (2) those who are in the negotiating position. There are some more findings
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such as sexualizing images, liberation of female body, and body diversity that will be elaborated further in future study.
REFERENCES
Andsager, J. (2014) Research directions in social media and body image. Sex Roles, 71(11–12):
407–413.
Bissell, K.L. & Chung, J.Y. (2009) Americanized beauty? Predictors of perceived attractiveness from
US and South Korean participants based on media exposure, ethnicity, and socio-cultural attitudes
toward ideal beauty. Asian Journal of Communication, 19(2), 227–247.
Bordo, S. (1993) Feminism, Foucault and the politics of the body1. Up against Foucault: Explorations
of some tensions between Foucault and feminism, 179.
Calogero, R.M., Boroughs, M & Thompson, J.K. (2007) The impact of Western beauty ideals on the lives
of women: A sociocultural perspective. UK, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 259–298.
Cash, T.F. & Roy, R.E. (1999) Pounds of flesh: Weight, gender, and body images. Interpreting weight:
The social management of fatness and thinness, 209–228.
Eller, G.M. (2014) On fat oppression. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 24(3), 219–245.
Evans, Peggy Chin, & McConnell, A.R. (2003) Do racial minorities respond in the same way to mainstream beauty standards? Social comparison processes in Asian, Black, and White women. Self and
Identity, 2(2), 153–167.
Fardouly, J. & Vartanian, L.R. (2015) Negative comparisons about one’s appearance mediate the relationship between Facebook usage and body image concerns. Body image, 12, 82–88.
Fardouly, J. & Vartanian, L.R. (2016) Social Media and Body Image Concerns: Current Research and
Future Directions. Current Opinion in Psychology, 9, 1–5.
Farrell, A.E. (2011) Fat shame: Stigma and the fat body in American culture. New York, NYU Press.
Ghaznavi, J. & Taylor, L.D. (2015) Bones, body parts, and sex appeal: An analysis of thinspiration
images on popular social media. Body image, 14, 54–61.
Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York, Anchor Books.
Groesz, L.M., Levine, M.P. & Murnen, S.K. (2002) The effect of experimental presentation of thin
media images on body satisfaction: A meta-analytic review. International Journal of Eating Disorders,
31(1), 1–16.
Harrison, K. (2003) Television viewers’ ideal body proportions: The case of the curvaceously thin
woman. Sex Roles, 48(5–6), 255–264.
Jackson, L.A., Hodge, C.N. & Ingram, J.M. (1994) Gender and self-concept: A reexamination of stereotypic differences and the role of gender attitudes. Sex Roles, 30(9–10), 615–630.
Kunzle, D. (2004) Fashion & Fetishism: Corsets, Tight-Lacing and Other Forms of Body-Sculpture
(Thrupp, UK).
Lim, M. (2013) Many clicks but little sticks: Social media activism in Indonesia. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 43(4), 636–657.
Perloff, R.M. (2014) Social media effects on young women’s body image concerns: Theoretical perspectives and an agenda for research. Sex Roles, 71(11–12), 363–377.
Polletta, F. & Jasper, J.M. (2001) Collective identity and social movements. Annual review of Sociology,
283–305.
Puhl, R.M. & Brownell, K.D. (2003) Psychosocial origins of obesity stigma: toward changing a powerful and pervasive bias. Obesity reviews, 4(4), 213–227.
Salomon, D. (2013) Moving on from Facebook Using Instagram to connect with undergraduates and
engage in teaching and learning. College & Research Libraries News, 74(8), 408–412.
Tiggemann, M. & Miller, J. (2010) The Internet and adolescent girls’ weight satisfaction and drive for
thinness. Sex Roles, 63(1–2), 79–90.
Tiggemann, M. & Slater, A. (2013) NetGirls: The internet, facebook, and body image concern in adolescent girls. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 46(6), 630–633.
Tiggemann, M. & Slater, A. (2014) NetTweens the internet and body image concerns in preteenage girls.
The Journal of Early Adolescence, 34(5), 606–620.
Wann, M. (2009) The fat studies reader. In: Rothblum, E. & Solovay, S. (eds.). New York, NYU Press.
Wood-Barcalow, N.L., Tylka, T.L. & Augustus-Horvath, C.L. (2010) But I like my body: Positive body
image characteristics and a holistic model for young-adult women. Body Image 7 (2), 106–116.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Problematizing sexualized female images and Donald Trumps’
immigration stance in video games: An analysis of Let’s Play
videos on YouTube
S. Angjaya & S.M.G. Tambunan
Department of Literature Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: As the use of social media becomes more common, there has been a massive
development of creativity in the form of online videos, specifically on YouTube. It provides
the opportunity for the fans to express themselves in a variety of ways in regard to their
object of fascination such as video games. One video genre that gains a great amount of
popularity among YouTube users in recent years is the Let’s Play (LP) videos. It is a type of
video where people record themselves while playing video games and give their comments
during the filming to share their gaming experience with other video gamers. People often
assume that video games could bring negative influence and they are considered as an activity that could have harmful effects on the player’s social lives, creativity, productivity, and
literacy. However, based on the analysis of several LP videos from two YouTube channels
namely PewDiePie and Cryaotic, this article examines how, through the appropriation process in the form of LP videos, video games could be utilized by fans to construct and articulate
new meanings that are related to various social issues. It could even open up dialogs to discuss
critically and problematize particular issues with a wider range of audiences who are not
categorized as video game fans.
1
INTRODUCTION
Video game is a product of popular culture that has been a part of human culture for more
than a half of a century. The general perception regarding video games is that it is a product
intended for children, and it is also closely associated with nerd or geek culture. Furthermore,
like most popular culture products, video games and the players are often associated with
negative stereotypes. Grossman (2001) compares video games with drugs for their capability
to make their players addicted and incapable of doing any other activities. Meanwhile, Kline
(2000) and Jessen (1995) argue that playing video games is a solitary activity that pulls the
players away from reality as they are becoming more and more immersed in the virtual world.
However, Turkle (1984), Ivory (2001), and Dorman (1997) present different findings as they
argue that playing video games is not as anti-social as people might think. They consider it as
a social activity that often enables the players to interact with other players. Another assumption is that playing video games has psychological effects on the players as it could cause
them to show aggressive and violent behaviour. Both assumptions, according to Ivory (2008)
and Griffiths (1999), are often inconclusive or even contradictory. There have been an extensive number of studies analysing video games focusing on various aspects which do not focus
solely on the effects of playing video games. Dickerman (2008), Leonard (2006), and Dunlop
(2007) examine and problematize how gender and race are represented in video games. From
the gender perspectives, several studies conclude that video games act as socializing agents
that teach both boys and girls about their gender role in society (Dietz, 1998; Espejo, 2003;
Provenzo, 1991). However, among those studies, the act of appropriation of video games by
fans in the form of video, namely Let’s Play, in social media platforms like YouTube is largely
unexplored because it is a relatively new phenomenon.
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Let’s Play (hereinafter referred to as LP), also known as video gaming commentary, is a
type of video where people (who are called Let’s Players) record themselves while playing
video games and give their comments during the filming. Generally, this kind of video is
uploaded by video game fans on video-sharing or streaming sites such as YouTube, Twitch,
Vimeo, or Dailymotion. In the last couple of years, LP has become one of the most popular genres on YouTube, which is shown from the number of LP videos being watched every
day—reaching a third of the site’s total view numbers everyday (Ault, 2016). The purpose
of creating LP is usually to show the audiences their experience, progress, achievements, or
difficulties when playing a video game. However, as it progresses, LP has not only become
a way for the players to share gaming experience and information about video games with
their peers, but it has also turned into a new form of entertainment as well as a commodity.
Through a textual analysis of several LP videos and YouTube comments, this article examines how the appropriation process in these LP videos could be used as a medium to address
various social issues, such as political expression and female representation in video games.
The goal is to show how the audience becomes an essential part in the meaning-making process as gamers or other audience members make sense of those video contents by actively commenting and participating in the discussion. By analysing these LP videos, the article aims to
provide an alternative perspective regarding the common argument that views playing video
games as an activity without productivity and creativity. Moreover, it also aims to explore how
video game players are not merely passive consumers that are separated from reality, but they
actually have active agencies as they produce new meanings when playing video games by connecting it to a wider social context and incorporating it in their creative process.
2
PROBLEMATIZING FEMALE SEXUALIZED REPRESENTATIONS
IN VIDEO GAMES
The female representation in video games is one of the most prominent issues that are frequently analysed in video game studies. A study by Heintz-Knowles et al. (2001) shows that
women are being underrepresented in video games compared to men. Furthermore, when
female characters do show up in video games, their role is limited to either the helpless
damsel-in-distress or the supporting role for the male characters, and they are often represented in a sexualized way (Dickerman, et al. 2008). Many studies have concluded that the
female representation showcased in video games is often problematic as they commonly portray female characters in a ‘hypersexualized’ manner. Hypersexualized is a term coined by
Heintz-Knowles et al. (2001) that is used as a synonym for the depiction of characters that
are overtly sexualized in video games. In many games, female characters are often objectified.
Their physical features are exposed in sexually revealing clothing, with big breasts, small waist,
voluptuous body, unrealistic body proportion, and even nudity (Downs & Smith, 2009). As
most of the video games are aimed towards heterosexual male players, these sexualized female
images are used as a marketing strategy (Entertainment Software Association, 2004).
There are several possible effects of sexualized female representations on video game players. Dunlop (2007) argues that such representations could affect an individual’s learning process of a gender role and reinforce the patriarchal ideology in which females are positioned
inferior to males. For male players, such representations may reinforce the belief that women
are sexual objects and may cause unrealistic expectation of the feminine body (Downs &
Smith, 2009). Meanwhile, for female players, being exposed to an unrealistic body representation may lead to body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, or even eating disorder due to
the unattainable body standard shown in the games (2009). Most of the studies mentioned
above have conclusively argued that sexualized female representations are frequently present
in video games, and they have the potential to bring negative effects to the players. However,
none of them could actually show the tangible responses from the players. By analysing the
content of LP videos, the players’ unfiltered and immediate responses to such representations as they are commenting while playing video games could be observed. Furthermore,
since the LP video is uploaded to YouTube, the meaning-making process does not stop in the
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production of LP video by the Let’s Players. By analysing the comments section, the way
audience members participate in the meaning-making process and how they make sense of
these LP videos can also be analysed.
A sample from the data, a video from Cryaotic channel entitled Cry Plays: Heavy Rain
[P5], reflects the way LP problematizes female representations in video games. Heavy Rain
is an award-winner thriller game, which was created by David Cage and developed by Quantic Dream3 (Heavy Rain for Playstation 3 Reviews, 2016). The game revolves around Ethan
Mars, a father who tries to save his child from a serial killer called the Origami Killer. In
an attempt to reveal the real identity of the killer, the player could control four characters
including Ethan Mars, Paige Madison, a journalist, Norman Jayden, an FBI Agent, and
Scott Shelby, a private investigator. This video is chosen because there is one particular scene
that is related to the issue of sexualized female representations. This LP video basically introduces the female lead character, Paige Madison, as she wakes up from her sleep in her apartment. What is interesting is that the sexualized image is so perceptible even in the way she is
introduced for the very first time. She is portrayed as a female with an ideal body proportion
wearing a white tank top without any bra and white panties.
Afterwards, there is one particular scene when she is taking a shower which shows her
naked body. In the description of the video, Cryaotic wrote the following, “So breasts. How
long until you think people flip a shit and freak out about censorship? I give it about tree
fiddy hours” (Cryaotic, 2016) because he does not censor the naked scene in the video. As he
watched the shower scene, Cryaotic stated (direct comment), “We are born to stay clean, and
human form is an important thing to be respect(ed). It’s not just some sexualized…It’s not
some just be like oh man that’s so bad. It’s natural!” (Cryaotic, 2016).
From his description and commentary on the video, he wants to emphasize that he does
not see the scene as showing a sexualized or objectified female body because he perceives it
as something natural. This is in accordance with Jenkins’ (1992) argument that fans’ productivity does not always try to resist or modify the meaning of the original text that they
borrow. In this particular case, it is the audience who is more active in the meaning-making
process by problematizing and addressing the issue of sexualized female representations displayed through the LP video by giving their commentaries. This is only possible because
social media, such as YouTube, helps fans’ activities to gain more visibility and become more
accessible to the public, while at the same time facilitating the many-to-many communication
that enables broader participation in discussions as well as in the exchange of information
(Jenkins, 2002).
Based on the audiences’ commentaries, it can be seen that their stance on the issue of
female sexual representations in video games is not as black and white or predictable because
each audience provides logic to back-up their arguments. Research findings reveal that most
of the comments do not passively accept the images that are given to them. On the contrary,
they are aware that the image of Madison is sexualized and they try to problematize it, and
most of these comments actually come from the male audiences:
“Of course, bodies are just bodies. However, they went way overboard and treated
the woman like an object. Unfortunately, breasts are never shown for any sort of
“body freedom” message, but instead they are shown in order to make a show out
of it for men. Female nudity in media is almost always for the male gaze - especially
when made by men. And I wouldn’t even have an issue with it if they had treated the
man the same way, but they didn’t.” (Fullmetal Triforce)
The commentary above clearly shows that as a male, instead of enjoying the nudity, he tries
to resist such a representation because he perceives it as a form of female objectification.
Moreover, he is also aware that the sole purpose of the shower scene in the game is only for the
pleasure of the male players and does not contribute to either character development or plot
progression in the game; thus, he thinks that it does not qualify as a body freedom message.
Contrary to the above commentary, most female audiences are the ones who support and
thank Cry for not censoring the shower scene. The following is one of the commentaries from
a female audience regarding the issue,
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“Kinda glad that Cry didn’t pixel the boobs out (not because I’m oogling them)
but mainly because boobs are very natural body parts. He even makes a whole tiny
speech about boobs being natural and how they shouldn’t be sexualized… I’ll just
put it simply: for the love of god boobs are not “sexual”… pls realize that 1) Boobs
are considered sexual because society has smashed that idea into our heads and
2) Educate your children about boobs. Ain’t nothing wrong with them.” (Amy Huynh)
The commentary above shows that as a woman, she does not find the sexualized image offensive as she considers it a natural part of the human body. She argues that it is the society that
views female breasts as something sexual and thus should be censored, which makes the body
image sexualized in the first place.
In the meaning-making process of LP videos, the Let’s Player is not the only one who has
the capability to construct and articulate meaning from video games. The audiences could also
take an active role in meaning-making processes as they are able to problematize the issue that
fails to be recognized even by the Let’s Player himself through their commentaries. Jenkins
(2002, p. 164) considers the various interpretations by the audiences as “a collective event
that implies the recipients, transforms interpreters into actors, and enables interpretation to
enter the loop with collective action.” It also shows that LP videos may not always be used by
the Let’s Player as a way to address a certain issue, but it still has the potential to open up a
dialog with other audiences, who may or may not be video game players, about various social
issues exhibited in the video. In this case, the LP video has managed to open-up a critical
dialog among the audiences regarding the issue of female representations in video games and
deconstructed that notion in the process. Such potential is in accordance with Jenkins’ (1992)
statement that sees fandom as “a space within which fans may articulate their specific concerns about sexuality, gender, racism, colonialism, militarism, and forced conformity”(p. 289).
3
DONALD TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION STANCE: APPROPRIATING
VIDEO GAMES AS A FORM OF POLITICAL EXPRESSION
In the case of LP videos, the video game fans are able to produce new meanings through a
video editing process and their personal commentary. A video from the PewDiePie channel
will be used as a sample to show how fans appropriate video games and construct a completely new meaning out of it. In his book Textual Poachers (1992), Henry Jenkins, a scholar
working on a fans study, explains that far from being passive cultural dupes, fans are able to
actively construct and circulate new meanings by borrowing and recreating from the textual
materials that become their object of fascination in order to form a basis for their own cultural creation and social interaction. By using the concept of “textual poaching” proposed by
Michel de Certeau (1984), he posits that fans are “readers who appropriate popular texts and
reread them in a fashion that serves different interests” (p. 23). Although Jenkins’ statement
is created in the context of TV series fans in the early 90’s, it is still relevant in addressing how
media fans conduct their activities in the digital era.
One of the ways fans appropriate a popular text is by “making intertextual connection
across a broad range of media texts” (Jenkins, 1992, p. 37) and that is exactly what PewDiePie
did in one of his videos entitled ‘Naked Donald Trump Space Simulator.’ As the title implies,
PewDiePie uses Donald Trump as a reference throughout the video. For the last couple of
years, Donald Trump draws the public attention from both the US and many parts of the
world. In 2015 he became one of the lead Presidential candidates from the Republican Party
for the 2016 US Presidential Election. Furthermore, in July 2016 he was officially nominated as the Presidential Candidate from the Republican Party (Collinson & Kopan, 2016).
However, during his presidential campaign, Trump created a lot of controversies from his
statements and speeches regarding various issues. One of them is his statement about the
immigration policy. He stated that he would build a wall along the Mexican border and
regards the Mexican immigrants who came to the US as criminals, drug dealers, and rapists
(Donald Trump Speech, debates, and campaign quotes, 2016).
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Contrary to what Cryaotic did in his video, PewDiePie edited the video game and used
Trump as the main reference. He did it as a form of critique for Trump’s controversial statement regarding the immigration issue as well as his participation in the US Presidential Election. In ‘Naked Donald Trump Simulator’, he used an indie PC game called Cosmochoria in
which the players take the role of a naked cosmonaut, whose tasks are to explore the space,
claim planets that he found, plant crops to create life, as well as attacking the aliens that
try to invade the planets (Cosmochoria by Nate Schmold, 2016). The game itself does not
have any connection with Trump, but PewDiePie managed to create that connection through
the editing process and his direct commentary which was recorded in the video. He edited the
cosmonaut and changed him to become Donald Trump. Every time aliens try to attack the
planet, an image of Donald Trump will appear and Trump’s head will replace the head of
the cosmonaut. At this point, PewDiePie will shout ‘Goddamn Immigrants!’ Through this
video, PewDiePie tries to critically address Trump’s oversimplified views regarding the immigration issue. He also shows how Trump sees the Mexican immigrants as nothing but threats
to the United States that must be exterminated just like how the aliens are portrayed in the
game. By using the features offered by LP videos, PewDiePie managed to articulate his concern in an informal, humorous, and playful manner in order to mock Donald Trump’s views.
Moreover, in the video, it is shown that as the cosmonaut kills more aliens, he gains more
points in the game. PewDiePie uses the game’s mechanism as a critique to Donald Trump
who made his controversial stance regarding the Mexican immigrants.
Through the appropriation process in the form of video editing and commenting, PewDiePie
managed to produce a whole new meaning from the video game. In doing so, he was able to create an inter-textual connection between the game’s mechanism and a real-life issue that comes
to his attention. Such an appropriation process does not necessarily ruin the original text rather,
“the text becomes something more than what it was before, not something less” (Jenkins, 1992,
p. 53). The example above also demonstrates that LP videos are not created for the purpose of
entertainment or the source of gaming information only but can also be used as an outlet to
address and express one’s concern about a certain issue in a creative way. PewDiePie uses LP
videos as a vehicle to articulate his political concern and a critique against Donald Trump, even
though he is not a US citizen; he is a Swedish who immigrated to England. Thus, it can be said
that the LP video itself is the reflection of the Let’s Player’s own identity and value. As Jenkins
(1992) states that it is through activities, such as borrowing, reproducing, and modifying popular texts that the fans construct their own cultural and social identity.
4
CONCLUSION
As stated by Burgess & Green (2013, p. 77) YouTube is “big enough, and global enough, to
count as a significant mediating mechanism for the cultural public sphere…under the right
conditions, the website is an enabler of encounters with cultural differences and the development of political ‘listening’ across belief systems and identities.” In the case of Cryaotic,
the Let’s Player himself might have not used the LP video to directly address the dubious
issue of female representation in video games. However, it managed to open-up a critical
and open-ended dialog among the audiences to problematize the issue. This shows that the
audiences could also participate actively in making meanings out of the video games, even
though they are not video game players. They do this while consuming the LP video because
YouTube as a social media naturally provides the space for dialogs and gives opportunities to
the non-gamer audiences to voice their opinion publically in the commentary section. This
shows that in co-creative environment, such as YouTube, “the participants are all at various
times and to varying degrees of audiences, producers, editors, distributors, and critics” (Burgess & Green, 2013, p. 82). Such critical dialogs could not occur if the video game content
is discussed privately among video game players. The discussion about PewDiePie’s critique
towards Trump’s stance on immigration issues reflects how a Let’s Player can be both a fan
and a prosumer (a producer and a consumer) who is able to construct and articulate new
meanings by appropriating video games.
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Through innovation in a creative process, LP videos have been used as a vehicle to address
and re-problematize social issues that are meaningful for the Let’s Players and in turn reflect
their own personal identity and value in the process. In this case, PewDiePie is able to creatively make inter-textual connections between the game’s mechanism and Donald Trump’s
statements regarding immigration to produce a LP video that tries to resist the ideological
stance that Donald Trump made in his electoral campaign. PewDiePie exhibited how a LP
video reflects the Let’s Player’s personal identity as well as the value of everyday life, and
YouTube allows it to be articulated “to more ‘public’ debates around social identities, ethics,
and cultural politics” (Burgess & Green, 2013, p. 80). Contrary to the common perception
that sees playing video games as an unproductive, uncreative, and anti-social activity, the
meaning-making process in the case of LP videos shows exactly the opposite of that. Instead
of being a fan product that is only used as either a source of information or entertainment, it
turns out that LP videos provide a platform for dialogs about various social issues in a public
space (YouTube) and become a space to voice one’s concern creatively using video games.
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Jenkins, H. (2002) Interactive audiences? The collective intelligence of media fans. The new media book,
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Jessen, C. (1995) Children’s Computer Culture. Retrieved from: http://www.hum.sdu.dk/center/kultur/
buE/articles.html.
Kline, S. (2000) Killing Time: a Canadian meditation on video game culture. Children in the new media
landscape. Games, pornography, perceptions. Göteborg (UNESCO International Clearinghouse on
Children and Violence on the Screen, 35–59.
Leonard, D.J. (2006) Not a Hater, Just Keepin’ It Real the Importance of Race- and Gender-Based
Game Studies. Games and Culture, 1(1), 83–88.
PewDiePie. (2015) Naked Donald Trump Space Simulator. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v = mdlfmc1QeCQ [Accessed October 15, 2015].
Provenzo Jr, E. F. (1991) Video kids: Making sense of Nintendo. Harvard University Press.
Schmold, Nate. (2016) Cosmochoria. Retrieved from: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nateschmold/
cosmochoria.
Turkle, S. (1984) The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. New York, Simon & Schuster.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Constructing an imagined community of fandom and articulating
gender identity: A case study on Indonesian female football fans’
participation in social media
N. Azizi & S.M.G. Tambunan
Department of English Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Even though nowadays it seems that there is no limitation for women to
participate in football, it is still a sport dominated by male players and even male football
fans. However, there has been a significant development in the number of female football
fans in the last decade. These days, social media has been utilised as a virtual communication medium bringing out a homophily tendency. Groupings of football fan communities
are based on similarities in accessing information related to their favourite football club.
This study examines two female football fan communities: @JCI_Juvedonna (Twitter) and
@babesunitedindo (Instagram). By utilising textual analysis and netnography methods (interviews and observations), the aim is to explore how female football fans construct contesting
gender identities in social media. Research findings reveal that there are strategies used in the
communities’ social media, such as the construction of an imagined community that unites
the members with a sense of belonging to the micro-community and the negotiation done to
make sense of the dominant existence of the male fan community by using multiple signifying practices in articulating their feminine identity.
1
INTRODUCTION
European football clubs have a great number of fans in Indonesia reflected by a variety of
football fan communities established by their loyal fans. Unfortunately, these communities
are still dominated by male fans. Compared with female fans, male fans usually overbear the
activities in the community making female fans look as if they are flattering mirrors in their
own communities (Bourdieu, 1984). These communities, nowadays, rely heavily on social
media to ensure constant interactions with other fans (Bruns, Weller, Harrington, 2014).
Social media is able to give distinguished features to reflect the individuals or groups’ identities, which is called homophily (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook, 2001). This research will
focus on the transpiring Indonesian female football fans in social media, which are Juvedonna
Indonesia/@JCI_Juvedonna (Twitter) and Babes United Indonesia/@babesunitedindo
(Instagram), as the most active social media-based football fan communities in Indonesia.
First of all, @JCI_Juvedonna is a Juventus female fan community established on 7th April
2014, which is part of Juventus Club Indonesia. Meanwhile, @babesunitedindo is a female
fan community for Manchester United (MU), which has been very active in their Instagram
account since early January 2016. It is part of United Indonesia, the biggest MU football fan
community in Indonesia dominated by male fans; however, United Indonesia does not have
full control on the activities carried out by @babesunitedindo. The members in both female
football fan communities build an association with other members in the same community
through the commoditisation of their club identity (Giulianotti, 2002).
Even though these two communities share similar traits, there are some differences, for
example in how each community constructs particular gender identities and how they
share information on how well they know their favourite football club. For example, members of @JCI_Juvedonna show that they have extensive knowledge about the history of the
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club, the latest development of the club, community events, and the structure of the club’s
management. Interestingly, when it comes to talking about legendary players, they usually
retweet information from the Juventus Club Indonesia twitter account. On the contrary,
@babesunitedindo does not rely on United Indonesia to show how knowledgeable they are
about Manchester United. This certainly raises the question: why does @JCI_Juvedonna rely
on the male dominated community for this type of information? Is there any knowledge gap
between the male and female football fan communities and how does this reflect the communities’ construction of gender identity? This will be problematised further in this article by
doing netnography as the researchers have done an extensive observation on both communities’ social media. Kozinets (2002) suggests that netnography can investigate specific instances
in which meaning is produced in the community through computer-mediated communication
(CMC) as it is used to manifest culture. Indirectly, netnography will be helpful to uncover the
identity of female fans reflected in both communities. Moreover, the activities undertaken
by them either in social life or in offline activities as proposed by Poster (1995) often portray
disconnections between construction and gender categories in offline and online realm. The
research aims to reveal how female fans make meaning out of their fandom activities in the
digital era, how nation-branding in an imagined community is used to unify the community in
order to negotiate with gender issues and how female fans respond to masculine pride.
1.1
Female football fans in the digital era
Being a football fan does not only mean that someone is interested in football as there are a
lot of reasons why someone chooses to be a football fan. Wann as cited by Pegoraro (1997)
identifies eight common motivations for becoming a sport fan: group affiliation, family, aesthetic, self-esteem, entertainment, escape, economy, and eustress. For female fans, their love
to football has a more substantial meaning such as to express their identity (Pope, 2013;
James and Ridinger, 2002; Jones, 2008; Regev: 2013). This way, they are able to express or
reflect on their affiliation to a particular social class. Therefore, the concept of fandom in the
case of female football fans should be problematized in an analytical way (Crawford, 2004).
Fandom is a term, which is used to portray a fan’s connection to other fans of the sport team.
It is different from the fanship that only discusses about a particular group.
Because of the growth of the Internet, the opportunity to interact with others has been
made possible and it has become more intense. Both communities, Juvedonna Indonesia and
Babes United Indonesia, utilise technological advances to create space and social networks
for people who have a common interest, in this case, the same interest on football clubs. The
ease of connection facilitates new forms of intimacy and the formation of collective identity
to build homogeneity, and this is done through signifying practices, such as wearing the same
jerseys (clothes), sharing the same attitudes, or places of memories to distinguish them from
other fans (Lennies and Pfister, 2015). In the digital age, female football fans create a new
way of understanding fandom in relation to their loyalty to the club. Furthermore, their relationship with the male fans dominating the ‘official’ community articulates different ways in
making sense of football fandom culture in Indonesia.
Moreover, in the digital era, activities done by communities are always closely hand in hand
with economic impact (Hellekson, 2009; Scott, 2009). For example, the rule that each member is required to buy a jersey or to give donations to their community. Of course, besides
economic value, there is a construction of sharedness, collectiveness, and a sense of belonging by buying the same jersey for every member of the community or by giving donation for
the sake of the community’s financial stability.
“The system of relations in moral economies if formed by ‘part-societies’, small
worlds of personal relationships in every society where individuals have lived out
their lives ... and the various fan communities that are within a specific fandom
form represent this part-society.” (Catherine, 2010: 64)
The visible manifestation of economic activities in communities is done in the form of
accessing information and technical knowledge, communication with like-minded individuals
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(Raacke and Bonds-Raacke, 2008), and finding entertainment and diversion (Ruggiero, 2000).
All three factors initiate a culture of consumption that aims to distinguish classes and culture
of living. Pierre Bourdieu states that cultural consumption is “predisposed, consciously, and
deliberately or not, to fulfil a social function of legitimating social differences” (Storey 1996:
1995–6). Thus, the members of Juvedonna Indonesia and Babes United Indonesia who could
not keep up with the activities, such as buying the same jersey, will appear to have a lack of
knowledge and will not be recognised in the same level of classes with the community. Pearson
(2010) asserts that communities and fans are the two things that should never be separated
because “fandom requires a community and participation in that community and possibly
self-identification with that community” (93).
Based on the history of Juvedonna Indonesia and United Babes Indonesia, the idea of
both small/“micro-communities” has been actually accommodated by male football fans.
Ananta Ariaji as the new head of Juventus Club Indonesia (JCI) in 2014 explained that Juvedonna was established with a clear structure of organisation. However, the members have
agreed that Juvedonna Indonesia would still be under on the JCI, the ‘original’ community.
Furthermore, Pelangi, as the one of the initiators of Babes United Indonesia, stated that her
community rises as a result of the increasing number of female fans in United Indonesia.
These members then, organically, formed a micro-community inside the macro-community,
United Indonesia. In the development of activities in social media, these micro-communities
usually hold a more important role. They cater to very specific groups’ shipper or interpretation of the text (Catherine, 2010: 119). The posts on the @babesunitedindo Instagram page
are dominated by the micro-community’s activities. No activity from the macro-community,
United Indonesia, is put on the Instagram page. It means the micro-community has set
boundaries, rules, and hierarchical structures that may not necessarily conform to the wider
fan community. This also applies in Juvedonna Indonesia, @JCI_Juvedonna, even though
they often tweet/retweet the regional community’s activities.
The existence of the micro-community (or chapter) domination is caused by the difficulties to examine large-scale activities because of geographical factors, and this phenomenon
has similarities with Anderson’s imagined community (Rashif in Pandit, 2016). A fancommunity is unlikely to know and identify all of the members. They might not have met
face to face and possibly never heard about each member. There is a projection of space and
time as people make a collective delusion that they are engaging in a single community; even
though they do not know each other, they are united by the love for the club. If in the conceptualisation of an imagined community the imagination of collectiveness and a sense of
belonging are built through print capitalism, in the two female football fan communities, the
main tool is social media: Twitter and Instagram. Furthermore, the impact of the imagined
community is a reinstatement of the traditional ways like face to face interaction in the form
of social media interaction. The whole process of interaction aims to maintain the solidarity
among members, to maximise the cohesiveness, and to demonstrate their existence (Huda,
2012; Sincere, et al., 2013; Wulansari, et al., 2014; Santoso, 2014; Saputra, 2015).
1.1
Constructing a female football fan identity: A response to masculine pride
Pride is the one of the central elements of fandom in accordance with the status of the football club and particularly the team’s success fielding the leagues. Furthermore, pride is often
identified with masculinity in football (King, 1997). Understanding the social and cultural
meanings constructed by Juvedonna Indonesia and Babes United Indonesia is a way to see
how they want people to recognise their identity. For that, they have built their own identity
to negotiate and contest the dominant discourse of female football fans, which mostly depicts
the fans as women craving over the handsome male football players. They also need to deconstruct the dominant conceptualisation of football fandom as a masculine cultural practice.
The findings of this research reveal that Juvedonna Indonesia and Babes United Indonesia
represent their female football fan identities through several signifying practices.
First of all, a logo becomes an important thing in revealing their identity because it
becomes a symbol of pride and a distinction between them and other communities (Hatch
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and Schultz, 1997; Erel-Koselleck, 2004). Juvedonna Indonesia uses an orchid as their logo.
According to interviews done with the founders of the community and the information on
their twitter account, six petals of the flower represent the initiation of Juvedonna that has
one goal, one thought, and one vision. On the other hand, flowers are also often associated
with femininity. Does Juvedonna Indonesia try to emphasise on a more feminine identity?
Another piece of evidence is the interface on the @JCI_Juvedonna’s Twitter page, which
is dominated by pink emphasising a feminine identity. When the members of Juvedonna
Indonesia celebrate the International Women Day, Valentine’s Day, and National Mother
Day, they use a pink-dominated page to express their enthusiasm in celebrating these events.
However, the macro-community Juventus FC uses white and black as the dominant colour
in their social media account. To sum up, Juvedonna Indonesia articulates their gendering
references by choosing pink which portrays a construction of feminine identity often done
along with other visual components in their Twitter account. A second function of pink is
to index sexual identity, which is complementary but also contradictory to the masculine
demarcation line. Finally, pink is also used to associate the community with fun attitudes,
independence, and confidence.
Babes United Indonesia chooses more or less similar feminine signifiers in their logo; however, through their Instagram posts, this community also tries to present a collective identity
of sisterhood. In their logo, they use two slim women silhouettes and high heels portraying
their feminine identity differentiating them from the male dominated community, United
Indonesia. However, in their Instagram page, almost all of the posts are group photos of the
members of the community from several parts of Indonesia. The captions they use represent
a sense of collectiveness or more specifically, sisterhood. For example, in one of their earlier
posts, there was a picture of the community’s members in an event, Gathbabes 2015 (gathering), and the caption was: “The friendship & sisterhood will make your life so colourful.” By
choosing images depicting togetherness, @babesunitedindo portrays sisterhood as a significant part of their identity. However, there are also some captions that portray a submission to
the dominant patriarchal ideology. One of the things they can do in the community is to find
‘a soul mate’ presumably from the United Indonesia community. One of the captions was (as
translated by the researchers): “Don’t forget to eat lunch, babes. If you want to find a soul
mate, you will need a lot of energy.” The feminine identity constructed in the Instagram page
of Babes United Indonesia is portrayed through a dualism between wanting to differentiate
themselves from the male dominated community and emphasising on the collectiveness of
sisterhood and the repeated idealisation of heteronormative relationship goals.
2
CONCLUSION
This paper has provided insights into the various ways in which an imagined community is
constructed through the activities of fandom in social media and how a feminine identity is
used, first and foremost, to differentiate the female football fan micro-communities from the
male dominated macro-community. The male domination in football fandom in Indonesia
encourages female football fans to seek recognition by constructing a social and cultural
identity though social media activities. The choice of social media by the female football fans
(homophily) will affect the way they construct their identity and the way people perceive it. In
conclusion, this paper has shown how football fandom for female fans could have a complex
meaning-making process. For a complementary study, the researchers recommend exploring
the comparison between female football fans’ activities and male football fans’ activities to
figure out how their gender constructions are determined.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Martha Nussbaum’s central capabilities read violence
against women in Indonesia
H.P. Sari
Department of Criminology, Faculty of Social and Political Science, Universitas Indonesia,
Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The ten central capabilities formulated in Martha Nussbaum’s unique
approach offer us a way of seeing whether a person is living a flourishing and meaningful
life and what a person is actually able to be and to do in life to realize his/her potential as a
human being. The underlying idea behind these ten capabilities is Nussbaum’s conviction of
what a human being is and what kind of life is worthy of human dignity. In effect, the central
capabilities may be used to determine whether the life aspects lived by a woman indicate that
she is a human being and is living a life worthy of human dignity. In this paper, the national
data on violence against women in Indonesia (Catahu Komnas Perempuan 2014, 2015, and
2016) were analyzed using the lenses of the central capabilities to know whether the lives of
Indonesian women are worthy of human dignity and whether their life is a human life at all.
Finally, a discussion on methodological obstacles to translating abstract philosophical ideas
into down-to-earth practical applications is presented.
1
INTRODUCTION
The capability approach is a frame of thinking of what constitutes a good life. The approach
aims to answer questions of what a person is actually able to do and to be in life. Amartya
Sen and Martha Nussbaum initially developed it to take into consideration the lives of
women which are often filled with gender discrimination (2011, p. 19). Nussbaum advanced
even further by proposing her version of the capability approach that is captured in her ten
central human capabilities. This is a list consisting of ten capabilities that every person must
have in order to live a life worthy of human dignity. Through an Aristotelian/Marxian way,
Nussbaum founded her central capabilities on human dignity and what it requires. In other
words, what the prerequisites for living a life that is fully human rather than subhuman, a life
worthy of the dignity of the human being, are (Nussbaum, 2004, p. 13).
Nussbaum’s capability approach is intended to be a universal normative theory underlined
by an account of a human life (Nussbaum, 1995, pp. 72–86). A human life, according to
Nussbaum, can be defined in terms of the most important functions and capabilities of the
human being. Such a basic idea is reflected in the questions: “What are the characteristic
activities of the human being? What does the human being do, characteristically, as such?”
In other words, what the forms of activities, of doing and being, are that constitute a human
form of life and distinguish it from other actual or imaginable forms of life, such as the lives
of animals and plants, or of immortal gods as imagined in myths and legends. The last forms,
Nussbaum believed, frequently have the function of delimiting humans.
Nussbaum (1995, pp. 72–73) offered two more concrete questions to approach those questions. The first question is what she calls a question about personal continuity: what changes
or transitions are compatible with the continued existence of that being as a member of the
human kind, and what are not? She believes that this is also a question about the necessary
conditions for continuing as one and the same individual because continued species identity
is at least necessary for continued personal identity. The question, in Nussbaum’s view, arises
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from an attempt to make medical definitions of death in a situation in which some functions
of life persist, or to decide, for others or for ourselves, whether a certain level of illness or
impairment means the end of the life of the being in question. Thus, Nussbaum is convinced
that some functions can be absent without threatening our sense that we still have a human
being on our hands, while the absence of other functions signals the end of a human life.
The second question is about the kinds of inclusion by Nussbaum (1995, 73–74): what
do we believe must be there if we are going to acknowledge that a given life is human? This
relates to recognizing other humans as humans across many different times and places. Her
example is that we recognize things differently when we see our child playing with a dog or
cat, when we see our dog and cat playing, or when we see anthropomorphic creatures, which
are not classified as humans because of the nonhuman features of their form of life and
function.
The first and second questions, in Nussbaum’s view, are inquired by examining a wide
variety of self-interpretations of human beings in many times and places, because people in
many different societies share a general outline of such conception. The result is a theory that
is not the mere projection of local preferences, but is fully international and a basis for crosscultural attunement (Nussbaum, 1995, p. 74). Thus, it is Nussbaum’s conviction that every
person is worthy of equal respect and regard because he/she has human dignity.
The facts that women—as human beings—have human dignity and are worthy of equal
respect and regard (Nussbaum, 2011, p. 18) and that philosophy has a lot to offer in approaching pervasive gender inequality all over the world (Nussbaum, 1998, pp. 762–769) have spurred
Nussbaum (2011, pp. 18–19) to aim her central capabilities at eliminating gender inequality.
She asserted that the approach is concerned with entrenched social injustice and inequality
[sic], especially capability failures that are the results of discrimination or marginalization.
Thus, she sees her capability approach as an approach to the question of fundamental entitlements that is especially pertinent to the issues of sexual equality (Nussbaum, 2003, p. 36).
She emphasized that “capabilities can help us to construct a normative conception of social
justice with a critical potential for gender issues, only if we specify a definite set of capabilities
as the most important ones to protect” (Nussbaum, 2003, p. 33).
Nussbaum offered a list of ten capacities (2011, p. 18). The list works as an indicator of a
woman’s quality of life (her basic decency or justice), that is, whether her life is a human life
at all and/or a good human life. A good human life is a life that enables each person to do
and to be. This means a life that provides opportunities for every person to fully realize his/
her potential to flourish to the optimum level.
Nussbaum’s central capabilities (Nussbaum, 2011, pp. 32–34) consist of ten capabilities
that each and every person is entitled to at a bare minimum. The capabilities should be
secured by a decent political order—the government—for the citizens to be able to pursue a
dignified and minimally flourishing life. The capabilities are as follows:
1. Life. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely,
or before one’s life is so reduced as to be not worth living.
2. Bodily health. Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; being able to
be adequately nourished; being able to have adequate shelter.
3. Bodily integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; being able to be secure
against violent assault, including sexual assault, marital rape, and domestic violence; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction.
4. Senses, imagination, and thought. Being able to use the senses, to imagine, to think, and to
reason—and to do these things in a “truly human” way, a way informed and cultivated by an
adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy and basic mathematical
and scientific training; being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing expressive works and events of one’s own choice (religious, literary,
musical, etc.); being able to use one’s minds in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of
expression with respect to both political and artistic speech and freedom of religious exercise; being able to have pleasurable experiences and to avoid non-beneficial pain.
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5. Emotion. Being able to have attachments to things and persons outside ourselves; being
able to love those who love and care for us; being able to grieve at their absence; in general, being able to love, to grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger;
not having one’s emotional development blighted by fear or anxiety. (Supporting this
capability means supporting forms of human association that can be shown to be crucial
in their development).
6. Practical reason. Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical
reflection about the planning of one’s own life. (This entails protection for the liberty of
conscience.)
7. Affiliation. (a) Being able to live for and in relation to others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction; being able
to imagine the situation of another and to have compassion for that situation; having the
capability for both justice and friendship. (Protecting this capability means, once again,
protecting institutions that constitute such forms of affiliation, and also protecting the
freedom of assembly and political speech). (b) Having the social bases of self-respect and
non-humiliation; being able to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to
that of others. (This entails provisions of nondiscrimination.)
8. Other species. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and
the world of nature.
9. Play. Being able to laugh, to play, and to enjoy recreational activities.
10. Control over one’s environment. (a) Political: being able to participate effectively in the
political choices that govern one’s life; having the rights of political participation, free
speech, and freedom of association (b) Material: being able to hold property (both land
and movable goods); having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others;
having the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. In work, being able to work as
a human being, exercising practical reason and entering into meaningful relationships of
mutual recognition with other workers.
The research question in this study is: how do Nussbaum’s ten central capabilities see violence against women in Indonesia from 2013 to 2015?
2
APPROACH/METHODOLOGY
All data used in this study were adapted from annual reports (henceforth Catahu Komnas
Perempuan) published in 2014, 2015, and 2016 by the National Commission on Anti-Violence against Women (henceforth Komnas Perempuan). Komnas Perempuan has divided the
data of violence against women in Indonesia into three categories: violence against women
in the personal sphere, in the community sphere, and in the state (authority) sphere. Each
category then is cross-checked with the ten central capabilities to see the existence or nonexistence of each capability. The tables presented in the paper are for highlighting the capabilities and not for statistic measures in whatsoever terms. In each sphere, the data from 2013,
2014, and 2015 are compared to find the forms of violence against women occurring within
the three-year period. Then, the forms of violence are cast under each capability to find their
existence or nonexistence. Because the data of the state (authority) sphere are more qualitative in nature, they are first summarized and then presented in the table.
3
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Utami’s (2012) research showed that Indonesian women in general suffer from gender discrimination, including violence, in different levels and forms. Concurring to that, the national
data from 2013, 2014, and 2015 (Komnas Perempuan, 2014, 2015, and 2016) indicate no tendency of the decrease of violence against women. Table 1 presents forms of violence against
women occurring in the personal sphere in 2013, 2014, and 2015.
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As can be seen in Table 1, in the personal sphere, the number of violence cases decreased
slightly in 2014 but increased in 2015 to an almost similar number to 2013.
Some research using feminist approach has highlighted that female victims of sexual, psychological, economical, and physical violence experience little to none of each of the ten
capabilities (Nussbaum and Glover, 1995). Table 2 shows that in the lives of the victims, capabilities of life, bodily health, bodily integrity, senses, imagination, and thought, emotions,
practical reason, and affiliation do exist, but they are hampered at best or non-existing at
worst. Table 2 shows whether each capability exists in each form of violence against women.
In the community sphere, there is a similar trend of violence: a slight drop in the number in
2014 but rising again in 2015. A new form of violence, “others”, is added here, and it consists
of violence experienced by migrant workers and victims of trafficking.
Table 4 shows that all the ten central capabilities do exist, yet they are also hampered by the
mere fact that the violence has occurred at a communal level. The female victims then have
less than full central capabilities.
In the state (authority) sphere in 2013, there were four cases of criminalizing women who
were involved in conflicts of claims over natural resources in West Sumatera and one case of
a woman victim of violence in the community sphere who was facing obstacles in reporting it
to the justice system (Catahu Komnas Perempuan, 2014, p. 14). Meanwhile, violence against
women in the state (authority) sphere in 2014 consists of one case of the rights of a woman
to adopt a child in Aceh, four cases of virginity tests in West Java (Bandung district), two
Table 1. Violence against women in the personal sphere in 2013, 2014,
and 2015.
Forms of violence
2013
N = 11,719
2014
N = 8,626
2015
N = 11,207
Sexual
Psychological
Economical
Physical
2,995
3,344
749
4,631
2,274
2,444
498
3,410
3,325
2,607
971
4,304
Source: Adapted from Catahu Komnas Perempuan 2014, 2015, and
2016.
Table 2. Existence of central capabilities in the occurrence of violence against women in
the personal sphere in 2013, 2014, and 2015.
Capabilities
Life
Bodily health
Bodily integrity
Senses, imagination,
and thought
Emotions
Practical reason
Affiliation
Other species
Play
Control over one’s
environment
Sexual
Psychological
Economical
Physical
√
× NA
√
× NA
√
× NA
√
× NA
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
√
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
√
×
×
×
×
√
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
×
×
×
√
√
√
×
×
×
√
√
√
×
×
×
√
√
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
×
NA
NA
NA
Source: Adapted from Nussbaum (2011, 33–34) and Catahu Komnas Perempuan 2014,
2015, and 2016.
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Table 3.
Violence against women in the community sphere in 2013, 2014, and 2015.
Forms of
violence
2013
N = 4,679
2014
N = 3,860
2015
N = 5,002
Sexual
Psychological
Economical
Physical
Others
2,634
248
25
897
875
2,183
41
7
1,086
543
3,174
169
64
1,124
471
Source: Catahu Komnas Perempuan 2014, 2015, and 2016.
Table 4. Existence of central capabilities in the occurrence of violence against women in the community sphere in 2013, 2014, and 2015.
Sexual
Capabilities
√
×
Life
Bodily health
Bodily integrity
Senses, imagination,
and thought
Emotions
Practical reason
Affiliation
Other species
Play
Control over one’s
environment
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
Psychological
Economical
Physical
√
×
NA √
×
NA √
×
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
√
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
√
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
√
×
×
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
√
√
√
×
×
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
√
√
√
×
×
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
√
√
√
NA
Others
√
×
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
√
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
√
√
√
×
×
×
×
×
×
NA
NA
Source: Adapted from Nussbaum (2011, 33–34) and Catahu Komnas Perempuan 2014, 2015, and 2016.
cases of criminalizing victims of domestic violence in Jakarta, and 17 cases of state omission
of migrant workers in Jakarta (Catahu Komnas Perempuan, 2015, p. 10).
In the state (authority) sphere in 2015, there were two cases of forfeit of marriage certificates in West Java; six cases of similar forfeit in East Nusa Tenggara; two cases of unrecorded
marriages, which caused obstacles for the wives who experienced spousal violence to report
the crimes as domestic violence to the justice system; one case of trafficking facing obstacles
with the police; and three cases of physical violence by a police officer (Catahu Komnas
Perempuan, 2016, p. 21).
Table 5 shows whether there are central capabilities in violence against women in the state
(authority) sphere in 2013, 2014, and 2015.
In the sphere of the state (authority), due to its huge and pervasive power over the citizens,
all central capabilities for the victims are hampered.
The victims of violence against women in all the three spheres have not yet had full central capabilities, as shown in Tables 2, 4, and 5. These women have not lived a life worthy of
human dignity; they have lived less than human lives. Thus, they have not been full human
beings yet. The data of Catahu Komnas Perempuan published in 2014, 2015, and 2016 are
only the tip of the iceberg, as a larger number of incidents against Indonesian women go
unreported. In fact, all Indonesian women might have experienced violence at one point or
another in their lives. As a matter of fact, Nussbaum and other feminists state that all women
in the world might have such experience (Nussbaum, 2011 and 2000). Hence, Indonesian
women have not yet lived flourishing life up to their potential.
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Table 5. Existence of central capabilities in the occurrence of violence against women
in the state (authority) sphere in 2013, 2014, and 2015.
2013
2014
Capabilities
√
×
Life
Bodily health
Bodily integrity
Senses, imagination,
and thought
Emotions
Practical reason
Affiliation
Other species
Play
Control over one’s
environment
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
2015
√
×
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
√
×
×
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
√
√
√
NA
√
×
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
√
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
√
√
√
√
√
√
×
×
×
×
×
×
NA
NA
Source: Adapted from Nussbaum (2011, 33–34) and Catahu Komnas Perempuan
2014, 2015, and 2016.
What should Indonesia do then? In answering the question, we can refer to Nussbaum’s
opinion (2011, pp. 63–64) that the duties to distribute to all citizens an adequate threshold of
the ten central capabilities belong to the nation’s basic political structure. She sees that the job
of the government is, at a minimum, to make it possible for people to live such a life. In line
with that, it is the duties of the Indonesian government to be accountable for the presence
of the ten capabilities on Nussbaum’s list if Indonesia wants to be even at least a just nation.
Nussbaum (2011, pp. 63–64) acknowledged, however, that poor nations may not meet all
their obligations without the aids from richer nations; thus, richer nations have the duties of
providing aids. Concurring with that, Indonesia is entitled to be assisted by richer nations
to meet its obligation to deliver the capabilities. Meanwhile, other duties to promote human
capabilities in Indonesia can be assigned to corporations, international agencies and agreements, and finally the Indonesian individuals (Nussbaum, 2011, pp. 63–64).
In discussing the implementation of the capabilities approach, Nussbaum (2011, p. 97)
asserted that the ten capabilities are all important and that subordinating one to another will
not be a recipe for achieving full justice. One of the major avenues of the implementation of
the central capabilities, in her view, is a nation’s system of constitutional adjudication involving fundamental rights. Following that, the Mahkamah Konstitusi (Constitutional Court) in
Indonesia might be used to implement the central capabilities.
Nussbaum (2011, p. 97) reminded us that the goal of policy makers should always be to
present people with choices in the areas the list identified as central, rather than to dragoon
them into a specific mode of functioning. She believed that such an emphasis on choices certainly shapes the strategies of implementation that policy makers should consider. In addition, some extent of further recommendation for implementation should be context-specific.
To achieve such ideal thoughts, Indonesians will still have to wait.
4
LIMITATIONS AND CONCLUSION
The data of Catahu Komnas Perempuan published in 2013, 2014, and 2015 are processed data
that do not provide detailed case-by-case information (for the methods and measurements
used by Komnas Perempuan, see the annual reports). Cross-checking them with the ten central capabilities is rather difficult and results in a very crude and superficial analysis. The fact
that they are the only available national data on violence against women over a certain period
of time has put some limitations on the following issue of Nussbaum’s central capabilities.
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Nussbaum (2011, pp. 59–62) admitted that there are some challenges faced by the proponents of the ten central capabilities to show whether and how this new standard of values for
public action is to be measured. Although the ten central capabilities are plural, she believed
that each of them can be measured individually. However, she admitted that the measurement is indeed not an easy task because the notion of capability combines internal preparedness with an external opportunity in a complicated way. This issue has resulted in a still
developing literature on the measurement of capabilities. Citing from the work of Hackett
(2000, p. 1), Utami (2012, p. 21) pointed out that this methodological issue is an obstacle to
translating abstract philosophical theory into practical life-transforming policy applications.
REFERENCES
Komisi Nasional Anti Kekerasan Terhadap Perempuan. (2014) Kegentingan Kekerasan Seksual:
Lemahnya Upaya Penanganan Negara (The seriousness of sexual violence: The weakness of state’s
involvement) Catatan Tahunan tentang Kekerasan terhadap perempuan. [Online] Available from:
http://www.komnasperempuan.go.id/category/publikasi/catatan-tahunan/.
Komisi Nasional Anti Kekerasan Terhadap Perempuan. (2015) Kekerasan terhadap Perempuan: Negara
Segera Putus Impunitas Pelaku (Violence against women: The state must immediately stop impunity
for perpetrators). Catatan Tahunan tentang Kekerasan terhadap perempuan. [Online] Available from:
http://www.komnasperempuan.go.id/category/publikasi/catatan-tahunan/.
Komisi Nasional Anti Kekerasan Terhadap Perempuan. (2016) Kekerasan terhadap Perempuan telah
Meluas: Negara Urgen Hadir Hentikan Kekerasan terhadap Perempuan di Ranah Domestik, Komunitas dan Negara (Violence Against Women has Expanded: The state must stop domestic, community and state violence against women). Catatan Tahunan tentang Kekerasan terhadap perempuan.
[Online] Available from: http://www.komnasperempuan.go.id/category/publikasi/catatan-tahunan/.
Nussbaum, Martha C. (1995) Human Capabilities, Female Human Beings. In: Martha C. Nussbaum
and Jonathan Glover (Eds.). Women, Culture, and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities.
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 62–104.
Nussbaum, Martha C. (1998) Public Philosophy and Feminism. Ethics, 108, 762–796.
Nussbaum, Martha C. (2000) Women and Human Development the Capabilities Approach. New York,
Cambridge University Press.
Nussbaum, Martha C. (2003) Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice. Feminist Economics 9, 33–59.
Nussbaum, Martha C. (2004) Beyond the Social Contract: Capabilities and Global Justice. Oxford
Development Studies, 32, 3–18.
Nussbaum, Martha C. (2011) Creating Capabilities the Human Development Approach. Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and London, England, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Nussbaum, Martha C. and Jonathan Glover. (1995) Women, Culture, and Development: A Study of
Human Capabilities. Oxford Clarendon Press.
Utami, Rona. (2012) The Application of Capabilities Approach, Master 2 en Philosophie, Sciences et
Arts Facultè de Lettre et Sciences Humaines, Universitè de Lorreaine, unpublished.
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 324
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Afghan women’s repression by patriarchy in My Forbidden Face
by Latifa
H.N. Agustina & C.T. Suprihatin
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This to show the repression experienced by Afghan women in the novel My
Forbidden Face written by a young Afghan woman writer. The discuss is the problems that
when women can no longer speak of their own freedom and independence. During those
dark periods the invasion of the Taliban, women were repressed by the confines of the social
system and traditions. My Forbidden Face features the repression Afghan women in the name
of Islam and under a patriarchy system. Women were restricted only the domestic realm and
were not allowed to work, attend school or engage in any other activities outside their home.
Only men were allowed in the public domain and could freely travel outside the home, to
work and to do other activities. This study a qualitative method, applying the concepts of
gender and feminism as tools. The results of this study reveal the repression experienced by
many Afghan women the patriarchal culture and gender construction prevailing in Afghanistan women were deprived of their rights part in the public domain.
1
INTRODUCTION
Afghan women’s struggle to liberate themselves from the shackles of oppression, gender repression and patriarchy under the Taliban era in 1996–2000 was voiced through several writings
of many Afghan diasporas. The story of the women’s struggle is interesting to be discussed
because they often become the main victim of repression. My Forbidden Face tells one of the
stories on the suffering of Afghan women. Growing Up under the Taliban: A Young Woman’s
Story by Latifa (2001) articulated the various forms of repression that Latifa and other Afghan
women experienced. The efforts and struggle of Afghan women for their rights and freedom
to participate actively in the public domain have opened the eyes of women around the world.
This article discusses the story of a young Afghan woman’s struggle to defend women’s rights
and represent Afghan women in portraying the many forms of repression in a memoir.
2
METHOD
Gender and feminism are the two issues that are interrelated when discussing women’s issues in
the Middle East. Different and diverse forms of gender inequality exist in these Middle Eastern countries. This often raises the issues regarding the relationship between women and men.
My Forbidden Face is written from the perspective of a young woman explaining the forms of
repression against Afghan women as a result of the patriarchal cultural construction, which is
represented by the presence of the Taliban regime. This novel has a wealth of analysis documenting the situation of Afghan women and placing it in a cultural, historical and political context.
The novel telling the story of repression against Afghan women is a product of several
years of research on women and politics in the country. As a researcher, the leading factor
that has inspired me to conduct research on this subject is the repression against women in
Afghanistan, which has become the most frequently discussed topic. To render justice to the
women in Afghanistan, I dedicate my research to make this ignored issue gain international
attention. By analysing the various gender issues in Afghanistan in my research, I aim to
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learn more in depth and also acquire a clearer understanding on the factual effects from the
Taliban’s ferocity upon Afghan women (Agustina, 2015a-c; 2016). This research is important
to show the repression suffered by Afghan women as a result of the patriarchal culture constructed by the Taliban regime and the misinterpretation of the Hadith and Al-Qur’an. The
foremost aspect of this study is to present all the determinant factors of the main problems
related to the repression against Afghan women.
3
3.1
RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
Overview of Afghanistan
Afghanistan is a multi-ethnic country in the Middle East. People in Afghanistan are divided
into four major ethnic groups: the Pashtuns (38%), Tajiks (25%), Hazara (19%) and Uzbeks
(6%) (Riphenburg, 2005, p. 37). This demography is based only from estimated statistics
because Afghanistan has never held a census; however, other data sources presented a ratio
of the four ethnic groups of approximately 42%, 25%, 30%, and 10%, respectively (Saikal,
2012, p. 80). The Pashtuns dominate the political and military leadership chair, while the
Tajiks mostly are the intellectuals and hold a clerical position. Meanwhile, the Hazara ethnic
occupies a lower social class, such as slaves, servants or low-skilled labourers. The complex
relationship between the upper- and lower-class ethnics also often triggers conflicts among
them (Agustina, 2007, 2015a, 2015b).
Early attempts of reform by the Pashtun rulers of the nascent Afghan State had to face
fierce resistance from the rural periphery. In the 1920s, King Amanullah (1919–1929) opened
girls’ schools in Kabul, advocated against the veil and gender segregation and ordered all
Afghans to wear Western dresses and hats (Emadi, 2002, pp. 63–65). He also introduced the
most progressive Muslim family legislation seen at that time, banning child marriage and
forced marriage and restricting polygamy—which then upset the political economy of tribal
kinship relations and men’s patriarchal authority (Moghadam, 2003, pp. 218–219).
The government under Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud attempted modest reforms in
the 1950s, advocating against compulsory veiling in 1959. Women also were given the right to
vote in 1964. These reforms benefitted the Dari-speaking urban elites, but had little impact
on women in rural areas. The Communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan also
attempted wider national reforms when it took power in 1978. Family legislation was overhauled, and compulsory literacy programs were introduced for all Afghan men and women,
including those in remote villages.
In the 1970s and the 1980s, a new kind of rebels emerged in Afghanistan. They called
themselves the Mujahideen, a word originally used to represent Afghan fighters who opposed
the British Raj’s push into Afghanistan in the 19th century. In the context of Afghanistan
during the late 20th century, the Mujahideen were Islamic warriors defending their country
from the Soviet Union, which invaded the country in 1979 and fought a bloody and pointless war there for a decade. Afghanistan’s Mujahideen were an exceptionally diverse lot that
included the Pashtuns, Uzbeks and Tajiks ethnics and others. Some were from the Shi’a sect,
sponsored by Iran, while most factions were made up of Sunni Muslims. In addition to the
Afghan fighters, Muslims from other countries volunteered to join the Mujahideen ranks.
Much fewer Arabs (like Osama bin Laden), fighters from Chechnya and others rushed to aid
Afghanistan (Szcepansky, 2016).
The Soviet occupation (1979–1989) created opportunities for women in urban areas, while
creating hardships for women elsewhere. Throughout this period, women in the capital city of
Kabul were active in public sphere as doctors, journalists and even police officers and soldiers
(2003, p. 233). The state’s Democratic Organisation of Afghan Women worked to actively
promote women’s rights. However, the women’s gains were tempered by the brutality of the
state’s secret service, KHAD, which silenced all political dissent (Rubin in Wall, 2012, p. 1).
The state’s failure paved the way for the emergence of the fundamentalist Pashtun-based
Taliban. Driven to cleanse the Afghan society from the ravages of the civil war, Taliban leaders came from the most rural and conservative Pashtun provinces in southern Afghanistan.
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They shared a vision of creating an ideal Islamic society akin to that created by the Prophet
Mohammed 1,400 years ago (Rashid, 2000, p. 23). With the support of Pakistan, the Taliban
has succeeded in conquering most of the country by 1996. The Taliban’s abuses have been
well documented. Upon taking power, the Taliban enforced a strict interpretation of the
Shari’a law and Pashtun customary law, or Pashtunwali, which was an anathema to many
other ethnic groups. Men were forced to grow beards and women to wear the burkha. Girls’
schools were closed and women were banned from working outside the home or leaving their
homes without a mahram, a male family member (2000, p. 70).
Those descriptions explicate some factors which caused the destructive system of the government, the gender inequality and women’s repression in Afghanistan. Wars, ethnic conflicts, the various sects of religion and the patriarchal culture gave rise to the huge impact on
social disharmony and breakdown in Afghanistan.
3.2 Afghan women’s repression by patriarchy
My Forbidden Face carries the voice of a young girl coming from the period of the terror of
the Taliban and reveals the complicated touch points between our world and hers. Throughout the book, Latifa also reveals the complex American influence in Kabul, from her crush
on Leonardo DiCaprio to her belief and possibility to go to the United States. Latifa’s community had been quite exposed to the Western popular culture and political ideals to be left
with a stinging feeling of hypocritical abandonment when the world turned a blind eye to the
Taliban oppression (Schiff, 2001, pp. ix–xii).
Walby defined patriarchy as a system of social structures and practices where men dominate, oppress and exploit women. The patriarchal relations in the family are common when
women are confined to domestic work, as restricted by their husbands or by the men who
live with them. The second form of patriarchy exists in the economy sector, namely the relation of a patriarchal system in employment and payment of wages. The state also becomes
a patriarch as a capitalist and racist. As the arena of struggle and not as a monolithic entity,
the state shows a systematic bias towards the interests of patriarchy (Walby, 2014, pp. 28–30).
This form of patriarchy is also apparent in Afghanistan, because the male-oriented policies
and rules applied by the Taliban regime became the most powerful restrictions forcing everything under their control.
In Afghanistan, the government was present in the form of the Taliban regime holding
power and authority to impose policies for all citizens in the era of 1996–2000. In practice,
the regulations and policies adopted by the Taliban were in the name of Islam. In fact, the
rules of Islam are very egalitarian and actually embrace the values of equality between men
and women. However, the patriarchy system has made a tremendous impact on the lives
of Afghan women due to the violence they had to endure. Various studies conducted by
researchers show a very significant impact from the patriarchy construction in Afghanistan
(Pourzand, 1999, and Povey, 2003).
Taliban’s position on this issue seems to be a reflection of their overall ultra-conservative
interpretation of Islam combined with a very traditional understanding of the Pashtun tribal
code of conduct (Pashtun Wali). Added to this is their reactionary notion of what it means to
be an Afghan man or woman and their power struggles with other groups in Afghanistan and
regional or international stakeholders in the country. They want to demonstrate that they are
the ‘purest’ and ‘most authentic’ Moslems and Afghans amongst all groups (Pourzand, 1999).
As usual, women play an important symbolic role in these assertions. This has very tragic consequences, as now widely known and denounced internationally. It is, no doubt, also an issue
of controlling men through controlling women, and controlling various ethnic and linguistic
groups and other factors. The human rights of almost all Afghans have been seriously violated.
Most Americans would probably agree that the dominant visual image of the new millennium is the flaming collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City
on 11 September 2001. Nevertheless, there is another powerful one: Muslim women wearing
the burkha, covering their body so completely that we can barely even see their eyes. These
women can hardly see where they are going, and it must certainly be difficult for them to
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speak clearly. They appear to be trapped physically, economically, emotionally and spiritually
(Spector, 2006). The donning of burkha by all Afghan women whenever they go out of their
homes and accompanied by a mahram is a symbol of men’s domination and the control over
women’s rights. These extraordinary changes come with substantial and harsh punishments
if the women do not obey the rules, and this has uprooted Afghan women’s lives.
Barlas (2002, pp. 2–3) revealed that the status and the role of women in a Muslim society
that adopts a patriarchal and gender bias social structure have multiple-factored functions
that are almost entirely not religion-oriented. Thus, when the patriarchal and gender bias
constructions are openly declared in the name of religion, it is actually contradictory and
very opposite of what is written in the Al-Qur’an. The methods and principles, which were
used by Asma Barlas in re-reading the Al-Qur’an and its application in the verses on gender,
are to establish the principles of egalitarianism and anti-patriarchal as interpreted from the
Al-Qur’an closely related to women’s liberation.
3.3
Latifa and her struggle against the repression
Gender inequality, patriarchal culture and religious values, which are interpreted differently,
are some of the issues leading to the repression against Afghan women. The period of darkness in Afghanistan was marked by the arrival of the Taliban regime, which then controlled
all forms of rules and policies for the entire population. Prohibition, intimidation and discrimination were often present as a symbol of the Taliban rule to regulate the rights of the
civil society. The rights of women were revoked and removed on the pretext of Islamic rules
to enforce the Shari’a principles.
The rules imposed by the Taliban have entrapped both men and women in toils and terror.
Some of those tormenting rules are mentioned in the following text: ‘From now on, the country
is ruled by a completely Islamic system. All foreign ambassadors are relieved of their duties. The
new decrees in accordance with the Shari’a principles are as follows: 1) Anyone in possession of
a weapon must surrender it to the nearest mosque or military checkpoint; 2) Women and girls
are not permitted to work outside of home; 3) All women who are obliged to leave their homes
must be accompanied by a mahram: their father, brother or husband; 4) Public transportation
department will provide buses reserved for men and buses reserved for women; 5) Men must let
their beards grow and trim their moustaches according to the Shari’a principles; 6) Men must
wear a white cap or turban on their heads; 7) The wearing of suit and tie is forbidden. The wearing of traditional Afghan clothing is compulsory; 8) Women and girls are required to wear the
chadri; 9) Women and girls are forbidden to wear brightly coloured clothes beneath the chadri;
10) It is forbidden to wear nail polish or lipstick or make up; 11) All Muslims must offer ritual
prayers at the appointed times wherever they may be; 12) It is forbidden to display photographs
of animals and human beings; 13) A woman is not allowed to take a taxi unless accompanied
by a mahram; 14) No male physician is allowed to touch the body of a woman under the pretext
of a medical examination; 15) A woman is not allowed to go to a male tailor; 16) A young girl
is not allowed to converse with a young man. Infraction of this law leads to the immediate
marriage of the offenders; 17) Muslim families are not allowed to listen to music, even during
a wedding; 18) Families are not allowed to photograph or videotape anything, even during a
wedding; 19) Women engaged to be married may not go to beauty salons, even in preparation
for their weddings; 20) Muslim families are not allowed to give non-Islamic names for their
children; 21) All non-Muslims, Hindus and Jews must wear yellow clothing or a piece of yellow
cloth. They must mark their homes with a yellow flag so that they are be recognisable; 22) All
merchants are forbidden to sell alcoholic beverages; 23) Merchants are forbidden to sell female
undergarments; 24) When the police punish an offender, no one is allowed to ask a question or
complain; 25) All those who break the laws of Shari’a are to be punished in the public square’
(Latifa, 2001, pp. 47–49). By the time the bans were announced by the Taliban, they have killed
a lot of girls and women stealthily, in silence.
The worst restriction imposed throughout the great majority of the country is the annihilation of the women’s rights by locking them out of the society. All women, young and
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old, are affected. Women may no longer work, which means a collapse of medical services
and government administration. There is no more school for girls, no more health care for
women and no more fresh air for women. The women went home or disappeared under the
chadri, out of the sight of men. It is an absolute denial of individual liberty, a real sexual racism (2001, p. 50). Another rule from the Taliban that obliges women to be accompanied by a
mahram when going out of their homes is an attempt to eliminate the rights of women to participate in the public sphere. They lost their rights to education, to socialise with others in the
workplace environment and also to gain access to information. All those rules and strict bans
have really ‘killed’ Afghan women’s freedom to participate in the public sphere. They have
no more rights to be what they want to be, and they are imprisoned in their own homeland.
The diverse linguistic, cultural and ethnic identities in Afghanistan have been formed
and reconstructed as a consequence of a broader historical process involving local and
regional wars and colonial and imperialist intervention (Povey in Afshar, 2012, p. 149). In
Afghanistan, as in all Muslim majority societies, the interaction of Islamic culture and religion with secularism, nationalism, ethnicity and other important historical, social and economic mechanisms structures the lives of the women and men of the country. Therefore, too
often, Islamic culture and religion are considered to be the primary agent in determining the
identities of women in Muslim majority societies, and this perception is used to justify war,
occupation and invasion of a country. Of course, patriarchal attitudes and structures remain
extremely strong in Afghanistan. The public domains for women are strictly forbidden, such
as schools, markets and offices.
As written by Latifa in her novel, ‘School, college, Sundays at the swimming pool, expeditions with my girlfriends in search of music tapes, film videos, novels to read avidly in bed
in the evening ... How I hope the resistance forces haven’t abandoned us to our fate’ (2001,
p. 14). My Forbidden Face is an expression of testimony on a variety of issues of violence
experienced by the women in Afghanistan. It is a story that shows the struggle of a teenager
from Kabul who was educated under the Soviet power and living under the Communist rule,
as well as factional disputes over the 4-year civil war and the arrival of the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan. Latifa finds herself imprisoned by a frightening power and sees her life taken
away at the age of 16 years. The issues of repression, bans and verbal and non-verbal violence
that are often experienced by Afghan women lead to the uprooting and loss of the women’s
rights. The Taliban is the embodiment of the present patriarchal structure in Afghanistan.
As a witness of repression and sexual abuse, Latifa spoke out in front of the international
public about the great suffering experienced by many Afghan women. My Forbidden Face, a
memoir of a young Afghan woman named Latifa, provides an illustration about the many
Afghan women whose lives were controlled by a patriarchal structure. This is a common situation in Middle Eastern countries that embrace Islam. Latifa, the writer of My Forbidden Face,
has spoken for the nation. Coming from a progressive and relatively well-to-do family of seven,
she was a 16-year-old student preparing for university life, majoring in journalism, when the
Taliban invaded Kabul in September 1996. In May 2001, she and her mother were given the
opportunity to travel to Paris to initiate a campaign on women’s liberation sponsored by an
advocacy organisation, Afghanistan Libre, and Elle magazine. While they were in Paris, the
Taliban issued a fatwa against them for denouncing the regime and stripped their Kabul apartment. Latifa and her parents remained in exile in Paris, where Latifa was given the opportunity
to write her book, as an attempt to ‘explain how a girl from Kabul, educated first during the
Soviet occupation, then under the Communist regimes throughout four years of civil war, was
finally locked away by a monstrous power, confiscating her life when she was only sixteen’.
4
CONCLUSION
A noteworthy feature is that the Taliban enforced a strong patriarchal structure that limited
the role of women in the public sphere. As a result, women’s voices have been silenced. They
have no role to play in any decision-making process. Latifa’s endeavour to be the voice of
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Afghan women through her writing is part of her great struggle to make the people around the
world aware of and understand the complex problems prevailing in Afghanistan. The invasion
of the Soviet Union, the patriarchal culture and the conflicts among the ethnics, which contributed to the harsh attitude towards Afghan women, worsened the situation. In some cases,
the problems arose from the misconception about interpreting the Hadith and Al-Qur’an.
Gender inequality between women and men due to the patriarchal structure has inflicted even
worse conflicts. The voice of Latifa could promote her nation, Afghanistan, to win world
sympathy through her writing to help Afghan women to have faith and hope for the future.
Afghan women should have equal rights to men based on the concept of Al-Qur’an and
Hadith. Finally, the book My Forbidden Face is a concise memoir that is riveting, insightful
and fascinating: a testament to the human capacity to grow beauty on the rockiest soil.
REFERENCES
Afshar, H. (2012) Women and fluid identities. Strategic and practical pathways selected by women. United
Kingdom, Palgrave MacMillan.
Agustina, H.N. (2007) Kompleksitas penyajian cerita dan kompleksitas konflik in The Kite Runner. (The
complexity of narration and conflict in The Kite Runner) [Thesis] Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia.
Agustina, H.N. (2015) The kite runner: My passion of literature. International conference on Social Sciences and Humanities (ICSSH’15), 5–6 May 2015, Bali, Indonesia. pp. 43–46.
Agustina, H.N. (2015) Dominasi konflik antar-etnis in The Kite Runner karya Khaled Hosseini. (Interethnic conflicts in The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini) Seminar Nasional Bahasa dan Sastra (Senabastra) VII, 10th June 2015, Universitas Trunojoyo Madura, Indonesia.
Agustina, H.N. (2015) Inspiring woman against the terror in A Dressmaker from Khair Khana. 4th
international Multi-Conference on Humanities, Law, Literature and Management Sciences (IJHMS)
Pattaya, Thailand 3(4), pp. 182–187.
Agustina, H.N. (2016) When desperate and guilty feeling destroy humans’ life in And the Mountains
Echoed by Khaled Hosseini. 2nd International Conference on Culture, Languages and Literature
(ICCLL), 22–24th June 2016, Singapore.
Barlas, A. (2002) Believing women in Islam: Unreading patriarchal interpretations of the Qur’an. USA,
University of Texas Press.
Emadi, H. (2002) Repression, resistance, and women in Afghanistan. USA Praeger.
Latifa. (2001) My Forbidden Face. Growing up under the Taliban: A young woman’s story. USA, Hyperion.
Moghadam, V.M. (2003) Modernizing women: Gender and social change in the Middle East. Boulder,
CO, Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Pourzand, N. (1999) The Problematic of Female Education, Ethnicity and National Identity in Afghanistan (1920–1999), Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, 43 (1),
73–82.
Povey, E.R. (2003) Women in Afghanistan: Passive victims of the Borga or Active Social Participants?
Development in Practice. [Online] 13 (2/3), pp. 266–277. Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Available from: http://
www.jstor.org/stable/4029597. [Accessed 14th March 2015].
Rashid, A. (2000) Taliban: Militant Islam, oil, and fundamentalism. New Haven, CT, Yale University
Press, 23.
Riphenburg, C.J. (2005) Ethnicity and civil society in contemporary Afghanistan. Middle East Journal,
59 (1), 31–51.
Rubin, B. (2002) The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State formation and collapse in the International
System. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press.
Saikal, A. (2012) Afghanistan: The status of the Shi’ite Hazara minority. Journal of Muslim Minority
Affairs, 32: 80, No. 1.
Spector, B. (2006) Dionysus, revenge, and the woman in the Burkha. San Francisco Jung Institute Library
Journal, 25 (1), 33–41.
Szczepanski, K. (2016) Asian History Expert: The Mujahideen of Afghanistan. [Online] Available from:
http://asianhistory.about.com/od/glossaryko/g/Who-Were-the-Mujahideen-of-Afghanistan.htm
[Accessed on 25th June 2016].
Walby, S. (1990) Theorizing Patriarchy. Oxford UK, Blackwell. pp. 28–30.
Wall, K. & David C. (2012) Afghan women speak. Enhancing security and human rights in Afghanistan.
USA, University of Notre Dame.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Memory of the female protagonist in relation to gender oppression
in Catherine Lim’s The Teardrop Story Woman
J.D. Sukham & D. Hapsarani
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The aim of this study is to find out the connection between memory and
gender oppression as experienced by the female protagonist in The Teardrop Story Woman
(1998), a novel written by a Singaporean author, Catherine Lim. Using Kate Millett’s concept
of sex/gender and Daniel Schacter’s memory theory, the analysis shows that memory serves
as a means of internalising gender-oppressive social constructions that eventually prevent
the female protagonist from rebelling against gender oppression. However, at the same time,
memory—through a selection process—also serves as a defence strategy that helps the female
protagonist to cope with gender oppression in a situation where real actions of resistance are
not possible. In relation to this, memory can also be seen as a form of female subjectivity. By
consciously using her memory as a defence strategy, the female protagonist positions herself
as a subject that has the right and ability to choose—thus performing her subjectivity as a
woman despite living under the constant pressure from gender oppression.
1
INTRODUCTION
Singaporean literature basically refers to a group of literary works written by Singaporean
authors in any of Singapore’s four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil
(“Literature of Singapore”, 2016). However, a long period of British colonialism causes
Singaporean literature to be dominated by literary works written in English. Singaporean
literature in English itself can further be divided into two periods—colonial and postcolonial—each with its own characteristics. In the colonial period, Singaporean literature in
English was produced in an academic environment, written by a few people who had access
to the Western education. The literature was dominated by poetry and shorter prose (short
stories), and was imitative of the Western writing styles and themes (Patke & Holden, 2010).
Meanwhile, in the postcolonial period, Singaporean literature in English was produced in
a broader environment, written by people who use English as their lingua franca. It was
dominated by the longer type of prose (novels) and adjusted to the writing styles and themes
relevant to the social issues the authors wanted to discuss (Patke & Holden, 2010).
Catherine Lim is one of the most prolific and significant Singaporean authors of Chinese
descent whose works show the characteristics of Singaporean literature in English produced
in the postcolonial period. Her works often depict the social issues that happen in everyday
Singapore and offer new points of view in response to the social phenomenon. This “sociallyengaged” characteristic is then reflected as well in The Teardrop Story Woman (1998), one of
Lim’s most popular novels. First published by Orion in London, the novel is set in Luping—a
small town in Malaya—circa 1940. The novel tells a story of a young Chinese woman named
Mei Kwei, who experiences gender oppression all her life. Unable to rebel against the oppression (as she lives in a Chinese community well-known for its patriarchal system), Mei Kwei
selects and relives certain memories that can help her cope with the gender oppression.
The above explanation shows the possibility of a connection between memory and gender oppression—the two main elements in the novel—and this study aims to analyse that
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particular connection. The study itself is conducted using a textual analysis and supported
primarily by Kate Millett’s concept of sex and gender and Daniel Schacter’s memory theory.
In Sexual Politics (1970), Millett, using Robert Stoller’s statement, differentiates the term
“sex” from “gender”. She explains that sex is biologically determined, while gender is socially
constructed. However, a patriarchal society uses the difference between sex and gender to create an environment where it is possible for men to dominate women based on sex. This leads
to the thought that sex is actually political—in terms of a power relation where one group
(male) subjugates the other (female).
Meanwhile, when discussing memory, Schacter (1996), in his book Searching for Memory:
The Brain, the Mind, and the Past, states that memory is a “fragile power”. Memory is
considered to be powerful because it is able to influence people greatly. He explains that “the
past shapes the present” (p. 7) in terms that our memory—our accumulated experiences in the
past—is able to influence our present and future. Schacter then states that the elderly members of the society use this influential quality of memory to internalise certain knowledge—
including the gender-oppressive social construction—into the minds of its younger members
through storytelling: “In many societies, the primary function of elderly adults is to pass on
significant personal and cultural lore to younger members of the group—to tell stories about
their own experiences and about the traditions and momentous events of the society” (1996:
300). This, consequently, leads to the regeneration and reinforcement of gender-oppressive
social constructions. Memory facilitates the gender-oppressive social constructions to operate not only in the public sphere (in society) but also in the private domain—in the mind of
each member of the society.
However, Schacter explains that memory is also “fragile” (1996: 7)—in terms that it can
be modified easily. Memory is built through a construction process, and any deviations in
the construction may result in the change of memory. Anderson and Levy (2009) explain
that people usually see this vulnerability of memory as “a human frailty to be overcome”
(p. 189). Nevertheless, they also state that this vulnerability may instead be useful to us. They
explain that forgetting, as an example of memory’s vulnerability, may actually help us to cope
with our negative experiences. By forgetting something, we sometimes prevent ourselves from
being exposed to the disadvantageous side effects of a certain negative experience. Schudson
(1995) states that this is possible to happen because our memory as a human is “selective”.
Therefore, we naturally select memories that are needed for our survival and repress—or even
omit—the ones that are dangerous for our mental health. Schudson (1995) also describes
that these two processes happen at the same time: “Whenever we selectively retrieve some
memories in response to a particular cue, but not others, inhibition of the non-retrieved
information occurs” (p. 360). The increased remembrance of certain memories will reduce
the appearance of other unwanted memories. Accordingly, this process may help us balance
and protect our mental condition. As a whole, what we previously think as the vulnerability
of memory can thus be seen as an advantageous flexibility. This study will then make use of
the dualism of memory as a starting point to analyse the memory of the female protagonist.
1.1 Memory as a means of internalising gender-oppressive social constructions
It has been mentioned in the previous part of this study that Mei Kwei, the female protagonist, falls victim to the oppressive male characters in the novel. Nevertheless, Mei Kwei is
unable to rebel against the oppression as she is confined by her personal memories, which
are influenced by the concept of male domination. These memories work implicitly and
cause her to submit to the male characters’ oppression. These memories can be divided into
two types: the stories told by the other female characters (Ah Oon Soh/Mei Kwei’s mother,
Second Grandmother/Mei Kwei’s grandmother, Sister St. Elizabeth/Mei Kwei’s teacher at
school) and her personal life experiences. The concept of male domination itself can be seen
more clearly when it is manifested in the rules correlated with women’s status and body. The
following table lists the memories that internalise the gender-oppressive social constructions.
Mei Kwei’s memories prevent her from rebelling against the gender oppression. The role of
these memories can be seen through Mei Kwei’s interactions with the male characters when
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Table 1.
Memories related to women’s status and body.
Memories related to women’s status
Memories related to women’s body
The story of Mei Kwei’s older sister.
The story of the Second
Grandmother’s lotus feet.
The story of an impure bride
caged in a pigsty.
The story of St. Agatha.
The story of Mei Kwei’s adoption.
Mei Kwei’s experience of being discriminated
by her father.
Mei Kwei’s experience of being expelled
forcefully from school by her father.
Mei Kwei’s experience of being slapped by
her father for opposing Big Older Brother.
Table 2.
Mei Kwei’s interaction with Uncle
Big Gun.
Mei Kwei’s interaction with Big
Older Brother.
The male character’s gender oppression.
Male characters
Manifestations of the gender oppression
Big Older Brother
Stalking Mei Kwei outside the bathroom.
Sexually abusing Mei Kwei when they were sleeping
together with their mother on the same bed.
Treating Mei Kwei as a sexual object.
Using Mei Kwei as a property to be flaunted to his
rival Old Tang.
Sexually abusing Mei Kwei.
Trying to mark Mei Kwei symbolically as his property
by giving her a jade bracelet.
Treating Mei Kwei as a sexual object.
Old Yoong
Austin Tong
she has grown up: Big Older Brother (Mei Kwei’s older brother), Old Yoong (Mei Kwei’s
ex-fiancé to whom Mei Kwei becomes a mistress at the end of the story), and Austin Tong
(Mei Kwei’s husband). The male characters put Mei Kwei under their dominance, but Mei
Kwei is unable to oppose their subjugation. The various manifestations of the gender oppression are listed in the following table.
The story of Second Grandmother’s lotus feet and its correlation with Old Yoong’s acquisition is chosen to show how one’s personal memory can serve as a means of internalising
gender-oppressive social constructions.
In the novel, the Second Grandmother is portrayed as having tiny lotus feet that are
claimed to be able to make her husband happy and satisfy him sexually. The lotus feet also
enable the Second Grandmother to become the favourite among her husband’s four wives. In
this context, the lotus feet can be seen as symbolising women’s position in the society. First,
just like tiny lotus feet, women are seen as small, insignificant, and inferior. Second, the lotus
flower symbolises purity in the Chinese culture (Qu, 2010), as women are expected to be virgin even if they are considered as men’s sexual objects. Women who possess lotus feet are thus
seen as having the necessary qualities to please men. This leads to the thought that women
are positioned as inferior beings whose only function is to serve men.
The novel then indicates that Mei Kwei knows about the Second Grandmother’s story, even
though it does not identify the person who tells this story to Mei Kwei. This story later influences Mei Kwei when she must face the gender oppression from Old Yoong—an old, rich man
from Penang who becomes Mei Kwei’s fiancé. In one part of the novel, Old Yoong gave Mei
Kwei a very expensive jade bangle in an attempt to mark her symbolically as his property. Even
though the jade bangle is too small for Mei Kwei’s wrist, Old Yoong refuses to change it with
a larger but cheaper one. Being forced to wear small jade bangle, Mei Kwei at first sees it as
an “invading”, “hurting”, and “hard gift” (Lim, 1998: 133)—showing that Mei Kwei sees it as
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a form of oppression. However, after she remembers the story of the Second Grandmother’s
lotus feet, she unconsciously submits to Old Yoong’s oppression—which can be seen in the
novel when her wrist finally gives up to the pressure coming from the jade bangle: “…the bones
[in Mei Kwei’s hand], finally reduced to a shivering helplessness, gave in at last” (Lim, 1998:
133). Mei Kwei still considers Old Yoong’s action as an “assault” or an “onslaught” (Lim, 1998,
p. 133), but she no longer struggles against it as she previously does. This indicates that the
memory of the Second Grandmother’s lotus feet has influenced Mei Kwei and prevented her
from rebelling against Old Yoong’s oppression. The memory about the Second Grandmother’s
lotus feet taught Mei Kwei that women should be inferior and submissive to men, and this
knowledge is what forces Mei Kwei to submit unconsciously to Old Yoong’s subjugation. This
pattern can be found repeatedly in the text and it indicates that Mei Kwei’s personal memory
has become a means of internalising gender-oppressive social constructions into her mind.
1.2
Memory as a defence strategy against gender oppression
Living in a patriarchal community, Mei Kwei has been described as unable to rebel against
gender oppression. As a result, Mei Kwei does not have any choice but to make an effort to
cope with it by selecting certain positive memories that enable her to survive under the pressure. These memories are listed in the following table.
Mei Kwei’s memory of her sexual intercourse with Father Martin is an example of how
memory can be used as a defence strategy against gender oppression.
This sexual intercourse happens near the end of the novel when Mei Kwei has resided in
Singapore. After being accused of cheating with Father Martin by her husband Austin Tong,
Mei Kwei leaves Luping and works as a cabaret girl in Singapore. Old Yoong, hearing the
news about Mei Kwei’s staying in Singapore, offers her to be his mistress. In need of financial
support to bring up her children, Mei Kwei finally agrees to Old Yoong’s offer. A few years
later, Father Martin—who was previously forced to go back to his homeland because of the
scandal—goes to Singapore on his own initiative to look for Mei Kwei. They end up having
a sexual intercourse as an expression of love to each other, even though they know they still
cannot be together. Mei Kwei has to go back to Old Yoong as he has already promised her
the financial support and protection for her children in exchange of her being his mistress,
and Father Martin has to continue his service in Vietnam.
The previous discussion has shown that Mei Kwei lives in a Chinese community where the
concept of male domination prevails. This concept results in the emergence of rules that tend
to discriminate women, one of which is related to virginity. In the patriarchal Chinese community, women are expected to give their virginity only to their husbands, and violation to
this rule will result in their being positioned as worthless animals. However, this rule does not
apply to men. This means that the society views virginity as women’s gift to their husbands.
Mei Kwei contradicts this rule by having a sexual intercourse with Father Martin. When
the event takes place, Father Martin is still a virgin (considering his position as a pastor that
has to lead a celibate life), while Mei Kwei is not. Mei Kwei’s virginity is said to be “all gone
and squandered” (Lim, 1998: 327); she has been married and has other sexual relations with
her ex-fiancé Old Yoong and some other men when she works in a cabaret. In this context,
virginity is Father Martin’s gift for Mei Kwei—a man’s gift for a woman. Mei Kwei’s sexual
intercourse with Father Martin can therefore be considered as an event that breaks the concept of male domination—a memory worthy enough to be selected.
The memory itself is selected as a defence strategy against Old Yoong’s oppression. When
the sexual intercourse happens, Mei Kwei is practically under Old Yoong’s dominance as she
is still positioned as his mistress. Living under Old Yoong’s dominance means living under his
gender oppression throughout her life. This realisation causes Mei Kwei to consciously create
and select a valuable memory as a defence strategy. The novel explains that the memory of
her sexual intercourse with Father Martin “would give a sublime rhythm to her life” (Lim,
1998: 327), which means that remembering the memory will strengthen and enable Mei Kwei
to survive under Old Yoong’s oppression. This indicates that memories can function as a
defence strategy against gender oppression.
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Table 3.
Memory used as a defence strategy against gender oppression.
Characters
Memory used as a defence strategy
Mei Kwei’s father
Memory of a coin from her father.
Memory of two kind foreigners (a Japanese
soldier named Sato-san and an Indian
worker).
Memory of Big Older Brother’s kindness in
their childhood.
Memory of Father Martin’s white handkerchief.
Memory of a photo of Big Older Brother and
Mei Kwei in their childhood.
Memory of God King and Moon Maiden
(the male and female protagonist in a Chinese
opera Mei Kwei watches).
Memory of Mei Kwei’s sexual intercourse
with Father Martin.
Memory of the First Month Celebration
clothes (representing two events: First Month
Celebration and Mei Kwei’s adoption).
Big Older Brother
Old Yoong
Austin Tong
1.3
Memory as a form of female subjectivity
The analysis in the previous parts of this study has shown that Mei Kwei’s memories always
consist of two parts: the negative and positive memories. The negative memories internalise
gender-oppressive social constructions into her mind and thus prevent her from rebelling
against the male characters’ gender oppression, while the positive memories help her survive
under the oppression. Like the two sides of a coin, these memories continuously take turns
in influencing and shaping Mei Kwei’s life. Nevertheless, as an individual, Mei Kwei always
chooses to remember the positive memories and repress the negative ones. This indicates
that Mei Kwei positions herself as a subject who has the right and power to choose what is
good for herself in spite of everything that is thrown her way—thus performing her subjectivity as a woman. In addition, Mei Kwei’s conscious choice of using personal memories as
a defence strategy against gender oppression shows that memory can be seen as a form of
female subjectivity.
2
CONCLUSION
The study shows that the female protagonist’s memories have two roles in relation to the gender oppression she experiences. First, Mei Kwei’s memories function as a means of internalising gender-oppressive social constructions into her mind. Through stories told by the other
female characters and Mei Kwei’s personal experiences, the concept of male domination is
internalised and reinforced into her mind. Accordingly, these memories prevent her from getting out of the oppressive treatment of the male characters when she has grown up. Second,
Mei Kwei’s memories function as a defence strategy against gender oppression. By selecting
the positive memories and at the same time repressing the negative ones, Mei Kwei is able to
adapt and survive under the male characters’ dominance.
Through these contradictory roles of memories, Lim as the author shows that memory
is a sort of battlefield where two opposing forces meet: one is the gender-oppressive social
constructions, and the other is the women’s resistance against gender oppression, which can
actually be seen as the manifestations of the aforementioned concept of male domination.
On one hand, Lim shows that the now-established patriarchal system develops from something as simple and natural as memory. On the other hand, Lim also tries to raise the readers’
awareness that women’s resistance might start from the same thing: memory. Meanwhile, Mei
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Kwei’s decision to select positive memories and repress negative ones reflects how a woman
might position herself as a subject that has the power and the right to choose for herself. This
way, memory can also be seen as a form of female subjectivity.
REFERENCES
Anderson, M. C. & Levy, B. J. (2009) Suppressing unwanted memories. Association for Psychological
Science. [Online] 18(4), 189–194. Available from: http://memorycontrol.net/AndersonLevy09.pdf.
Lim, C. (1998). The Teardrop Story Woman. London: Orion.
Literature of Singapore (2016) Focus Singapore. [Online] Available from: http://www.focussingapore.
com/information-singapore/literature/.
Millett, K. (1970) Sexual Politics. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Patke, R. S. & Holden, P. (2010) The Routledge Concise History of Southeast Asian Writing in English.
New York, NY: Routledge.
Qu, R. (2010) The symbolic meaning of lotus flowers in Chinese culture. China Culture. [Online] Available
from: http://www.chinaculture.org/chineseway/2010-07/23/content_386723_4.htm.
Schacter, D. L. (1996) Searching for memory: The brain, the mind, and the past. New York, NY: Basic
Books.
Schudson, M. (1995) Dynamics of distortion in collective memory. In: D.L. Schacter (Ed.), Memory
distortion: How minds, brains, and societies reconstruct the past. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press. pp. 346–364.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Women and corruption in Okky Madasari’s 86 and
Anggie D. Widowati’s Laras: A feminist study
A. Akun
Department of English Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia
M. Budiman
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The aim of this study was to criticise the representation of women in two
Indonesian women’s novels about corruption by comparing the corruption behavioural construct of female characters during the Indonesian reformation era. In particular, it reveals
how the relationship between female characters and corruption habitus is built through the
narration, irony, metaphor, character and characterisation in both stories. Furthermore,
the study aims at interrogating the text to reveal the extent to which the female authors
are trapped in strengthening the biased male-dominating ideology by exposing the texts’
absences, omissions and silences, as well as the story parts and social practices unspoken or
thought of as being natural. The research method used was Pierre Macherey’s text interrogation to expose the unspoken truth of the texts. Furthermore, Susan Faludi’s backlash theory
and Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus and social arena were used. The result of the study shows that
although the two Indonesian female authors while writing about corruption appear to represent women in seemingly dominating roles, they still cannot escape the patriarchal ideological
trap as revealed by their ironic marginalisation of women as done by many writers.
1
INTRODUCTION
‘There is a common sense in our society to properly assume that behind the corrupt men
(husbands) there are greedy and demanding wives…just inversely true as behind the husbands’ career success, there are great wives’ (www.jurnalperempuan.org/bias-gender-danperilaku-korup.html). The seemingly influential position of women actually shows that they
have socially been constructed as never being equal to men, either in good deeds or in bad
ones. More specifically, women have disadvantageously been justified as men’s reason or barrier for corruption as elaborated in Indonesian novels from the 1940s to the 1980s. Mariam,
the first wife of the protagonist Bakir who fights corruption to the bitter end, and Sutijah,
the kept woman who causes Bakir’s corruption in Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s novel Korupsi
(Corruption, 1954) are examples of female characters in this category, just as Fatma, Dahlia
and Hasnah in Mochtar Lubis’ Senja di Jakarta (Twilight in Jakarta, 1970). Throughout the
development of the Indonesian literature, there have been very few works discussing women
corruption despite the massive corruption practices. The research on women and corruption
is also very rare (Sarjono, 2012, p. 2). Thus, this topic is still challenging to be elaborated to
see how women are represented and positioned in the authors’ attempt to resent women’s
involvement in corruption cases.
Furthermore, men’s involvement in corruption is well tolerated and broadly unquestioned
as if it is men’s habitus and arena. However, when women commit corruption, they are
exposed not only in terms of their crime, but also in terms of their womanhood, female
and feminine identity. This trend can be traced in the recent corruption cases committed by
women as critically discussed by Mariana Amiruddin (2012) in her article “Dari Payudara
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Melinda Dee, Rambut Ungu Miranda Goeltom, Hingga Tas ‘Hermes’ dan Kerudung
‘Louis Vuitton’ Nunun” (From Melinda Dee’s Breasts, Miranda Gultom’s purple hair to
Nunun’s Hermes Bag and Louis Vuitton Veil). She has concluded that there is an indication
of gender bias when the media exposes female corruptors because the coverage of female
corruptors has become a separate profile in news about their private life and lifestyle, which
is not the case for male corruptors. For example, Sjoberg and Gentry, quoting Wight and
Myers, have emphasised this point, ‘when a woman commits an act of criminal violence,
her sex is the lens through which all of her actions are seen and understood’ (2007, p. 29).
This thought has reduced and degraded women not only for their crime but also in the way
they are discussed, ‘…women who are violent are highlighted, exploited, and fetishized…
discussions of women’s violence debase women and reduce them to their sexuality’ (p. 46).
Another research on corruption and women is Mashuri’s Goda dan Lupa: Wajah Korupsi
dalam Novel Indonesia (Temptation and Forgetting: Corruption’s Face in Indonesian Novels), which elaborates the triadic relation of wealth–power–women as the root of corruption
(Sarjono, 2012, p. 25).
This study aims to criticise the representation of women in two Indonesian women’s novels
about corruption by comparing the corruption behavioural construct of female characters
during the Indonesian reformation era. 86 is a novel by Okky Madasari, a former journalist.
It is about a young woman named Arimbi, a suburban girl and a university graduate from
Central Java, who is directly employed as a civil servant typist in the corrupt district court
in Jakarta under Bu Danti, a senior and corrupt court registrar. After four years of naivety,
she finally joins the others (judges, attorneys, lawyers) in the banal corruption practice in the
court. Meanwhile, Laras is a novel by Anggie D. Widowati, also formerly a journalist. The
story centres on the female protagonist Laras who has an ambition to take revenge on her
irresponsible biological father because he left Laras’ mother during her pregnancy after a love
affair and refused to accept Laras due to her being an unwanted child. Laras consciously takes
revenge by becoming a mistress of Handoko, the finance minister, to gain material wealth,
pleasure and status.
This study aims to reveal how the relationship between female characters and corruption
habitus is built through the narration, irony, metaphor, character and characterisation in
both stories. Furthermore, the study interrogates the text to reveal the extent to which the
female authors are ironically trapped in strengthening the biased male-dominated ideology
by disclosing the texts’ absences, omissions and silences, as well as the story parts and social
practices unspoken or thought of as being natural.
2
METHOD
This is a qualitative study that used Macherey’s text interrogation to expose the promised
truth (ideological project), the revealed truth (realisation) and the unconscious (unspoken
truth) of the texts.
3
3.1
RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
The unspoken and feminist backlash
Macherey believed that the silence in the text speaks more about something that the author
‘cannot’ speak of, ‘…to know what the writer is saying, it is not enough to let him speak,
for his speech is hollow and can never be completed at its own level…in its every particle,
the work manifests, uncovers, what it cannot say. This silence gives it life…for in order to
say anything, there are other things which must not be said…to reach utterance, all speech
envelops itself in the unspoken…Speech eventually has nothing more to tell us: we investigate
the silence, for it is the silence that is doing the speaking’ (2006, pp. 93–96). The power of the
silence and unspoken has given the possibility to a more productive feminist reading of a text
because the ideological determinations can be revealed more through ‘the silences, gaps and
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contradictions of the text’ (Moi, 1995, p. 94) compared to its explicit statements. Eagleton
clarified further the role of the silence and unspoken in relation to the disguise of ideology of
the text and how an author is unconsciously forced to reveal a certain ideology:
‘It is in the significant silences of a text, in its gaps and absences that the presence of ideology can be most positively felt. It is these silences which the critic must “speak”. The text is, as
it were, ideologically forbidden to say certain things; in trying to tell the truth in his own way,
for example, the author finds himself forced to reveal the limits of the ideology within which
he writes. He is forced to tell its gaps and silences, what it is unable to articulate. Because a
text contains these gaps and silences, it is always incomplete. Far from constituting a rounded,
coherent whole, it displays a conflict and contradiction of meaning; and the significance of
the work lies in the difference rather than unity between these meanings…’ (Moi, 1995, p. 94).
There is no complete text, and ideology can be exposed through the study of silences and
contradictions in the text.
Feminists find this way of uncovering ideology fruitful because most ideologies work
beyond the silences and unconsciousness, and this gives the critics space to study the (contradictory) textual construct more comprehensively and therefore ‘enable the critic to link to a
specific historical context in which a whole set of different structures (ideological, economic,
social, political) intersect to produce precisely those textual structures. Thus, the author’s personal situation and intentions can become no more than one of the many conflicting strands
that make up the contradictory construct we call the text’ (p. 94).
Overall, Macherey’s method of analysis takes three instances: the ideological project (the
‘truth’ promised), the realisation (the ‘truth’ revealed) and the unconscious of the text (the
return of the repressed historical ‘truth’) as the significant unspoken ideology (Storey, 2009,
p. 76).
Faludi’s backlash concept tries to critically make all aware of the fact that women are
silently and ideologically blamed for their own unhappiness due to their own feminist struggles for equality. Women are made worried or scared that the freedom they have achieved
enslaves them so that they seem to be convinced and constructed through discourses that
their worst enemy is women themselves (not men) (Faludi, 2006, p. 2). Moreover, backlash
works uncontrollably and unrealised among everyday dynamics, where the enemy can ironically be somebody calling herself feminist, as Faludi (2006, p. 13) states, ‘The backlash is
not a conspiracy, with a council dispatching agents from some central control room, nor
are the people who serve its ends often aware of their role; some even consider themselves
feminists’. The beauty myth as proposed by Naomi Wolf is also part of the backlash (beauty
backlash) where women are psychologically terrorised through the play of a woman’s image
as naturally imperfect—causing fear, lack of confidence and embarrassment and labelled
as fat or ugly feminazis—without having the idealised beauty promoted by the media and
beauty industry (Wolf, 2012, pp. 2–3). To reach an awareness of this disadvantaged position,
the study of the silences or unspoken is very crucial as it provides insight into the infiltrating
ideology of the backlash.
Furthermore, to understand the banal practice of corruption and its connection to women,
Bourdieu’s habitus theory is needed. Bourdieu formally defined habitus as:
“the system of ‘durable transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed
to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes
without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the
operations necessary in order to attain them. Objectively ‘regulated’ and ‘regular’
without being in any way the product of obedience to rules, they can be collectively
orchestrated without being the product of the organizing action of a conductor…
The habitus is sometimes described as a ‘feel for the game’…The habitus is the result
of a long process of inculcation, beginning in early childhood, which becomes a
‘second sense’ or a second nature” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 5).
The social arena is the site where this habitus works well just as a field where any game is
played. The habitus thus functions in two ways: as a structured structure and a structuring
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structure. The habitus requires no conscious obedience to rules and is practised naturally by
relying on improvisation in the social arena, where the game is collectively played or orchestrated even without a leader or conductor.
3.2
Social arena and corruption habitus
The two novels represent women’s involvement in corruption habitus in different social arenas. Laras pictures the protagonist Laras in the kept woman social arena, while 86 deals
with the protagonist Arimbi in the district court arena. Laras depicts the main character as
knowing her potentials and position as well as being smart, active and independent from the
first-person singular point of view. Meanwhile, 86 pictures a woman as more independent
and dominating than men from the third-person point of view. Both female protagonists
enter the social arena where corruption has become a common practice. Laras consciously
plunges herself into the corrupt arena to achieve her personal ambitions, while Arimbi needs
four years of naive work before drifting into and finally accepting the corruption practices.
3.3
The banality of corruption habitus
The banality of corruption habitus is clearly seen through the presentation of no characters
refusing the practice in social arenas. The metaphoric jargon 86 (meaning ‘we all know’) itself
shows this intensity of corruption. Expressions of calling corruption results as ‘blessing’, ‘prosperity’, ‘bonus’ and so on indicate that the crime has been accepted as non-criminal income,
even seemingly blessed by God. The use of these metaphors has even ironically veiled common
place corruption practices from outsiders instead of uncovering everything clearly as assumed
to be the real function of metaphor. Other metaphors such as the ‘sand house’ and ‘instant
noodles’ all refer to an instant way of achieving materialistic dreams through corruption.
3.4
The unspoken irony of women’s representation
Despite the fact that both stories are written by women—to some extent criticising women’s
marginalisation as well—it is revealed through the elaboration of the unspoken that the texts
constitute backlash in their attempt to put women in a dominating position, but unconsciously represent women the other way around. The following discussion of the irony in
these novels will clarify this standing.
There are five situations where women are represented as actually occupying marginalised
position although presenting them as dominating on the surface.
First, women are represented as ‘fighting’ against other women, blaming or downgrading one
another but never blaming or even forgetting that men are actually the real actors of the crime.
In Laras, Bu Ayu (Rahayu, the legal wife of the minister Handoko) is made collide with Laras
as well as the beautiful singer in terms of faithfulness, beauty and motivation, even though
Handoko is the one who is unfaithful and commits bigger corruption. Laras keeps mocking
Bu Ayu as lacking beauty or physical attraction and a source of her husband’s corruption to
fulfil her glamorous life style, thus justifying Handoko’s infidelity to find other kept women.
Laras—doing the same capitalising of her beauty and smartness—also mocks the beautiful
singer as having only physical beauty without intelligence and hard work. These women fight
one another to get the unfaithful and corrupt Handoko. This unspoken truth of the fight over
beauty or body capital actually roots from the men’s expectations or patriarchal ideology where
women are pushed back to their traditional role as faithful wives or mothers with the second
sex stigma, while men can be polygamous and have hegemonic control over women’s body.
In 86, the real corrupt actors are the lawyers, judges and attorneys. However, the story
plots a dominant and never-ending conflict between Bu Danti, the senior registrar who
arranges the corruption/bribery flow, and Arimbi, the clerk who takes small bribe in the flow
of big legal cases. Another example is the fight between the maid Tutik and her master’s wife
when she is caught having a purely sexual affair with the master. The male master is depicted
to slowly escape from the room as the two women harshly fight each other almost to death.
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There was no further story about the cheating master. This silence or omission proves the
author’s unconscious reluctance to blame men, as she is supposed to from a feminist perspective. The story’s plot turns to the conflict between Arimbi and Tutik instead, over their same
sex relationship with its entire dilemma seen indirectly as a social and moral punishment.
Second, still connected to the first, women are clearly punished in both stories for their
crime, but not men. In Laras, the unfaithful and corrupt men such as Handoko and Soedjatmiko (Laras’ biological father) are both unpunished. The plot omits their legal and social
punishment. Meanwhile, female characters, such as Laras and Bu Ayu, are socially and morally punished. Laras is psychologically and morally punished through her eventual moral conflicts after losing Hendra (her ex-boyfriend and idealised man who is murdered by Handoko).
Bu Ayu is plotted as severely stressed and finally insane at the end and is tragically considered
dead by her husband Handoko. Above all, women such as Bu Ayu and Laras have been
unconsciously constructed as the real reason for men’s corruption, implying that the true bad
characters and the blame go to women.
It is also ironic that, from the law reinforcement point of view, men committing huge
unlawful corruption crimes in 86 remain formally and socially unpunished. More ironically,
the female characters who know less about the law and commit only small crimes get caught
by KPK (Corruption Eradication Commission) and are formally and socially punished. Both
Arimbi and Bu Danti are formally punished, while none of the law enforcement men are
punished. The story even omits and is silent over their legal punishment.
Third, polygamy is silently tolerated and women are blamed or justified for men’s unfaithfulness. This is related to some extent to beauty myth promoted by the male culture. Women
overthrow other women when their male partners turn away to other women, especially when
beauty and physical attraction seem to be the main reason. However, it is more complicated
than that reason, although the bottom line is the same toleration of this unfaithfulness.
Handoko turns to Laras because Bu Ayu has no more bodily beauty attraction. This does
not seem to be the real reason for the turning away. The reason is disputed because Tutik’s
master turns to her not because she is beautiful or has physical attraction (she is big, muscular, dark, ugly and with low social status). It is more about men’s polygamous nature that has
socially been reinforced and tolerated as being natural. This toleration takes its hidden and
unspoken way through men’s and women’s ambiguous attitudes, for instance, toward faithfulness and virginity. This aspect of faithfulness and the moral values (burden) attached to
female virginity have disadvantaged women beyond silent acceptance. In Laras, this ambiguity
is clearly seen through the depiction of the wild and smart Laras, the naive commoner Widya
and the unfaithful yet idealised Hendra. In her revenge to life’s unfairness and poverty, Laras
has decided to plunge herself into the high-class lifestyle of the minister’s kept woman social
arena for material wealth and bodily pleasure. This decision is taken partly due to her lost relationship and virginity to Hendra. He left her without any clear reasons and with no news for
years. When she met the already married Hendra years later, she was in a dilemma whether or
not to accept Hendra who kept tempting her to reunite their relationship. Hendra wished so
much that Laras would give him another chance and accept him despite his married status to
the commoner Widya. The story cleverly avoids giving direct answers to the dilemma but offers
a resolution through Hendra’s and Widya’s death. However, the idea of letting Hendra to be
polygamous is still reinforced as a resolution of the story when Widya lets Hendra ‘have’ Laras
as his ideal wife through the religious use of a ‘dream’. This is not a common dream because
the author uses the religious dimension as the reaction to Laras’ seemingly supernatural experience. The use of arsy and the reading of the Surat Yasin together after the supernatural dream
strengthen the seriousness of the dream and thus the acceptance of this polygamy ideology.
The bottom line is Hendra is allowed to have both Laras’ wildness and Widya’s domestication.
Fourth, men’s double standards towards female virginity also justify their polygamous
nature, especially when women unconsciously use man-made language in describing the
experience. Both novels describe women’s sexual experience through man-made language.
Laras describes her wildness and sexuality concerning her virginity using the word merenggut (taken by force) by saying ‘Hendralah yang telah kupilih untuk merenggut kesucianku’
(Hendra is the one I chose to take my virginity, Laras, p. 27). The above statement seems
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to imply woman’s autonomy over her own body but using man-made language merenggut,
which assumes a man’s active control over a woman’s body because it implies that man has
the right and domination to take something with hard effort or by force. Moreover, both
Hendra and Laras seemed to regret the experience. Laras kept condemning herself and
showed self-hatred for her lost virginity and position as a kept woman. Meanwhile, Hendra
kept showing his guilt over his taking Laras’ virginity, by even saying that all men as husbands will expect a virgin wife (Laras, pp. 88–9). Laras is represented as labelling herself
with the ‘whore’ image when she is not virgin and playing the game in the kept woman
arena. The double standards are seen clearly in the fact that Hendra marries a commoner
Widya (who is not wild, is obedient, virgin and domesticated), but keeps wishing to have
Laras (who is wild and not a virgin).
In 86, Arimbi and Tutik also use man-made language such as ‘nyoblos’ (penetrate, 86,
p. 175) to describe a woman’s sexual experience even from a woman’s perspective. This penetration according to Dale Spender is man-made language showing domination and activeness, describing more physical activity rather than emotions, feelings or love.
Fifth, in corrupt social arenas, religion is used as merely a lifestyle or distinction in the
penance mechanism over the result of corruption. Laras wears her veil when she contributes to the orphanage foundation, Islamic boarding school or woman’s organisation. She
calls herself a ‘female Robin Hood’. Arimbi and Bu Danti also show similar attitudes in
presenting their religious identity. In their corrupt life, Arimbi uses, for instance, the expression Alhamdulillah and Bu Danti uses Natalan (Celebrating Christmas) as religious signifiers.
However, these are nothing more than a lifestyle because their corruption does not reflect
their religious practices.
4
CONCLUSION
Following Macherey’s three instances of the analysis method, this study concludes as follows. The ideological projection as the promised or spoken truth is the idea that women can
dominate and commit corruption like men. This was clear enough from both stories written
by two female authors where female characters were represented as the main and dominating
ones. This ideological projection was realized by the authors by featuring female protagonists
playing the game in different social arenas. They were depicted as having control over their
own life as well as their corruption habitus. However, the unconscious (or the unspoken
truth) of the texts revealed that the female authors were trapped in marginalising women
by representing them as the real criminals of corruption, depicting women fighting other
women, omitting punishment for male corruptors, tolerating men’s double standards towards
polygamy and women domestication and using man-made language to elaborate women’s
sexual experiences.
Although the two Indonesian female authors while writing about corruption appeared to
represent women in seemingly dominating roles, they still could not escape the backlash of
the patriarchal ideological trap as revealed by their ironic marginalisation of women as done
by many writers.
REFERENCES
Amiruddin, M. (2012) Dari payudara melinda dee, rambut ungu miranda goeltom, hingga tas ‘hermes’
dan kerudung ‘louis vuitton’ nunun (From Melinda Dee’s breasts, Miranda Gultom’s purple hair, to
Nunun’s Hermes bag and Louis Vuitton veil). Jurnal Perempuan, 72, 97–108.
Bias Gender dan Perilaku Korup. (n.d). Retrieved from: www.jurnalperempuan.org/bias-gender-danperilaku-korup. html [Accessed 1st June 2015].
Bourdieu, P. (1995) Sociology in Question. London, Sage Publications Inc.
Bourdieu, P. (2012) Pierre Bourdieu: Arena Produksi Kultural-Sebuah Kajian Sosiologi Budaya (Pierre
Bourdieu: Cultural Production Arena-A Cultural Sociology Study). Bantul, Kreasi Wacana.
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Eagleton, T. (1991) Ideology: An Introduction. London, Verso.
Faludi, S. (2006) Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women. New York, Three Rivers Press.
Habsari, S.U.H. & Haryono, A.T. (2014) Pemberitaan koruptor perempuan dalam perspektif gender
(News about female corruptors in gender perspective). Jurnal Dinamika Sains, 12 (28), 68–91.
Hellwig, T. (1994) In the Shadow of Change: Images of Women in Indonesian Literature. Berkeley, The
Regents of the University of California.
Hooks, B. (2000) Feminism is for Everybody. Cambridge, South End Press.
Lubis, M. (1970) Senja di Jakarta (Twilight in Jakarta). Jakarta, Badan Penerbit Indonesia Raya.
Macherey, P. (2006) A Theory of Literary Production. London, Routledge.
Mashuri. (2012) Goda dan Lupa: Wajah korupsi dalam novel Indonesia (Temptation and Forgetting:
Corruption’s Face in Indonesian Novels). Jurnal Kritik, 2, 25–49.
Moi, T. (1995) Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. London, Routledge.
Sarjono, A.R. (2012) Perkara korupsi dalam sastra Indonesia (Corruption in Indonesian literature).
Jurnal Kritik, 2, 2–9.
Spender, D. (1985) Man Made Language. New York, Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Storey, J. (2009) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Harlow, Pearson-Longman.
Toer, P.A. (1954) Korupsi (Corruption). Jakarta, Balai Pustaka.
Wolf, N. (2012) Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used against Women. New York, HarperCollins e-books.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Contesting representations in the gendered space of politics:
Hillary Clinton’s representations in Living History, A Woman
in Charge, and Her Way
D. Hapsarani & M. Budianta
Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, West Java, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The aim of this research is to show the contesting representations of Hillary
Clinton in her autobiography Living History (2003) and two biographies (2007): A Woman in
Charge by Carl Bernstein and Her Way by Jeff Gerth and Don van Natta. The results of the
analysis on Living History reveals that Hillary negotiates with the gendered writing convention of political autobiography and the double binds traps in building her image as a credible
and capable world leader. Meanwhile, the study on the two biographies brings to light the
consistent strategies to frame Hillary with gender stereotypes, double binds, as well as a negative and disturbing personality.
1
INTRODUCTION
The fact that political elections in the United States are deeply gendered has sparked a great
deal of research on women studies to figure out the reasons why it is so difficult to convince
the American people to vote for a woman’s leadership. Falk (2010) confirms her assumption
that the way media treated women candidates has not changed after a thorough study on the
nine presidential campaigns involving women candidates in the United States from 1872 up
to 2008. Waylen, et al. (2013) put politics both as practices and a study within a wider social
context in which gender plays a very determining role, and they are convinced that in order
to change the current, political science it should start to embrace gender perspective in their
study.
With all this mushrooming research on gender and politics at the background, gender,
once again, became a hot button issue in the 2016 political election as Hillary Clinton managed to win the presidential nomination from the Democratic Party. Josh Marshall (2016), a
respected political journalist and blogger, dubbed the election as “the ultimate gendered election,” while Bartash (2016) from The Market Watch predicted that the election will lead to
“the biggest battle of the sexes in American political history” since Hillary has to face Trump,
the embodiment of extreme masculinity. It is not surprising that Hillary is still experiencing
offensive onslaught as in the 2008 election.
Offensive onslaught and negative representations are not new for Hillary who has started
to become the target of attack ever since she assumed an active role in the administration
of her husband’s presidency back in 1993–2001. The following pictures display some negative stereotypes that are consistently and continuously attached to Hillary in the virtual
media in 2008 and 2016. Hillary has been portrayed as the embodiment of a threat to the
society.
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Figure 1. Negative stereotypes of Hillary Clinton found in 2008 and in 2016.
With negative representations in the media and strong association between presidency and
masculinity, Hillary is compelled to manoeuvre in this gendered space in representing herself
as a woman candidate for president. Following the campaign tradition, Hillary chose to
construct her self-representation by writing an autobiography, Living History, years before
her candidacy. Writing a political or campaign autobiography is problematic in itself as the
writing convention of the genre brings forth masculine characteristics. Long (1999) identifies four elements of masculinity in the writing convention of autobiography: a linear plot
which emphasizes success, a call or destiny in the public domain, a solitary hero displaying
independence and self reliance, and avoiding emotional exploration by repressing the emotional experiences. These elements reflect the gendered space of politics and political elections which is dominated by masculinity and masculine stereotyping references. Therefore, it
is interesting to see how Hillary makes use of references available in the gendered society to
convince the readers of her capabilities and leadership.
Another interesting phenomenon was the publication of two unauthorized biographies
on Hillary in 2007, six months prior to the election. A Woman in Charge was written by Carl
Bernstein, a Washington Post veteran journalist famous for his investigative report (with
Bob Woodward) on the Watergate scandal resulting in the resignation of President Richard
Nixon. Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton was written by Jeff
Gerth and Don Van Natta, two Pulitzer-Prize winning journalists from New York Times.
Considering the background of the writers and the publication of the biographies, it can be
assumed that the purpose of their publication was to challenge Hillary’s self-representations
in her autobiography. Both books relied and also commented on Hillary’s story in Living
History. This paper aims to show the contesting representations of Hillary Clinton and the
barricades that a woman presidential candidate has to break through to gain the voters’
confidence.
The strategy of representations in the three life narratives will be examined by investigating
the framing used in telling Hillary’s life story. Framing is “selecting and highlighting some
facets of events or issues and making connections among them so as to promote a particular
interpretation, evaluation, and/or solution” (Entman, 2004, p. 5). The practice of framing
commonly used in media studies is applicable in studying life narratives. Life itself has no
structure and no meaning. It is the writer who selects and highlights a particular aspect of the
subject’s life in order to unify the unrelated incidents and to interpret life experiences to make
them meaningful and to give a sense of purpose. Framing can be identified by examining key
words, metaphors, myths, concepts, symbols, visuals, ideas, and actions that are consistently
and repeatedly used within the text.
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This study uses a feminist framework to investigate Hillary’s strategies in navigating her
life story through the maze of gender stereotypes, gender bias, double binds, and double
standards to build her leadership image. At the same time, by analyzing the two biographies,
the study examines the strategies of the three biographers in re-establishing the conventional
gender stereotypes and gender bias and in reinforcing the use of double binds and double
standards in telling their story about Hillary.
2
LITERATURE REVIEW
Research on gender and politics has been growing abundantly in the U.S., as researchers and
scholars attempt to discover the barriers that prevent women from winning the presidential
election. The results of these studies indicated a progress. The earlier research confirmed the
negative effects of gender stereotypes on women candidates (Huddy and Terkildsen, 1993;
Kahn & Goldenberg, 1991), while the latest research found evidence showing that gender
stereotypes do not negatively affect the electability of women candidates, for there is a complex interaction involving several elements, among others the gender of the candidate, the candidate’s party affiliation, the gender of the voters, and the gendered perception of the political
party in nominating their candidates (Sullivan, 2007; Shaver, 2013; Dolan, 2013; Bauer, 2014;
Hayes and Lawless, 2015). Also large in number is the research on gender stereotypes in the
media aiming to reveal the extent of media bias against women candidates. Kahn’s analysis
of newspaper coverage of senatorial and gubernatorial candidates in the 1980s (Kahn, 1991)
shows gender bias in the media, as women candidates received less coverage and more negative coverage than their male counterparts. Though women candidates nowadays receive more
coverage than before, they are still defined by the media through their gender.
A great deal of research focuses on Hillary’s strategy in dealing with these barriers. In evaluating Hillary’s failure in the presidential election of 2008, Lawrence and Rose (2010) identify three interlocking variables to analyse female presidential candidates: gender stereotypes,
media routine, and candidate and her context. By evaluating Hillary’s campaign strategy in
navigating her path around and through the use of gender stereotypes, Lawrence and Rose
draw conclusions on factors to consider for future woman presidential candidate in developing her campaign strategy. This research covers an extensive range of campaign media
from campaign speeches, website, advertisement, to media coverage (blogs, newspapers, and
television stations). However, the research does not cover Hillary’s preliminary campaign
strategy using memoir or autobiography. Kaufner and Perry-Giles (2007), seeing a political
memoir as a campaign medium to build arguments for future office, analyse the contrasting
narrative style in Living History and Hard Choices and identify Hillary’s assumed political
identities to position herself as a political leader. One interesting phenomenon with Hillary’s
candidacy that has been overlooked by the previous research is the contestation of representations within the genres of life narratives. This paper will focus on the contestation between
Hillary’s self-representation and other representations that challenges her representations.
2.1 Hillary’s representation in Living History
Hillary’s autobiography, Living History, shows that Hillary gives careful thoughts on how to
present herself as a credible and capable world leader. In her strategy to evade the traps of
gender stereotypes, gender bias, double standard, and double bind, she uses the strong points
of both gender traits. She adopts some masculine traits to construct her representation as
a competent political leader, while at the same time she also tries to balance the masculine
qualities with selected feminine traits to soften her image without disrupting her leadership
image.
To position herself as a qualified political leader, she uses frames that are her success as the
embodiment of the national ethos, the self-made man, and thus positions herself as a true
American. Her claim that she is equal to other male political leaders in the American Dream
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can also be read as her statement on the myth that has hitherto rejected women from attaining the highest leadership position in the country.
The patriotism frame is more complicated for women, as heroic acts are perceived as masculine performance. Unfortunately for Hillary, patriotism has taken a centre stage in presidential campaigns since 1988 and has become more salient after 9/11 and the ensuing war against
terrorism. Hillary uses patriotism to frame her life during the Vietnam War period to justify
her opposing standpoint as an act of nationalistic posture. The frame allows her to affirm the
possibility of a woman who has no war experience to denote her patriotism by treating wars
as a discourse into which a woman can enter. A similar frame is used in addressing the most
controversial and embarrassing case, the Monica Lewinsky affair. Although Hillary shares
her private feelings toward the scandal, she justifies her decision to stick to her marriage by
framing it with her sense of patriotism and responsibility of a citizen to protect her country.
To strengthen her position as a strong political leader, Hillary consistently contrasts herself to women with traditional gender roles and builds an image that she is a non-conventional and progressive woman qualified to become a world leader and that she is the symbol
of social change itself. Nevertheless, despite her efforts to put herself at the same level as
male political leaders, she retains some feminine attributes to soften the masculine image. For
example, she highlights the positive warm and congenial image of her staff, the Hillaryland
which consists mainly of women and contrasts it with Bill Clinton’s competitive and individualistic presidential staff in the White House. This is an important strategy considering
the operation of the double binds against women in politics. If she appears too masculine,
she will be doomed as a threatening woman, whereas if she appears too feminine, she will be
perceived as weak and thus she will lose her leadership credibility.
2.2
Representation of Hillary Clinton in A Woman in Charge and Her Way
The study on the two biographies shows that both books use negative frames in telling
Hillary’s story. Hillary is represented as ambitious, manipulative, compromising, dishonest,
and dominating. These negative representations challenge Hillary’s self-representation in
Living History by undermining her credibility and integrity as a trustworthy leader. Along
with the negative qualities, the writers impart gender stereotypes and emphasize Hillary’s
dominant masculinity as she is portrayed as a dominating and aggressive woman.
However, although both books convey negative representations, they employ different
framing strategies. Bernstein uses the frames of evolution, hypermasculine leadership, and
narcissistic personality disorder, while Gerth and Van Natta use the frames of double standard, image making, and negative personality. With the frame of evolution, Bernstein portrays Hillary that looks positive on the outside as she is perceived of having the capability
to change from a transitional woman (a progressive woman who is still trapped within the
conventional values) into an independent female politician who has the courage to disconnect
her leadership from her husband’s leadership. However, behind the seemingly positive image,
Bernstein reveals that Hillary’s evolution is not the result of her hard work and independence,
but the fruit of her manipulative strategy and compromise in presenting herself as a faithful
traditional wife to draw people’s sympathy and thus gaining her popularity. This representation challenges Hillary’s self-representation as Berstein insists that Hillary’s senatorship
is an ascribed status, not an achieved status as portrayed by Hillary through the myth of
the American Dream. Bernstein also relates the frame of Hillary’s evolution with her moral
degradation and lack of integrity as he emphasizes more on how Hillary compromises her
idealism and moral values to attain her political standing.
Although Bernstein uses masculine traits as a frame to highlight Hillary’s personality, his
choice of masculine traits are different from the ones used by Hillary. While Hillary uses the
positive traits of masculinity to strengthen her leadership capability, Bernstein challenges
her self-representation by applying hypermasculinity traits as his frame. She is not only portrayed as an unruly woman, but also as an insatiable monster who is craving for power.
Another frame used by Bernstein is the frame of narcissistic behaviour indicated by
an inflated self-esteem, a sense of self-entitlement due to self aggrandizement, lack of
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empathy toward others, and difficulties to accept failure. To build the foundation of this
frame, Bernstein uses a different perception in telling Hillary’s childhood, specifically in relation to her father. By claiming that Hillary has fabricated her childhood story to conceal the
truth, Bernstein contests, denies, and invalidates Hillary’s version of story and questions, the
authenticity of Hillary’s self-representation, as well as her integrity. Based on this deconstruction, Bernstein builds up his frame of narcissism to operate “the madwoman in the
attic” metaphor. Thus, Hillary is claimed to be not only unreliable but also mentally unfit to
become the president.
Gerth and Van Natta use a different set of frames in their biography. They operate frames
that highlight the double-standard, image making, and negative personality starting from
the prologue. The double-standard frame is set up by their statement that “[f]or years,
Hillary has known that the standard for the first female president would be far higher than
that for a man. A woman president would have to be super strong” (Gerth and Van Natta,
2007 p. 8). This statement of double standard is normalized with the quotation from Charlotte Whitton, a Canadian politician (1963) which states that “[w]hatever women do, they
must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult” (Gerth
and Van Natta, 2007 p. 340). The last sentence strengthens the normalization of the double
standard by confirming that although it might not seem fair, the double standard is still
achievable for women. Gerth and Van Natta also include Eleanor Roosevelt’s answer in an
interview on the possibility of a woman to become a president. She mentioned the conditions a woman should have if she wants to be a president: her capacity and the people’s trust
in her integrity and ability. These criteria are used as the measuring rod to evaluate Hillary
and in the end justify their claim that Hillary has neither the capability nor the integrity and
ability.
To convince the readers that Hillary does not meet the criteria set by Eleanor, Hillary’s role
model, the writers operate the frame of image making and negative characters. The image
making frame sets Hillary as any ordinary politician who brushes up her image to conceal the
reality. To stretch it even further, Gerth and Van Natta represent Hillary as a politician who
does not know her true identity since she has been used to apply different types of personas
for different situations. Overall, Hillary is portrayed as an ambitious, dishonest, compromising, and manipulative politician who is driven with the desire to dominate.
Although the two biographies, A Woman in Charge and Her Way, employ different
frames, both of them construct counter representations to subvert Hillary’s self-representation in Living History. Both biographies essentially confirm and support the negative representations about Hillary in the media which can be classified as a symbolic
annihilation.
The research shows that gender inequality has placed Hillary in a less fortunate position
as the result of the complexity of the negotiations a woman should comply in constructing
her own political persona. Autobiography as one of the most effective media for political
campaign due to its ability to manipulate and influence the audience becomes problematic
when used by women presidential candidates. Although, in an autobiography, the writer has
the authority to construct the narration of her own life and experiences without any mediation, in reality the writer is bound to the convention of autobiography dominated by myths,
values, stereotypes, and characteristics associated with masculinity. Consequently, positioning becomes not only very important but also complex for women candidates in writing
their autobiography. They have to negotiate the convention of autobiographical writing and
gender stereotypes to avoid the trappings of the double binds. This complexity of gender
positioning is a form of suppression toward women that curbs them from entering politics
since they have to face greater, more complicated, and intimidating situations than male candidates. Despite the fact that people expect women candidates to have masculine characteristics, they are also expected to keep their femininity. If they appear too masculine, they will be
perceived as cold and threatening, while on the other hand, the traits of femininity pose a risk
to their leadership. In addition, if they choose to negotiate between masculine and feminine
traits, they will be judged as inconsistent, image making, and compromising (see Figure 2).
Whatever their choice is, the result is always negative.
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Figure 2. The double binds traps.
The adversity continues on. Once a female presidential candidate constructed her political
persona, it will then be scrutinized by the readers, which include the media. As indicated by
the two biographies on Hillary Clinton, reinterpretation that produces counter-representations
might occur in the form of a number of contesting representations.
The practices of repression is operated in doing the reinterpretation through the use of
particular frames, such as gender stereotypes (hypermasculinity, “the mad woman in the
attic” metaphor, the unruly woman), double standards (by using prominent women figures as
the justification), negative personality, and image making. All of the frames are used for the
same goal, which is to paralyze the character of the subject which can be classified as a form
of symbolic annihilation (Gerbner & Gross, 1976).
Considering that the representations in the two biographies are not far too different from
the ones circulating in the media prior and during the writing of the biographies, there are
two possible conclusions to draw. First, the biographies’ adoption of the frames that have
been constantly used by the media indicates the powerful influence of the prevailing frames
used to undermine women presidential candidates. Second, given that the three biographers
are political journalists, there is a possibility that they are part of the institution that builds
the news framing Hillary in the media. In that case, these political biographies are campaign
tools used to voice the resistance or rejection toward women presidential candidates.
3
CONCLUSION
Based on the narrative strategies used in the three life narratives, gender still dominates politics in America as well as the narration convention of life writing. The concepts of gender
roles, gender stereotypes, double standard, and double binds are being intensified in the writing of the political biographies of Hillary Clinton.
Lastly, the analysis reveals how gender asymmetry operates in the writing of campaign
auto/biography of women presidential candidates. The gendered narration convention in
autobiographical writing intensifies the complexity of positioning for women candidates.
Since women presidential candidates are still an anomaly and due to the domination of masculinity in politics and campaign autobiography, the existing concepts and mental representations within the convention have not included women candidates. As a result, women
candidates have to negotiate with the masculine concepts or mental representations while
calculating other consequences that might arise due to the implementation of double standards and double binds. The writing of campaign biographies with women candidates as the
subject contesting the self-representation constructed in the autobiography of the subject
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amplifies the challenges and complexity of the situation. It is undeniable that the complexity faced by Hillary Clinton cannot be separated from her liabilities; however, apart from
Hillary’s political baggage, the consistent use of gender stereotypes, double standards, and
double binds as the strategy to resist Hillary’s candidacy as president shows that politics is
still a gendered space.
The results of this research affirm the research on the consequences of gender stereotypes
conducted prior to the U.S. election of 2008. This research proves that gender stereotypes,
double standards, and double binds are still believed to be a powerful and influential strategy
to shape the way voters evaluate women presidential candidates. This research offers new
possibilities to see the dynamics of the gender issue in politics through the formation and the
contestation of representations in campaign auto/biographies. Since the gender issue does
not only affect female presidential candidates, but also male candidates, gendered perspective
research can also be applied to autobiographies written by male presidential candidates. Are
male candidates free from the gender issue or do they also have to play with gender stereotypes in representing themselves?
REFERENCES
Bartash, J. (2016) The 2016 election is shaping up to be the ultimate battle of the sexes. [Online] Available
from:
www.marketwatch.com/story/the-2016-election-is-shaping-up-to-be-ultimate-battle-of-thesexes [Accessed on 11th May].
Bauer, N. (2014) How partisans stereotype female candidates: Untangling the relationship between
partisanship, gender stereotypes, and support for female candidates. Presentation at the Visions in
Methodology Conference, 20–22nd May 2014 Hamilton, Canada, Mc Master University.
Duerst-Lahti, G., & Kelly, R. M. (1995) Gender power, leadership, and governance. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
Entman, R.M. (2004) Projections of power: Framing news, public opinion, and U.S foreign policy. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Falk, E. (2010) Women for President: Media Bias in Nine Campaigns. Chicago, University of Illinois.
Gerbner, G., & Gross, L. (1976) Living with television: The violence profile. Journal of Communication,
26 (2), 172–194.
Hayes, D., & Lawless, J.L. (2015) A Non-Gendered Lens? Media, Voters, and Female Candidates in
Contemporary Congressional Elections. Perspectives on Politics, 13 (1), 95–118.
Huddy, L., & Terkildsen, N. (1993) The Consequences of Gender Stereotypes for Women Candidates at
Different Levels and Types of Office. Political Research Quarterly, 46 (3), 503–525.
Kahn, K.F., & Goldenberg, E.N. (1991) Women candidates in the news: An examination of gender
differences in U.S. senate campaign coverage. Public Opinion Quarterly, 5 (2), 180–199.
Lawrence, R.G., & Rose, M. (2010) Hillary Clinton’s race for the white house: Gender politics and the
media on the campaign trail. Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Long, J. (1999) Telling women’s lives: Subjet, narrator, reader, text. New York & London, New York
University Press.
Marshall, J. (2016) The Trumpian Song of Sexual Violence. [Online] Available from: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-trumpian-song-of-gender-violence [Accessed on 24th May 2016].
Prentice, D.A., & Carranza, E. (2002).What women and men should be, are allowed to be and don’t
have to be: The content of prescriptive gender roles. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26 (4), 269–281.
Waylen, G., Celis, K., Kantola, J., & Weldon G.W.K.C.J.K.L. (2013) Gender and Politics: A Gendered
World and a Gendered Discipline. New York, Oxford University Press.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Construction of woman in the Sundanese magazine Manglè
(1958–2013): A corpus-based study of metalinguistic signs
S. Yuliawati & R.S. Hidayat
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This study examines the meaning of woman as constructed in the corpus
of the Sundanese magazine Manglè, published between 1958 and 2013. Using corpus-based
and Barthes’s semiotic approaches, the study focuses on the usage of five Sundanese nouns
denoting woman in the magazine, spanning four different eras: the Guided Democracy, the
New Order, the Transition to Democracy and the Reform Era. The study regards the nouns
as signs whose meanings are derived from Barthes’s model of metalanguage. It argues that
such meanings are the result of the extension of expression (E2) in the secondary system of
a semiological chain, which makes it possible to be analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively using corpus analysis. Therefore, the most or least frequently used signs and the
meaning they carried can be explored by investigating the diachronic frequency and semantic
preference of the nouns. This contributes to explaining the metalinguistic signs of women
and gender construction from different perspectives. This study reveals that diachronically,
the word wanoja was found to be the only sign used to denote women in Manglè with constantly increasing frequency. Moreover, it shows that women who were initially portrayed
as dependent with regard to their traditional roles were becoming increasingly portrayed as
independent in terms of their existence in the public sphere.
1
INTRODUCTION
Gender identity is the most important social category in people’s lives that is given at birth,
and thereafter, all social interactions are influenced by gender assignment (Weatherall &
Gallois, 2003: 487). Gender identity is socially constructed using different individuals, groups
and social institutions such as law, religion, education, cultural norms, beliefs, values and the
media, which in the modern age have played a substantial role in the way people see, perceive,
understand and construct gender (Ali & Khan, 2012: 343).
In the study of gender, language is one of the mechanisms to construe the notions of how
gender is constructed because language is the fundamental means through which meanings are
maintained, constructed, contested or resisted other meanings (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet,
2003). Two views related to language and gender that are prominently discussed are: (1) language is merely the reflection of society (language-as-mirror), so the social category based on
gender is reflected in the patterns of language use and (2) language contributes actively in creating gender division (language-as-reproductive) (Talbot, 2001: 14). In spite of continuous debate
on the two different views, it must be acknowledged that both of them can be regarded as a way
to see how gender is constructed through language. Furthermore, Talbot (2001) argued that the
most important task in studying the relationship between language and gender is to explore the
multifarious roles of language in creating and maintaining gender division in society.
One of the linguistic phenomena found in the Sundanese society that contributes to
the construction of women is the expression of parawan jomlo, a term typically used to
describe a woman who has passed the usual age for marriage. The term obviously causes
some discomfort to the woman, her parents or her family. Consequently, it is quite common
for Sundanese parents to have their daughters marry early rather than let their daughters
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to stay single (Edi, 1984). Moreover, the position of women—with respect to their marital
status—is aggravated even more by a Sundanese proverb kawin ayeuna, isuk pepegatan (‘it
is better to marry and then divorce, than to never get married at all’). This view is probably one of the causes why the divorce rates in some areas of West Java are higher than
anywhere else in Indonesia (Jones, Yahya & Tuti, 1994). The other linguistic phenomenon
found is in the mixed-gender personal binomials. On the one hand, women are often mentioned in the second position, such as in the phrases salaki jeung pamajikan and laki rabi
(‘husband and wife’). On the other hand, women are also frequently mentioned in the
first position, such as in the phrases of indung bapa, ema jeung bapa (‘mother and father’)
and nini aki (‘grandmother and grandfather’). These reveal that it is common to mention
women behind men when talking about women in relation to men; however, in relation to
family, women are positioned ahead of men. Motschenbacher (2013) found that positioning of men and women in relation to the order principle mostly carries a harmful discourse
about the normative positions and the roles of men and women in society. Consequently,
mixed-gender binomials create a type of structure in which gender power differentials,
gender binaries and gender differences have become firmly materialised. They, however,
should not be understood as natural, but rather as discursively and linguistically mediated
social constructions (Cameron, 1992).
Corpus linguistic that involves the analysis of large collections of computerised texts
(known as corpora) representing certain language uses could provide some insights into the
way gender is constructed by certain societies. By identifying the frequent linguistic patterns
derived from the large samples of texts, the construction of gender can be studied through
the combination of both qualitative and quantitative analyses. As argued in Baker (2005,
2010, 2014), language and gender studies in the past preferred to use qualitative analysis
and small-scale data. However, in recent years, there has been a shift towards larger sketches
of texts and combining the forms of qualitative and quantitative analyses. The objective
of this study was to investigate the construction of woman diachronically, namely period 1
(the era of Guided Democracy, 1958–1965), period 2 (the New Order, 1966–1998), period
3 (the Transition to Democracy, 1999–2003) and period 4 (the Reform Era, 2004–2013), in
the corpus of Manglè, a magazine published in Sundanese language, based on the usage of
five nouns denoting women (geureuha, mojang, pamajikan, wanita and wanoja) using corpus
linguistic and Barthes’s semiotic approaches. By integrating the two approaches, a deeper
understanding about the construction of woman in Manglè can be explored.
2
METHODOLOGY
A corpus from collection of texts taken from Manglè published between 1958 and 2013 was
constructed for this study. The corpus was built from a sample of 92 editions of the magazine
using the calculator size sampling1. Then, to determine the total number of words used to
construct the corpus from period 1 to period 4, the technique of proportional systematic random sampling was employed. The size of the Manglè corpus was 2,940,537 words, consisting
of 78,081 words from the corpus of period 1; 1,897,777 words from the corpus of period 2;
324,614 words from the corpus of period 3 and 641,065 words from the corpus of period 4.
To study the construction of woman in the corpus of Manglè, we use a mixed-method
design in which quantitative and qualitative approaches are combined to provide a more
complete understanding of the research topic than either approach alone (Creswell, 2014).
The author uses three procedures of the corpus analysis to investigate the Sundanese nouns
denoting women, that is, a frequency analysis, a collocation analysis to examine the strength
of collocations statistically and the concordance contextual analysis to determine the semantic categories. To measure the strength of collocations, the study uses MI score of 3.00 or
higher and the minimum frequency of 5, generated by the corpus software, WordSmith Tools
6.0. Subsequently, the corpus analysis results are used as a basis to interpret the way women
1. Available in http://www.surveysystem.com.
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are mentioned in Manglè using Barthes’s semiotic approach, specifically through the metalanguage process.
From the perspective of Barthes’s semiotic approach, the phenomenon shows that the
society tends to regard something that are natural as the result of the process of signification2, and derived from the processes of metalanguage3 – the extension of Expression/E2
– and connotation4 – the extension of Content/C2. In other words, the signification moves
in two directions: either towards the metalinguistic process as indicated by the synonymic
phenomenon particularly in the case of verbal signs or towards the connotative process as
indicated by the various concepts referring to the same form. Grounded on that theory,
this study argues that in revealing the construction of women based on the words used
to denote women in the Manglè corpus implies interpreting the signification of women
through verbal signs. The five nouns denoting women, being the focus of the analysis,
are regarded as the result of the metalinguistic process of the signification (the extension
of E2). Therefore, the construction of women here is specifically interpreted through that
process.
3
ANALYSIS
On the basis of the list of word frequency of the Manglè corpus generated by WordSmith
Tools 6.0., the frequencies of nouns denoting women from period 1 to period 4 could be
identified. Table 1 presents a normalised frequency of the nouns in words per million found
in every period that shows the diachronic change of word use frequency. There were several findings from the frequency analysis that may contribute quantitatively to the study of
women’s constructions in Manglè.
One of the important findings to note about the nouns in the Manglè corpus is the fact that
while the frequency in the usage of geureuha, mojang, pamajikan and wanita was gradually
decreasing from period 1 to period 4, wanoja was the only noun whose frequency was constantly increasing. The usage of wanoja began to rise significantly in Manglè during period 2
(the New Order, 1966–1998), whose occurrence had been found to increase by eightfold since
period 1 (the era of Guided Democracy, 1958–1965).
In the first period, the noun wanoja was found only 13 times in a million words, but in
the second period, it was found 111 times in a million words. In addition, observing the
frequency of wanoja from period 1 to period 4, the considerable increase in frequency of the
word could be identified. The usage of the word increased by 23-folds: from 13 words/million in the Guided Democracy period to 301 words/million in the Reform Era, resulting in
a frequency of occurrence that was nearly the same as the occurrence of the most frequent
noun, that is, pamajikan (321 words/million). Considering the frequencies of the other four
nouns that continue to decline diachronically, it can be concluded that wanoja is the only
noun that gained popularity to use for denoting women in Manglè – and its rise began in the
New Order period (1966–1998).
2. Barthes defined a sign as a system that consists of an expression (E) in relation (R) to content (C)
and identified two orders of signification: the primary system (E1 R1 C1) and the secondary system
(E2 R2 C2). The secondary system can be resulted from the extension of expression (E2) known as the
process of metalanguage or from the extension of content (C2) known as the process of connotation
(Nöth, 1995).
3. In the metalinguistic process, users of a sign extend the expression in the secondary system of the
semiological chain, so there are more than one expressions referring to the same content. For example, there are several words in Indonesian referring to a place for prisoners, such as penjara, lembaga
pemasyarakatan, hotel prodeo and kurungan (Benny, 2014).
4. In the connotation process, users of a sign extend the content in the secondary system of the semiological chain, so there is more than one concept used to signify an expression. For example, every word
used as a sign to signify a place for prisoners has a specific meaning in the case of connotation, such as
the specific meaning of penjara is a place to punish criminals, while lembaga pemasyarakatan is a place
to turn criminals into good citizens (Benny, 2014).
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Table 1.
Frequency of the word usage denoting woman in words per million.
Nouns
Period 1
Period 2
Period 3
Period 4
Geureuha
Mojang
Pamajikan
Wanita
Wanoja
Corpus size
156
545
584
298
13
78,081 words
8
244
524
146
111
1,897,777 words
6
166
379
105
179
324,614 words
3
164
321
59
301
641,065 words
Another interesting finding from the Manglè corpus is the usage of pamajikan. The usage
of pamajikan demonstrates the opposite phenomenon from the usage of wanoja. Although
pamajikan was the most frequent word encountered amongst all the five words in all periods,
its usage continued to decrease over time. In fact, in the Reform Era (2004–2013), the occurrence of pamajikan was close to wanoja, which was the least-used noun in the Guided Democracy period (1958–1965). Figure 1 illustrates the trends in word usage in consecutive order,
from period 1 to period 4. It shows that the frequencies of pamajikan and wanoja noticeably
start from different positions in period 1 (pamajikan is at the top position of the word frequency axis, while wanoja is at the bottom), but then they move to almost the same point in
period 4. It shows that the word pamajikan is getting less popular for denoting women, while
the popularity of wanoja tends to rise as the noun of choice for denoting women in Manglè.
The last finding about the frequencies of the nouns for denoting women that is also significant to observe is the occurrence of geureuha. The usage of this word began to decrease
dramatically in period 2 (the New Order, 1966–1998) and continued to decrease until period
4 (the Reform Era, 2004–2013). In the Manglè corpus of period 1 (the era of Guided Democracy, 1958–1965), the usage of geureuha was found to be 156 times in a million words, but
in period 2, the usage of the word was only eight times in a million words, which means
that its occurrence decreases by nearly 95%. Moreover, the occurrence of the noun geureuha
decreased by 98% in the first to the fourth period, from 156 times in a million words to three
times in a million words. On the basis of the frequency analysis, the usage of geureuha to
denote women in Manglè will probably disappear soon as a result of its rare usage.
On the basis of the lexical meanings of the five nouns5, the study shows that the editions of
Manglè published between 1958 and 2013 (from the era of Guided Democracy to the Reform
Era) mostly used the noun pamajikan, which is a word usually used by men to refer to the
women they are married to and regarded as a low-level language (Kasar). According to Satjadibrata (in Anderson, 1993), Kasar is normally used by a speaker to a referent of a lower
status than either the speaker/listener or to a referent of the same status when the speaker
speaks to well-acquainted or younger listeners. Referring to the lexical meaning, it is likely
that the women who are most frequently mentioned in Manglè during that period are married
women who are regarded to have an equal or lower status than either the speaker/listener. On
the contrary, the noun geureuha is a word of a high-level language (Lemes) and is used to refer
to a married woman of a higher or equal status (when the speaker speaks to interlocutors with
5. The lexical meanings of the five nouns from three Sundanese dictionaries, KBS (2010), KBS (2009)
and KUBS (1969), are as follows:
Geureuha is a high-level language (Lemes) used to refer to a married woman that is usually used by
lower-status speakers to upper-status hearers.
Mojang is defined as a word used to refer to a young woman, but there is no explanation whether it
belongs to high (Lemes)- or low-level language (Kasar).
Pamajikan is a low-level language (Kasar) used to refer to a married woman and is usually used by a
man to address his married woman, which the antonym is salaki (a married man).
Wanita is simply defined as a word used to refer to a woman that is borrowed from Sanskrit—no
further explanation about its speech level, whether it is a low (Kasar)- or high-level language (Lemes).
Wanoja, which is borrowed from Kawi, is the synonym of wanita that is used to refer to a woman, and
the speech level of the word is also not explained.
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Figure 1. Frequency of the word usage denoting woman in words per million.
a higher status and strangers) that is likely to disappear from the corpus of Manglè. The opposite phenomenon shown by the occurrences of both nouns in the diachronic corpus of Manglè
demonstrates that women tend to be constructed through a low-level language (Kasar) rather
than a high-level one (Lemes). Besides, there is a tendency that women with marital status are
more interesting to be discussed in the magazine. To investigate how women are constructed
semantically, the analysis looks further at the semantic categories of the five nouns referring
to women based on their relationships with the co-occurring words using a semantic preference analysis.
On the basis of the analysis of semantic preference, the semantic categories of the nouns
referring to women from period 1 to period 4 can be identified by observing their significant
collocates, that is, words that statistically co-occur with the nouns in a significant number.
On the basis of the analysis, semantic differences were generally found among the nouns.
The noun geureuha, which can be identified only in the first period due to its infrequency
in other periods, is associated with family because of its repeated co-occurrences with the
word putra (child/children). Similarly, the noun pamajikan is closely related to family almost
in all periods (from period 2 to period 4) because it co-occurs with the word anak (child/
children). Moreover, the other co-occurring words that strongly connect pamajikan to the
semantic category of family are adi (sister/brother), bapa (father), barudak (children), budak
(child), indung (mother), mitoha (mother/father-in-law) and indungna (his/her mother) – and
these are mostly found in period 2. The noun pamajikan, especially in period 2, is also associated with places, such as imah (house/home), imahna (his/her house), suhunan (roof/house),
dapur (kitchen), kamar (bedroom) and lembur (hometown), which depict women’s traditional
places. Unlike pamajikan and geureuha, the nouns wanita and wanoja tend to co-occur with
words whose semantic categories are occupational and organisational. The noun wanita, for
example, co-occurs with the words referring to women’s participation in organisations such
as anggota (member), dharma wanita (women’s association), PKK (the Supervisors of Family Welfare), ketua (chair), organisasi (organisation), persatuan (association) and koperasi
(cooperative), and with the words referring to occupations, such as karir (career), pelacur
(prostitute), usaha (business) and wiraswasta (entrepreneur). These significant collocates are
mostly found in period 2. Slightly different from wanita, the significant collocates of wanoja
whose semantic category is organisational are not connected with men/men’s position, such
as dharma wanita and PKK. The noun wanoja co-occurs with the words organisasi (organisation) and tokoh (figure) showing women’s participations in the public sphere independently.
Besides, wanoja is found to be the only noun that does not co-occur with its antonyms—
words referring to men—and words referring to family (pamajikan and salaki, wanita and
pria/lalaki, mojang and jajaka, geureuha and putra). Particularly in period 2 and period 4,
wanoja also co-occurs with the words referring to places, but it is different from the semantic
category of places for pamajikan. Here, the places refer to country or region, such as Sunda,
Indonesia and Kuningan, which are commonly used to describe the women’s places of origin.
Moreover, the women referred to in this context are usually evaluated positively. Meanwhile,
the noun mojang tends to co-occur with words referring to beauty, such as geulis (beautiful),
body such as leungeun (hands) and sora (voice) and places such as Bandung and Jawa Barat
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(West Java). From the categories, it shows that although in general the five nouns can be used
to denote women, the nouns have their specific meanings.
From the perspective of Barthes’s semiotic approach, the five nouns referring to woman
(geureuha, mojang, pamajikan, wanita and wanoja) are regarded as signs that are necessary to
signify. The signs were used by their users, that is, the writers in Manglè, to signify the concept of ‘woman as a social category’. The fact that there is more than one sign used to signify
the concept shows that the users of the signs extend the signification of woman through the
extension of expression (E2) in the secondary system of the semiological chain, known as
the metalanguage (Barthes, 1991). As a result, the meaning of woman as a social category is
signified by various signs, such as geureuha, mojang, pamajikan, wanita and wanoja. Referring
to the corpus analysis, the signification process of woman through metalanguage in Manglè
is demonstrated through not only the fact that there are various signs used to signify the
concept of ‘woman as social category’ but also the sign users’ tendency to use signs diachronically, as illustrated in Figure 1. The sign users in Manglè did not use a single sign to denote
woman; instead, they were using five signs with varied levels of occurrence from period 1
(the era of Guided Democracy, 1958–1965) to period 4 (the Reform Era, 2004–2013). The
sign most frequently used was pamajikan, because its occurrence in all periods was always the
highest of all signs. Other signs that show a decrease in their use are geureuha, mojang and
wanita – with geureuha as the one whose usage decreased the most. On the contrary, there
is an interesting finding that shows that wanoja is the only sign whose usage persistently
increased at all periods.
It could be argued that the analysis of the signification of woman through metalanguage
in the corpus of Manglè is indicative of several points. First, the declines of almost all signs
denoting women show that the degree of signification of women in the magazine was decreasing. Next, the finding on the considerable decline of the sign that belongs to the Lemes (formal language) category, and that contradictorily, the most frequent sign found in all periods
belongs to the Kasar (informal language) category, reflects that women were mostly mentioned colloquially and were most probably regarded to have a lower status. Moreover, it
generally indicates that the Sundanese language is becoming more egalitarian.
4
CONCLUSION
After analysing the construction of women in the corpus of the Sundanese magazine Manglè,
several points can be summarized. First, a move towards the usage of wanoja among other
signs to denote women reflects the changing trend in the word usage that plays a significant role in the construction of women in the magazine. Second, there is a dramatic shift
in how women were portrayed in Manglè: in the New Order period (1966–1998), women
were more frequently associated with family and domestic roles, whereas in the subsequent
periods, women were more frequently portrayed in relation to organisations, occupations
and other places that reflected their independency and participations in the public sphere.
In other words, it can be concluded that the construction of women in Manglè tended to
shift diachronically. Initially, women were portrayed as dependent, that is, their presence was
frequently related to someone (anak, adi, bapa, barudak, budak, indung, mitoha, indungna,
etc.) or something (imah, imahna, suhunan, dapur, kamar, lembur, etc.) that was closely associated with their traditional roles. However, later on, women were increasingly portrayed as
independent, that is, their presence was associated with their existence in the public sphere.
Referring to Cameron (1992), the findings should not be understood as natural, but rather as
the results of the discursively and linguistically mediated social constructions of gender.
Third, we argue that the combination of Barthes’s semiotic and corpus linguistic approaches
used for studying the construction of woman in the Sundanese magazine provides a more
thorough description. This is because the signification of woman can be explored not only
qualitatively through the identification of a synonymic phenomenon (as the extension of
the expression in the primary system), but also quantitatively through the analysis of sign
occurrences diachronically. Therefore, the shift in the sign users’ perspectives on women’s
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issues can be investigated by analysing the way they used the signs diachronically. Thus, this
study proposes a theoretical framework to study verbal signs using a mixed-method design,
such as the combination of the metalanguage of Barthes’s signification and corpus linguistic
approaches.
REFERENCES
Ali, G. & Khan, L.A. (2012) Language and construction of gender: A feminist critique of sms discourse.
British Journal of Arts and Social Sciences, 4(2), 342–360.
Barthes, R. (1991) Mythologies. USA: Twenty-fifth printing.
Benny, H.H. (2014) Semiotika dan dinamika sosial budaya (Semiotics and socio-cultural dynamics). 2nd
edition. Depok: Komunitas Bambu.
Blackburn, S. (2004) Women and the state in modern Indonesia. UK: Cambridge University Press.
Butler, J. (1986) Sex and gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex. Yale French Studies, (72), 35–49.
doi:10.2307/2930225.
Cameron, D. (1992) Feminism and linguistic theory. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Creswell, J.W. (2014) Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. 4th edition. USA: Sage Publication.
Eckert, P. & McConnell-Ginet., S. (2003) Language and gender. UK & US: Cambridge University
Press.
Ekadjati, E.S. (1984) Masyarakat Sunda dan kebudayaannya (The Sundanese and their culture). Jakarta:
Girimukti Pusaka.
Hoey, M., Mahlberg, M., Stubbs, M. & Teubert, W. (2007) Text discourse and corpora: Theory and analysis. London & New York: Continuum.
Jones, G.W., Yahya, A. & Tutu, D. (1994) Divorce in West Java. Journal of Comparative Family Studies,
25(3), 395–416.
Motschenbacher, H. (2013) Gentlemen before ladies? A corpus-based study of conjunct order in personal binomials. Journal of English Linguistics, 41(3), 212–242.
Nöth, W. (1995) Handbook of Semiotics. USA: Indiana University Press.
Stubbs, M. (2002) Words and phrases: Corpus studies of lexical semantics. New Jersey: Blackwell
Publishing.
Talbot, M.J. (2001) Language and gender: An introduction. UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Teubert, W. & Krishnamurthy, R. (2007) Corpus linguistics: Critical concepts in linguistics. 1st Volume.
London and New York: Routledge.
Tognini-Bonelli, E. (2010) Theoretical overview of the evolution of corpus linguistics. In: O’Keeffe,
A. & McCarthy, M. (Eds). The Routledge handbook of corpus linguistics. London: Routledge.
Weatherall, A. & Gallois, C. (2003) Gender and identity: representation and social action. In: J. Holmes
& M. Meyerhoff. The Handbook of Language and Gender. Cornwall: Blackwell Publishing.
pp. 487–508.
West, C. & Zimmerman, D. (1987) Doing gender. Gender and Society, 1(2), 125–151.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Metaphors of women in the Sundanese magazine
Manglè (1958–2013): A corpus-based approach
A. Alkautsar & T. Suhardijanto
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This paper aims to see how women are described in the Sundanese language
through the use of metaphors found in Manglè magazine, published from 1958 to 2013.
The analysis is divided into four different periods: the Era of Guided Democracy, the New
Order, the Transition to Democracy, and the Reform Era. By exploiting the corpus-based
approach within the framework of Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the
study focuses on two Sundanese nouns denoting women: awéwé and mojang. A combination
of quantitative and qualitative methods is used to identify the features of linguistic metaphors for women: collocational behaviour and syntactical behaviour, as well as its frequency
of occurrence in different periods of time, thus providing a more complete description of
women in the Sundanese society. The research finds out that as a metaphor, awéwé has been
spoken in several different contexts: marriage (a wife, or a partner in an extramarital affair),
companionship (a lover), practices of prostitution (a prostitute), and as an entity of weakness. Meanwhile, the metaphorical mojang has only been spoken in the context of beauty
pageants (contestants or winners). Frequency-wise, the metaphorical senses of awéwé have
experienced rises and falls in their usage throughout time, except for the sense of entity of
weakness that keeps decreasing until the latest period. A rather similar fluctuation happened
to nearly all the metaphorical senses of mojang, excluding the sense of contestants of beauty
pageants, which sees a drastic increase in its usage.
1
INTRODUCTION
Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory or CMT (1980) and several other publications marked the establishment of what Lakoff (1993) referred to as the contemporary
view of metaphors. The basic idea of CMT lies in the notion that metaphors work on a
thinking level, implying that human’s cognitive mind is metaphorical by nature. If we look
deeper into it, the cognitive mind is packed with such a wide variety of concepts amassed
by the owner’s experience, be it physical, social, or cultural (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). Upon
learning a new particular concept, human—the speaker of the language—would attempt to
understand the new concept by looking at it through another existing concept the speaker has
experienced before (Koller, 2011). Lakoff and Johnson state that inside the mind, a transfer
process occurs between two different conceptual domains—from the source domain where
the more concrete concept based on experience resided, to the target domain that contains
the abstract, newfound concept to provide a plausible explanation to the speaker.
The classical view of metaphors puts a solid line between the non-literal (metaphors)
and literal language. Metaphors are seen as simply the ornaments or additions to the
literal language—the reason why metaphors have long been associated with poetry and
literature. In contrast, one of the biggest consequences of CMT is the realisation that
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daily language in human communication—on the linguistic level—mostly consists of
metaphors, including the words widely regarded as literal by their speakers, as these words
are products of metaphors on a thinking level. To differentiate these ‘metaphorical’ words
with the metaphors on a thinking level, Steen (1994) suggests the term linguistic metaphors
is for the former, while Lakoff and Johnson introduced the term conceptual metaphors for
the latter.
As Wikberg (2008) asserts, the development of corpus linguistics enables researchers to
describe meanings of certain word combinations, either in its literal or non-literal sense. Sinclair (in Cheng, 2012) reported two important discoveries concerning corpus-based language
studies, they are: (1) language is all about the creation of meaning, and (2) language has a
tendency to be phraseological. The term phraseological refers to repeated word patterns coselected by its creators—the speakers of the language—in order to create a specific meaning.
McEnery and Hardie (2012) state that meaning is not attributed solely to a single word, but
rather to a group of words whose uniqueness could be determined by how frequent the words
appear together with other certain words (collocational patterns) or in certain structures
(syntactical patterns). In other words, meaning is not isolated to only one word (word-based),
but is distributed among the surrounding words (phrase-based) as chosen by the speaker of
the language (Sinclair, 2004).
Deignan’s (2005) corpus-based research about metaphors on the Bank of English corpus categorised the linguistic metaphors into four different types: 1) innovative metaphor; 2)
conventional metaphor; 3) dead metaphor; and 4) historical metaphor. The second type, the
conventional metaphor, is described as highly dependent on the core sense of the word and
the context surrounding the word, which means that both the collocational and the syntactical patterns should be thoroughly examined. Additionally, Deignan states that conventional
metaphors have the most examples in the corpus. As the Bank of English consists of texts
from the media, which means it consists mostly of ordinary texts, what Deignan calls conventional metaphor is basically the CMT’s area of focus.
The objective of this research is to investigate how women are described in the Sundanese
language through the use of metaphors found in the long-running Sundanese magazine,
Manglè, from 1958 to 2013. The approach of corpus linguistics within the framework of
CMT is applied to identify and examine the metaphorical senses of two Sundanese nouns
denoting women, awéwé and mojang. Based on the research done by Yuliawati (2016), the
frequency of occurrence of awewe and mojang throughout 1958–2013stays on the top ranks
among the Sundanese nouns denoting women, although in later periods, wanoja overtook
mojang (see Table 1).
In the literal sense, the Sundanese dictionary Kamus Basa Sunda (Danadibrata, 2009)
defines awéwé as jelema nu saperti indung urang (a person like a mother, referring to the
female sex, or a woman), mojang as parawan (a virgin, or a young woman), and wanoja as
istri, wanita (a woman, or similar to awéwé). The findings that awéwé and mojang occur
most frequently show that both words are the most used in accordance with their respective
Table 1. The frequency of occurrence of nouns denoting women in
Manglè (1958–2013).
Frequency of occurrence (in percentage)
Noun
Period 1
(58–65)
Period 2
(66–98)
Period 3
(99–03)
Period 4
(04–13)
awéwé
mojang
wanoja
0.064%
0.054%
0.001%
0.064%
0.024%
0.011%
0.052%
0.017%
0.018%
0.052%
0.016%
0.030%
(Source: Yuliawati, 2016).
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definitions; hence, this becomes the rationale in determining awéwé and mojang as the focus
of the research.
Inspired by Deignan’s research, the conventional metaphors are the main focus in this
paper and they are examined quantitatively through the frequency of occurrence and
qualitatively through their collocational and syntactical patterns. However, seeing metaphors as products of the conceptual thought that is based on a physical, social, and cultural
experience, the frequency of occurrence of metaphors with its specific patterns could indicate
the norm of language use in society, alongside the patterns for literal senses of words (Teubert
& Krishnamurthy, 2007).
2
METHODOLOGY
This research uses nearly all articles in Manglè (e.g. editorials, profiles, columns, stories, etc.),
leaving out advertisements and quizzes. The required texts for the corpus were divided into
several periods based on the context of Blackburn’s gender ideology of the Indonesian state
from 1958 to 2003 (in Yuliawati, 2016): 1) the Era of Guided Democracy (1958–1965), 2) the
New Order (1966–1998), and 3) the Transition to Democracy (1999–2003). Another period
was later added to cover the texts of Manglè publications after 2003: the Reform Era (2004–
2013). This totalled to 2,455 editions of Manglè, spanning from 1958 to 2013. The magazine’s
texts had to be converted into electronic data by scanning them with an OCR (optical character recognition) tool or retyping them manually on the computer. The electronic texts were
stored as plain text (.txt) files and uploaded to the software.
However, considering the limitation of the corpus software capacity compared to the
abundance of the data, only samples from each period were used to build the corpus. The
application of proportional cluster random sampling on each period reduced the number of
samples to a total of 91 editions, proportionally distributed in each period. The details of the
constructed corpus divided by each period can be seen in Table 2.
This research combines both quantitative and qualitative approaches (Creswell, 2014) for
the data on the frequency and concordance of the corpus, respectively (Sinclair, 1994). The
metaphors of the Sundanese words awéwé and mojang were identified and examined in the
corpus by investigating the features of their linguistic metaphors, as well as the collocational
and syntactical patterns (Deignan, 2005). Initially, the metaphorical nature of one sense could
be detected by comparing it with the definition provided by dictionaries (i.e. the literal sense).
The suspected metaphorical sense was then examined through how the most significant collocates on the left and right side of the word appeared together on a number of citations (i.e.
the collocational patterns).
Different metaphorical senses could be unique with their set of collocates, or they share
the same collocates, in which a wider look at the whole context was needed. Subsequently,
another investigation was conducted by looking into the syntactical patterns—grammatical
tendencies of metaphorical words in certain senses, e.g. word classes. The examined metaphors and their patterns, together with how frequently they occurred in the corpus, could
Table 2.
The corpus size of Manglè.
Corpus size
(words)
Period
1
The Era of Guided Democracy (1958–1965)
2
The New Order (1966–1998)
3
Transition to Democracy (1999–2003)
4
Reform Era (2004–2013)
Whole corpus size (words)
78,081
1,897,777
324,614
641,065
2,941,537
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show how awéwé and mojang were described, at least giving us one of the many descriptions
of women within the Sundanese society from one period to another.
3
3.1
RESULTS & DISCUSSION
Awéwé
Table 3 presents the frequency of occurrences (shown by number of citations) of five metaphorical senses of awéwé from Period 1 to Period 4. It is interesting to note that while the
frequency of other metaphorical senses was fluctuating between periods, the frequency of
metaphorical sense #5 (entity of weakness) drastically dropped from Period 1 (8.82%) to
Period 2 (1.59%) and kept decreasing persistently in later periods.
Another interesting note is that the reduced usage of sense #1 (wife) in Period 4 happened
together with the rise of sense #2 (lover) in the same period. Its consequences, context-wise,
will be discussed later.
Meanwhile, the word awéwé tends to appear together with its lexical collocates, as shown
in Table 4.
Table 3.
The metaphorical senses of awéwé.
Number of citations (and its percentage)
#
Sense
Period 1
(58–65)
Period 2
(66–98)
Period 3
(99–03)
Period 4
(04–13)
1
2
3
4
5
Wife (spouse)
Lover (companion)
Partner in extramarital affair (cheater)
Prostitute (courtesan)
Entity of weakness (not masculine)
3 (8.82%)
0
1 (2.94%)
0
3 (8.82%)
56 (4.44%)
8 (0.63%)
21 (1.67%)
12 (0.95%)
20 (1.59%)
17 (8.54%)
1 (0.5%)
5 (2.51%)
12 (6.03%)
3 (1.51%)
19 (6.03%)
11 (3.49%)
5 (1.59%)
2 (0.63%)
2 (0.63%)
34
1260
199
315
Total frequency of awéwé in the corpus
Table 4.
The lexical collocates of awéwé.
Collocates
#
Sense
Period 1
(58–65)
Period 2
(66–98)
Period 3
(99–03)
Period 4
(04–13)
1
Wife (spouse)
–
2
Lover
(companion)
–
salaki
beda
salakina
pamajikan
andalemi
boga
lalaki
paduduaan
setan
Salaki
cari
aya
urusan
batawi
ceuk
–
3
Partner in
extramarital
affair (cheater)
–
sejen
mimin
ditaroskeun
imah
resep
salaki
Sejen
salaki
raresep
ngarandapan
ditikah
ditaroskeun
lalaki
salakina
tinande
nasib
budak
boga
sejen
neangan
babarengan
beda
boga
sejen
nyelewer
(Continued )
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Table 4.
(Continued ).
Collocates
Period 1
(58–65)
Period 2
(66–98)
Period 3
(99–03)
Period 4
(04–13)
Prostitute
(courtesan)
–
pangawakan
tempat
sauted
bangor
purah
lalaki
ngangkat
–
–
Entity of weakness
(not masculine)
bangor
ketengan
sampeuran
bondon
beunang
wts
pangawak
lalaki
ngangsrog
pangawakan
tanaga
ngalawan
hengker
#
Sense
4
5
–
Sense #1 (a wife) and sense #3 (a partner in an extramarital affair) are related to the context
of marriage, since they share the same collocates salaki (husband) and salakina (her husband), as seen in the citations below.
Sense #1 Sabab eta mah urusan salaki, lain urusan awéwé.
Because that is the husband’s business, not the wife’s.
Di hareupeun salakina, eta awéwé teh kurulang-kuriling siga peragawati.
In front of his husband, the wife walks around like a catwalk model.
Sense #3 Contona, anu hayang tengtrem rumah tangga, anu embung salaki ngabagi asihna
jeung awéwé sejen ku Haji Djedje dipalakiahan.
For example, anyone who wants peace in her household, who never wants her
husband to share his love with another woman, will get treated by Haji Djedje.
Mun teu nyelewer manggih deui awéwé sejen, tangtu lantaran salakina kabur ninggalkeun bari jeung teu puguh alesanana.
Other than having an affair with another woman, there is no other clear reason for
her husband to leave.
Most of the expressions for awéwé in sense #1 show how awéwé stands freely as a noun. However, a few other expressions also have a degree of fixedness to the point that they become
decomposable, although they remain as a noun.
Komo ayeuna mah sesebutan “awewe dulangtinande” teh geus teu merenah deui.
Furthermore, nowadays the term “awewe dulangtinande” is not relevant anymore.
The fixed expression of awéwé dulangtinande (women are always driven by men) is idiomatic;
thus, the metaphors could only be seen when all the words appear together. This is also the
case for awéwé sejen found in citations of sense #3, albeit having a lower degree of fixedness.
The word sejen itself means different.
Sense #2 (a lover) is more related to an intimate companionship or date—relationship between
an unmarried man and a woman, as shown by the collocate paduduaan (together, restricted
to two people only) or babarengan (together, common)”, while salaki is absent. Contextually,
both collocates are used when describing a date and they do not form a fixed pattern with
awéwé, which remains a noun. There is an interesting finding showing that awéwé in this sense
also collocates with setan (the devil) as shown in the citation below.
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Tingali deui, hadits di luhur; netelakeun yen tiap lalaki paduduaan jeung awewe, pasti
setan nu katiluna.
Check again the hadith above; it says that every time a man gets alone with a woman,
the third company must be the devil.
This quote contextually refers to one of the teachings in Islam, which is widely embraced by
the Sundanese people, as 95% of them are Muslims (Ekadjati, 2010). According to Jami’ atTirmidhi: 2165 (translated by Abu Khaliyl), whenever a man is secluded with a woman, the
devil (and all the temptations it brings) is accompanying them as the third person. This shows
that an intimate companionship has always been less preferred than a legitimate marriage
among the Sundanese, and sometimes the practice could go as far as allowing an early marriage or even a forced marriage (Marlina, 2006). However, the frequency of the sense’s usage
in Period 4 increased, while the frequency of sense #1 was the opposite. This could mean the
Sundanese people were getting more resistant to marriage and its practices, yet also shows a
more welcoming attitude towards intimate companionship as the time goes.
Sense #4 (a prostitute) tells us about a woman performing paid sexual services for customers (usually men). The expressions are mostly fixed and idiomatic with an immediate collocate on the right side of awéwé forming noun phrases, such as awéwé bangor (bangor means
naughty), awéwé ketengan (ketengan means unit price), awéwé sampeuran (from the term sampeur or come over), awéwé bondon (bondon means prostitute), awéwé panggilan (from panggil
or call), etc. Some of these phrases are shown on the citations below.
Jeung lain awewe bangor bae tapi loba mahasiswi-mahasiswi nu gampil diajak sare.
And not just prostitutes, so many female students are also easy to sleep with.
Awewe bondon lamun ceuk barudak ngora mah.
(She is) a prostitute, as the children said.
Kawasna moal jauh ti awewe panggilan, malah teu mustahil kelas profesional.
(She) seems like a prostitute, and it is possible she could be a professional.
Sense #5 (an entity of weakness) tells the opposite of women and men, mostly from the
physical sense. Most of the expressions in sense #5 do not directly say that women are weak
compared to men, but rather place one of the attributes of women together with a certain
condition that is normally handled by men or attributed to men. One example of this is
shown below.
Najan pangawak awewe Tiah henteu nolak pagawean lalaki.
Despite having a woman’s body, Tiah never refuses to do men’s work.
The word pangawak means body. Physically, women are weaker than men and most of the
jobs (pagawean means job) done by men are commonly too heavy for women’s physics to
handle. Other expressions include tanaga awéwé (tanaga means strength), mental awéwé
(mental means mental), pangawak awéwé, and pangawakan awéwé which are collocationally
fixed as noun phrases with the word awéwé as the modifier of the phrases. Another way to
express the weakness of women is shown in the citation below.
Tepi ka dina hiji peuting mah kuring bijil aral ngarasula, kuring ceurik nyegruk, kawas
awewe.
Until one night, unable to hold myself from lamenting on how my life has been,
I burst into tears like a woman.
The phrase ceurik nyegruk or ‘burst into tears’ is commonly attributed to women as it shows
emotion. Therefore, crying men—who are commonly attributed to thinking and logic—are
considered weak like a woman (kawas awéwé). The attribute of weakness to women stems
from the fact that women have been positioned as lower beings than men in the Sundanese
society since the feudal era (the late 19th century and the early 20th century) in Indonesia,
as shown in the written texts of those times, such as Wawacan Sajarah Galuh and Wawacan
Carios Munada (Stuers, 1960; Wiraatmadja, 1980 in Marlina, 2006). Not to mention that as
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a general trait, men have been always physically stronger than women. As Table 3 suggests,
the persistent decrease of usage for sense #5 perhaps shows that the norms of the Sundanese
society were moving to a more progressive direction, where men and women could be positioned more equally.
3.2
Mojang
A glance at Table 5 shows us that all the metaphorical senses for mojang are contextually
related to each other, as they all spoke about beauty pageants. The only difference lies on
the component of the beauty pageant, which is represented by the metaphorical mojang.
Period 4 saw a drastic increase of usage of all senses (notably sense #2, the contestant of a
beauty pageant), except for sense #1 (beauty pageant), which fell from 11.48% in Period 3
to 5.45% in Period 4. Nevertheless, despite the drop from Period 3 to Period 4, the usage of
sense #1 in Period 4 was still much higher compared to its use in earlier periods.
The word mojang tends to appear together with the lexical collocates shown in Table 6.
The tendency of mojang to appear together with its counterpart jajaka (literally means
young male) started in later periods, especially on metaphorical sense #1. Most citations have
jajaka on the right slot from mojang, as seen below.
Sense #1 “Mojang jeung Jajaka Jawa Barat 2001 di TVRI Bandung, Mang”.
“(We are watching) Mojang and Jajaka Jawa Barat 2001 on TVRI Bandung, Uncle”.
Sense #2 Diantarana wae, Kota Bandung: Novi Kumala S (Mojang) jeung Padika M (Jajaka);
“Among them are, Bandung: Novi Kumala S (Mojang) and Padika M (Jajaka);
Sense #3 Kalawan nangtukeun jeung milih Mojang Jajaka Pinilih...
By deciding to choose the 1st winner of Mojang Jajaka...
One citation, however, has jajaka appear on the left slot from mojang. This happens on a
citation for sense #1.
Nu teu bisa dipopohokeun mah, cenah, basa keur jadi Juara I sakaligus jadi Juara
Favorit dina Jajaka/Mojang Parahyangan.
But she could not forget, she said, when she was crowned both as the 1st winner and
the Most Favourite in Jajaka/Mojang Parahyangan.
The collocational patterns for mojang and jajaka are mostly fixed, such as Pasanggiri Mojang
Jajaka Jawa Barat and Mojang jeung Jajaka Priangan (sense #1), Mojang Jajaka Pinilih
(sense #3).
For sense #2, the majority of citations show that mojang stands alone, although still
appears together with jajaka, as shown in the citation below.
Kab. Purwakarta: Ria Monika (Mojang) jeung Imam Ashari A (Jajaka);
Purwakarta Regency: Ria Monika (Mojang) and Imam Ashari A (Jajaka);
Mojang also collocates with names of place, city, or region like Bandung, Parahiyangan, Priangan, Jawa Barat, etc. These collocates appear on the right side of mojang in every citation.
Table 5.
The metaphorical senses of mojang.
Number of citations (and the percentage)
#
Metaphorical senses of mojang
1
Beauty pageant
2
Contestant of a beauty pageant
3
Winner of a beauty pageant
Total frequency of mojang in the corpus
Period 1
(58–65)
Period 2
(66–98)
Period 3
(99–03)
Period 4
(04–13)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
12
6 (1.14%)
4 (0.75%)
2 (0.75%)
528
7 (11.48%)
1 (1.64%)
0 (0%)
61
6 (5.45%)
26 (23.6%)
5 (4.55%)
110
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Table 6.
The lexical collocates of mojang.
Collocates
Period 1
(58–65)
Period 2
(66–98)
Period 3
(99–03)
Period 4
(04–13)
Beauty
pageant
–
2
Contestant of
a beauty
pageant
–
saembara
Parahyangan
bade
alit
jajaka
nomer
hayang
dibuka
baheula
jajaka
pasanggiri
Barat
Jawa
Priangan
–
3
Winner of a
beauty
pageant
–
parahyangan
–
jajaka
Jawa
Barat
pasanggiri
kagiatan
jajaka
kota
kab
Tasikmalaya
Sukabumi
jajaka
milih
wakil
pinunjul
barat
#
Sense
1
Syntactically, all the obtained phrases by combining mojang and its collocates mostly do not
undergo word class changes as they remain as noun phrases. Some examples of these nounphrases are seen below. It should be noted that specific names (Mojang and Jajaka beginning
with capital letters) are not translated to English.
Sense #1
saembara mojang
kontes mojang
Pasanggiri Mojang Jajaka Jawa Barat
young woman contest
young woman contest
West Java Mojang Jajaka Contest
Sense #2
mojang nomer 91
(young woman) contestant number 91
Sense #3
Mojang Jajaka Pinilih
Mojang Jajaka Kameumeut
1st Winner of Mojang Jajaka
Most Favourite Mojang Jajaka
The increased usage of the metaphorical senses of mojang could be attributed to the hype of
beauty pageants in Indonesia, especially the national-level pageants, such as Puteri Indonesia
and Miss Indonesia. The chosen contestants in such pageants were the winners in lowerlevel competitions, such as a province-level contest. The usual path for a contestant would
be competing in the city level, then competing in the province level, winning on the national
level, and finally becoming the best in the world. As beauty pageants could pave one’s way to
bigger opportunities and fame, young people are enthusiastic to participate from the earliest
stage of the competition, not excluding the people in Jawa Barat (West Java), where most
Sundanese people reside. It could be said that Pasanggiri Mojang Jajaka, which is annually
held in cities and regencies in West Java and in a higher, province level, is one of the starting
steps to such opportunities and fame.
Contextually, all the metaphorical senses of mojang above are associated with beauty,
which indeed serves as one of the key things in beauty pageants. The tendency that mojang
often collocates with the name of a place (city, province, or region) shows these places take
pride in the qualities of the females born in that place. In return, this could also mean that
women are proud of the place where they come from. The nature of beauty pageants, not
excluding Pasanggiri Mojang Jajaka itself, is “showing off ” the finest qualities of its contestants to public. To win a prestigious event like Pasanggiri Mojang Jajaka could mean a higher
prestige for both the winner and the place she represents, or will later represent when competing in a higher level.
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Ekadjati (1984) stated that in the Sundanese society, women gained their significance after
they are coupled with men through marriage, even going as far as the Sundanese proverb that
says kawin ayeuna, isuk pepegatan (it is better to marry and divorce than never marry at all).
Apparently, this issue of significance is unconsciously shown in Pasanggiri Mojang-Jajaka,
as the final purpose of the beauty pageant is to find a couple—a young man and woman—as
opposed to a single man or a single woman.
4
CONCLUSION
This research shows that the combination of the CMT framework and corpus linguistics
method could provide a more complete description of women through the use of metaphors
in Sundanese. Looking at it qualitatively, the significance of collocates, the collocational
behaviour, and the syntactical behaviour show how words are chosen to deliver specific metaphorical senses in certain contexts. For the case of metaphorical awéwé, its senses are used
when describing women in the context of marriage (a wife and as a partner in an extramarital
affair), companionship (a lover), practices of prostitution (a prostitute), and an entity of
weakness. Meanwhile, the senses of metaphorical mojang are limited to the context of beauty
pageants (event, contestants, and winners).
Quantitatively, by examining the frequency of occurrence, we can see how often these
identified metaphorical senses are used in different periods of time. This research reveals
that most metaphorical senses of awéwé experienced their rises and falls in usage throughout
Period 1 to 4. However, this is not the case for the sense of entity of weaknesses as it drastically dropped since Period 2 and never rose even slightly, which might indicate the change of
view about the position of women in the present Sundanese society. Another interesting phenomenon is that in Period 4, the usage of the sense of wife decreased, while the usage sense
of lover rose, which might show the change of attitude towards marriage (more resisting) and
companionship (more welcoming). Meanwhile, nearly all metaphorical senses of mojang also
experienced their rises and falls in usage through all periods, notably the sense of beauty pageant contestants that shows a very drastic increase. This increase of usage can be attributed
to the hype of beauty pageants in Indonesia, especially among the Sundanese people.
REFERENCES
Cheng, W. (2012) Exploring corpus linguistics: Language in action. New York: Routledge.
Creswell, J.W. (2014) Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. 4th Edition. New York: Sage Publication.
Deignan, A. (2005) Metaphor and corpus linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
Ekadjati, E.S. (1984) Masyarakat Sunda dan kebudayaannya (The Sundanese and their Culture). Jakarta:
Girimukti Pusaka.
Ekadjati, E.S. (2010) Islam, agama pilihan utama dan abadi orang Sunda (Islam, the eternal and main
religion of choice of the Sundanese). In: M. Hasbullah (Ed.). Studi Sejarah Islam Sunda (A Study
of Sundanese Islamic History). Bandung: Fakultas Adab & Humaniora, Universitas Islam Negeri
Sunan Gunung Djati.
Koller, V. (2011) Analysing metaphor and gender in discourse. In: F. Manzano (Ed.). Unité et diversité
de la linguistique: Cahiers du Centre d’Etudes Linguistique. Lyon: Atelier intégré de publication de
l’Université Jean Moulin. pp. 125–158.
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G. (1993) The contemporary theory of metaphor. In: A. Ortony (Ed.). Metaphor and thought.
2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1999) Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western
thought. New York: Basic Books.
Marlina, I. (2006) Kedudukan wanita menak dalam struktur masyarakat Sunda: Studi kasus di kota
Bandung (The status of prominent women in the structure of Sundanese society: A case study in the
city of Bandung). Sosio humaniora, 8(2), 185–205.
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McEnery, T. & Hardie, A. (2012) Corpus linguistics: method, theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Perkawis Manglé (n.d.) Available at: http://mangle-online.com/pidangan/perelean/1354423703. Accessed
on the 29th September 2016.
Sinclair, J. (1991) Corpus concordances collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sinclair, J. (2004) Trust the text. London & New York: Routledge.
Steen, G. (1994) Understanding metaphor in literature. London: Longman.
Stuers, C.V. (1960) The Indonesian woman, struggle and achievement. Gravenhage: Mouton & Co.
Teubert, W. & Krishnamurty, R. (2007) Corpus linguistics: Critical concepts in linguistics. Vol. 1. London & New York: Routledge.
Wikberg, K. (2008) The role of corpus studies in metaphor research. In: N.L. Johannesson & D.C.
Minugh (Eds.) Selected papers from the 2006 and 2007 Stockholm Metaphor Festivals. Stockholm:
Department of English, Stockholm University. pp. 33–48.
Yuliawati, S. (2016) Profil semantis nomina perempuan dalam korpus majalah berbahasa Sunda (Manglè, 1958–2013) (Semantic profiles of women’s noun in the corpus of Sundanese language magazine,
Manglè, 1958–2013). Presented in KIMLI 2016, the 24th–27th August 2016. Denpasar, Bali.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The collocation and grammatical behaviour of two nouns
denoting women in Sundanese: A corpus-based analysis
of language and gender relationship
P.G. Bagasworo & T. Suhardijanto
Department of Indonesian Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: For many years, people have been discussing the potential relationships,
intersections, and tensions between language structures and gender in different ways. This
paper focuses on the collocational and grammatical behaviour of two nouns in Sundanese
denoting woman as used in the corpus of Manglè magazine. The corpus comprises of texts
taken from Manglè published between 1958 and 2013. This paper examines collocational
and grammatical tendencies between a node and its collocate where the node acts as a subject or an object of a sentence. In this paper, the analysis only focuses on two Sundanese
nouns denoting woman and view them as the node of collocational constructions. This study
approaches Sundanese corpus data from the Romaine perspective that looked at sexism in
language through collocational and grammatical evidence (Romaine, 2000). By taking this
approach, this analysis allows us to reveal deeper information about sexism in language
through collocation behaviour between a subject or an object and the surrounding words.
The result shows that pamajikan tends to co-occur with words that are semantically related
to family and women’s submissive quality, while wanoja tends to co-occur with words that are
semantically related to independence.
1
INTRODUCTION
The relationship between language structure and gender has been the subject of discussion
for a long time, even since the days of the ancient Greek philosophers. Aristoteles, the
Protagoras philosopher who coined the terms masculine, feminine, and neuter to classify
nouns, can be regarded as the first philosopher relating language structures with gender
(Tannen, 2007). Lakoff (1975) claims that a number of language characteristics are indeed
based on gender and some of them are related to the structures of language, such as the uses
of intensifiers in an excessive way, hypercorrect grammar, particular imperative words and
adjectives, etc.
Research on the relationship between language and gender consists of three areas of study.
First, the study of language and gender that focuses on the language variations associated
with a particular gender. Second, the study that explores the norms and social conventions
producing a gender-based language use. Third, the study that focuses on how gender is constructed and operated in particular ways that are local and context-specific. In relation to
these three areas, the approach employed for the current research is closer to the description
of the third approach. On the subject of this research is specifically the use of collocation
that has an implication in gender.
Corpus-based research has been regarded as one of the characteristics of current linguistic research. Corpus, a collection of texts selected under a certain mechanism, becomes the
foundation for linguists to reveal a language phenomenon and to attest language theories. In
relation to the use of corpora, there have been numerous studies that examine gender-based
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language on corpora. Kjellmer (1986) studied the frequency and distribution of masculine
and feminine pronouns with the words man/men and woman/women in the 1961 Brown
and LOB corpora. Kjellmer found that there was a tendency of more “masculine” items
than “feminine” ones in both corpora. However, masculine bias is found more in the NorthAmerican Brown corpus than in the LOB corpus.
Sigley and Holmes (2002) also examined the comparative frequencies of man/men and
woman/women in the Brown and LOB corpora, the Wellington Corpus of Written New Zealand English, the Freiburg-Brown Corpus of American English, and the Freiburg-LOB Corpus of British English. They found that the frequency of women in writing doubled between
1960s and the early 1990s. However, the frequency of references to women as individuals
remained smaller than the references to men as individuals. It seems that adult males were
more frequently referred to singularly, while adult women were more commonly referred to
collectively.
Vigliocco & Franck (1999) investigated whether the system of language production, more
specifically in French and Italian, used conceptual information about biological gender
in the encoding of gender grammatical agreement between a subject and predicate. Both
French and Italian have a gender category system that includes a distinction between the
nouns reflecting the sex of the referent (conceptual gender) and the nouns for which gender
does not reflect the sex of the referent (grammatical gender). Their findings implied that
syntactical features that reflect conceptual features are retrieved from different sentence elements. This information ensures the accuracy of the sentence encoding and makes it more
efficient.
Meanwhile, in line with Kjellmer (1996) and Sigley and Holmes (2002), Pearce (2002)
studied the representation of men and women in the BNC by focusing on the collocational
and grammatical behaviours of the noun lemmas WOMAN and MAN (including the nouns
woman/women and man/men). In his study, Pearce explored the functional distribution of
the target lemmas and revealed the structured and systematic nature of the differences in the
way the words referred to adult males and females were patterned with other words in different grammatical relations. The collocational evidence of the lemma WOMAN shows that it
is related to “sociological” discourses, i.e. women were presented as objects of sociological
enquiry within a discourse that acknowledged their subordinations and tried to redress it in
that context. According to Pearce, the finding was not surprising due to the construction of
BNC that came from the collection of texts mainly taken between 1975 and 1994, known as
the ‘second wave’ of feminism—the period of extensive discussion in academic circles about
gender and the nature of women’s oppression.
Moreover, according to Pearce, there were at least three observable patterns that had limited distribution to particular text domains. First, men were mainly portrayed to be aberrant
in news reporting, and the distribution of the sequence adjective of “deviancy” + MAN
(such as dangerous, armed, and convicted) seemed to confirm this. Second, the adjectives of
“neuroticism” in the pattern of “neuroticism” + WOMAN (such as distraught, hysterical, and
silly) occurred in prose fiction texts. Third, the social class markers (such as working-class
and middle-class) premodified WOMAN over nineteen times more frequently per million
words in the social science genre than they do in the overall BNC. It indicates that the “sociological discourse” was likely associated with this domain of genre.
The current study is rather similar to the study by Pearce (2002) in the case of examining
words referring to women in Sundanese that occurred and are used in particular collocational
and grammatical patterns in the corpus of Sundanese magazine Manglè, and the texts were
collected between 1958 and 2013. In this study, the relationship between language structure
and gender is revealed through the patterns of collocational and grammatical behaviour of
two Sundanese words: wanoja and pamajikan. The rationale in determining the two words as
the focus of the analysis is based on the study by Yuliawati (2016) about the frequencies of
Sundanese nouns denoting women found in Manglè magazine. The two words were found to
have an inverse frequency distribution from time to time (see Figure 1). For this reason, it will
be interesting to analyse these two words further based on the corpus.
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Figure 1. The frequency of WOMAN in word/million (cited from Yuliawati, 2016).
The current research examines not only the grammatical behaviour, particularly in relation
to the subject and predicate of a sentence, but also the collocational behaviour of the words
wanoja and pamajikan in order to reveal the way a woman is constructed in Sundanese society. The collocational patterns may unveil the associations and connotations of words, and
subsequently the assumptions they embody (Stubbs, 1996). Furthermore, Romaine (2000)
shows how sexism in language could be demonstrated with collocational behaviour. According to her, in English there were several pairings of gender bias displaying various kinds
of semantic and discursive asymmetry, e.g. master and mistress, god and goddess, wizard
and witch, and bachelor and spinster. Besides, Romaine found in her study that the gender
terms for females were associated negatively more frequently than the gender terms for males.
Although the study does not include gender terms for males, the present research aims at
revealing the associations and connotations embedded in the words pamajikan and wanoja by
investigating their collocational and grammatical behaviours.
2
METHODOLOGY
To examine the collocational and grammatical behaviour of the words pamajikan and wanoja,
the corpus linguistic approach is employed in this research. Referring to Jones and Waller
(2015), a corpus provides information for researchers about the frequency of grammatical
patterns in particular contexts. By using a corpus, information concerning which pattern is
more frequently used may be obtained. A corpus, however, cannot demonstrate the reasons
why such pattern is frequently used.
To reveal particular grammatical patterns in a corpus, several statistical test techniques are
applied. They are frequency test, n-gram, and collocation test (Lindquist, 2011). However,
according to Jones and Waller (2015), the statistical tests can only be applied to identify
grammatical patterns. To examine further on why and how certain grammatical patterns are
used, concordance lines displaying the use of a word or a group of words that we investigate
can be employed.
The corpus used for the research is constructed from the collections of texts taken from
Manglè published between 1958 and 2013. The corpus is divided into four periods: Period 1
(the Era of Guided Democracy, 1958–1965), Period 2 (the New Order, 1966–1998). Period 3
(the Transition Era, 1999–2003), and Period 4 (the Reform Era, 2004–2013). The total of the
corpus size is 2,940,537 token. The number of words for each period is 78,081 tokens in the
corpus of Period 1; 1,897,777 tokens in the corpus of Period 2; 324,614 tokens in the corpus
of Period 3; and 641,065 in the corpus of Period 4.
The research uses corpus software, namely WordSmith Tools 7.0, to do a corpus analysis.
The software helps corpus researchers to manage and explore the corpora they have. Some
features in the WordSmith Tools 7.0 can provide word list, key word list, and concordance.
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By using the software, significant collocates in collocational construction, which is one of the
focuses of the research, can be easily generated.
3
DISCUSSION
Based on the data analysis of the 1958–2013 Manglè corpus with the help of WordSmith
Tools 7.0, the frequencies of the diachronic usage of pamajikan and wanoja can be identified.
Table 1 demonstrates how the words pamajikan and wanoja had been distributed for 55 years
in the Manglè corpus.
The numbers displayed in the above table indicate that throughout the publication period
from 1958 to 2013, the use of pamajikan is more dominant than the use of wanoja. In spite of
that, in Period 2 (1966–1998), a significant change occurs, and it is indicated by the increased
use of wanoja by more than 60% per period. The use of wanoja increases from Period 2 to
Period 3 (61.2%) and from Period 3 to Period 4 (68.15%). Meanwhile, the use of pamajikan
is decreasing by 10% on average, with the highest decrease from Period 2 to Period 3, which
is 27.7% (see Table 1).
From the comparison of ten collocates co-occurring with the words pamajikan and wanoja,
there are several interesting things to discuss as we examine Table 2. First, the significant collocates of the word pamajikan are kuring ‘I/my’, anak ‘child’, boga ‘possess’, salaki ‘husband’,
and imah ‘house’. The occurrences of anak, salaki, and imah as the significant collocates of
the word pamajikan demonstrate that the word is semantically related to domestic sphere.
Furthermore, from a close examination of the most frequent collocate of the node pamajikan, which is kuring, it is found that the frequency of the collocate kuring is 15.09% of the
total occurrences of pamajikan, and all collocates in the Manglè corpus. From the distribution, the collocation of pamajikan and kuring occurs 65.93% out of the total 91 texts in the
corpus. The collocate kuring equally occurs either before or after the node pamajikan with
the detailed percentage of 8.02% (on the left) and 7.07% (on the right). The interesting thing
from the occurrences on the right as generated from WordSmith is that more than half of the
occurrences of kuring are at the position of immediately following the node pamajikan. Thus,
in other words, pamajikan occurs quite frequently in the phrasal combination of pamajikan
kuring ‘my wife’.
Based on the analysis shown in Table 2, another interesting collocate to study further is
the verb boga. It can be seen that the verb occurs more frequently on the left (6.85%) than
on the right (1.17%) of the node pamajikan. Then, if it is studied further, the analysis shows
that among its occurrences, which are on the left of the node, the word boga occurs more
than 75% immediately on the left of the node pamajikan. Thus, the words form the clausal
construction of boga pamajikan ‘possessed/possesses a wife.’
From the analysis of the words kuring and boga that co-occur with pamajikan in the corpus, there is a tendency that Sundanese women, in their role as wives, remain subordinate to
men who become their spouse. In this relationship, the husband is the ‘possessor’, while the
wife is the ‘possessed’.
Among the ten significant words co-occurring with the word wanoja, there are three highest collocates that are interesting to discuss further: kaum ‘group’, boga ‘possess’, and milu
‘follow’. The collocate kaum ‘group’ always co-occurs before the node wanoja. It indicates
that the word wanoja is frequently used in a collective meaning. Meanwhile, the collocate
Table 1.
The frequency of WOMAN in word/million.
Nouns
Period 1
Period 2
Period 3
Period 4
Total
pamajikan
wanoja
Corpus size
584
13
78,081
words
524
111
1,897,777
words
379
179
324,614
words
321
301
641,065
words
1372 (74.25%)
476 (25.75%)
2,941,537
words
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Table 2.
The collocates of Pamajikan and Wanoja in the Manglè corpus.
Pamajikan
Wanoja
Word
Text
Total
Total
Left
Total
Right
Word
Text
Total
Total
Left
Total
Right
KURING
ANAK
BOGA
SALAKI
IMAH
MILU
LALAKI
RESEP
PINTER
KAUM
65.93%
62.64%
57.14%
46.15%
26.37%
13.19%
9.89%
4.40%
0.00
0.00
15.09%
9.11%
8.02%
5.61%
2.41%
0.95%
1.17%
0.29%
0.00
0.00
8.02.%
6.56%
6.85%
3.94%
1.75%
0.29%
0.66%
0.07%
0.00
0.00
7.07%
2.55%
1.17%
1.68%
0.66%
0.66%
0.51%
0.22%
0.00
0.00
KAUM
BOGA
MILU
RESEP
KURING
PINTER
GEULIS
ANAK
IMAH
SALAKI
13.92%
10.13%
8.86%
8.86%
7.59%
3.80%
3.80%
2.53%
2.53%
0.00
6.93%
2.73%
1.47%
1.68%
1.26%
0.63%
0.63%
0.42%
0.42%
0.00
6.93%
0.47%
0.21%
0.42%
0.84%
0.00%
0.21%
0.21%
0.21%
0.00
0.00%
2.26%
1.26%
1.26%
0.42%
0.63%
0.42%
0.21%
0.21%
0.00
boga dominantly occurs on the left or in the position after the node wanoja, which indicates
that wanoja is used in the contexts where Sundanese women are regarded to have the rights to
possess or to have a will or wish. This implies that wanoja is used to denote Sundanese women
who are regarded as powerful, and it is semantically positive.
Comparing the significant collocates between the node pamajikan and wanoja is another
interesting thing to discuss. There are no collocates pinter and kaum that co-occur with the
node pamajikan, as found in the node wanoja. It indicates that at least in the Manglè corpus, pamajikan has never been associated with both concepts. On the contrary, there is no
collocate salaki that co-occurs with the word wanoja, as it is found in the node pamajikan.
Nevertheless, the word anak is still found to be one of the significant collocates of the node
wanoja (see Table 2). Therefore, wanoja is still associated with anak, even though it is not
related with salaki.
The next discussion on the use of pamajikan and wanoja is in terms of grammatical behaviour from the perspectives of subject-object construction and phraseology. Table 3 displays
information about words that co-occur with the nodes pamajikan and wanoja, side by side. In
the table, the inclusion of subject and object is done by listing all the words within the span
position 5:5 of the node pamajikan. From the list obtained, only the words that are in the
position of one to the left and one to the right of the node are used.
In Table 3, the result shows that the occurrence of pamajikan is more frequent as the object
of a sentence than the subject. There are several interesting things to discuss about some of
the words shown in the table. One of them is the position of co-occurring words toward the
node pamajikan from the perspective of sentence structures. For instance, the word dibawa
that co-occurs after the node pamajikan is a passive form. Consequently, although in that
construction the word pamajikan is the subject of the sentence, the collocate is semantically
the patient or the participant that undergoes the actions, for example, “Tapi ari kapangumbaraan mah pamajikan the papada teu dibawa” (“However, living outside the country, their
wives were taken along”). It demonstrates that semantic roles are important to consider when
analysing the subject and object of a sentence.
Another interesting thing presented in Table 3 is the word boga, which in its every single
occurrence makes pamajikan the object of the sentence. It is important to notice because
it indicates, as explained previously, that pamajikan is often positioned as the ‘possessed’.
For example, in the sentence of Dina Lain Eta: “Mahmud kacatur boga pamajikan, ari Neng
Eha pepegatan jeung salakina, lantaran diteruskeun oge percumah matak baeja dimasiat lahirbatin.” (In ‘Not That Thing’, it is told that Mahmud possessed a wife, while Mrs. Eha was
divorced from her husband because continuing their marriage would be useless, yet bringing
more physical and spiritual sins.”)
In Table 3, the word wanoja, as examined from its function as the subject and object of
a sentence, is less frequent than the word pamajikan. Besides, based on its co-occurrence
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Table 3. The collocational behaviour of Pamajikan and Wanoja as the subject and the object of the
sentence.
Pamajikan
Wanoja
Word
Subject
Object
Word
Subject
Object
Balik
Bisa
Boga
Cek
Ceuk
Cul
datang
Hirup
Inget
Nyaho
Ret
tembal
Make
Balik
Diuk
Indit
Cek
hariweusweus
Ceuk
bangun
dibawa
ambek
Bisa
ceurik
Milu
Nanya
ngajuru
ngomong
norojol
Nyaho
nyampeurkeun
Nyarita
0
0
0
30
33
0
0
0
0
0
0
5
2
6
5
4
0
6
0
5
6
5
10
11
6
6
9
4
6
4
5
4
3
12
89
3
7
5
6
5
7
5
5
1
1
0
0
1
7
0
6
1
0
1
0
0
1
1
0
2
0
0
0
2
bisa
boga
milu
resep
4
6
5
4
4
0
0
1
with its co-occurring words as shown in the table, the word wanoja tends to function more
frequently as the subject of the sentence. With the word boga, for instance, wanoja tends to
function as the subject. In this case, wanoja is portrayed in the sentence as a woman who has
willingness or desire.
In this current paper, the grammatical behaviour of the phraseological aspect is observed
in the contexts when the words pamajikan and wanoja become an adjectival modifier and
head in a phrase construction. As the adjectival modifier, pamajikan and wanoja modify their
co-occurring words. The list of phrases in which pamajikan and wanoja are the head or modifier of a phrase can be seen in Table 4.
Some phrases in which pamajikan is the modifier, as shown in the table, can be classified
into several groups of semantically related phrases. For example, the group of phrases relating to family are anak pamajikan (children and a wife), salaki pamajikan (husband and wife),
lanceuk pamajikan (the sister/brother of a wife), sodara pamajikan (the relatives of a wife),
bapana pamajikan (the father of a wife), and kulawarga pamajikan (the family of a wife).
Then, there is a group of phrases relating to the possession of an object or quality, such as
sora pamajikan (the voice of a wife), imah pamajikan (the house of a wife), hate pamajikan
(the heart of a wife), sieun pamajikan (afraid of a wife), harta benda pamajikan (the property
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Table 4.
The phraseology of Pamajikan and Wanoja.
Pamajikan
Wanoja
Adjectival modifier
Head of Phrase
sora pamajikan
hate pamajikan
sodara pamajikan
bapana pamajikan
pamajikan geulis
pamajikan sieun
pamajikan babakti
pamajikan kolot
beuteung pamajikan
duit ke pamajikan
salempang ka pamajikan
imah pamajikan
nyiksa pamajikan
sieun pamajikan
kulawarga pamajikan
nitah pamajikan
lanceuk pamajikan
anak pamajikan
salaki pamajikan
pamajikan solat
pamajikan ceurik
pamajikan ka randa
pamajikan nitah
pamajikan ngora
pamajikan nyigeung
pamajikan nyentak
pamajikan jebi
pamajikan muncereng
pamajikan kabur
pamajikan
ambek-ambekan
pamajikan nuturkeun
pamajikan akang
pamajikan satia
pamajikan keuheul
pamajikan panasaraneun
pamajikan sabar
harta benda pamajikan
Adjectival modifier
Head of phrase
kaom wanoja
kaum wanoja
kuningan boga tokoh
wanoja
tokoh wanoja
pangarang wanoja
organisasi wanoja
sora wanoja
caleg wanoja
kegeulisan wanoja
majalah wanoja
pahlawan wanoja
pemberdayaan wanoja
cinta ti wanoja
hak kaum wanoja
wanoja Sunda
wanoja ngarawat kulit
wanoja Indonesia
mutiara wanoja
pakean wanoja
percaya deui ka wanoja
wakil wanoja
wanoja Bandung
wanoja Kuningan
wanoja legislatip
wanoja meunang
wanoja Arab
wanoja Bali
wanoja desa
wanoja pasundan
wanoja Aceh
wanoja nu dilukis
wanoja Jerman
wanoja pamingpin
wanoja nu ti keur SMA
wanoja nu wani
of a wife), nitah pamajikan (ordering a wife), and nyiksa pamajikan (torturing a wife). In the
phrases showing the possession of pamajikan, some imply that pamajikan is represented as
someone who is inferior, i.e. nitah pamajikan and nyiksa pamajikan, but there is also a phrase
showing the superiority of pamajikan, i.e. sieun pamajikan. The three phrases are associated
with the wife’s spouse, so it can be said that the superior and the inferior in this case are salaki
(husband).
Then, with regard to the use of pamajikan as the head of a phrase, the construction of
the phrases tends to relate women semantically to their habit. The classification of phrases is
also made here, and some of them indicate the behaviour and quality commonly possessed
by a pamajikan, such as pamajikan satia (a loyal wife), pamajikan babakti (a dedicated wife),
pamajikan ambek-ambekan (an angry wife), pamajikan sieun (a wife who is scared), pamajikan
kolot (an old wife), pamajikan nitah (a wife ordered), pamajikan nyentak (a wife snapped),
pamajikan panasaraneun (a wife was curious), and pamajikan sabar (a patient wife). In this
case, the behaviour and the quality of pamajikan that tend to follow the husband might be
related to the culture that prevailed in Sundanese society that adopts a patriarchy system.
Nevertheless, there are some verbs showing pamajikan as the superior subject. For example, pamajikan nitah and pamajikan nyentak. This, however, does not occur for the spouse
of pamajikan, which is salaki. This finding is supported by the recent statistic data from
the National Commission on Violence against Women. It is stated that in 2015, there were
11,207 cases of violence against women on domestic level, and 60% of them (or 6,725 cases)
were violence against wives (National Commission on Violence against Women, 2016). The
number can finally represent a similar condition in the data corpus being studied.
Based on its position as an adjectival modifier as presented in the above table, wanoja and
its co-occurring words can be categorised into several groups of semantically related phrases.
The first group consists of phrases which are closely related with political terms, such as
kaom wanoja (a group of women), kaum wanoja (a group of women), tokoh wanoja (female
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figures), caleg wanoja (female legislative candidates), pahlawan wanoja (a female hero), organisasi wanoja (the organisation of women), pemberdayaan wanoja (women’s empowerment),
hak kaum wanoja (women’s rights), and wakil wanoja (women’s representatives). It represents
women who in recent decades have participated in the Indonesian government or parliament.
Considering the available corpus only covers data until 2013, we include the data on the
representatives of women derived from the paper on the Policy of Women’s Participation in
Politics and Government, the United Development Programme, the House of Representatives of the Republic of Indonesia (DPR RI), and the Regional Representative Council of
the Republic of Indonesia (DPD RI). The participation was observed from two general elections, i.e. the 2004–2009 election and the 2009–2014 election (UNDP, 2010). During these
two periods of administration, women representation increased in two parliament chambers
of Indonesia. The figure of women representatives rose from 22.58% to 26.25% in DPD RI,
while in DPR RI, the figure jumped from 11.80% to 18.04%. Although incrementally the rise
may not be largely significant, it can be used as a benchmark for a country that is still struggling for equal rights with regard to its policy makers.
We also have some additional data relating to the two parliament chambers in a smaller
scope, i.e. women representatives from West Java. However, the data available is only for the
2009 general election. There were 22 women representatives or 24.18% seats filled by women
in DPR RI, and 25% seats filled by women in DPD RI. The interesting fact is that the 22
women representatives have made West Java the province with the highest number of female
delegates. Therefore, this could be the reason why there are many phrases where the adjectival
modifier wanoja is closely associated to politics.
In the same table, there is also a group of phrases characterising wanoja as the representation of womanhood that is related to appearance and beauty. The group of phrases, for
instance, is sora wanoja (women’s voice), majalah wanoja (female magazines), cinta ti wanoja
(love from women), mutiara wanoja (pearl of women), and pakean wanoja (women’s clothes).
If the five phrases are investigated further based on their contexts in sentences, it can be seen
that women are frequently mentioned in relation to appearance and beauty. Thus, the two
large groups of phrases with wanoja as adjectival modifiers demonstrate the tendency of
using wanoja in the political sphere and in the topics related to appearance and beauty.
Regarding the occurrence of wanoja as the head of a phrase, the word tends to modify
the origin or the identity of women. The group of phrases found, for example, are wanoja
Sunda (Sundanese women), wanoja Indonesia (Indonesian women), wanoja Bandung (women
from Bandung), wanoja Kuningan (women from Kuningan), wanoja Arab (Arabian women),
wanoja Bali (Balinese women), wanoja desa (women from villages), wanoja Pasundan (women
from Pasundan), wanoja Aceh (women from Aceh), wanoja Jerman (German women), and
wanoja nu tikeur SMA (female students of a senior high school). The phrases demonstrate
that the word wanoja in the corpus is associated with places of origin.
The last group of phrases discusses women in relation to superiority. The phrases are
wanoja pamingpin (a female leader) and wanoja nu wani (a brave woman). Compared to pamajikan in the same column, the general character of wanoja is quite different. The difference is
caused by its co-occurring words that show the tough and independent qualities of women.
4
CONCLUSION
The current research is about the collocational behaviour of two Sundanese words referring
to women, namely pamajikan and wanoja. In Table 4, the collocational behaviour shows that
pamajikan tends to co-occur with words that are semantically related to family and women’s
submissive quality. Additionally, the words that co-occur with pamajikan tend to involve only
a few people in the process of communication. On the contrary, wanoja tends to co-occur
with words that are semantically related to independence. The word wanoja is used to talk
about women who show strong personality of free expression and toughness, and are associated with their places of origin, so the place where a wanoja is from or her identity can be
seen.
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From the sentence structures, compared to the word wanoja, the word pamajikan is more
frequently used as the object of the sentence. Moreover, if it co-occurs with the verb boga
(possess), pamajikan is always found to be the object of the sentence. However, the same thing
does not occur with the word wanoja.
REFERENCES
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and the media. 8(2), 137–146.
Bari, F. & Venny, A. (2010) Perempuan di ranah politik (Women in politics). In: UNDP. Partisipasi
Perempuan dalam Politik dan Pemerintahan (Women’s participation in politics and government).
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Cheng, W. (2012) Exploring corpus linguistic: Language in action. New York: Routledge.
Danadibrata, R.A. (2009) Kamus basa Sunda (Dictionary of Sundanese language). Bandung: PT Kiblat
Buku Utama.
Jones, C. & Waller, D. (2015) Corpus linguistics for grammar: A guide for research. New York: Routledge.
Komisi Nasional Anti Kekerasan terhadap Perempuan (National Commission on Violence against
Women). (2016) Lembar Fakta Catatan Tahunan 2016 (Annual Fact Report Sheets 2016) [Online]
Available from: http://www.komnasperempuan.go.id/lembar-fakta-catatan-tahunan-catahu-2016-7maret-2016/. Accessed: 22nd September 2016.
Lakoff, R. (1973) Language and woman’s place. Language in Society, 2(1), 45–80.
Panitia Kamus Lembaga Basa dan Sastra Sunda (The Committee on Sundanese Language and
Literature). (1980) Kamus umum bahasa Sunda (General dictionary of Sundanese language). Bandung:
Tarate Bandung.
Pearce, M. (2008) Investigating the collocational behaviour of man and woman in the BNC using Sketch
Engine 1. Corpora, 3(1), 1–29.
Satjadibrata, R. (2010) Kamus bahasa Sunda (Dictionary of Sundanese language). Bandung: PT Kiblat
Buku Utama.
Sigley, R. & Holmes, J. (2002) Looking at girls in corpora of English. Journal of English Linguistics,
30(2), 138–57.
Sinclair, J. (1991) Corpus concordances collocation. Oxford: Oxford University press.
Speer, S.A. (2005) Introduction: feminism, discourse, and conversation analysis. In: S.A. Speer. Gender
talk: Feminism, discourse and conversation analysis. London & New York: Routledge. pp. 7–8.
Stubbs, M. (2002) Words and phrases: Corpus studies of lexical semantics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Tannen, D. (2006) Language and culture. In: R.W. Fasold & J. Connor-Linton. An introduction to
language and linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tannen, D. (2007) You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation. New York: William
Morrow Paperbacks.
UNDP. (2010) Partisipasi perempuan dalam politik dan pemerintah (Women’s participation in politics and
government). Jakarta: UNDP Indonesia.
Vigliocco, G., & Franck, J. (1999) When sex and syntax go hand in hand: Gender agreement in language
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Yuliawati, S. (2016) Profil semantis nomina perempuan dalam korpus majalah berbahasa Sunda (Manglè,
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The role of women in Javanese literature: A case study of Serat
Gandakusuma SJ 194 NR 324 and SW 5 SB 47
W.P. Sudarmadji & A. Prasetiyo
Department of Area Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This study is a modified version of a dissertation. It analyzes the text entitled
Serat Gandakusuma. Here, the focus of the analysis is the study of two texts of Gandakusuma produced in two different scriptoria. The first one, which was edited philologically,
is a text produced in the keraton (palace) peripheral. The second one is a text that was produced in the coastal peripheral. We will analyze how the two texts that come from different
peripherals present the roles of female characters with regard to the type of culture in each
peripheral based on how each text formulates the story, which strongly involved the main
female character, especially to support the main male character for achieving the true dignity.
1
INTRODUCTION
The development of literature in Java can be traced back at least to the 9th century A.D.
Records indicate that, during that era, an ancient Javanese literary work entitled Kakawin
Râmâyana was composed in 820–832 Çaka (Poerbatjaraka 1952, p. 2–5). Since then, the
world of Javanese literature has continued to undergo development and innovation. The
growth of Javanese literature cannot be separated from multifarious and intertwining social
and cultural factors and phenomena. One of the most important factors in the development
of the Javanese literature was the religious transition from Hinduism–Buddhism to Islam
among the Javanese people. While some original features of the old faiths were retained, the
arrival of Islam had inevitably introduced new features to the Javanese literature, especially
when the new faith had taken deep root among the local populace.
The influence of Islam on the Javanese literature is clearly demonstrated in a literary work
entitled Menak. The Menak tale is actually a Javanese adaptation of Hikayat Amir Hamzah (the
Epic of Amir Hamzah) in Malay tradition (Poerbatjaraka 1952, p. 109). Pigeaud argued that the
Menak tale has been known in Java since at least the 17th century. Since that time, it has continued
to develop. The development was such that it eventually lost much of its original trace and became
an independent and self-contained Javanese–Islamic romance (Pigeaud 1967, pp. 212–213).
In addition to the popularity of Hikayat Amir Hamzah, which led to its adaptation in the
form of the Menak cycle, there was a great interest among the Javanese people in romances
originated from the Arabic–Persian tradition. Those romances were then adapted by Javanese poets or authors based on Malay manuscripts. With their strong Islamic tinge, these
Javanese romances remained very popular in the northern coast of Java until the 19th century. They are Joharmanik, Jaka Nastapa, Prantaka, Jatikusuma, and Jatiswara (Pigeaud
1967, pp. 219–222).
2
SERAT GANDAKUSUMA
The text analyzed in this study is Serat Gandakusuma. This work displays the characteristic
of a Javanese romance with an Islamic nuance. The data consist of two versions of the text,
which, taken together, form a complete corpus for this research. The first text is kept in the
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Manuscript Room of Universitas Indonesia Library with the code number SJ 194 NR 324,
while the second text is kept in Sonobudoyo Museum Library Yogyakarta with the code
number SW 5 SB 47.
Our full corpus of Serat Gandakusuma consists of 10 manuscripts, which are kept separately in Sonobudoyo Museum Library Yogyakarta and Universitas Indonesia Library’s
Manuscript Room. Text selection was performed based on the descriptions of Serat Gandakusuma manuscripts produced by us. However, some parts of the texts cannot be examined
because they do not fulfill two criteria: completeness and availability in either of the two
places where the manuscripts are stored—the former was the most important inclusion criterion in this work. Some sections of the texts have even been completely lost, so they had to
be excluded from our analysis.
From the metrical system of tembang macapat (Javanese lyric poem), in which both versions of the text were composed, and the writing style of a number of words and the prolog
of the text, it is clear that the two versions of Serat Gandakusuma are the products of two different scriptoria. The first one is the coastal scriptorium, which is marked by its characteristic
diction, distinctive language style, and more metrical flexibility. The second one is the palace
scriptorium, which is indicated by more metrical rigidity, better spelling consistency, more
profuse and poetical word choice, and formal language.
The general plotline of these two texts is about the journey of Raden Gandakusuma, the
crown prince of Bandaralim. One night, he was abducted and then killed by his half-brother,
Prabu Jaka or Menak Tekiyur. His corpse was then flung into the sea. The presence of the
corpse in the ocean generated a chaos in the nature. This condition forced the goddess Sarirasa, the ruler of Sirrullah in the depth of the ocean, to rise to the surface to see what had
triggered the turmoil. Upon seeing a light emanating from Gandakusuma’s corpse, the goddess Sarirasa approached it and revived it using her magical power. She then led Gandakusuma into a long and perilous journey, which concluded with a great reunion of the royal
family of Bandaralim and Gandakusuma’s coronation as a king, accompanied by Sarirasa
as his queen. From the formulation of the tale, Serat Gandakusuma can be categorized as
Javanese Sufism literature, which typically features a protagonist who has to undergo a long
journey to achieve salvation.
It is interesting to examine Serat Gandakusuma because it emphasizes the role of a female
character as both the medium and the goal of the protagonist, Raden Gandakusuma, in completing his spiritual journey. Indeed, women often play a prominent role in the Javanese Sufism literature. The main focus of this work is how the two texts, which were produced in two
different scriptoria, reflect and position the role of its main female character, the goddess
Sarirasa. We first show the difference between the dissertation as the original source of this
work and this study. This study discusses the role of women as represented by the main female
character shown through the formulation of plots, parts of dialogs, and the authors’ point of
view in both texts. It does not include in-depth discussion on the Sufi concept, which is symbolized through the elements in the structure of the story and the comparison between them.
3
AN OVERVIEW OF SERAT GANDAKUSUMA
This section outlines the general plotline of the epic as produced by two different scriptoria
and discusses several important constituting elements of the epic. The version of Serat Gandakusuma with the code number SJ 194 NR 324 will be referred to in this study as “text A”.
This set of manuscripts contains 38 pupuh or chapters written in tembang macapat style. The
version of Serat Gandakusuma with the code number SW 5 SB 47 will be referred to in this
study as “text B”, and it consists of 41 pupuh or chapters.
Both texts share the same general plotline, which consists of:
– The introduction of the characters
Both texts begin with elaborating Gandakusuma’s identity as the son of the king of
Bandaralim.
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– The abduction of Gandakusuma
Both texts share this part of the tale in which Gandakusuma was abducted from the palace
of Bandaralim. The abductor was one of Gandakusuma’s own brothers, Prabu Jaka, also
known as Menak Tekiyur, assisted by another character named Darba Moha (in text A)
or Dremba Moha (in text B).
– The assassination of Gandakusuma
After being abducted, Gandakusuma was assassinated by the same character, Prabu Jaka
or Menak Tekiyur. His body was then thrown into the sea.
– The appearance of the goddess Sarirasa
In both texts, Gandakusuma’s death is described to trigger an extraordinary turbulence in
the surrounding nature. This great turmoil was immediately felt by a supernatural being
named the goddess Sarirasa, who lived at the bottom of the ocean, in a cave named Sirrulah. She then left her abode to search for the cause of the turmoil.
– The resurrection of Gandakusuma
The goddess Sarirasa then found and revived Gandakusuma. Gandakusuma fell in love
with her, but she did not accept his love directly.
– The deliverance of the goddess Sariraga and the marriage of Gandakusuma and the goddess Sariraga
After a long conversation with the goddess Sarirasa, Gandakusuma agreed to help her
release the goddess Sariraga who was captured by a king named Prabu Dasaboja or Prabu
Dasabahu. After she was released, Gandakusuma was then married to the Goddess and
then crowned as a king in Kakbahbudiman or Gabahbudiman, which was the home of the
goddess Sariraga.
– The seizure of the magical heirlooms of Baginda Amir
In general, these heirlooms would assist Gandakusuma in defeating his enemies, the heathen kings.
– The marriage of Gandakusuma and the goddess Sarirasa
After seizing the entire set of magical heirlooms, Gandakusuma married the goddess Sarirasa. However, the goddess gave Gandakusuma one condition for marrying her: he had to
be able to answer a riddle that she would give. The riddle was answered correctly, and the
marriage took place.
– The defeat of Prabu Jaka
At the end of the tale, Prabu Jaka or Menak Tekiyur was finally defeated. Bandaralim was
reclaimed, and Gandakusuma rightfully assumed his throne.
4
THE MAIN FEMALE CHARACTER AND HER ROLE
IN GANDAKUSUMA’S TALE
It can be deduced from the above plotline overview that even though Gandakusuma serves
as the protagonist, there are many parts of the story which demonstrate that he is very much
dependent on a female character named the goddess Sarirasa. First, Sarirasa revived Gandakusuma. Second, Sarirasa assisted Gandakusuma in releasing the goddess Sariraga from
Prabu Dasaboja’s grip. Third, she planned the strategy for waking Kanekaputra from his
meditation. She also introduced the idea to recapture the magical heirlooms of Baginda
Amir. Finally, during the final battle, she helped Gandakusuma to defeat his enemies.
Both texts evidently suggest that the goddess Sarirasa played a very important role in the
development of the story. Nevertheless, due to the fact that the texts were produced in two
different scriptoria, they are expected to display some differences in terms of character formulation and description of the goddess Sarirasa. Below are some of the differences.
4.1
The identity of the character
Both texts have a different way of describing who the goddess Sarirasa was. This is shown in
the two passages below, translated from the original text.
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Text A:
(Chapter 5: 2)
It was said that the princess was very difficult to describe. According to some people, she was
actually the son of the Prophet Kilir. There were also some who said that she was a daughter
who became the heart of water. Nobody knew except the Holiest One, who knew everything
and possessed the characteristics of sama’ and bashar.
Text B:
(Chapter VII: 1–4)
It was told that she was the one who sat on the throne, the adorable gem of the ocean,
famous all over the world, and she was truly the woman whose beauty was incomparable.
She was neither a genie nor a heavenly angel. She did not belong to the human race, nor did
she become a descendant of the giants. She was in actuality the heart of water (the ocean).
She was the noblest essence (heart/mind). She was revered like angels. She united her soul
at the depth of the sea, reigning over the ocean. Anything she wished, it could come true. She
was highly skillful in both hard and fine tasks, and she could also adjust herself to both the
young and the elderly. The blessing of a noble life remained with her. A life which was full of
the purest perceptions.
Such perception was conceived in the real picture of Sang Sukma Maha Luhur (the Most
Glorious Soul) in the disguise of the Princess Sarirasa, the essence of the earth. The beautiful
light glowed faintly. The rainbow shone brightly, and the stars moved about. Sparkling when
(one) beheld (it). Light fell like a full moon. Her origin was the same as that of the One who
was the highest in the universe.
4.2
The resurrection of Gandakusuma
Both texts also give different accounts regarding how Gandakusuma was revived. Text B
is somewhat more dramatic because it describes the process in more detail. Text A gives a
briefer description.
Text A:
(Chapter 5: 13 and 15)
“God is never mistaken about the people who perform good things by giving help. They will
certainly receive kindness. If they do evil, they will be punished. That is His sure promise. If this
is so, it is better for me to give him) help. O, handsome body, I ask you to retreat to the seashore.”
The goddess Sarirasa immediately took the medicine that was put in a container in the
form of a small bottle made of diamond, which she put in her hair bun. She quickly opened
the bottle and raised it over the wounds on the body three times.
Text B:
(Chapter IX: 4, 12–13)
The princess took the holy water. She then dropped some of the water over Raden Gandakusuma’s head. All his wounds were healed in an instant.
Like a flower, the princess then lifted up her heart and said solemnly, “Gandakusuma, live,
by His permission!” The prince did not wake. The princess said again, “O, Tambangraga,
wake! Wake, by the word of mine; wake, by the word of the Highest One.”
Still, the crown prince did not recover. The princess said again, “Live, o, pilgrim. Live, by
my word, by my will.”
4.3
The riddle of the goddess Sarirasa
As mentioned in the plotline overview above, the goddess Sarirasa gave Gandakusuma a riddle, which he had to answer correctly as the condition for marrying her. Surprisingly, both
texts feature two different riddles, as shown by these two passages below.
Text A:
(Chapter 14: 24 and 26)
“During the full moon, the weaving loom is broken in one thrust. After the departure of
the eastern star, where can it be found?” The King’s heart was suddenly filled with joy upon
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hearing the princess’s words. The king stood up immediately. He quickly approached the
princess.
“Later, when we are in our bed, (o) my sweet one, I shall tell you.” Then, His Majesty the
King summoned the celebrant, preacher, and muezzin, no one was left uncalled. Prabu Anom
at that time submitted to his celebrant. Thus, he was married to the goddess Sarirasa.
Text B:
(Chapter XXV: 31–33)
“... answer this riddle correctly: is the Sirullah cave at the bottom of the serene ocean?” The
king answered solemnly,
“It is called the vast ocean, it is crystal clear and brightly brilliant. It is the palace of the
grandest perception. Meanwhile, you take abode in the truest perception, the spirit of the life
of the whole universe, it is the manifestation of the essential spirit, the king above all who live,
just like Gandakusuma as the place where perceptions gather.
The Sirullah cave is the place of seclusion of the Living One, who lives without being vivified. There live you, I, and Sariraga. Therefore, all three must never separate. Humans and
God. The earliest perception is marked by a true human being.
Below is an outline of the appearances and roles of the main characters in the epic.
1. The death of Gandakusuma
In both texts, the goddess Sarirasa made her first appearance after Gandakusuma was murdered. In order to prepare for the goddess’ first appearance, both texts create a leading cause
in the form of fierce natural phenomena triggered by Gandakusuma’s death.
2. The resurrection of Gandakusuma
The goddess Sarirasa felt that the ocean was in a terrible turmoil, so she rose to the sea
surface to find out the source of the trouble. After witnessing that the turbulence was being
caused by Gandakusuma’s corpse, Sarirasa moved to revive the prince. At this point, there
are several subplots, which are relevant to our discussion, as follows:
– Both texts agree that the goddess Sarirasa had known the cause of Gandakusuma’s death
and felt pity on him.
– Text B recounts that, before the goddess Sarirasa revived Gandakusuma, she had been
involved in a battle with a Chinese princess named the goddess Karsinah. The battle
between those two female characters ended with Sarirasa’s victory.
– The media that Sarirasa used to revive Gandakusuma was medicine, which was carried in a
small diamond bottle and put in her hair bun (text A) or holy water (in text B). The water
was poured on the injured parts of Gandakusuma’s body (text A), while the medicine was
slowly poured over his head (text B).
– After pouring the water/medicine, two different things happened. In text A, Gandakusuma
immediately recovered and lived again. Meanwhile, in text B, Gandakusuma did not wake
until the goddess Sarirasa said, “Live, o, pilgrim. Live, by my word, by my will”.
3. The deliverance of the goddess Sariraga
In the next episode, the goddess Sarirasa gave a plan and directions to Gandakusuma on
how to live his second life. The first mission was to release the goddess Sariraga who was
captured by Prabu Dasaboja in the land of Kandhabuwana. The most important subplots
are as follows.
– The goddess Sarirasa tested the faithfulness of Gandakusuma.
– The goddess Sarirasa gave Gandakusuma a condition for being united with her.
– Prabu Dasaboja was conquered and converted into Islam. This involved securing Prabu
Dasaboja’s commitment to being the foremost and most loyal ally of Gandakusuma.
In addition, this deliverance mission became very important because it would serve as a
means by which Gandakusuma could assume the throne of Gabahbudiman, the home of the
goddess Sariraga.
4. Supporting Gandakusuma’s claim as a king
In this episode, the goddess Sarirasa assisted Gandakusuma in completing all the requirements that he would need to support his claim as a king. Those requirements are as follows:
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– a skillful and powerful chancellor or prime minister;
– sacred heirlooms, which could augment the king’s dignity;
– a queen (the goddess Sarirasa herself).
5. Adept commander in the battlefield
Finally, the goddess Sarirasa proved to be a very adept commander, as well as a brilliant warrior with supernatural powers. She was able to defeat the heathen kings. Of all heathen kings
who had been killed in the battle, some were revived by her to be converted into Islam and
also had to swear loyalty to Gandakusuma as his new allies.
5
THE GODDESS SARIRASA IN THE “COASTAL” TEXT AND THE
“PALACE” TEXT
It seems that, based on the above textual comparison, the goddess Sarirasa played a significant role in enabling Gandakusuma to achieve his ultimate triumph at the end of the tale.
Even though both texts exhibit a similar general plotline, there are still several differences
in the way both texts depict the goddess’ role. In text A, which was composed in the coastal
scriptorium, the author and/or scribe tended to exercise more carefulness in describing the
identity of the goddess Sarirasa. It seems that the author described only what is necessary
and put more emphasis on the goddess’ physical appearance.
On the contrary, text B, which was composed in the palace scriptorium, tends to be more
dramatic in nature and explicitly represents the goddess Sarirasa as “the real picture of Sang
Sukma Maha Luhur (the Most Glorious Soul)”. With regard to the resurrection of Gandakusuma, text B clearly vests more power and strength in the goddess Sarirasa, which enabled
her to revive Gandakusuma by the mere power of her words. This cannot be found in text A.
In text A, Gandakusuma was revived by means of medicine in a container, which the goddess
placed in her hair bun.
In spite of some minor differences, both texts also give the same general account of the
division of role and power between Gandakusuma and the goddess Sarirasa after Gandakusuma became both the king and the husband of the goddess Sarirasa. As a general rule, ever
since Gandakusuma was able to solve Sarirasa’s riddle, Sarirasa’s dominance over Gandakusuma’s life and future plans, both as an individual and as a leader, had been gradually fading. Sarirasa no longer served as Gandakusuma’s strategy and decision maker. However, she
continued to be his companion as his queen, as well as his confidante, by employing all of her
magical powers, especially her healing and resurrection powers.
6
CONCLUSION
Literature is an inseparable part of a society that has produced it. The two versions of Gandakusuma tales are the products of a society that flourished in a particular place and time.
These spatial and temporal factors have inevitably exerted a great influence on how female
characters, together with their roles and functions, are represented in the tale.
Text A, as the product of the coastal scriptorium, tends to show a higher degree of explicitness as well as carefulness when it comes to the depiction of the goddess Sarirasa as a female
character. On the contrary, text B, as the product of the palace scriptorium, tends to further
explore Sarirasa’s character in terms of physical and non-physical qualities. In text A, Sarirasa is depicted as a woman with supernatural powers, but a constant effort is also made to
avoid giving an impression that Gandakusuma, as the main character, was inferior to her. In
text B, Sarirasa is depicted as having all kindness and strengths. Sarirasa’s identity is established from the very beginning of her appearance and maintained until the end of the tale.
Our analysis of both texts demonstrates that the ancient Javanese culture, as reflected in
Serat Gandakusuma, gives an equal treatment to both male and female in terms of room and
power. Nevertheless, in spite of her powers, Sarirasa did not exert her influence by force. She
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is still depicted as an ideal Javanese woman; she might wield a great power and influence,
but she also had to display all the qualities required of a typical Javanese woman: gentleness,
patience, and calmness.
REFERENCES
Behrend, T.E. (1990) Katalog Induk Naskah-Naskah Nusantara Jilid I Museum Sonobudoyo Yogyakarta
(Main Catalogue of Manuscripts from the Indonesian Archipelago Volume I of Museum Sonobudoyo
Yogyakarta). Jakarta, Djambatan.
Behrend, T.E. & Pudjiastuti, T. (1997) Katalog Induk Naskah-Naskah Nusantara Jilid 3-A Fakultas Sastra Universitas Indonesia (Main Catalogue of Manuscripts from the Indonesian Archipelago Volume
3-A of the Faculty of Letters of Universitas Indonesia). Jakarta, Yayasan Obor Indonesia.
Damono, S.D. (1978) Sosiologi Sastra Sebuah Pengantar Ringkas (The Sociology of Literature, A Brief
Introduction). Jakarta, Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa Departemen Pendidikan dan
Kebudayaan.
Endraswara, S. (2013) Teori Kritik Sastra: Prinsip, Falsafah, dan Penerapan (The Theories of Literary
Critiques: Principles, Philosophy, and Application). Yogyakarta, Caps.
Hamid, I. (1989) Kesusastraan Indonesia Lama Bercorak Islam (Old Indonesian Literature with Islamic
Nuances). Jakarta, Pustaka Al-Husna.
Handayani, C.S. & Novianto, A. (2004) Kuasa Wanita Jawa (The Power of Javanese Women).
Yogyakarta, LkiS.
Pigeaud, Th. G. Th. (1967) Literature of Java Catalogue Raisonné of Javanese Manuscripts in the Library
of the University of Leiden and Other Public Collections in the Netherlands Volume I Synopsis of Javanese Literature 900-1900 AD. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.
Poerbatjaraka, R.M.Ng. (1952) Kapustakan Djawi (Javanese Literary Bibliography). Djakarta,
Djambatan.
Poerwadarminta, W.J.S. (1939) Baoesastra Djawa (Javanese Dictionary). Batavia, J.B. Wolters’.
Prawiroatmodjo, S. (1981) Bausastra Jawa-Indonesia (Javanese-Indonesian Dictionary). Jakarta, PT.
Gunung Agung.
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 388
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Posuo, space and women: Buton community’s customary tradition
and its preservation
I. Ibrahim & M. Budiman
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Posuo is a specific ritual intended for Butonese women, spanning from the
menstrual period to the pre-wedding period. The purpose is to mark a woman’s maturity as
a sign that she is ready to enter a new phase of life in marriage. The advent of modernity
and globalisation has brought about a change in posuo. Originally, it signified the transition of women’s status from adolescence to maturity, but nowadays it has drifted away from
adat (customs). In this study, we analyse the impact of such a change by first describing
the structure of posuo and then looking at how today’s community in Buton respond to it.
Ethnographic approach is used to obtain as much data as possible from various resources.
The next step is to answer how posuo survives despite the change, causing the change and
the ways in which the Butonese community give meaning to such a change. There are three
reasons for the existence of posuo until today: (1) as part of the local traditional customs, it
is not considered to be against Islamic teachings, (2) it serves as one of the requirements for
women who are about to enter marriage life and (3) and it has become an inseparable element
of cultural identity.
1
INTRODUCTION
The Buton Island area covers the expanse of islands of Southeast Sulawesi and some parts of
the mainland peninsula of Sulawesi Island. Buton was formerly a sultanate and the centre of
the development of Islam in Southeast Sulawesi. The island is included in the administrative
region of Southeast Sulawesi province.
In the 19th century, the government of the Butonese sultanate implemented Islamic sharia.
Tasawwuf teachings developed by Sultan Muhammad Idrus Kaimuddin (Zahari 1977, 28)
had a broad impact on various aspects of community life, including the terms of cultural and
art practices. All forms of traditions and arts that were not in accordance with the teachings
of Islam were ‘cleaned’ from the palace. In the end, a number of traditions and arts that are
still maintained by the community can only be carried out outside the court. Some examples
that can be mentioned here include the maataa in Cia-Cia or pakande-kandea in Baruta.
In addition, kabanti as a literary performance was considered contrary to the moral ethics
of the Sufis, and it was banned around the palace (Asrif, 2015, p. 2). Unlike kabanti, even
though posuo tradition has the influence of Hindu in its practice, it is accepted in the palace
territory. A different treatment that is given to posuo, in contrast to other traditions and art
forms, is one of the reasons this research is conducted.
Posuo is a ritual performed specifically for women in Buton, marked by the first menstruation until maidenhood. The ritual is meant to mark the maturity of female members of the
society, marking their entrance to a new phase of life and their readiness to foster their own
household. The people of Buton believe that ‘a female cannot be considered mature, despite
signs of physical maturity, before she is inaugurated in suo’.
Etymologically, the word posuo originated from po, which means ‘do’, and ‘suo’, which
refers to a room located at the back of a house. It refers to the division of space in a traditional house in Buton, which is divided into three rooms: bamba (front), tanga (middle) and
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suo (rear). Thus, posuo can be defined as the activities carried out in a room behind a house.
The rear room occupied by the participants is the room where the whole ritual takes place.
Only females (the participants and bisa) are allowed to enter. Bisa is an older woman who
has adequate knowledge about the customs and who acts as a mentor for the participants.
Under the customary terms, posuo should be performed for eight days and eight nights, but
the current circumstances have led to varying durations.
Even though Butonese people consider posuo as part of the Islamic tradition, in reality,
pre-Islamic traditions are still apparent. Their influences can be seen in the series of the
structure of implementation, conduct and myth incorporated in it. For example, there is a
belief that if the content of the equipment bowl of the participant falls and spills, then their
faces will be blackened or it will cause rainstorm in the village. Another belief is that, during
the process of beating the drums, if one of the drums cracks, it is believed that one of the
participants is no longer a virgin.
The strict customary rules of posuo have received various responses from younger generations, especially the female Butonese. Some of them considered that the ritual is no longer
relevant, while others think that the ritual is still necessary. The two different perspectives
reveal that the posuo tradition of Buton is facing a serious problem as, on the one hand, it
can strengthen its tradition and, on the other hand, it threatens its own sustainability. On the
basis of the issues discussed above, here we explain the changes that have happened to the
posuo ritual and their implications to the culture of Buton. We aim to describe the causes and
reasons for the changes, including revealing the reasons for the existence of posuo tradition
until today.
2
METHOD
The research data were attained through the ethnographic method, by conducting in-depth
interviews with the subjects and objects of the tradition. Furthermore, information was also
received from ‘secondary set of eyes’, which refers to the help of female partners, due to the
customary ban for males to be in the suo area.
3
ANALYSIS
Posuo is performed in three steps: pauncura, baliana impo and matana karia. The three steps
are the main activities that the participants need to attend. Before the main activities are performed, however, there are two introductory activities called maludu and malona tangia. For
further explanation, the steps for implementing posuo are described in Table 1.
Table 1 is based on posuo that is organised during the fieldwork in four different locations:
at Mr Jafar’s house, in the area of Buton palace, Melai Village and Baubau City. Mr Jafar
held the posuo ritual for his daughter, together with his wife’s relatives. The ritual was held
for four days and four nights, from 31 August to 4 September 2012. The second posuo was
organised in Laompo Village, Batauga Subdistrict, South Buton Regency, which was held in
the family home of Lakina Burukene. The posuo was attended by 28 participants from the
Burukene family, from Bautaga and family members from Papua who came for the ritual.
Similar to the one held in Melai, posuo in Laompo was held for four days, from 1 August
to 4 August 2014. Third, moose was held in Lipu, Betoambari Village, Baubau City, in the
house of Parabelana Lipu. The ritual was attended by 12 participants, and it was held for
4 days, from 31 July to 3 August 2014. Fourth, pahora’a was held in the house of Mrs Wa Rosi
in Takimpo, Pasar Wajo Sub-district, Buton Regency, which was held from 19 to 21 August
2013, as part of the Buton traditional party to celebrate Sail Indonesia 2013, attended by 12
participants.
Table 2 describes the changes in the posuo ritual.
According to Table 2, there are approximately five aspects that seem to experience significant changes in the implementation of the posuo ritual, namely the objective, time, location,
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Table 1.
Steps for the implementation of Posuo in Buton.
Name of the activity
Time
Activity
Maludhu
16.00
Malona tangia
18.30
A group of women sing barjanzi verses with tambourines. The
activity is held inside the suo in the late afternoon after Ashar
prayer, with a break for Maghrib prayer, and it continues until
an announcement is made that the participants can enter the
suo room
Invited guests are the family and friends who arrive and sit in the
yard of the house. Guests, both men and women, gather for the
opening night of posuo. Women who are close to the family or
members of the family are instructed to go inside the house and
sit in the living room. The family provides dinner called haroa,
which is served in a talang and covered in tudung saji made from
woven palm trees
Participants of posuo who are assisted by bisa, their parents and an
escorting girl as well as a functionary walk together going around
the village towards the house where posuo is organised; they are
welcomed by the guests. They climb the house stairs, the bisa
steps up first, followed by the parents and the companions
Parika (the leader of bisa) reads the names of posuo participants
and explains the requirements that need to be fulfilled by the
participants inside the suo. This activity is known as malona
tangia, a sign that posuo is about to start. While crying, the
participants kick their feet up to the wall, an activity called ranca.
The louder the cry, the harder the kick to the wall. Ranca can
only be done by the participants from the walaka class, while the
participants’ cries from the kaomu class are accompanied with
drums and a gong
Dinner is prepared by the family. After dinner, malona tangia
is considered done, and the participants will sleep in the suo
accompanied by a bisa
During shubuh (early morning prayer), two (or more) boys are
assigned the task of bringing water from the specified river. They
take two bottles to be filled with water. The first bottle is called
uwe malape (good water) and the other one is called uwe madaki
(bad water). This task has to be done in secret, as if the boys were
stealing, because their action should not be seen by other people
The bisa conducts tuturangi, which refers to the preparation of the
water that is going to be used for bathing the participants. In
front of the bisa are four bottles of water, and each participant
will use two kinds of water as explained above.
This activity starts with preparing dupa and kemenyan (incense and
frankincense). The bisa tries to blow the bucket from the incense
sticks, while another person opens the water bottle and gives it to
a parika. Parika is assigned to read the batata, a kind of prayer,
by putting her mouth closely to the mouth of the bottle, as if she
were talking to the water. The parika’s hand holds the bottle with
four fingers, while her index finger points to something. Then,
the parika blows the opened water bottle before closing it back
again and replacing it with the next bottle. This continues until
the fourth bottle
After spells are cast onto all the bottles of the posuo participants,
parika takes the frankincense and spreads it to the incense. The
smoke of the frankincense covers the room, and one by one the
bottled water is put inside the smoke and held by the four bisas.
The bottles are moved in the count of seven times to the left and
eight times to the right
19.00
19.30
20.00
04.00
Pauncura
07.00
(Continued )
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Table 1.
(Continued ).
Name of the activity
Time
Activity
07.30
The process of bathing the posuo participants (pebaho) is carried
out after the bath water is ready. The participants enter the
bathroom with the bisa. The participants squat facing east, and
then the parika showers the water to the head of the participants,
while the other bisa wash the participants’ hair in the count
of seven times to the left and eight times to the right. The
participants change their seating position from facing the east
to the rights, and then following the previous step, the parika
showers the water and the bisa washes the hair.
The sarong worn by the participants is taken off by tautening, and
the replacement sarong is prepared. Bisa must cast a spell on it
before it can be worn. The sarong worn for the bath should never
be worn ever again according to the local belief. After taking
a bath, the participants enter the suo with bisa to continue the
process to tuturangiana kiwalu
After the process of panima is completed, the bisa gives a mouthful
of food, such as rice and a slice of egg to the participants. This
activity is called posipo (feeding). Posipo is given only once to the
participants, as they can continue on their own
The bisa takes turmeric scrub that has been ground to be used by
the participants. This activity is called pomantomu. The bisa only
shows the participants how to use the turmeric scrub on the left
and right arms once, and then the participants have to continue
on their own, using the scrub on the face, neck, torso and legs.
The scrubbing process goes on for up to three days before the
baliana impo stage. After pomantomu, the bisa gets out of the suo
room, and the participants remain in the room and they are not
allowed to communicate with other people outside the suo, unless
particularly when the bisa needs it
The fourth day is known as baliana impo or a position change.
The participants who originally sleep with their heads facing
the east change the direction to the west. On the fourth day, the
participants undergo a procession similar to the first day, except
for pebaho and pasipo. Next, scrubbing, which originally uses
turmeric scrub, is now done with cold powder made from rice
called pobura bhae
In the suo, they receive guidance from the bisa regarding
manners, culture and customs, and they are asked to do dhikr
and to always recite istighfar
In the late afternoon before sunset, the participants go through
the process of pebaho (shower) similar to the first day. Then, the
participants put on their make-up and get dressed in traditional
clothes called kombo. One by one each participant goes out of
the suo room guided by the bisa, and then they sit in front of the
guests. Then, the guests who are invited by the wife of moji or
muezzin of the grand mosque of Buton palace, from the walaka
class, symbolically make the process of trampling of the ground
to each participant; this is called palandakiana tana. The soil is
later stored in a container and then rubbed on the soles of the
participants of posuo. This procession lasts until the evening, and
the event in the evening is called matana karia or the main party
08.00
09.00
Baliana impo
06.00
Matana Karia
16.00
***Maludhu and malona tangia are not considered as one full-day activity. Days are counted according
to the three steps of posuo, which are pauncura (sitting down/benediction) on the first day, baliana impo
(changing sleeping position) during the ritual (for the fourth day in an eight-day ritual and second day
for a four-day ritual) and matana karia (the main event) as a closing. The description of each step is
given in Table 1.
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 393
Table 2.
Changes in Posuo tradition.
Posuo
Then
Now
Reason
Objective
Inauguration of a female in Buton,
from kabua-buatokalambe
There is a perception that time and age are not the
main issue, because the focus is not on the timing
of the ritual but the actual implementation
of posuo
Time
Customary rules require posuo to be held
for eight days and eight nights
It is now a requirement for a woman who is
going to marry. Although a girl has shown
signs of physical maturity or reached a
certain age to do posuo, if she does not
have plans to get married, posuo is not
urgent
Now, posuo is organised for four days and
four nights, and sometimes it is held only
for two days and two nights, or even one
night
Location
The word suo refers to the back part of
a house in the structure of a traditional
house called banua tada (house on stilts).
Posuo must be done in that part of the
house
Nowadays, posuo is often held in the front
part of the house. This shift, however,
does not change the name of posuo into
po-bamba (the front part of the house) or
po-tanga (the middle part of the house)
Participant
The participant has to be a teenage girl
who has just had her first menstruation
In the Buton/Wolio palace, a woman has to
be an old and widowed to be a bisa
In other places, such as Lipu, Takimpo and
Laompo, to be a bisa, a woman must still
be married, and she is usually the wife of
the modji or the imam of the mosque
The participant can be teenage girls to
unmarried women
In the Buton/Wolio palace, a woman has to
be old and widowed to be a bisa
In other places, such as Lipu, Takimpo
and Laompo, to be a bisa, a woman must
still be married, and she is usually the wife
of the modji or the imam of the mosque
Bisa
The community in Buton believe that as a custom,
posuo still needs to be held.
However, for efficiency, participant’s conditions and
other technical reasons, the length of the ritual needs
to be adjusted. Some parts of the ritual, from pauncura
to matano karia, are still implemented according
to customs. The length of time, however, is shortened
Because the house structure has changed into a house
made out of concrete (although some still have their
houses on stilts), posuo is held at the front part of
the house. The same arrangement is also done in
the palace with a house-of-stilts form, although
generally the back of the house has become a kitchen
made out of concrete, so posuo needs to be done in
a room at the front part of the house
Cost and time adjustment
The different status of bisa is based on the customary
agreement in each area
(Continued )
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 394
Table 2.
(Continued ).
Posuo
Then
Now
Reason
Steps
Pauncura
Malona tangia
Baliana impo
Matana karia
To make clear of social stratification during
the posuo ritual, it is regulated that during
the ritual, the kaomu class should be
accompanied with drums, while those
from the walaka class should not be
accompanied
with drums
Pauncura
Malona tangia
Baliana impo
Matana karia
In Lipu, those who are not from the kaomu
class could still be accompanied with
drum music during moose or the posuo
ritual
As for the steps, there has not been any change because
in general, each step is considered as a fixed rule,
the order of which has been arranged according to
customary rules
The practitioners of adat in the karie area believe that
the use of drums during the posuo ritual should not
be an exclusive right for the kaomu class
This understanding is a free interpretation made by
the adat functionaries in the kadie area
Social
Status
11/17/2017 9:21:00 AM
participants and social status. Meanwhile, the aspect of bisa and the implementation steps do
not change. In terms of the reasons for the change in each aspect, it seems that the dominant
influence that changes the implementation of the posuo ritual is public perception. Besides
perception, economic factors affect the implementation of the posuo.
Perception here refers to the changing perspective on posuo, which is now seen as an obligation. This is why the time chosen is usually before the wedding day. Because posuo is usually arranged three or four days before the wedding, it affects the structure of the ritual. The
part that is reduced is actually the essential part of the ritual because during the mentoring
nights, the bisa will provide advice to the participants about the patterns of act and behaviour
directly related to the objectives of the ritual.
4
CONCLUSION
IAs mentioned in the Introduction, the Butonese people come from a community with a
very strong maritime tradition. A question has been arising as to whether the sea is the main
dimension of the Butonese people’s life as represented in posuo. When observing the process
of implementation and the use of cultural material, no idioms could be found related to the
sea. How can a community with strong cultural roots in a maritime tradition ignore the presence of the sea in its cultural practice? This raises the question as to whether the ‘sea’ also
takes part in posuo in this context.
Concerning the status and role of Butonese women, according to Schoorl (2003, 213),
although they are influenced by the social class system, they never see the importance of
understanding the differences between men and women. This is illustrated by the position of
the empress or the queen who was essential in Sultan’s decision-making process. According to
oral sources, during the period of the sultanate, the selection of a new sultan depended on the
eligibility of his wife to play the role of an empress. This is one record about the candidacy of
an empress who had to be educated and to master mysticism or ilmuu. If these requirements
were not met, a potential sultan was unlikely to be selected. There is a belief that Butonese
women are matured in the suo to acquire good and firm knowledge in order to have a role
and a position like an empress. However, in the present circumstances, it can be concluded
that the value to be invested during the ritual process of posuo is devitalised because the
objective emphasises more on the accessorial aspect than on the content. Thus, the short
duration of posuo weakens its function because it is no longer present as an educational function intended to prepare the maturity of a Butonese woman.
REFERENCES
Anceaux, J.C. (1987) Wolio dictionary (Wolio—English—Indonesia). Leiden, Foris Publication Holland.
Asrif. (2015) Kesusastraan Buton Abad XIX: Kontestasi Sastra Lisan dan Sastra Tulis, Budaya, dan
Agama (19th Century Butonese Literature: Contestation of Oral and Written Literature, Culture,
and Religion). Paper presented at The Annual Meeting of the Butonese Cultural, Buton.
Malihu, L. (2008) Buton dan tradisi maritim: Kajian sejarah tentang pelayaran tradisional dissss Buton
Timur (1957–1995) (Buton and maritime tradition: Historical study on traditional sailing in East
Buton (1957–1995)). [Thesis], Depok, FIB Universitas Indonesia.
Schoorl, P. (2003) Masyarakat, Sejarah, dan Budaya Buton (Butonese Community, History, and Culture). Jakarta, Penerbit Djambatan.
Southon, M. (1995) The Naval of the Perahu: Meaning, and the Values in the Maritime Trading Economy
of a Butonese Village. Canberra, ANU Press.
Zahari, A.M. (1977) Sejarah dan Adat Fiy Darul Butun (History and Customs of Fiy Darul Butun). 1st,
2nd, and 3rd editions. Jakarta, Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan.
Zuhdi, S. (2010) Sejarah Buton yang Terabaikan: Labu Rope Labu Wana (The Abandoned History of
Buton: Labu Rope Labu Wana). Jakarta, Rajawali Press.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Cosmopolitan female Muslim travellers in Berjalan di Atas Cahaya
S. Hodijah & C.T. Suprihatin
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Travel writing is a medium to report about the world, reveal the traveller’s
self and represent other cultures. Problems related to a conflict of values, either cultural or
religious, could be seen in the works of female Muslim authors. Berjalan di Atas Cahaya is
a compilation of travel stories written by Hanum Rais, Tutie Amaliah and Wardatul Ula in
Europe. They share their thoughts, experiences and feelings during their trips, as well as the
various stereotypes of Islam centred on the position of women in both the public sphere and
the global world. The awareness of female Muslim travellers as cosmopolitan characters is
based on female perspectives. In this article, we examine the discourse of cosmopolitan female
Muslims aimed at describing how female Muslim travellers find and address the conflict of
values, cultures and religions and explaining the construction of Islamic cosmopolitanism
by prominent female Muslim travellers. Furthermore, we argue that such a construction is
carried out by characters, points of view and the tones of the writings examined.
1
INTRODUCTION
Travelling has been one of the many aspects that play an important role in the establishment of the Islamic civilisation, from the spread of the religion by the Prophet Muhammad
S.A.W to the recent development of Islamic people. In Popular Dictionary of Islamic Terms
(2012:117), travel is related to hijrah, which is ‘the event in which the Prophet Muhammad
S.A.W travelled from Mecca to Medina to safeguard himself from the oppression of the
Quraysh tribe, a move to leave a sinful place or sinful deeds to a better place or deeds in order
to devote himself to Allah’. On the basis of this definition, in Islam, travel is of two types:
physical and spiritual.
Since the independence of Indonesia, travel, as a means of connecting people to the global
world, can be seen through the works of Hamka, Usmar Ismail and Bahrum Rangkuti in
writing their experiences of travelling to Muslim countries, such as Egypt and Pakistan (Salim,
2011:82). Muslim novelists, such as A. Fuadi, Agustinus Wibowo and Habiburrahman El
Shirazy, have also described the tradition of travelling and writing the travel experience from
the viewpoint of men.
In the context of travel, female Muslims have not been much exposed and discussed.
However, in fact, Burhanudin and Fathurahman (2004:113) explained that since the mid1990s, the discourse of Islam and women in Indonesia has become more open and an
interesting topic to discuss, and even a Malaysian Muslim activist, Zainah Anwar, has
considered Indonesia as the future standard regarding the issue of women and Islam because
of its largest Muslim population.
Mernissi (1994:174) shared the same opinion regarding the fact that the future lies in
the eradication of limitations through communication and dialogues to create a global
prospect, in which all cultures can be unique. Berjalan di Atas Cahaya (Walking above the
Light) described the travel of female Muslims in Europe and the impressions they had about
the cultural differences. The stories are interesting as they were written by female Muslims
showing their independence as well as stereotype problems related to veil, public–domestic
role and social manner in Islam. Long been functioned as the foundation of civilisation
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through their roles as both wives and mothers, female Muslims are currently more involved
in functioning leaders, as their viewpoints are listened to by the world, which responds too.
This study focuses on the difference between the cultural and religious values of female
Muslims and the idea of cosmopolitan female Muslims built through the development of
cosmopolitan zones. To analyse cross-culture interactions, we use the relationship between
the cosmopolitan concept and the principles in travel writing. Thompson (2011) defined
travel writing as the record and findings between one’s self and new things or people through
space travel as well as negotiation between similarities and differences. The principles of
travel writing are reporting about the world, revealing the self and representing others.
Fussell and Thompson (2011:15) explained that travel writing emphasises personal factors
and retrospective subjectivity, as it comes as a report on the experience of the author as a
traveller, in order for the readers to experience his responses, impressions, thoughts and feelings. In addition, Thompson (2011:72) explained that the subjective description emphasises
the discussion about the self and his/her emotional responses and opinion. In relation to the
description, the analysis model proposed by Mills in Discourse of Difference (1991) analyses
the subjects and objects from the perspective of the person who delivers and receives the
information. In travel writing, the narrator, through the subject ‘I’, becomes important as the
first person as well as the story teller of the world, places and people he/she met during the
travel so that the readers depend solely on the narrator to obtain information.
Travellers always have the go-international idea. Fine (2007:4) explained that cosmopolitanism emphasises the universal idea and the rights of the people worldwide. The increase
in the cosmopolitan quality in identity was analysed by Rantanen (2005:124) through the
following five zones: media and communication, learning another language, living or working
abroad or having family members living abroad, living with a person from a different culture
and engaging with foreigners in your locality or across a frontier.
2
METHOD
By using the qualitative method and the feminist approach, the cosmopolitan ideas are
analysed through the following positional and intrinsic components: characterisation, point
of view and tone. During the analysis of the data, the special expressions of the characters’
ideas and dialogues are then linked with Islamic perspectives and the development of the
cosmopolitan zone. In this respect, this study tries to show the narrator’s decision in revealing
the roles of female Muslims and the formation of Islamic cosmopolitan values through the
alternative discourses between the collision and the formation of cultural and religious values.
3
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Problems regarding the position of newcomers and settlers, discrimination and culture in
a society can be observed only through conducting research on literary works with crosscultural interaction. Kurnia (2000) described the traditional image of Indonesia in four
German novels in the 20th century. Meanwhile, the discussion on Islamic cosmopolitanism
was analysed by Budiman (2013) regarding the female main character in the novel Geni Jora.
Finally, Mashlihatin (2015) analysed the novel 99 Cahaya di Langit Eropa from the postcolonial perspective.
So far, research on travelling records has focused on male characters and male authors. In
contrast to the studies conducted by Budiman and Mashlihatin, this study focused on Berjalan di Atas Cahaya. By reviewing the definition of the travel and the formation of the idea
of Islamic cosmopolitanism, the research on the experiences and direct observations of three
female Muslims is focused more on the problems and influence of value collision.
Berjalan di Atas Cahaya consists of stories written by the following three authors: Hanum
Salsabiela Rais, Tutie Amaliah and Wardatul Ula. The similarity in the identity of the
authors as female Muslims and the spatial difference influence the factors explored. Hanum,
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for example, provided a detailed description on the value collision between Eastern and Western families:
I myself have not got the courage as those in Europe to let go of my children when
they are 17 or 18... People coming from Asia and those from Europe are like two
groups coming from two complete opposite poles on the issue of raising children.
That is where religion takes place.... (p. 40).
The collision of values discussed earlier is related to the difference in mindsets that forges
family relationship. The construction of house and family members is shown from the viewpoint of the narrator, which shows the different ways and styles through which European
people let their children go. From a specific point of view, Europeans are seen to have a better
value regarding the matter through the character ‘I’ as well as contrastive courage. The different ways of raising children are described as unique.
Although the character ‘I’ has lived and interacted with the European society, it prefers
Asian or Eastern identity, as shown in her statements and acknowledgement of the family.
Such an assumption indicates courage and openness of the European (Western) values, while
wariness and not being open are considered as Asian (Eastern) values. ‘I’ considers religion
as the point that differentiates the two cultures. An example is provided in Islamic cosmopolitan regarding how Markus, a mualaf (a person who converts to Islam) from Switzerland,
was raised:
‘I only learned from my mother who is a Catholic teacher. She raised me with religious values. When I told her about my choice to become a Muslim, it was the hardest moment for her. True, time heals. Time heals everything. Although now I have
a different faith from her, she is proud of me because I also follow her example in
raising my children by getting close to God’, said Markus (p. 48).
Dialogues between Markus and Hanum show that religions, both Islam and Catholic,
teach religious values in life. Through these dialogues and dramatic description, the point of
view focuses more on the memory that Markus had about the figure of his mother. By maintaining a good parent–child relationship and applying religious values on the development
of children, Markus emphasised that a role model deals with attitude as opposed to being
limited to just the basic values. Such point of view shows that cosmopolitanism supports
diversity in unity from the perspective of value equivalence. Involving God and religious values in parenting is a common practice in every religion, and Markus is successful.
In addition to the collision in the method of parenting, the collision of values is shown
when dealing with old parents:
I understand that most elderly in Europe are united in an organisation in the house
for the elderly by their children. However, it does not mean that the children do not
love them. It is just a common practice in Europe in dealing with the elderly... (p. 24).
Then, the collision is again described from the viewpoint that compares the society’s mindset in taking care of family. The narrator’s first point of view is based on the experience in
Europe, which is then compared to that in Asia. The description of others is humble in Asia,
whereas it is bolder and freer in Europe. ‘I’ uses the experience of ‘knowing’ and ‘direct
involvement’ to describe the feeling of the other character. The explanation that Europeans
tend not to take care of their parents is in contrast to that of Indonesians, who live together
in a society in one big house. Europe is considered as a place with a slow growth phase, as
well as its cycle of family life.
On the contrary, the collision towards Islamic points of view can be noted from the following dialogue between Hanum and Xiao Wei, a Chinese student in Austria who strongly
believes in communism:
‘I do not see any flaw in you as mentioned by people about Muslims. They all talked
about things they had not seen before...I bring Indonesian food for you. You invite
me to join your husband’s events so that I can practice my English’ (p. 74).
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The above dialogue shows the development of the character’s mindset towards female
Muslims and vice versa. Through a comparison of Islamic values between Indonesia and
Chinese communism, the readers are led to the understanding in comparing and concluding
that the Chinese are communists, which is against Hanum’s character. However, an empirical
experience strategy was used by Hanum to show the awareness of both parties in terms of
giving labels and stereotypes.
The collision between Islamic good values and negative images of Islam is described
through the development of the awareness of Xiao Wei, whose statement shows that effort
could change the awareness of non-Muslims about Islam, provided Muslim men and women
portray the goodness of Islamic values to people. The relationship between Xiao Wei and
Hanum reveals how social friendship as a medium could strengthen the understanding about
each other. From the dialogue, it seems that they both build the awareness that not all Muslims are terrorists, but they show good attitude. Furthermore, the following three cosmopolitan zones are shown: media and communication, learning language and involvement to
interact in one country.
Another cosmopolitan character in Hanum’s travel is Nur Dann. In an interview, Nur is
portrayed through the questions and direct answers about the choice of preaching through
rap music:
‘Changing perspective, people’s point of view about veil as the symbol of being
conservative in female Muslims. Veil is like when you wear a special hat for a rap
and make it tilted. You feel comfortable if you wear it while doing rap. I said that I
would feel comfortable when wearing veil....’
‘This is how you preach, is it?’
‘Ja!’ (p. 35)
What makes the dialogue interesting is that the collision between the cultural values in
rap music and energetic conveyance does not prevent Nur from using a veil in festivals and
associating the veil with a special hat for a rapper. From the viewpoint of the narrator, Nur’s
optimistic tone represents female Muslims in choosing the way of preaching and changing
audience’s point of view, which shows the quality of Islamic cosmopolitan.
Meanwhile, the collided character in Tutie’s story focuses on the stereotype of female
Muslims and the East. ‘After you. Please go ahead before me,’ she briefly responded. ‘Better, I come later. This black veil that covers the face will make you wait long,’ she continued
(p. 83).
The quoted phrase given above explains the difficulty faced by Layla, a female Muslim
who wears a veil covering her face, towards airport checking. Although Tutie, being a Muslim woman, has different principles in wearing a veil covering the face every day, she still
feels Layla as her sister. Wearing hijab and veil covering the face, female Muslims are seen
negatively from the Western perspective. However, this does not stop female Muslims doing
their regular activities, even in Western countries. Meanwhile, the point of view from European countries is represented by Tutie through the busy condition picturing the traffic of
European passengers in an airport. ‘They walk straight, while discussing business, entertainment, vacation, or music concert. In every of the steps, as if such noise appeared is for money,
money, money.....’ (p. 81).
The quoted phrase given above describes the difference and attitude of the European society. In a subjective description, through the expression ‘does not care’, the image of ‘walking
straight’ and the discussion about ‘business, vacation, music’, Tutie assumes that Europeans
tend to be individualistic or in group only when they have the same interest. This is in contrast
with the appearance of Layla that makes Tutie regard her as being different from the rest of
Europeans. The negative and subjective tone is described strongly in the mindset of Tutie.
In her travel as a graduate student in Austria, Tutie also experienced collisions, such as in
terms of hangout culture, drinking wine and gossiping that she could not endure. The ability
to socialise is obviously accompanied by the experience of being isolated by friends. In the
end, Tutie gives a speech about her cosmopolitan idea in the graduation:
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‘...I grew up and was raised in a Muslim family... Yet, I’m very lucky I can continue my studies here, where the knowledge of West and East meets, and the border
becomes unseen. Here, all people think globally, but still hold the principle and
respect differences. I believe this is a powerful weapon to survive and become the
champion in the global era’ (p. 123).
This quoted phrase describes how Tutie sees Europeans objectively and positively. Tutie’s
cosmopolitan quality increases as she interacts with others in the campus. This shows that the
position and judgement about female Muslims become more positive when interacting in a
public area. Tutie also describes Europe as part of the world to develop cosmopolitan in her
last quote. Through an oral explanation in the academic space, Tutie shows the success in her
living zone and her studies abroad.
Last but not least, the character of Wardatul put more emphasis on the romance and
problems that Muslim women from other countries face, especially those from countries with
conflicts. This can be seen from the viewpoint of a Serbian Muslim woman:
Dzelila comes from Sandzak, an area in Serbia. Islam has become a religion practiced
by the minority group in a country once under the authority of Yugoslavia. Although
born as a Muslim, Dzelila never tries to deepen her understanding about Islam.
Their families are against them when they want to wear veils. (p. 150).
The abovementioned viewpoint of the narrator shows the difficulties faced by female Muslims abroad when they compromise their faith for the society. In the quote, Turkey as a meeting place of students from various countries becomes a space where everyone can be open
about themselves. There is a point of view regarding Wardatul’s luck of living in Indonesia.
‘I wish I had been born in Indonesia, we would perhaps have understood Islam, just like
you,’ said Elma (p. 151). Through empirical experience, Indonesian female Muslim readers
are placed in the same position as Wardatul’s. Other female Muslims have an envious tone
towards Wardatul because of her being at ease with practising religious activities in Turkey,
which represents collisions experienced by female Muslims in the world.
In building a female Muslim cosmopolitan discourse, the characters also present cosmopolitan characters, women and men, Muslims and non-Muslims. Cosmopolitanism is built
through the spirit of equality as humans with the respect for diversity, such as what Hanum
says, ‘In addition, those who help are not all Muslims. Mostly, they are not believers. Indeed,
the brotherhood is not only with Muslims, but also with those of different religions. Sometimes Allah SWT sends them to help me through life’ (p. 8).
Hanum’s cosmopolitan quality is built through the aforementioned five zones. Her story
with the characters in Europe begins with media and communication as well as learning a
foreign language. Hanum presents more female characters, such as A Man, Xiao Wei, Heidi,
Bunda Ikoy, Ce Siti and Nur Dann. A Man, Xiao Wei and Anne represent Europeans with
their spirit of tolerance towards Hanum and Islam. Hanum focuses on reporting European
hospitality and openness, a diaspora Muslim family in Europe, different mindset and lifestyle
between West and East and the mission for Muslims to become representatives of Islam
worldwide. Hanum reveals herself as a female Muslim and minority in Europe, and she
regards the Europeans and immigrants in Europe as ‘other’.
Meanwhile, Tutie’s cosmopolitan quality is described through the three zones (ambivalent
cosmopolitan), which are learning a foreign language, living abroad and interaction with foreigners through campus activities. Subjective description is more towards discussing discrimination issues in Europe, the progress in Europe and the difficulties faced by Muslim men
and women in becoming the citizens of the world due to Islamophobia. The culture collision
is described through issues concerning hijab and stereotyping of female Muslims in Europe.
However, the success in coping with differences and stereotyping is achieved by overcoming
obstacles and becoming the best graduate. Tutie reports the stereotype and discrimination,
reveals herself as an Asian and a Muslim and represents the European and Middle-Eastern
people as ‘other’.
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On the contrary, Wardatul shares her experience when studying in Turkey during her early
life. ‘I always bear Imam Al Ghazali’s words that support my life. (He said) do hijrah, and do
not be afraid of what you leave behind, as you will get better replacement, even more’ (p. 158).
In positioning herself, Wardatul uses the authority of an Islamic figure, such as Al Ghazali, in relation to the goodness given when deciding to perform hijrah or move from one
place to another. It becomes a principle and a spirit in life for her to be a traveller. The
opportunity to succeed overseas at a relatively young age is something special, and Wardatul
gains the full advantage of it. The collision occurring and at first only involving some issues,
such as women and young age, does not stop her moving forward because her family, who
are very local, always support her and the Islamic religious values support her in every
step. Wardatul’s cosmopolitan quality is described through the aforementioned three zones
(ambivalent cosmopolitan).
4
CONCLUSION
Berjalan di Atas Cahaya builds a discourse and voice of independent female Muslims who
are able to adapt with the environment and new culture. Such condition is very evident as
being viewed from the improvement of the cosmopolitan quality throughout the story. The
complete cosmopolitan quality is obviously seen in Hanum as she experienced five Rantenan
zones and wrote more experience and assumption. Meanwhile, Tutie and Wardatul show
three qualities of cosmopolitan zones.
A detailed subjective description is presented to show the independent vision and the
character’s success in coping with cultural differences with the local society. This exposition
shows that the national cultural identity becomes the highest priority. Islamic values, on
the one hand, being foreign for the local people, create problems for female Muslims; on
the other hand, it improves their faith to change the negative perception by being actively
engaged in social interactions. This resolution leads to the final discourse that cosmopolitan female Muslims are everywhere and that readers can position themselves like the three
characters. As a whole, collisions occur on issues related to different mindsets of people
from certain countries in seeing family relationship, women’s roles and the image of hijab.
All characters see the position of female Muslims as more empowering and refer to Islamic
teachings as the guidelines in travelling. ‘I’ is described as an observer as well as the actor
in the interaction.
Last but not least, the characters describe physical and spiritual travelling as a great opportunity for women to understand the world and the people, as well as to re-define the image
of female Muslims within the global context. All characters highlight the images and stereotypes of hijab in the countries they visit. Accepting differences is considered as an obstacle to
become cosmopolitan female Muslims. New and unaccustomed values are taken as comparison to the existing values. A final and emphasised attitude is to adopt good values from the
world and maintain those values as local and religious values. Through physical and spiritual
travel, female Muslim travellers build the discourse of travel as a bridge to understand and
generate awareness of the ‘other’. Globalisation is regarded as an opportunity to be more
open to the world without losing their identity as Indonesian cosmopolitan female Muslims.
REFERENCES
Astuti, D. (2012) Kamus popular istilah Islam (Dictionary of Islamic terminology). Jakarta, Kalil.
Budiman, M. (2013) Geni Jora: Islamic cosmopolitanism. In: Reimagining the archipelago. Jerman,
LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing.
Burhanudin, J. & Fathurahman, O. (2004) Tentang perempuan Islam: Wacana dan gerakan (On Muslim
women: Discourse and movement). Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Fine, R. (2007) Cosmopolitanism. London & New York, Routledge.
Kurnia, L. (2000) Citra Indonesia dalam empat novel Jerman abad kedua puluh (Indonesia’s image in the
four German novels in the 20th century). [Doctoral dissertation]. Universitas Indonesia.
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Mashlihatin, A. (2015) Novel 99 Cahaya di Langit Eropa sebagai cerita perjalanan poskolonial (99 Lights
in the Sky of Europe: a novel about postcolonial journey). [Master’s thesis]. Universitas Gadjah
Mada.
Mernissi, F. (2003) The meaning of spatial boundaries. Feminist postcolonial theory, ed. Reina Lewis
and S. Mills. USA and Canada: Routledge.
Mills, S. (1991) Discourse of difference: An analysis of women’s travel writing and colonialism. London,
Routledge.
Rais, H. S., T. Amaliah, & W. Ula. (2013) Berjalan di atas cahaya (Walking in the light). Jakarta,
Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Rantanen, T. (2005) The media and globalization. London, SAGE Publication.
Salim, H. (2011) Muslim Indonesia dan jaringan kebudayaan (Indonesian Muslims and cultural networks). In: Ahli Waris Budaya Dunia: Menjadi Indonesia 1950−1965. Bali, Pustaka Larasan.
Thompson, C. (2011) Travel writing. London & New York, Routledge.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The mosque as a space for Minangkabau women
H.F. Agus & M. Budianta
Department of English Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: With regard to the routine activities in mosques in West Sumatera, in
this article, we aim at elucidating how women position themselves in a segregated space.
Through examining the forms of spatial management by observing and interviewing mosque
congregations, we demonstrate the extent to which mosques can serve as a space that both
limits and supports women participating in their communities on the basis of the social
contexts and issues in the local environments. Furthermore, we show the contextual and
cultural differences between two mosques located in different areas, Nurul Amri Mosque
in Padangpanjang City and Nurul A’la Mosque in Tanah Datar district. We also show the
complexity of hidden meanings of gender differences in a religious space that is interlinked
with religious values and at the same time influenced by the socio-cultural life in Minangkabau.
1
INTRODUCTION
Mosques often attract tourists because of their unique architecture and history. The architecture of a mosque is influenced by the Middle Eastern cultures, foreign cultures that were
brought during the colonial period and the local culture (Khan, 1997). As a Moslem from
Sumatera, I experienced an awkward moment when I was trying to find the women’s praying
room in a mosque in West Java and accidently entered the men’s praying room, which made
me aware of the influence of local culture on the architecture of the mosque. This inspired me
to conduct a study on the gendered spatial division in mosques in West Sumatera, my hometown, which shows a mixture of Islamic culture and Minangkabau’s matrilineal tradition.
For the Muslim community, a mosque is both a symbol of quiddity and a centre of Islamic
activities (Khan, 1997). In large parts of the society, mosques disseminate Islamic principles to both the local community and the global network through intra-mosque connections
(Bano and Kalmbach, 2012). According to some women, mosques do not always provide
equal space for them as men. A large number of research works have shown the efforts made
by women in various Muslim communities worldwide to achieve equal access to mosques
or to offer a different interpretation of a tradition that is dominated by men. Thus, in some
areas where women are not allowed to participate in religious spaces, such as mosques, there
have been significant changes, and those mosques have become alternative spaces for women
to gain knowledge about Islamic principles and to play a role in their community. This shows
how a mosque is not just a solid structure but can be more flexible and open to women,
although this change still requires much effort.
As one of the provinces in Indonesia that is known to implement Islamic teachings
in secular institutions (obligating hijab for female students and civil servants as well as
participation in the Ramadhan Pesantren and Wirid Remaja), West Sumatera supports the
local identity through mosques. In this study, we aim to investigate the extent to which the
spatial management in mosques influences the role of women and how women use this space
to redefine their position in the socio-cultural context of Minangkabau. In order to answer
this question, contextual data will be collected through desk research and observation of
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the spatial management of mosques as well as through interviews. Furthermore, the concept
of culture proposed by Stephen Greenblatt (1995) indicates that culture might have two
opposite natures, namely constraint and mobility. Culture also functions as a controlling
gesture of ‘praise and blame’ to achieve the ideal behaviour in the community, which will be
used in this study to describe the relationship between culture as constraint and as mobility
by using mosques as a religious space. The concept of space and gender in religion refers to
the conceptualisation of Kim Knott in The Location of Religion (2005), where he demonstrates how space and religion are inseparable as “there are no places in which religion may
not, in some sense or other, be found”, in order to check how gender as one of the elements
could be discussed in religious space. We also argue that the mosque is a public space, rather
than a static space, which is not only influenced by the Islamic culture, but is also a space to
interpret the role of women in customs and Islam.
2
SPATIAL DIVISION
Protests by Muslim women in various countries show the importance of providing equal
access to physical space in mosques. Thus, physical space becomes one of the main considerations in studying the role of women in public spaces such as mosques. In this study, we
observe the spatial division of two mosques located in different areas, namely Nurul Amri
Mosque in Padangpanjang City and Nurul A’la Mosque in Tanah Datar district. Padangpanjang is the smallest city in West Sumatera, which is nicknamed Serambi Mekkah, that is,
the Porch of Mecca. This nickname is related to the city’s image as one of the places where
Islamic schooling (madrasah and pesantren) developed in West Sumatera. Tanah Datar, on
the contrary, is one of the districts where the nagari (village) way of living is still maintained
in some parts and it consists of four tribes that have influential traditional leaders in decisionmaking processes in a societal life. These two cities are chosen because of their distinct characteristics in terms of customs and Islam.
In general, from the perspective of the positioning of the praying space, the spatial division
for men and women in the two mosques does not display any difference. The spatial interior
is similar to that in other mosques in West Sumatera, with the praying space for men at the
front and near the rostrum and that for women at the back and separated only by a temporary divider (i.e. screen). The ratio of their praying spaces is 1:1 with an entrance located
either facing one another or side-by-side.
Observation of the two mosques apparently shows the differences during Friday prayers.
Nurul Amri Mosque in Padangpanjang provides a relatively smaller praying space for women
than for men (though not 1:1), whereas Nurul A’la Mosque, which is located in the village,
does not provide praying space for women during Friday prayers.
Figure 1. Nurul A’la Mosque (Tanah Datar District). The left image is the men’s praying space, while
the right image is the women’s praying space (source: personal archive).
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Figure 2. Example of spatial comparison while carrying out daily prayers.
(Nurul Amri Mosque and Nurul A’la Mosque models)
Notes:
1. Blue: men’s praying space
2. Green: women’s praying space
3. Red: rostrum
4. Black: divider.
Figure 3. Example of spatial comparison during a Friday prayer in Nurul Amri Mosque.
Notes:
1. Blue: men’s praying space
2. Green: women’s praying space
3. Red: rostrum
4. Black: divider.
Female congregation is one of the factors determining the provision of praying space for
women as it often facilitates the arrival of women to mosques (the same holds for the reason
that women are not obligated to partake in congregational prayers or Friday prayers).
Under this condition, similar spatial management of mosques does not result in any difference in the treatment of women. However, the availability of equal space and facility supports the comfort and practicality for female congregation in mosques. As a result, there is
no conflict related to spatial arrangement, even though it remains segregated with a divider.
On the basis of the information provided by the caretakers of the two mosques, during daily
prayers (other than Friday prayers), female congregation is larger than male congregation.
The availability of space for women can support the congregation without feeling isolated or
not facilitated.
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3
THE MEANING OF WOMEN’S IDENTITY AS BUNDO KANDUANG
The mosque, which represents the Islamic ideology, also accommodates customs, but in a
different way. This is observed from the role of customs in decision-making processes related
to social issues. In both the mosques, we find that the Minang women are projected as the
Bundo Kanduang, a personification of a noble woman with strong leadership in the Minang
matrilineal community. The figure of Bundo Kanduang is described in the Minangkabau literature to be a strong, wise, knowledgeable and independent character (Mina Elfira, 2007).
Bundo Kanduang is a central character in Minangkabau customs. In relatively ethnically
homogenous villages practicing customary laws, important affairs are settled by a meeting
in an open field called Medan Nan Bapaneh, involving the four pillars of the Minang customs: Bundo Kanduang, Ninik Mamak (patriarchal leader), Alim Ulama (religious leader)
and Cadiak Pandai (intellectual, cultural leader). The role of Bundo Kanduang is played by a
senior and well-respected woman because of her position and knowledge about customs. In
cities and villages with a more heterogeneous population, Bundo Kanduang does not refer to
such actual representation of female body, but a collective norm about how a female leader
should be. In cities, community affairs are settled by a formal state institution, KAN (Nagari
Custom Meeting). In general, KAN in cities focuses more on nagari matters, such as the issue
of Tanah Ulayat (the hereditary land in nagari).
Nurul Amri Mosque is located in an area that no longer implements decision-making
processes in Medan Nan Bapaneh because it is composed of multicultural communities.
Nurul A’la Mosque is located in nagari, which still uses the process of decision making by the
existing traditional leaders. For both congregations of Nurul Amri Mosque and Nurul A’la
Mosque, Bundo Kanduang remains a reference, but in different forms and interpretations.
The interviews conducted in the congregation of Nurul Amri Mosque in Padangpanjang
show that the women understand the story and mythology of Bundo Kanduang as part of
the identity of Minang women, which motivates them to study and play a larger role in their
community. Even though this female figure is not present or represented in customary meetings, the mythical character of a brave, independent and knowledgeable woman is reflected in
the way Minang women are positioned by the congregation in religious contexts.
This has a different impact on female congregation in Nurul A’la Mosque, which still
has institutionalised Bundo Kanduang as the representation of women in the customs. The
mosque becomes a more limited democratic space because of the tendency of the decision
makers who are only monopolised by traditional leaders, especially Alim Ulama (including
the aforementioned four pillars in customs). The result is that members of the congregation who do not hold position in the structure of the traditional society have limited voice
compared to those in the city where the customary structure has been institutionalised into a
more formal and centralised institution.
Even though the role of Bundo Kanduang can be debated, for a number of Nurul Amri
congregation members, the memory of the Bundo Kanduang figure makes them more vocal
towards their position in society. There is a need to show the inseparability of women and
their Minangkabau identity. Open access for women to mosques is one of the factors that
can support the balance of the bargaining process for the position of women in society. For
female congregation, mosques become a place that facilitates not only studying the religion
but also discussing and understanding the concept of women in Islam and customs.
In an interview conducted in the female congregation of Nurul Amri Mosque, some of
the women quoted a hadith on women during the time of the Prophet Muhammad and
related it to their current condition. They had the opinion that passivity is not the character
of Minangkabau women. Eva (aged 60 years) held the opinion that the mosque is part of
her daily life. According to her, the prohibition or appeal to carry out worship in the mosque
is something that is absolute and cannot be debated. Similarly, Dian (aged 55 years) also
related her life experience to her role in the mosque. Upon discussing the discrimination
towards women and the prohibition of women going to the mosque in other communities,
Dian expressed her opinion about the mazhab (school or teaching) and cultural differences
as something that should be respected but should not confine women. For such reasons,
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these women showed a critical attitude towards religious interpretations and connected their
interpretation with their daily experiences.
In the context of both congregations (as well as other congregations) relating the hadiths
to the endeavours of women, they all refer to Bundo Kanduang as a reference for the ideal
character of the Minang women. For these women, the Bundo Kanduang character is not just
a traditional figure, even though she does not exist physically. On the basis of the explanations given by both Eva and Dian as well as other members of the congregation, there has
been much effort devoted to elaborate the complexity of the interpretation of a hadith. For
them, without context, a hadith cannot just be the reason to cease access to women, especially when it provides a means for worship and for the pursuit of religious knowledge. In
all possible occurrences, Eva and Dian inserted phrases “our grandma the Minang woman”,
which implies how important is identity as a Minang woman for them to show the difficulties
faced by them in everyday life.
Unlike the congregation of Nurul Amri Mosque, the female congregation of Nurul A’la
Mosque was found to be more passive. The women who frequently visit the mosque focus
more on worship and mosque-related activities set by its caretakers. These findings show that
every district or smaller community unit could have different interpretations on the role of
women. On the basis of the experience of Ayu (aged 30 years), a member of the female congregation of Nurul A’la Mosque, the management of the mosque is limited to some central
characters in the local customs. Ayu believes that decision-making processes related to this
mosque do not involve the congregation in general, but are decided only by the members
of the committee with Alim Ulama as the leader, Ninik Mamak and Bundo Kanduang. The
society only involves in making decisions without discussion. Ironically, in this context, the
representation of Bundo Kanduang is also considered quite passive. In several customary
decision-making processes, Bundo Kanduang also tends to follow the opinions of other leaders, so that the female congregation is not free to express their opinion. For the women, this
tradition is very confining, as they realise that access to express opinion is crucial.
This is very contextual and can differ from one nagari area to another; however, these
findings reveal that the role of women in tradition also affects religious and social spaces. In
other words, the participation of women in mosques in the above two cases of mosques is
parallel to the interpretation of the traditional role of women in customs. Greenblatt (1995)
argued that culture has two opposing forces, namely constraint and mobility. Culture may
become a constraint and an obstacle; however, it may also be a driving force for social change.
In other words, there are two oppositions within culture. It can lead to the establishment of
borders that serve as a controlling mechanism within the society as well as an opening space
for changes.
4
WOMEN’S INITIATIVE IN EVERYDAY ACTIVITIES IN MOSQUES
Regardless of the fact that social institutions have a strong influence in determining the position of women, Minang women in their daily lives play an important role as an agent in
the negotiation for wider access and larger opportunities. The efforts are not made through
huge demonstrations, such as those carried out by the Muslim women who demonstrated in
mosques, as well as through the discourse of gender equality. The efforts are visible from the
self and through everyday experience and small, yet concrete proof of self-achievement. The
everyday life strategy of Minang women in securing their place in religious activities is not a
threat to other parties and hence it is more acceptable. Although small in scale, daily initiatives of women have widened their public roles.
The main members in a mosque’s committee are usually men led by imam and khatib.
The central position is limited because the role of imam and khatib can only be held by men.
Almost all mosques adopt this tradition (even though some women activists try to offer new
interpretation towards this practice), except for women’s mosques. Despite the limitation
from the central management, several mosques allow women to participate in other divisions
(such as community and education affairs). Some women expand their role through their
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initiative by starting new programs or activities in the mosques. This simple discussion not
only allows women to be more involved in social activities through mosques but also builds
their interest to participate and to express their opinions in public space without feeling
inferior (in relation to states, profession, education, etc.). Even though the scale of the activities is very small, such as monthly community meetings or weekly sermons and learning the
interpretation of the Koran, these simple activities become events that help members in the
society interact with each other.
Women holding many positions in the management structure of a mosque opens more
possibilities for them to expand their role and knowledge in understanding Islam. However,
this access will be ineffective without efforts from the society to support and develop the
functions of mosques. Many women in Nurul Amri Mosque actively propose to rebuild the
mosque for the younger generation. Ratih (aged 61 years), triggered by several incidents
in her community (the use of drugs and bullying), suggested that the mosque’s caretakers
should revive the Teen Mosque program for teenagers to interact and be involved in discussions related to Islam and other pressing issues. Ratih began the program by disseminating
the ideas from house to house in the neighbourhood and became a volunteer for other activities, such as Marching Band trainer to attract the interest of the teenagers.
Ratih’s efforts show that women can hold amanah mandates in managing mosques. One
of her major considerations as a member of the mosque management is the rules and behaviours that are appropriate in the religious space. According to her, going to a mosque means
understanding the rules in it, the main one being not to disturb other members who are carrying out worship.
According to Greeblatt (1995), culture has a control mechanism within the concept of gesture, which is highly efficient in determining the criteria for inappropriate behaviour as well
as models and ideals. In producing gesture that both inhibits and allows such behaviour, the
technique of praise and blame is implicitly implemented in daily life. Through acts of respect,
praising smiles and approving nods, one’s act and behaviour are supported and accommodated; however, through sharp looks, satire and insults, certain behaviours are perceived to be
bad and will be rejected. Hence, for the congregations, appropriate behaviours become one of
the elements to prove their ability and awareness in managing the mosque.
In other various activities, such as Majelis Taklim, a joint wirid among groups in the same
sub-districts, and celebrations of religious holidays and social activities, female congregation
is very enthusiastic and willing to cooperate with men congregation. Often women propose
the forms of activities, the person to deliver the sermon, as well as the donators. In general,
these activities are commonly seen in mosques in other areas, except in larger mosques like
Masjid Negara, Masjid Besar and Masjid Agung. These large mosques are managed professionally because those activities require bigger management to serve a larger society. In
general, smaller mosques at the local community and sub-district levels are supported by the
voluntarism of local members, motivated by the aspiration to study and find a solution of
social problems in their community.
5
CONCLUSION
The mosque as a space can be made to both limit and empower women. Spatial negotiations in mosques for women are one way for them to gain access related to how the society
interprets the role of women in a wider context. By observing the space in the two mosques
as case studies, Minang women in general have flexible and friendly space. However, spatial
management does not guarantee women freedom to involve in the decision-making processes
in mosques. The challenge for women comes from the interpretation of the Islamic ideology
and the practice of local customs. In a community that institutionalises a matrilineal custom
in a more rigid way, the role of women in a religious space is more limited. On the contrary,
in a community where the myth of female leader operates as a collective reference, women
can develop thoughts more freely regarding their positions in Islam and customs. This shows
that the interpretation of the role of women from one custom to another can be different.
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This study also shows that the participation of women in activities in mosques also has a significant influence on the size of the space that is provided for them. The presence of women
in the management structure of mosques is crucial in helping them to express their opinions
and empower other women to be more confident, although there are limitations and segregation in mosques. Thus, space as a socio-cultural context and the active participation of
women to increase agency in space are equally important.
This study is one of the early works conducted to develop in-depth research on the relationship among space, religion and women in West Sumatera. The complexity of other variables, such as the variance of traditions, city–village differences, government policies related
to women and other elements, such as education and social status, can contribute to further
research on religious spaces and gender role for Minang women.
REFERENCES
Bano, M. & Kalmbach, H. (2012) Women, Leadership, and Mosques. Brill, Leiden.
Greenblatt, S. (1995) Culture. In: Frank, L. & Thomas, M. Critical Terms for Literature Study. Chicago,
University of Chicago.
Holod, R. & Hasan-Uddin, K. (1997) The Mosque and the Modern World. Thames and Hudson Ltd.
Knott, K. (2005) The Location of Religion. London, Equinox Publishing.
Mina, E. (2007) Bundo Kanduang: a powerful or powerless ruler? Literary analysis of Kaba Cindua
Mato (Hikayat Yang Muda Tuanku Pagaruyung) (Fable of the Young Prince Pagaruyung). Makara,
Sosial Humaniora, 11(1), 30–36.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The realisation of metaphorical speech act in a religious themed
text: Pragmatics analysis on a popular religious self-help book
S. Altiria & A. Muta’ali
Department of Linguistic, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This research was based on Charteris-Black’s (2004) notable argument about
how metaphors in religious texts are basically utilized as tools for persuasion with affective
value of a religious moral code. This research used the Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA)
approach to find out what persuasion strategy is used in the metaphorical speech act of
a particular popular religious text regarding premarital romantic relationship. By using a
descriptive qualitative research method and the combination of cognitive linguistic theories,
this research finds that there is a polarization in metaphorical meaning between tenors in
the data. The tenors also imply gender bias; men are portrayed as the source of problems,
whereas women are viewed as the sole victim of premarital romantic relationship. Finally, the
analysis on the speech act strategy reveals that it is delivered by using assertive and directive
way of speech. The result here is in line with Charteris-Black’s findings of didactic nature in
sacred texts. This research might shed a light for further research in various disciplines on the
study of religious texts in Indonesia.
1
INTRODUCTION
The modern expression of Islamic piety in Indonesia has caught the attention of global
academics for years. An annual Indonesian Update conference held in the Australian National
University in 2007 specifically discussed the particular topic with a number of scholars
presenting numerous points of interest such as the marketing of religious preaching books
and cassettes as a manifestation of customer’s religious self-image, and Islamic law discussions
on the Internet that led the public to become more close-minded and less tolerant (Fealy
& White, 2012). Among all observations on piety expression, Hoesterey (2012, 2013, 2015)
focuses on Abdullah Gymnastiar (Aa Gym), an iconic figure that has changed the trend of
religious preaching in Indonesia with his approach on popular Islamic discussion, religion
as the authority holder, Muslim’s subjectivity, and public devotion to religion. Hoesterey
highlights Aa Gym’s unique passion to popularize and mobilize Islamic idioms as a singular
answer to all problems, including economy and politics. Through his books, TV programme,
seminars, and self-healing trainings, Aa Gym introduced to Indonesian Muslims a whole
new horizon of popular preaching that is later followed by other celeb-preachers (Hoesterey,
2012).
After years of saturated market on popular religious preaching, a new popular preacher
Felix Siauw emerged through social media with millions of followers and subscribers. One
particular notorious topic brought up by him is the campaign to refuse any kinds of romantic
relationship before marriage, through his book titled “Udah Putusin Aja” or “Just Put an
End to It”. Here, he tries to convince millions of people who bought his book to despise
any kinds of premarital romantic relationship. The book itself is a kind of a self-help book
based on religious values. It was claimed that it could be used as a guide for youths to avoid
romantic relationship before marriage and as a guide for parents to supervise their children
misbehaviours.
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The book ignited objections from other Islamic scholars. Akhiles (2014) asks Muslims to
carefully think about and learn the basic of Islamic law used to support Siauw’s argument.
He was displeased by the way the book elaborated circumstances in a rigid fashion and is
prone to subjective bias. He states that we need to perceive Islamic law with a fair perspective
and based on good intention, rather than “forcing scriptures to reality without dialogue or
manipulating a sacred text in order to win the debate” (Akhiles, 2004, p. 7). Fathoni (2015)
also expresses his disappointment in his book titled “Dear Felix Siauw” that specifically questions Siauw’s rigid claim on religion-based morality. These critics reflect a big burden for
“Just Put an End to It” book that has potentially misled general readers in viewing reality
and morality.
The style of argumentation and reasoning used in particular religious narratives has a
unique pattern that presumably was not intended by the writer. Metaphors were frequently
used in general religious preaching in social media, especially in Siauw’s book, to express
ideas. This is consistent with Stern’s (in Gibbs, 2008) argument that metaphors do not only
occur in classic literatures, but also in casual conversation. Metaphors in popular religious
preaching are also reflected in Ortony’s (1975) idea that metaphors are not only used to
amplify the beauty of a language, but also to embed important values in it. Furthermore,
Charteris-Black (2004) states that metaphors can adequately express religious messages
because they deliver abstract concepts to concrete examples in real life.
Considering the significance of language expression in Siauw’s book that also represents
mainstream religion preaching expression in Indonesia, it is important to take a closer look
on the topic through a question, “what kind of speech act strategy is being used to communicate the metaphorical text in the book?” This research used cognitive linguistic theories,
consisting of semantics (metaphor-semantic cognitive) and pragmatics (speech act) to analyse the book’s content comprehensively. In the pragmatic discussion, the researchers investigated the interaction between a linguistic approach and general issues that are related to the
language. A semantic approach was used to set the boundary so that the observation and
elaboration stay on the linguistic elements without expanding to other domains.
Multiple steps of analysis in this research were based on Gibbs’ (1999) argument that
metaphors in the linguistic, cognitive, and social context are different, so a careful analysis was needed to elaborate metaphorical expressions appropriately. Therefore, to answer
the research question, three theories were needed, namely conceptual metaphor theory by
Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 2003) to find the type of metaphors used in the data, relevance
theory by Sperber and Wilson (1995) to find moral messages that are communicated in
metaphorical speech acts, and Searle’s (1975) speech act classification to classify metaphorical speech acts as well as to find speech act strategy used in communicating the particular
moral messages.
1.1
Research on metaphors in Indonesia
There are quite a few numbers of studies on speech act of religion issues in Indonesia. One
research by Rahyono, Sutanto, Rachmat, and Puspitorini (2005) observed the speech act in
mass media focusing on language profile of mass media in post New Order era. Another
research by Sitanggang (2009) also focused on the political nuance of the language in her
thesis.
As for metaphors, the discussions are vastly available and dynamically elaborative on many
important issues in public. Yin (2013) states that the scope of the metaphorical text analysis
has extended to various sectors, including ideology (Goatly, 2006), political economy (Heradstveit & Bonham, 2007, and Cammaerts, 2012), education (Cameron, 2003), and religion
(Charteris-Black, 2004). There was also specific research that observed casual daily conversation (Ponterotto, 2003) by using a cohesion approach on the speech/text of the conversation. Yet, there is still a little research on metaphors in religion-themed texts in Indonesia.
One of the most notable studies can be found in Murtadho’s (1999) investigation on the
Indonesian translation of the Holy Koran. Most of the analyses on metaphors in Indonesia
mainly focused on classic literatures, such as poems, song lyrics, and novels (Hasan, 2000,
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and Karnedi, 2011), but the metaphors in religion-based texts are not yet properly discussed
in academic research.
1.2
Conceptual metaphors
The theory of conceptual metaphors was first introduced by Lakoff and Johnson (1980).
According to them, metaphors involve two conceptual structures, which are the source
domain and the target domain. Lakoff (in Cruse 2004:201) states that the source domain
is concrete, while the target domain is abstract. Besides the two domains, there is also a set
of mapping and accordance between the domains. The theory does not only focus on the
linguistic expressions in metaphors, but also the semantic of conceptual metaphor or the
speech’s metaphorical expression. Taverniers (2002, p. 5) further explains that conceptual
metaphor is part of cognitive linguistic discourse, which stretches on a dimension from the
simplest to the most complex. This dimension can be seen from the structure of metaphor in
speech and is divided into three kinds, which are orientational metaphor, ontological metaphor, and structural metaphor.
Orientational metaphor is the simple dimension metaphor. It consists of semantics’ basic
notion, such as time, quantity, status, changes, causes, and category members which metaphorically can be defined as the length of conceptual basic elements (e.g. space, motion,
force) (Lakoff in Cruse, 2004, p. 204). The examples are: argument is a container; happy is
up; sad is down. Ontological metaphor is the natural and persuasive metaphor in human
cognition. It is a tool to understand about the experiences/sequences of human life. It can
be used to conceptualize an abstract projection of a sentence into something more realistic
(Cruse, 2006, p. 127). The entities of this metaphor can be derived from sentences which are
related to one another. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 2003). The examples are: inflation is an
entity which is derived from these related sentences: Inflation is lowering our standard of living
and If there’s much more inflation. Structural metaphor is a concept which conceptualizes
another new concept metaphorically (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 2003). It is a whole configuration formed by the mapping of metaphor domains (source domain & target domain) and
it is built upon some related primary metaphors. Examples: the Structural Metaphor: A purposeful life is a journey from the primary metaphors: People should have purpose in life, and
Purposes are destination; People should act so as to achieve purpose, and Actions are motion
(Ning yu in Gibbs, 2008, p. 247).
This conceptual metaphor represents the basic concepts of an idea or description based on
a set of metaphors found in the speech. This theory is still considered as a crucial approach in
the studies on metaphors as found in Ponterotto (2014) decades after the initial conceptualisation of the theory. The research explored the metaphor of “happiness is up” as an emotional
concept through the investigation on the verbs in the sentence.
1.3
Relevance theory
Relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995) views that a speech automatically creates an
assumption that subsequently helps interlocutors to understand the meaning intended by
the speaker. In relevance theory, people are perceived to efficiently process information; in
this case, it means that there is an equilibrium on the effort to process information and the
produced contextual effect (Cruse, 2004, p. 383). The processing effect means that the less
effort given to discover the facts, the bigger the relevance of the facts. In other words, conspicuous facts need less effort to understand, if compared to the less obvious facts; direct
inferences need less effort than indirect inferences. Subsequently, contextual effect means that
the more contextual effect given, the stronger the relevance of those particular facts. This
contextual effect includes additional information, the new information that either strengthens or weakens old information. New facts, which are irrelevant with the information, will
not be processed.
This article agrees with the main premise of relevance theory, which states that in order to
maintain a fluid communication, the speaker needs to understand the relevance principles,
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namely 1) that human cognition tends to be used to maximize relevance, and 2) that every
demonstrative communication automatically communicates information with optimum relevance. Relevance theory in this article is used to find metaphorical meanings embedded in
the speeches. This is based on the notion that the relevance between the source domain and
the target domain can lead to certain meanings, which later can be used to form the reflector
or determinant of illocutionary function in a metaphorical speech.
1.4
Speech act taxonomy
Searle (in Cruse, 2004) classifies speech act into five categories known as macro-functions.
The first is representative/assertive, an illocutionary function that ties the speaker with the
truth of expressed proposition, such as: stating, proposing, bluffing, whining, expressing
opinion, reporting, imposing, suing. Next is the directive, an illocutionary function that
aims to produce an effect of action performed by the speaker, for instance: ordering, asking,
instructing, begging, forcing, giving advice. The third one is the commissive, an illocutionary
function that makes speaker (more or less) tied to action in the future, such as promising and
offering. This illocutionary functioning is to bring happiness and is less competitive because
it does not facilitate speaker’s needs, but rather the interlocutor’s needs. The fourth function is
expressive, an illocutionary function to express psychological attitude of the speaker toward
situations implied in the illocution, such as gratitude, congratulation, forgiving, admiring,
sympathizing, etc. Finally, declarative, an illocutionary function in the form of statements
which have the influence to change one’s status instantaneously, such as resigning, baptizing,
firing, giving names, sentencing, ostracizing, promoting, divorcing, etc.
2
METHODS
This research uses a descriptive qualitative method. A mathematical calculation (e.g. sum,
frequency, percentage) is only used to state numbers in order to support the data analysis. Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) is a metaphor research approach, underlined by
the principle that metaphors are unique phenomena. These are important examples on the
human experience reflected on language, especially about how pragmatic, context, speaker’s
diction, and semantic are seen as a unified linguistic system of language interpretation discourse (Charteris-Black, 2004). Metaphors by the definition of CMA can only be explained
by considering the relationship among domains of cognition, pragmatics, and semantics
Table 1.
Source data of the research.
Number of data
The original theme from book
Sentence
Rest Area (prolog)
Premarital romantic relationship is a sin
Just Let it Go! And the mentality of man who are involved
in premarital of romantic relationship
Valentine’s Day
Marriage as piety
Love as piety
Solution for not ready to marry
Move on
Love for the youth
Let’s improve our self-quality
Epilogue
SUM
Proposition
8
18
29
15
30
54
20
4
12
16
17
17
20
16
47
9
19
33
26
36
37
30
177
336
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(Charteris-Black, 2004, p. 2). This approach has been proven capable of explaining metaphors in various kinds of discourses, such as politic, journalism, and religiosity.
The source of data in this research is the book entitled “Udah Putusin Aja” or “Just Put
an End to It” by Siauw (2013). There are 180 pages in the book, and the data used in this
research are the metaphorical sentences.
The data gathering started with the documentation process which included a) selecting the
data that resembled social media statuses, b) rewriting all data by maintaining the themes
based on the structures in the book, and c) performing codification to the metaphorical
speech data to ease the exploration of statements. After documentation, the data were simplified so that irrelevant data could be eliminated. This simplification is based on macrostructure theory by Van Dijk (in Renkema, 2004), that is a) a screening and marking speech unit
that can be eliminated without reducing or changing the contextual meaning (deletion);
b) reconstructing speeches that have been screened without reducing or changing the contextual meaning (re-construction), and c) generalizing similar data with homogenous meanings without reducing or changing the contextual meaning (generalisation). Furthermore, to
get the expected data, the researcher needed to find the proposition or sentence fragment
expressing metaphors, so that the propositions without metaphorical expression were not
used as data to be processed any further. After the proposition of expressed metaphors had
been found, we conducted a subjectification, which is grouping propositions that have similar
meaning to avoid overlapping topics. The subjects on the selected sentences would be further
called as tenors or metaphor subjects.
Generally, CMA integrated the cognitive semantics and pragmatic process based on evidence gathered from the corpus linguistics analysis. The CMA approach consists of three steps
of the metaphor analysis, which are 1) identification, 2) interpretation, and 3) explanation.
Identification and interpretation started from exploration in the sentence subjects that were
expressed with metaphors (tenor). The analysis and elaboration included the identification
of source domain and target domain, and subsequently a further analysis was conducted to
interpret the relationship between domains. This interpretation later produced a new concept
into the speech tenors. At this stage, the data produced were sentences’ propositions with
metaphorical expressions, followed by speech codes where the proposition came from and a
lexical indicator that formed the metaphors.
In the process of identification and interpretation of metaphor domains, there were two
types of data, namely metaphor domains whose existence cannot be known unless by referring to special indicators in the form of lexical unit cohesion function (implicit metaphor)
and metaphor domains that can be known directly (explicit metaphor/simile) (Steen in
Cameron & Low, 1999, p. 82). The analysis of implicit metaphors in this article is based on
Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980, 2003) classification of metaphor types. These steps were used to
form a “new concept”, but for specific metaphor of simile supposition. This “new concept”
in metaphorical texts can be directly identified through the referential accordance between
metaphor domains.
The next step is the explanation of metaphors. The analysis conducted in this step is an
analysis of illocutionary act in metaphorical speeches. Based on Charteris-Black’s (2004)
main premise, this analysis is intended to discover the speech act strategy that includes performative and illocutionary function of the speech in delivering the messages. The new concept
gathered would be unified in a metaphorical speech meaning. This meaning is very useful to
Figure 1.
The identification and interpretation process of the research.
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Figure 2. The explanation process of the research.
state the contextual indicator (in this article, it is called reflector), as well as to bridge the gap
of analysis among metaphorical speeches, performative speech act, and illocutionary function (IF) that underlines it.
3
3.1
RESULTS
Metaphors identification and interpretation
The investigation finds that there are two kinds of metaphors based on what the metaphor
domains in the speeches are, namely implicit and explicit metaphors. The implicit metaphors
in this research include these categories of conceptual metaphors: orientational metaphors,
ontological metaphors, and structural metaphors. Implicit metaphors found in the source
data are “premarital romantic relationship”, “marriage”, “love”, “life”, and “dignity”, while
explicit metaphors found in the source data revolve around “men” and ideas about love, and
most of them are in the form of simile figurative language.
Based on the meaning of the particular metaphors, a meaning polarization is found. They are
positive metaphors (+) and negative metaphors (−). This meaning polarization is found in the following tenors: “premarital romantic relationship” and “marriage”; “love” (in general) and “premarital love”; “men who are involved in premarital relationship” and “men who are not involved
in premarital relationship”. In the tenors of “life” and “dignity” there is no meaning polarization
found in the source data, which means that both of them had neutral metaphorical meaning (n).
Based on the result above, these are metaphorical messages implied; 1) It is better to get
married as soon as they are deemed appropriate because marriage is a source of happiness,
and premarital romantic relationship is an unfavourable action which should be avoided
because it will bring disadvantages, especially for women; 2) Men who are not involved in
premarital romantic relationship are good/well-behaved, while men who are involved in premarital romantic relationship are bad; 3) Religion-based love relationship is a good deed,
premarital love relationship is a bad deed, and love in general is neutral; 4) Men are portrayed
as the source of problems in premarital romantic relationship, while also benefiting from it,
and women are viewed as the sole victim of it.
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3.2
Metaphors explanation
The analysis in this step focuses on speech’s illocutionary action. This analysis is based on
the findings on the previous step and it determines how these metaphors are communicated.
Subsequently, the analysis method is laid upon Searle’s (1979) classification of the macrofunction in speech act.
The realization of metaphorical speeches in the source data can be seen as an occurrence
of performative action, which means the action in the speeches can be determined (Austin,
1962). For instance, by stating that premarital romantic relationship is a sin, the writer of
the book imposes bad value on the activity by relating the deed with unwise values. In this
case, the source data deliver metaphors and at the same time intend to persuade teenagers to
consider avoiding premarital romantic relationship. Performative actions found in the source
data are 1) arguing, 2) directing, 3) persuading, 4) expressing, and 5) naming/labelling. Subsequently, the speech’s illocutionary function analysis is performed to find out the strategy of
delivering the message in the source data.
Renkema (2004, p. 17) states that researchers need to put relevant factors or adequate background information into account when determining an illocutionary action. For instance,
from these following sentences; 1) If you take the garbage out, I will give you beer, and 2) If
you keep this up, you will have a nervous breakdown, they were both valid as a speech of promise. However, the second sentence requires a further explanation on the idiom of “a nervous
breakdown”, a simple nominal metaphor of “dangerous,” so that the illocutionary function in
the second sentence is no longer considered as a promise, but a warning.
Therefore, the illocutionary function analysis in this article is based on the investigation of
metaphorical meaning from the tenors in Table 2. These metaphorical meanings form a contextual indicator (reflector). The analysis of illocutionary function by using reflector is done
by Sitanggang (2009) on her research on implicatures of political discussion in Indonesian
media. Aside from the use of reflector in determining illocutionary function, the analysis also
needs to add an additional indicator that can be seen directly on the speech, for instance, the
existence of performative verbs, instructive words, punctuation, adverbs, etc. Searle (1969)
calls this as illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs). Regarding this consideration, this
research uses two indicators in determining illocutionary function, namely reflector (contextual indicators) and IFIDs (additional indicators).
In the analysis of illocutionary function on metaphorical speeches in source data, there is a
pattern that forms speech strategy from the relationship of metaphorical meaning and illocutionary function in the speech. In general, speech strategy used in source data in delivering moral
messages are divided into two types, 1) speech strategy in tenor/sub-tenor considered as bad
things (negative), and 2) speech strategy in tenor/sub-tenor considered as good things (positive).
Table 2.
Metaphorical meaning of tenor on the data.
Tenor (−)
Metaphorical meaning
Tenor (+)
Premarital love
relationship
short-term
threat
game
misery
lust
violation
short-term
depended on lust
full of lies
easy to get
Marriage
Love in premarital
condition (valentine)
Men who are involved
in premarital love
relationship
Spoiled
Egoistic
Emotional
long-term
guaranty
serious thing
happiness
appropriateness
obedience
commitment
mandate, blessing
certainty
patience, sincerity
expectation, struggle, a battle
Though, Strong willed
Aware to their capacity
Full of preparation
Love in general
Men who are not
involved in premarital
relationship
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Table 3.
Performative act and reflector of metaphorical speech act in data.
Types of Speech
act
Performative
act
Reflector
Assertive (45)
Directive (19)
Commissive (15)
Expressive (6)
Declarative*
Perceiving
Ordering
To influence
To express
Naming/labelling
The value of the wisdom, information
A change, deed/action, idea
Consequence of previous action
Hope, appreciation, anxiety (emotion)
The value of truth
N: 85 (metaphorical sentences)/*declarative speech acts are also found in assertive &
directive.
Table 4.
The result of illocution act analysis.
Performative
act
Reflector
1. Perceiving
2. Ordering
3. To influence
4. To express
5. Naming/labelling
1. The value of the wisdom
2. Deed; a change
3. Consequence of previous action
4. Anxiety (emotion)
5. The value of truth
Tenor/sub-tenor (+)
Performative
act
Reflector
Illocutionary
function
Marriage
Men who are not
involved in premarital
love relationship
Love in general
1. Perceiving
2. Ordering
3. To influence
4. To express
5. Naming/labelling
1. The value of the wisdom
2. Deed; a change
3. Consequence of previous action
4. Anxiety (emotion)
5. The value of truth
1. Stating
2. Suggesting
3. Promising
4. Appreciating
5. Praying
Tenor/sub-tenor (−)
Premarital love
relationship
Men who are involved
in premarital love
relationship
Love in premarital
condition
Illocutionary
function
1. Claiming
2. Asserting
3. Prohibiting
4. Ordering
5. Threatening
6. Insulting
7. Judging
The first speech strategy in negative tenors/sub-tenors consists of 1) claiming/asserting
bad deeds, 2) prohibiting misbehaviours and ordering to change (demanding a change),
3) threatening by emphasizing the consequences of a sin, 4) insulting emotionally, and
5) judging a sin through elaboration of personal believed values. The second strategy is speech
strategy in positive tenors/sub-tenors, namely 1) stating good deeds, 2) suggesting ideas,
3) promising beneficial consequences of good deeds, and 4) appreciating and praying through
hope and prayers (see Table 3).
Another finding in the source data is the recurring discrimination between men and women
in premarital romantic relationship. The speeches in the book frequently position men as the
perpetrator of a sin and women as the victim of a sin. Careful observation in the source
data does not find any speech that men experience disadvantages in premarital relationship.
In fact, it implies a “judgment” towards men as the sole cause of women’s sufferings in premarital relationship. It can be seen on this particular definitive statement in the source data,
“premarital relationship is 100% disadvantageous for women and 100% beneficial for men,
sooner or later” (Siauw, 2013, p. 38).
4
DISCUSSION
The result shows that the book is intended to shift the readers’ mind-set on premarital
relationship with a set of ideation to reconstruct the meaning of premarital relationship.
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Subsequently, the book frequently mentions the needs to change, which later leads to
speeches of prohibition to commit sin and reinforcement to do good deeds. This is consistent
with the fact that persuasion speech act is frequently found in the source data. Rahyono, et al.
(2005) state that illocutionary function found in metaphorical speeches in negative tenor/subtenor is mostly unwise illocutionary action, such as claiming, asserting, prohibiting, directing, threatening, and judging. From the 12 illocutionary functions found in the source data,
7 of them are unwise illocutionary actions, 4 are positive, and one is neutral. It can be said
that the preaching narratives used in the source data tend to express negative illocutionary
act that reflects unwise values.
Based on the finding in the analysis, it can also be seen that the preaching narratives in
the source data mostly have assertive (52.94%) and directive (22.35%) tone; this is consistent
with Charteris-Black’s (2004) research where religions’ sacred texts tend to be didactic or aim
to give instruction and direction on religious morality. In religions’ sacred texts, the concept
of marriage, maturity, and heritage revolves around the values of obedience with the prize of
heavenly advantages and punishments of hellfire for the deviants. However, the concept of
hope, ambition, and energy are absent in the religion texts analysed by Charteris-Black (2004,
p. 221). The concept of heavenly advantages and punishments of hellfire stated in CharterisBlack writing can be found in the source data on “influencing” speech act strategies, which
are “promising” and “threatening” respectively. Referring to the metaphors of “light” and
“darkness” in the Holy Koran (Charteris-Black, 2004), which states that “good is light” and
“sin is darkness”, the narratives in the source data generally position premarital relationship
as “darkness”, a sinful act that is mostly initiated by men to gain benefits, and thus, men
involved in the particular relationship are considered evil/immoral, while women involved in
the relationship are victims of men’s sinful act.
5
CONCLUSION
The analysis on metaphorical speeches in the source data has answered the question stated in
the beginning of this article, where speech strategies are used in delivering or communicating the messages. The investigation in this research is a representation of cognitive linguistic
discussion (cognitive semantics and pragmatics), and in a more specific term this research is
a discussion on metaphors of preaching texts in an Indonesian popular self-help book. In
line with a psychological investigation, which suggests that religious sermons’ narratives tend
to repress the audiences’ own thoughts and replace them with directive notions (Schjoedt,
Sørensen, Nielbo, Xygalatas, Mitkidis, & Bulbulia, 2013). The findings in this research also
suggest that preaching narratives tend to constrain the readers’ own perceptions by shifting
the idea of premarital relationship through assertive and directive metaphorical speeches.
We realize that the data used in this research do not represent the entire narratives on
Islamic preaching and only represent preaches with a similar linguistic pattern. It is important for more advanced research to analyse various preaches from representative Muslim
societies with a computerized corpus method to get the whole picture of how religion preaching is conducted in Islam. One potential data source might be religious accounts on social
media that frequently promote religious teachings in daily life.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Imagery characters and ideology of Islamic fundamentalism:
Adaptation of the novel Les Étoiles de Sidi Moumen and the film
Les Chevaux de Dieu
D. Jinanto & J. Tjahjani
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: In this article, we report the ideological theme of the novel Les Étoiles
de Sidi Moumen and the film Les Chevaux de Dieu by conducting an adaptation study.
An ideological text is expressed using a structural approach and a critical discourse analysis
of the aforementioned works. The result of this adaptation study reveals different ideological
texts, especially in the transformation of the portrayal of the fundamentalist character. The
narrative and cinematographic elements of the film eliminate some of the ideas found in
the narrative structure of the novel, particularly with respect to several emotional aspects
of the character. The film’s text relies on the interactions between characters to shape the
fundamentalist figure. The result of this study is an ecranisation capable of depicting the
image of the Islamic fundamentalist character. The image of the fundamentalist character
can be observed as a form of self-awareness in human values, as found in the novel, or as an
internalisation of sovereignty practices unbeknownst to the characters in the film.
1
INTRODUCTION
Francophone literature works, especially those originated from the Maghreb, often describe
Islamic cultural values in the French language, with the purpose of presenting identities that
are different from those of the Europeans or most Africans. The objective of Maghreb’s
francophone works is to incorporate Islamic identities in the characters without eliminating
the elements of European culture, such as European fashion or football (Murphy, 2003).
The complexity of these identities becomes the foundation for observing ideological text.
This complex situation can be simplified by presenting actual phenomena related to identity
issues, as shown in contemporary francophone works.
Terrorist attacks that have taken place since the early 2000s has created a bad impression on Islamic identity associated with the networks of radical groups. These attacks have
tempted francophone writers to develop religion-based themes filled with terrorism, radicalism or fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is a tenet that attempts to defend something as
the truth. The truth is a value believed to have been sent (probably through a scripture or
spiritual belief) to influence the path of the human life (Dawkins, 2013, pp. 375–376). In some
recent cases, fundamentalist groups have interpreted the tenet as a call to action to bring
people back to religious teachings. Through the belief in the truth of religious teachings,
fundamentalist groups often justify their violent acts.
The 11 September 2001 tragedy made radical fundamentalists the main topic of discussion in various media. Popular literature and scientific works have considered this case to
have endless discussion, which prompted many writers to conduct studies with radical event
background as a significant factor of creative process.
Fiction about the life of terrorists has become common nowadays. The following are
some examples of terrorist attacks that have inspired fictional works: the 11 September 2001
tragedy in Terrorist (2006) by John Updike (the United States), Bali Bombing I tragedy on
12 October 2002 in Conspiracy (2005) by Muhammad Najib (Indonesia) and the serial suicide
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bombing incident in Morocco on 16 May 2003 in Les Étoiles de Sidi Moumen (Stars of Sidi
Moumen) (2010) by Mahi Binebine (Maroko). The last work was adapted by a Moroccan
director, Nabil Ayouch, in 2012 in his film titled Les Chevaux de Dieu (Horses of God). The
novel Les Étoiles de Sidi Moumen and the film Les Chevaux de Dieu narrate the life story of a
street kid named Yachine who decides to sacrifice himself together with his friends as suicide
bombers at the end of the story.
Each medium has unique ideological texts related to the theme as the focus of the study.
Different viewpoints from two media can provide different interpretations of the same fundamentalist story. Islamic fundamentalism stories are related to the depiction of the characters that play roles in the works. An adaptation study on the text Les Étoiles de Sidi Moumen
and the film Les Chevaux de Dieu could show the difference in the depiction of characters in
the context of Islamic fundamentalist ideology.
1.1 Adaptation study
An adaptation study is the one that shows the interpretation of the portrayal of ideas in the
form of text. This study perceives media as vehicles that carry an idea. A different ideological text will change the idea due to the difference in the medium (Damono, 2014, pp. 13–14).
This statement is similar to the idea proposed by Boumtje (2009) who states that currently
films are a medium most commonly used to communicate a work. A film allows people to
understand a work, a poem, play or novel, more easily. Therefore, the story of the novel Les
Étoiles de Sidi Moumen (Stars of Sidi Moumen), which deals with the ecranisation with a different title, Les Chevaux de Dieu (Horses of God), can show different Islamic fundamentalist
ideas in two different media.
The essence of finding meaning in the social context is the main focus of an adaptation
study, as explained by Sapardi Djoko Damono in the book Alih Wahana (adaptation): ‘What
is contained in each text can be analysed to find a broader interpretation because a text is a compilation of other texts; therefore, the more texts there are in a work mean the more meanings
can be found’ (Damono, 2014, pp. 15–16). Sapardi Djoko Damono’s idea about adaptation
complements the theory of adaptation proposed by Linda Hutcheon, according to which,
any adaptation of a work is a form of repetition of interpretation expressed in a different
way (Hutcheon, 2006, p. 7).
Damono (2014, pp. 118–119) asserted that a film often replaces the function of narrator
with motion picture. In other words, the motion pictures in films can explain many interpretations thanks to cinematography. Therefore, Sapardi Djoko Damono emphasised that
different media will create different meanings.
1.2
Symbolic power
Power is considered as a social practice resulting from the relationship between cultural participants and their role in an arena. Randal Johnson, in an introduction on Bourdieu’s concept of social practice, defined arena as a space that is structured by rules and inter-agent
relationships with a habitus to determine the position of the dominant agent. The position of
the agent, which can be identified on the basis of the capital ownership of each agent, determines the pattern and structure of the arena (Bourdieu, 2010, p. xvi). The practice of power
occurs with the presence of a more dominant capital in the inter-agent interaction.
Inter-agent conflict occurs when an agent tries to hold the highest position in an arena.
The dominant agents will defend their capital to keep their positions stable, whereas the dominated agents will try to improve their positions by increasing their capital in order to become
stronger agents (Widjojo, 2002, p. 43). Haryatmoko (2015) further stated that sometimes an
agent unknowingly enters an arena of power conflict because of the strategy of a dominant
agent to defend his/her capital in an arena. This can be understood as a reproductive nature
of habitus, that is, when the dominant agent plays the same role when a new agent is entering
the arena.
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The practice of power may take the form of violence-inducing symbolic power unbeknownst to the agents in it. Bourdieu (1991) explained that symbolic power is used by the
dominant agents to differentiate themselves from the dominated agents in order to be recognised. Symbolic power can be identified by anatomising the discourse implied by a certain social practice. The attention required in disclosing the symbolic practice of power is
achieved by observing the recognition received from the dominated agents.
1.3 Structure of the novel Les Étoiles de Sidi Moumen
The novel Les Étoiles de Sidi Moumen has 18 untitled chapters. All of these chapters have
Yachine as the narrator. The role of Yachine as the narrator-character is to narrate the complete story. The first-person viewpoint in this novel is useful for interpreting each occasion on
the basis of the character’s subjectivity.
Each story is narrated from the initial situation to the final situation. The transformation
of characters is shown using the Greimas functional chart, which groups different events in
a formula in order to see the whole story from the movements of situations (Zaimar, 2014,
p. 41). Therefore, the indoctrination experienced by the characters of Les Étoiles can be
understood as a transformation. The journey of Les Étoiles’ group as a transformation is
presented in Table 1.
Table 1 reveals a plot of the transformation of the Les Étoiles into a fundamentalist group
in Le Garage. The initial situation of Les Étoiles in a poor neighbourhood led to the selection
of this group as a fundamentalist group. Fundamentalist doctrines brought this group to the
primary test, that is, the wish to become martyrs. The downfall test is experienced by this
group during the bombing. The transformation of Les Étoiles results from the education and
training in Le Garage. The death after the execution awakened Yachine, as a member of Les
Étoiles. The reflection of Les Étoiles through the depiction of another street kid expressed
Yachine’s regret to explain the useless act of a sacrifice.
According to the functional chart presented in Table 1, fundamentalism can be instilled
into an individual in a relatively short time. This inter-functional relationship shows several
phases of indoctrination of Islamic values experienced by Yachine, which motivates him to
make a change in life, that is, to get his family and himself out of poverty and to become a
respectable person.
1.4 Structure of the film Les Chevaux de Dieu
The characteristic of a film as a medium that is different from a novel lies in the aspect of
cinematography that reinforces the narrative aspect of a story. The film Les Chevaux de Dieu
with 107 minutes of running time visualises the life story of Yachine chronologically from
a child to the bombing executor. The film’s narration uses an objective-point-of-view camera
technique. This cinematic visualisation strategy focuses on the incidents that happened in the
Table 1.
Les Étoiles’ transformation functional chart.
Transformation
Initial situation Screening test
Les Étoiles,
a group of
street kids
who live in
poverty.
Primary test
Victory/
downfall test
Final situation
Les Étoiles’ wish to Les Étoiles’
A group of street kids
Les Étoiles’
become a martyr
action as the
with the potential to
participation as
after receiving
executor of
become new martyrs.
a member of a
fundamentalist
the bombing
Les Étoiles’ reflection:
fundamentalist
education.
in Genna Inn,
Depiction of an
group in Le
Casablanca.
unchanged situation.
Garage.
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Table 2.
Les Chevaux’ transformation functional chart.
Transformation
Initial situation
Screening test
Primary test
Downfall test
Final situation
Les Étoiles,
a group of
street kids who
often fight,
oppressed in the
neighbourhood.
The involvement of
Yachine, Hamid,
Nabil and Fouad
as students in a
fundamentalist
group.
The selection of
Yachine and his
friends to become
martyrs, which
is marked by the
change of the name
Les Étoiles to Les
Chevaux.
Bombing in
Casablanca
with Les
Chevaux
group as the
executor.
A group of Sidi
Moumen
street kids
who watched
the bombing
from a far.
life of the character Yachine. Table 2 presents a functional chart that shows the storyline of
the film.
Table 2 shows the transformation of Yachine’s group and their friends who have a background as Sidi Moumen street kids. Their early life is full of violence and oppression being
in slum and poor areas. The film’s text visualises and justifies the fact that poverty is closely
related to criminal activities. Fundamentalist groups work to protect Yachine and his friends
from all sorts of trouble. The plot formed from this transformation explains the logical chronology of the selection of fundamentalist group to create martyrs.
Some name changes in the plot of Les Chevaux de Dieu mark the important events in the
story. The transformation of the character Yachine is clarified in the film’s text when the
name Yachine is changed to Tarek. This name change shows the difference between Yachine
outside Le Garage and Tarek inside Le Garage. Furthermore, the text emphasises the evolution of two different characters from one figure due to the Islamic fundamentalist doctrine.
1.5
Ecranisation and symbolisation of fundamentalist ideology
From the narrative structure, a change of information in the ecranisation of Les Étoiles de
Sidi Moumen can be identified. On the basis of a statement by Damono (2014) that a change
in an ecranisation may be an inclusion or exclusion of information from a narrative aspect;
the study of adaptation can reveal ideas from each text. The novel Les Étoiles de Sidi Moumen and the film Les Chevaux de Dieu put forth the fundamentalist ideology through figures
that can be divided into two categories, namely the fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist.
The martyr figure in the novel and the film is represented by the youngest fundamentalist
figure. Poverty, hardship and the absence of hope for the future enable this type of figure to
receive a doctrine easily. The indoctrination of fundamentalist values makes the street kids to
play a role in their group. Further details about this youngest fundamentalist group can be
seen from the differences between Les Étoiles and Les Chevaux presented in Table 3.
Description of their family backgrounds shows the interest of street kids in joining the
fundamentalist group. The novel’s text appears to place the family as an important element
that influences the actions of Les Étoiles. In the novel, poverty in each family is narrated in
detail as a problem, while the family aspect in the film seems to be ignored. The film’s text
depicts the fundamentalist figure as a character that does not have an emotional bond with
his/her family. The family in the film appears to have values that are contradictory to the
Islamic fundamentalist values. With a family value-erasing pattern, the Azzi figure is not
included in the film, because Azzi’s story in the novel’s text prioritises family emotions, which
is depicted through the character’s conflict with his father.
Khalil’s characterisations can also be compared between the two texts from different media.
The similarity of the Khalil characters between the novel and film is that they have a life
ambition. However, the difference is that the novel’s text depicts a change in Khalil’s ambition. Khalil in the novel undergoes a change of ambition after joining the fundamentalist
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Table 3.
Differences between Les Étoiles and Les Chevaux.
Screening test
Les Étoiles
Les Chevaux
Family background
stories
Yes (story of each group
member comes with a
family background story)
6 (Yachine, Hamid, Nabil,
Fouad, Khalil and Azzi)
Yachine, Hamid, Nabil,
Khalil, Azzi
Fouad
No (family is only a
supporting character in
the story)
5 (Tarek/Yachine, Hamid,
Nabil, Fouad and Khalil)
Tarek/Yachine, Hamid,
Nabil
Fouad and Khalil
Number of members
Executors (martyrs)
Figures not taking part
in bombing mission
group. On the contrary, Khalil in the film tries to achieve his life ambition and refuses to join
the fundamentalist group. The story of Khalil in the novel explains that ideology indoctrination from the fundamentalist group has the potential to change the character’s ambition.
However, the story of Khalil in the film explains that violent fundamentalist indoctrination
can be rejected by sticking to the worldly ambition.
Language shift also explains a different ideological text. The use of the French language
in the novel shows that the Moroccan writer wants to convey some information to the
French readers. This shows the attempt made by the francophone work in expressing its
opinions of fundamentalism issues to the world. The character’s regrets in the novel represent a criticism to the radical act that is associated as part of the Islamic culture. In the
film, however, the use of Arabic in the dialogues between the characters conveys a message
to the Arab people that fundamentalist groups are a threat to the Islamic culture. This indicates a criticism, like in the novel’s text, but with a different focus. The criticism through
the film’s text attempts to warn the Arabic speakers of the symbolic power developed by
the fundamentalist groups.
1.6
Power and fundamentalism
The position of Les Étoiles as training participants makes them a group dominated by
figures that have a bigger capital in the Le Garage arena. The novel’s text depicts the inability
of Les Étoiles to resist the teachings of the emirs. Yachine’s hatred towards the fundamentalist group leader, Abou Zoubeïr, appears at the end of the story as a form of the character’s
rejection of the violent fundamentalist ideology indoctrination.
The emirs aim to provide useful information to Les Étoiles on the basis of the Islamic
fundamentalism doctrines, including Islamic philosophy, self-defence and technology. With
the information provided in Le Garage, Les Étoiles are able to increase their cultural capital, which becomes the strategy of the fundamentalist group to recruit members. This also
becomes a regenerative membership system of the fundamentalist group.
The figure who symbolically possesses the most dominant power is Syekh, who appears
only once in Le Garage. The respect shown by all residents of Le Garage makes Syekh a
sacred figure, and he has the highest power. Syekh’s advice to Les Étoiles allows this group to
justify all of their actions as the truth from the fundamentalist perspectives.
The activities in Le Garage can be considered as those of fundamentalists to make a person
believe in a religious truth as a life guidance. This zeal could prompt the fundamentalist group
to justify their actions to become martyrs. The activities in Le Garage affect the understanding of Islamic fundamentalist values as the defensive mechanism of Muslims. This forms the
fundamentalist habitus that is practiced immediately by the Les Étoiles group.
The fundamentalist habitus is formed in Les Étoiles in a relatively short time by absorbing
religious teachings intensively. When the agents in the lowest position in the arena are capable
of judging a case by religious truth, the group leader can easily direct them to a certain act.
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This direction creates zeal inside these agents to perform a radical action that they believe to
be the truth. This demonstrates the influence of the fundamentalist logic that can change the
mindset of a character, from being a street kid to a martyr.
The agents depicted in the Le Garage arena can be explained using Bourdieu’s capital
mapping, which is in turn used to show the influence of power in an arena. Bourdieu’s
capital mapping uses two axes. The horizontal line indicates the variations of opposing
economy and cultural capitals, whereas the vertical line indicates the global capital volume.
This global capital is related to the economic, social, cultural and symbolic capital possessed
by an agent in a certain arena (Jourdain & Naulin, pp. 94–95). On the basis of the capital
ownership in the Le Garage arena and the people in Sidi Moumen, the agent capital mapping picture (Figure 1) shows the position of the agent and the shift in the position of Les
Étoiles as follows:
On the basis of the character capital mapping (Picture 1), the Les Étoiles or Les Chevaux
group are the agents in the lowest position in two different arenas. The first arena (indicated
by the blue line) is Sidi Moumen in general. This arena places Les Étoiles as the agents in
the lowest position because of their economic limitations. The attempts of this group to gain
economic capital by working do not change their position to the lowest. Something different
happens when this group joins the Le Garage arena (indicated by the red line). Les Étoiles is
provided with cultural capital to shift the position of the group.
The Islamic fundamentalist education changes the cultural capital ownership in the form
of Islamic values that are physically learnt by the agents in the lowest position. This sort of
indoctrination is considered capable of changing someone’s habitus rapidly. A pseudo-shift
is created (indicated by the dotted line) by providing a symbolic capital to the agents in the
lowest position as an important agent in the arena. The symbolic capital is considered as false
due to the lack of recognition from the people. This capital is only felt by the lowest agents.
This sort of system places Les Étoiles or Les Chevaux as agents who are exploited to become
martyrs.
On the basis of the mapping scheme, it can be understood that certain agents are stable,
whereas other agents experience a change in capital. The stable agents tend to work to create
martyrs. These agents can maintain their positions without becoming martyrs. In the lowest position, there are agents whose capital ownership can be shifted. The lesser the capital
owned by the agents in the lowest position, the easier it is to deliver the fundamentalist indoctrination. Therefore, the task of becoming martyrs will be given to these agents. When agents
in the lowest position are no longer available, the system will find new agents to fill the vacant
position in the arena.
Figure 1. Character capital mapping in Sidi Moumen.
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2
CONCLUSION
On the basis of the storytelling that focuses on the idea of Islamic fundamentalism in two
media, the novel Les Étoiles de Sidi Moumen and the film Les Chevaux de Dieu share a similar
idea to display groups of uneducated youths from poor areas as fundamentalist figures. The
characters that come from these areas were portrayed to have issues in dealing with hardships. It is in this crevice of life that the Islamic fundamentalist groups take the opportunity
to establish new fundamentalist groups to work as martyrs. Therefore, both texts question the
validity of the Islamic fundamentalist ideology that justifies radical actions.
These two texts of different media criticise the validity of the Islamic fundamentalist ideology through the disclosure of power practices. Both texts show symbolic forms of violence by
different methods. The novel text shows that the decision to become a martyr is a damaging
one. In other words, the narrator-character provides an understanding of the awareness of
symbolic violence that occurs within the fundamentalist group. The film text presents the
symbolic violence through visual interpretations that depict the fundamentalist group as a
threat that places the Les Étoiles or Les Chevaux group as the victims of power.
Through their narrative exposure, both texts present character portrayals of Islamic
fundamentalism values that tend to ignore human values. Adaptation explains the role of
storytelling from the viewpoint of the first person. This study could describe the internalisation
of fundamentalist values that makes the character directly unaware of power practices. The
depiction of the martyr figure as the victim of power practice can be seen in the film text
from the viewpoint of the third person by using the objective-point-of-view technique. The
differentiation of interpretation from the viewpoint of the third person is a characteristic of
the film that makes it an effective medium to convey a message about power practices.
Adaptation plays a role in providing different interpretation to the text. The fundamentalist
figures turned into martyrs depicted in the novel become wasteful figures. The regrets depicted
make the figures in the novel a reflection of humans who need emotional and social awareness
before making a decision. On the contrary, the film text depicts the characters as associated with
a threat of power practice based on Islamic fundamentalism. The depiction of characters as
victims of power reveals a warning of practices that have the potential to create radical actions.
REFERENCES
Boggs, J.M. (2008) Art of Watching Films (Seventh edition). The United States of America, Mayfield
Publishing Company.
Boumtje, M. (2009) L’impact du film en cours de littérature francophone. The French Review, 82 (6)
1212–1226. American Association of Teachers of French. Available from: http://www.jstor.org/
stable/25613823.
Bourdieu, P. (1991) Langage et pouvoir symbolique. Paris, Éditions Points.
Bourdieu, P. (1993) The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (2010). Arena Produksi
Kultural: Sebuah Kajian Sosiologi Budaya, Yudi Santosa, translator). Yogyakarta, Kreasi Wacana.
Damono, S.D. (2014) Alih Wahana. Ciputat, Editum.
Dawkins, R. (2013) The God Delusion (Zaim Rofiqi, translator). Depok, Banana.
Murphy, D. (2003) Beyond tradition versus modernity: postcolonial thought and culture in Francophone sub-Saharan Africa. Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduction (Charles Fordsick
& David Murphy, eds.), London, Arnold. pp. 221–230.
Haryatmoko. (2010) Dominasi Penuh Muslihat: Akar Kekerasan dan Diskriminasi (Domination Full of
Deceit: Root of Violence and Discrimination). Jakarta, Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Hutcheon, L. (2006) The Theory of Adaptation. New York, Routledge.
Jourdain, A & Naulin, S. (2011) La théorie de Pierre Bourdieu etses usages sociologiques. Paris, Armand
Colin.
Widjojo, M.S. (2003) Strukturalisme konstruktivis: Pierre Bourdieu dan Kajian Sosial Budaya (Constructive Structuralism: Pierre Bourdieu and Socio-Cultural Studies). In: Irzanti Sutanto & Ari Anggari Harapan, (eds.). Prancis dan Kita. Jakarta, Wedatama Widya Sastra.
Zaimar, O.K.S. (2014) Semiotika dalam Analisis Karya Sastra (Semiotics in Literature Work Analysis).
Depok, Komodo Books.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
School-centric Islamic education in Indonesia: A deconstructive
analysis of Muhammad Abed Al-Jabiri
N.S. Wibowo & Naupal
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Violent acts committed by Islamic fundamentalists at the ideological level in
Indonesia have become frequent nowadays. In this article, we examine the extent to which Islamic
education is implemented in Indonesia in relation to the impacts of global fundamentalism at
large. The term “Islamic education” in Indonesia does not only mean formal Islamic education
but also Islamic education in the form of religious guidance (fatwa), which is especially provided by Majelis Ulama Indonesia (Indonesian Ulema Council). Islamic education also comes
from Islamic writing. In this study, we carry out deconstructive hermeneutics of Muhammad
Abed Al-Jabiri to examine the origin of Islamic writing in Indonesia. We find that Islamic
education in Indonesia is school-centric (mazhab-centric), resulting in the school receiving new
ideas of fundamentalism aimed at triggering violent acts by the fundamentalists. The results
show a correlation between the violent acts committed by the Islamic fundamentalists and the
Islamic education in Indonesia. To solve this problem, schools must develop moral consciousness to refer to the teachings of Qur’an, instead of the school-centric ones.
1
INTRODUCTION
Initially, the diversity of Islam in Indonesia, or commonly called Islam Nusantara, did not
cause any clash or physical conflict. However, in fact, ideological conflicts have penetrated into
Islam Nusantara. The conflicts taking place are influenced by not only internal factors but
also global factors, which play a significant role. One of the conflicts causing social turmoil
is the conflict between Sunni and Shia that is worsened by the presence of the Salafi-Wahabi.
The conflict between Sunni and Shia in Indonesia can be traced back to 1984 when Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) announced a fatwa against Shia teachings (Majelis Ulama
Indonesia, 2015, pp. 17–18). In a short time, this conflict pervaded to issues regarding policies of regional government offices. Recently, in 2016, the Bogor regional government has
banned Shia followers to celebrate Ashura Day. Earlier, in 2012, a conflict between the Sunni
and Shia followers took place in Sampang, Madura, which culminated in the exile of the
Shia followers from Sampang. They could only be allowed to return from the exile if they
had acknowledged Sunni as the only official doctrine of Islam. Until 2016, the Shia followers were in exile in Sidoarjo, and this issue is the background for this study. This study was
conducted using Muhammad Abed Al-Jabiri’s deconstructive method, which analyzes the
relationship between one Islamic text and another and that between one occasion and other
past occasions to explain the present situation in the Islamic world.
1.1
Muhammad Abed Al-Jabiri’s deconstruction
The deconstruction by Muhammad Abed Al-Jabiri is conducted by analyzing the habits of
mazhab followers in Islam and their association with traditions, for example, pre-Islamic
tradition that existed before Islam. In addition, Al-Jabiri’s deconstruction is based on the
intertextual studies between one mazhab and another to learn their influence on the other
(Nughroho, 2007, p. 103) and forms the so-called Al-Jabiri’s “dominating thought”. Al-Jabiri
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stated in his work that the foremost task of people wanting to reform and reconstruct the
thought (dominant thought) is to criticize the dominant thought (reason):
… all of it cannot be done but through the critique of a dominant reason, and the
critique process must be done inside the reason itself by deconstructing the principles, making the effectiveness more dynamic, expanding, and also enriching the concepts and new knowledge that we gained from any places, even though it originated
from the past, philosophers, or scientific thoughts. (Al-Jabiri, 2014, p. 30)
Using the hermeneutical deconstruction, Al-Jabiri categorized Islamic epistemology into
three forms: bayan, irfan, and burhan. Furthermore, he described two different types of reasoning, namely active reasoning and dominant reasoning.
Active reasoning is defined as a “cognitive activity done by the mind when reviewing,
analyzing, forming concept, and formulating basic principles” (Al-Jabiri, 2014, p. 28), and
Seyyed Hossein Miri defined the reason as “constructive reason consisting of general principles, frameworks, concepts, methodologies, and all those elements which are, in some ways,
able to influence a culture and produce a new discourse. Thus, this reason is characterized
by creativity and productivity” (Miri, 2012, p. 44). Dominant reasoning is defined as “principles and rules that we make as a guideline in arguing (istidlal)” (Al-Jabiri, 2014, p. 28). Miri
defined the reason as “the common and current reason along with the principles and rules
institutionalized and accepted within a culture and historical period; in this framework, it is
of absolute value” (Miri, 2012, p. 44). Precisely, active reasoning is one of the aforementioned
three forms of Islamic epistemology, whereas dominant reasoning is the result of these epistemologies, which is called ijtihad or ijma’.
Bayan is the original thinking in Arabic Islam. The main idea of this epistemology uses
different aspects related to the Arabic language, like nahwu, sharaf, and balaghah, in interpreting the main Islamic sources, Al-Quran and Sunnah. This epistemology is called “Arabic
Religious Reasoning” by Al-Jabiri (Ibid, p. 495).
Irfan is tasawuf or sufi way of perspective that bases its interpretation on “ilham” (inspiration) believed to have come from God or God’s Guardian in a close relationship with Muhammad bin Abdullah (AhlulBayt). The method is called mukasyafah or “cleavage”, because it tries
to divide the implicit meaning (spiritual meaning) of Al-Quran and the meaning of Sunnah.
Burhan is similar to Western philosophy, especially Aristotelian. This epistemology uses a
concluding method through “empirical experience and rational concluding” (Ibid).
Although Al-Jabiri groups Islamic epistemology into three forms, according to him, they
are still used in the religious field. In other words, the aim of these three forms is to interpret
two Islamic sources, namely Al-Quran and Sunnah.
1.2
Mazhab in Islam
Mazhab, in the book of Syiah Menurut Syiah (2014), is considered as a “relative religion”.
In this book, religion is divided into two categories, namely absolute religion and relative
religion. Absolute religion is believed to be passed on by God directly to prophets; relative
religion is “an interpretation to sacred and absolute revelation” (Tim Ahlulbait Indonesia,
2014, p. 26). For further comprehension, I define mazhab as the school resulting from dissenting opinions of ulemas after all prophets left them. In Islam, there are some mazhabs, and the
most embraced mazhabs by Muslims are Sunni and Shia. Sunni can be divided into Hanafi,
Maliki, Syafi’i, Hanbali, and Zahiri, whereas Shia has two main mazhabs, namely Ja’fariyya
(ItsnaAsyariah) and Zaidiyya. Furthermore, there are other mazhabs called kalammazhab,
such as Asy’ariah and Mu’tazilah, and ghulat community, such as Rafidha, Ahmadiyya, and
Salafi-Wahabi. I categorize Salafi-Wahabi as a ghulat community because of their extreme
acts toward other Islamic groups with different opinions and faith. This ghulatmazhab is often
miscalculated as the majority. The relationship between the ghulat community and the rise of
other mazhabs and its implication in Islamic education in Indonesia will be discussed below.
According to Quraish Shihab, Sunni or Ahlul sunnah teachings originated when Abu
Hasan Asy’ari built a mazhab called Asy’ariah, whose method is based on fiqh belief, which
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was developed by four great Imams of Islam, namely Muhammad bin Idris as-Syafi’i, Malik
bin Anas, Ahmad bin Hanbal, and Abu Hanifah (Shihab, 2014, pp. 57-58). In reference to
the perspective of Muhammad Abed Al-Jabiri, Sunni tends to use the bayan epistemology in
developing its mazhab.
Upon further investigation, the Asy’ariah mazhab did not wholly use bayan. This is because
Abu Hasan Asy’ari was the alumni of Mu’tazilah before he switched to the fiqih method.
Sunni, since the era of Abu Hamid al’Ghazali, has experienced changes. After using bayan
and burhan, it has now begun to syncretize both of them with irfan. This happened because
Al-Ghazali is a Sufi practitioner in the mid to late part of his life. Thus, it was natural when
he began to interpret Qur’an using the method of mukasyafah or over viewing; furthermore,
he investigated it from the language and logical concepts.
Shia can be considered as contradictory to Sunni, with regard to the political concept and not
the epistemological concept, because it refused Abu Bakr bin Abu Quhafah, ‘Umar bin Khatthab, and ‘Utsman bin ‘Affan as caliphs. For Shia, the legitimate caliph was ‘Ali bin Abu Thalib,
as he was appointed directly by Muhammad bin Abdullah during the period of Ghadir Khum.
According to Muhammad Abed Al-Jabiri, Shia tends to use irfan in studying Qur’an
and Sunnah. This is undeniable because Shia always refers to words of their imam that
they acknowledge, such as Ahlul Bayt Muhammad, and they believe that the imam receives
enlightenment directly from God. However, when we think of some Shia ulema like Mulla
Sadra, we can find not only the irfan epistemology but also the burhan epistemology, because
Shia refuses qiyas (analogy) as it is considered weak. Shia prefers the use of logics or a ratio
as a whole than qiyas only.
The Bayan epistemology can also be found in Shia. This is due to their belief that ushulfiqih
is important in reviewing Qur’an and Sunnah. This type of thought can be found in different
works of Muhammad Husain Thabataba’i, especially in his exegesis work Al-Mizan.
1.3
The impact on Islamic education in Indonesia
The rise of mazhab in Islam resulted in the rise of the ghulat community. According to Ali Rabbani Gupaygani, from Syekh Mufid, ghulat originates from the word “ghuluw”, which means
“... exceeding the limit and out of the stable border” (Gulpaygani, 2014, p. 371). The Ghulat
community is often considered as a non-Islam group like Baha’i, Alawiyah, and Ahmadiyya
Qadiani. However, the ghulat community could originally refer to those who still embrace
Islam; however, because of their strong attitude, they are called the ghulat community or
“extremists” similar to groups such as Lahore Ahmadiyya, Salafi-Wahabi, and Shia Rafidhah.
The ghulat community often say that the group only exists in Shia. However, if the meaning of ghulat is “extremist”, then Sunni mazhab may also contain the ghulat community. In
fact, there are more ghulat communities in Shia, such as Nausiriyah, Rafidhah, Alawiah,
Bathiniyah, Druze, and Baha’i, as well as in Sunni. Examples of Sunni ghulat are Lahore
Ahmadiyya and Salafi-Wahabi. In contrast to Qadiani Ahmadiyya, which claims that Mirza
Ghulam Ahmad is the Prophet after Muhammad, they claim that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is
Imam Mahdi (Ibid, pp. 417-418).1 Lahore Ahmadiyya can be considered as a Sunni, because
they claim to follow Sunni teachings, especially in terms of aqidah of the pillars of faith and
the pillars of Islam. We can refer to a book on the thought of Lahore Ahmadiyya in Islamologi written by Muhammad Ali. Salafi-Wahabi, which claims that they follow the teachings
of Ibn Taimiyah and the literalism of Ahmad bin Hanbal. The rise of the ghulat community
can then influence Islamic education in Indonesia.
Islamic education follows at least one of the mazhabs, because the focus of the teachings
must be based on the purpose of educating about Islam. On the contrary, the education using
the mazhab faces some challenges in relation to the sharpening conflict between the followers
of Sunni and Shia in Indonesia. With the presence of the ghulat community, especially Shia’s
1. See The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam on site http://aaiil.org/text/qadi/
intro/cmprsn.shtml
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Rafidhah, many Islamic educational institutions, especially those from the Indonesian Ulema
Council could not differentiate between Shia Rafidhah and Shia movements in general.
One of the causes of the conflict is the intensive and continuous aqidah teaching. From elementary school to high school, even in non-formal education institutions, it is always taught
that the Islamic aqidah includes the six pillars of faith, (a) to Allah, (b) to the angels of Allah,
(c) to Prophet and Rasul, (d) to the Holy Quran, (e) to the end of life, and (f) to the qadha
and qadar, and five pillars of Islam, (a) syahadah, (b) sholah, (c) alms, (d) fasting, and (e) hajj
(The Ministry of Religious Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, 2014, pp. 5–6). In fact, two
of the pillars are not purely from Islam, but an interpretation of Sunni over a hadits called
Jibril Hadits. In Shia tradition, there are no such pillars. According to Quraish Shihab, Shia
does not formulate this, because they believe Islam and Faith as one (Shihab, 2014, p. 92);
therefore, it is impossible to separate or formulate them differently. However, in a book written
by Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), Shia formulates the five pillars of Islam as (a) sholah,
(b) fasting, (c) alms, (d) hajj, and (e) willayah, as well as the pillars of Faith as (a) tauhid, (b)
nubuwwah, (c) imamah, (d) Al-‘Adl, and (e) Al-Ma’ad (Tim Penulis MUI Pusat, 2012, p. 85).
However, for Gulpaygani, what is mentioned by MUI is not the two pillars in Islam, but the
principles for the Shia mazhab, especially Shia Ja’fariyya (Gulpaygani, 2014, p. 160).
In addition to the different aqidah, MUI claims that all Shia followers tend to be labeled
as kafir (heretics), except those who support Imam Ali as the legitimate caliph. This is evident in the statement issued by MUI, “...the revolutionary Iran leader, al-Khumaini says
that ‘Aisyah, Talhah, Zubair, Mu’awiyyah and so on, so even though physically they are not
impure, they are worse and more disgusting than dogs and pigs” (Tim Penulis MUI Pusat,
2012, p. 54). By contrast, not all Shia followers are labeled as kafir, as stated by themselves
(Tim Ahlulbait Indonesia, 2014, pp. 313-316). According to Gulpaygani, the insult to the
Prophet’s companions is directed to Shia Rafidhah. Even the word “rafidhah” is still debated
(Gulpaygani, 2014, pp. 424-427). It is essential to know that Shia Rafidhah tends to label
Muhammad’s companions as kafir when they do not support Imam Ali.
In addition to Rafidhah, the minority Shia (ghulat) that is often mentioned as the majority
Shia believes that Imam Ali is god or the true prophet. Furthermore, Shia ghulat is related to
those who believe that the currently existing Qur’an is incomplete. In fact, for the majority
Shia (Ja’fariyya and Zaidiyya), referring the term “kafir” to the Prophet’s companions, considering Ali as god, and saying that Qur’an is incomplete are considered to be un-Islamic. Iran,
whose population is mostly Ja’fariyya Shia, uses the same Qur’an as Sunni (Shihab, 2014).
From the perspective of Al-Jabiri, mazhab-centered Islamic education in Indonesia is
repetitive and non-comparative, because it tends to use the dominant logic or ijtihad from
elementary school up to high school without any revision. The Islamic education can be considered as non-comparative, because when examining an issue, the educators only look at it
from one perspective (one mazhab). An example of this is their examination of the aqidah as
described above. Islamic education in Indonesia tends to use the basic perspective of Sunni
(ijtihad), so that an ideological conflict could arise when it encounters a perspective of Shia.
This educational characteristic can create the third characteristic of Islamic education in
Indonesia, namely generalization, which occurs when Islamic education in Indonesia has to
encounter the perspective of ghulat community, which is a minority of all Islam communities.
The ghulat community often represents themselves as a group like Shia because of a tendency
of generalization that occurs within the Islamic education in Indonesia; therefore, the ghulat
community is positioned at the same level as the present Shia group.
Another impact of the mazhab-centered education is that all followers are easily infiltrated
by radicalism, such as by the Salafi-Wahabi movement, the followers of which claim that
their teaching is the same as that of Sunni, which follows one mazhab, Hanbali. Their teaching is to eradicate all types of bid’ah that they claim as the teachings of Shia. The labeling of
bid’ah (heresy) and the misinformation over the Shia teachings did not stop at the ideological
stage, but worsened into the killing of the Shia people in Karbala (El-Fadl, Sejarah Wahabi
& Salafi, 2015, p. 41). This act was then followed by most Indonesian Muslims, as mentioned
in Introduction, by banning the celebration of Ashura Day in Bogor and making the Shia
people into an exile in Sampang, Madura.
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2
CONCLUSION AND SOLUTIONS
Mazhab-centered Islamic education in Indonesia has created several problems resulting from
not only internal issues but also external affairs, especially from the Middle East. The foremost challenge for Islamic education in Indonesia is the existence of the ghulat community,
which provokes generalization between the ghulat community and one of the mazhabs, the
Shia. The second challenge is the advent of radicalism, including that of the Salafi-Wahabi
movement, which instigates violence in Indonesia toward the Shia group, at the ideological
level not only through the release of fatwas against the group but also through physical violence, similar to that in the Shia community in Sampang, Madura.
For this reason, Islamic education in Indonesia must undergo reformation. On the issue
of generalization, Quraish Shihab stated, “One of the complaints from the Shia... is that
writers... often times write negative opinion about Shia, even though they have perished as a
group” (Shihab, 2014, p. 19). As mentioned above, Islamic education in Indonesia, especially
that supported by MUI, tends to highlight the negative opinions on the Shia. For Shihab,
the opinion of ulema from the majority Shia groups like Ja’fariyya and Zaidiyya should
be the reference, not the minority (Ibid). In addition, one of the common points of Sunni
and Shia can be viewed from the perspective of Shia Zaidiyya. This may happen because
Shia Zaidiyya tends to use the Hanafifiqh in religious matters. Upon further analysis, the
Sh’aJa’fariyya, whose fiqh is different from that of Sunni’s mazhab, is much more different
from that of Zaidiyya. The views of the five mazhabs of Sunni are based on Ja’farifiqh. This
is clear because the Imams of the four mazhabs, Abu Hanifah and Malik bin Anas, are the
students of Imam Ja’far ash-Shadiq (Ash-Shadr, 2014, p. 145) who was the sixth Imam of
the Shia Ja’fariyya doctrine. The question of whether the Shia Ja’fariyya is part of Islam
due to different views in seeing fiqh can be analyzed from the statement of Shia scholar
named Muhammad Husain Kashiful-Githa, “Consider the libraries of the Shia’s. The rows
are well-stocked! Examine our own library as well!” (Kashiful-Githa, p. 4). Furthermore,
Kasyiful-Githa denied the accusation that all Shia is not Islam by saying, “Their religion is
pure ‘tawhid’ (Oneness of God)” (Ibid, p. 15).
Amir Maliki Abitolkha states:
... Islamic education has to change its strategy and operational method. The changes
in strategy and methods require overhauling the models as well as its institution, so
that the education can be more effective and efficient in pedagogic, sociologic and,
cultural aspects. (Abitolkha, 2014, p. 116)
An institutional overhaul is certainly needed, especially from the perspective of the institution, particularly if the institutions refer to MUI. According to Novan Ardy Wiyani, there
are nine important points in developing Islamic education in Indonesia, some of them being
fairness, respect for others, and tolerance (Wiyani, 2013, p. 75).
As the highest body of education in Indonesia, MUI should adopt a more comparative
method, that is, it uses not only the internal Sunni methods but also other mazhabs, such as
Shia Ja’fariyya and Zaidiyya, suggested by Shihab and Kashiful-Githa. Hence, I disagree
with the fact that the school-based education proposed by Abitolkha refers to giving the
full authority to the schools to create a curriculum. Even though “... it’s open and inclusive
to foreign resources of school environment...” (Abitolkha, 2014, p. 118), it is possible for
the schools to have full authority in choosing the resources that support their mazhab only.
MUI should still design the curriculum that must be continually improved. For that purpose,
MUI cooperates with the Ministry of Religious Affairs to create a tolerant and non-mazhabcentered curriculum. After that, a supervisory body should be established to find schools
still using mazhab-centered curriculum. The curriculum made by MUI and the Ministry of
Religious Affairs should not be absolute, but a divider curriculum. The schools or similar
institutions may deal with the rest. Hence, Abitolkha meant that there is still an interrelationship between the highest institutions and local resources.
Within MUI, there should also be non-Sunni ulemas. This is done to establish a relationship between Sunni and Shia, to restore each interpretation of the Qur’an and Sunnah
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using active logics or the aforementioned three Islamic epistemologies, and not only using the
dominant logic or ijtihad that is considered absolute and unchanged. According to Al-Jabiri,
these three epistemologies used in many mazhabs, especially by Sunni and Shia, refer to the
two same sources: Qur’an and Sunnah. They use the three epistemologies because Qur’an
and Sunnah do not consist of bayan (language), but irfan (spirit) and burhan (logics). It is
widely believed that Islamic education in Indonesia can be more creative and comparative.
With the aforementioned improvements in Islamic education, Indonesia can tackle the
issues of radicalism and fundamentalism. With the creative Islamic education, the society is
expected to not only accept ijtihad carelessly but also examine the truth of the ijtihad and its
legal sources. With the comparative Islamic education, the society is expected to be thoughtful in drawing conclusions by not only using one perspective of mazhab, but also examining
a situation by acquiring knowledge on different mazhabs, so as to avoid mazhab-centered
education. Furthermore, the comparative education can inform the society that Islam is not
as rigid as it is thought to be, but it provides several alternatives in solving current problems.
REFERENCES
Abitolkha, A.M. (2014) Problematika Penyelenggaraan Pendidikan Islam (Pendekatan Manajemen
Berbasis Sekolah) (Problematic Islamic Education Administration [School-Based Management
Approach]). Tadris, 9 (1), 111–131.
Affan, H. (2013) Konflik Keluarga, Mazhab atau Politik (Family, Mazhab, or Political Conflict).
[Online] Available from: http://www.bbc.com/indonesia/ [Accessed 2nd August 2016].
Ahmad, M.G. (2012) Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part I & II. London, Islam International Publication Ltd.
Ahmad, M.G. (2014) Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part III. London, Islam International Publication Ltd.
Ali, M. (2016) Islamologi translated by Kaelan, R. & Bachrun, H.M. Jakarta, Darul Kutubil Islamiyah.
Al-Jabiri, M.A. (2014).
NU Online. (2015) Kebijakan Walikota Bogor soal Syiah Dinilai Diskriminatif (The Bogor Mayor’s
Policy on Shia Considered Discriminative). [Online] Available from: http://www.nu.or.id/post/
read/63162/kebijakan-walikota-bogor-soal-syiah-dinilai-diskriminatif [Accessed 2nd August 2016].
Nughroho, S.E. (2007) Muhammad ‘Abid al-Jabiri (Studi Pemikirannya tentang Tradisi (Turas) (The
study on his thought on tradition). Yogyakarta, Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga.
Ramdhoni, F. (2013) Di Balik Merebaknya Konflik Sunni-Syiah di JawaTimur (Behind the arising conflict of Sunni-Shia in East Java). [Online] Available from: http://www.nu.or.id/post/read/47029/dibalik-merebaknya-konflik-sunni-syiah-di-jawa-timur [Accessed 2nd August 2016].
Riswanto, A.M. (2010) Buku Pintar Islam (Islam Smart Book). Bandung, Penerbit Mizan.
Shihab, M.Q. (2014) Sunnah-Syiah Bergandengan Tangan! Mungkinkah? (Sunni-Shia working together?
Is it possible?) (ed.). Tangerang, Lentera Hati.
Sobhani, J. (2001) Doctrines of Shi’i Islam: A Compendium of Imamis Beliefs and Practices. (R. ShahKazemi, Trans.) New York, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd.
Thabataba’i, M.H. (1975). Shi’ite Islam. (S. H. Nasr, Trans.) New York, State University of New York
Press.
Thabataba’i, M.H. (1983). Al-Mizan: An Exegesis of the Qur’an. (S.A. Rizvi, Trans.) Tehran, World
Organization for Islamic Services.
The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam. (n.d.). A Comparative Study of the
Beliefs of the Two Sections of the Ahmadiyya Movement (Lahore vs. Qadiani Groups).[Online] Available from: The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam: http://aaiil.org/text/
qadi/intro/cmprsn.shtml [Accessed 29th July 2016].
Tim Ahlulbait Indonesia. (2014) Syiah menurut Syiah (Shia according to Shia). Jakarta, Dewan Pengurus Pusat Ahlulbait Indonesia.
Tim Penulis MUI Pusat. (2012) Mengenal & mewaspadai penyimpangan Syi’ah di Indonesia (Knowing &
Being Aware of the Shia Deviation in Indonesia). Jakarta, Nashirus Sunnah.
Wardah, F. (2013) Aktivis: Kekerasan Terhadap Warga Syiah Sampang Berpotensi Genosida (Activists:
Violence towards Shia followers in Sampang having the potential for genocide to happen). [Online]
Available from: VOA Indonesia: http://www.voaindonesia.com/a/aktivis-kekerasan-terhadap-wargasyiah-sampang-berpotensi-genosida/1737595.html. [Accessed 2nd August 2016].
Wiyani, N.A. (2013) Pendidikan Agama Islam Berbasis Anti Terorisme di SMA (The Anti-Terrorism
Islamic Religion Education in Senior High School). Jurnal Pendidikan Islam, 2 (1), 65–83.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Developing English teaching materials based on Content-Based
Instruction (CBI) approach for the Islamic management and
banking students at IAIN Imam Bonjol Padang
Elismawati & Mukhaiyar
Faculty of Tarbiyah and Teacher Education, Imam Bonjol Islamic State Institute, Padang, Indonesia
Faculty of Language and Art, Padang State University, Padang, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The lack of English teaching materials containing business topics is one of the
factors leading to the students’ poor grasp of English for Business Purposes. This research is
designed to develop English teaching materials based on the content-based instruction approach
for the students of the Islamic Management and Banking Study Programme at IAIN Imam
Bonjol Padang. The method is R&D, adopted from the ADDIE model consisting of five phases:
Analyse, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate (ADDIE). The phases are structured to
allow an exploration of the students’ need, to develop the design and to identify its validity, and
to verify the practicality of the developed learning materials. However, the evaluation phase is
excluded due to the limited time and budget. The respondents of this research were taken from
two classes of first-year students (79 students) and one class of third-year students (39 students).
The results of the needs analysis show that the students preferred to learn English for Business
Purposes as opposed to General English. The business topics that they wish to learn the most
were related to subjects of recruitment, CV writing and application letters, job interviews, business and telephoning etiquettes, etc. In the implementation phase, it was found that the developed
materials were considered as practical for students of the Islamic management and banking.
1
INTRODUCTION
English has become the most powerful and essential tool of communication in the era of globalisation. Almost no parts of the world—and only very few of our daily routines—that are
not exposed to English, because as a means of communications, English permeates almost all
aspects of our lives—from politics, economics, science, technology, education, and socio-cultural aspects. English becomes the language of many nations, and the language in every sector of
the post-modern age. This means that they who reject English will eventually be excluded from
the global community. As a result, the teaching of English should be given a high priority at all
levels of the education system. Richards (2002) states that English is becoming the language of
globalisation, which is highly needed in a business-based management for commerce and trade.
In higher education in Indonesia, English is taught in every study programme, including in the
Islamic Management and Banking (MPS) Study Programme at IAIN Imam Bonjol Padang.
Nowadays, people have started to consider the importance of learning English as a tool for
global communications. This certainly has given English a somewhat special status (Crystal,
2003), and therefore English Language Teaching (ELT) has experienced continuous evolution and development (Varela, Polo, Garcia, & Martinez, 2010). Thus, it is no wonder that
with globalisation and the role of English as an international language, the requirement of
English competence is obvious (Astika, 2012). As a result, the enthusiasm to learn English
has intensified. English has a very important position in Indonesia. This is reflected by several relevant policies issued by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Indonesia (e.g.
the Decree No. 060/U/1993, No. 020/U/2003, & No. 12/U/2012), which require English to be
taught in schools, starting from lower secondary schools to university level.
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The difficulties mostly faced by Indonesians who learn English as a foreign language, in
fact, as admitted by the students, are that the globalisation era has significantly affected a
number of sectors in Indonesia, such as education, economics, politics, and social (Rokhayani, 2012). This presents a new challenge for Indonesians to compete in the global arena with
people from all over the world. To compete in this era, it is necessary to have human resources
who are fluent in English.
Through interviews and observations conducted at MPS IAIN Imam Bonjol Padang,
the author focused on several issues in English classes, especially those related to the course
design, students, and learning materials. The course is designed independently by the lecturers. The institution, in this case the Faculty of Islamic Economic and Business (FEBI), does
not determine the specific goals to be achieved from the course. The institution only expects
that the students will be able to use oral and written English in business contexts, but such
goals are too broad to be defined by the lecturers who design the courses.
With that in mind, the author carried out a study in developing English learning materials by applying the content-based instruction approach. This approach can be an alternative solution for at least three reasons. First, the content-based approach is appropriate for
vocational schools or colleges, such as business schools in which the learners are trained to
master English for academic and job-related purposes (Davies, 2003). According to Snow (in
Villalobos, 2013), the content is subject matters that consist of topics or themes based on the
interests or needs of the learners in an adult EFL setting, or it may be very specific, such as
the subject that the students are currently studying. The second reason is that the contentbased syllabus can be developed with the principles of ESP (Chen, 2015), in this case are
English for business, academic, and job purposes. The third reason is that the content-based
approach enhances the intrinsic motivation of the learners and empowers them to focus on
the subject matters that are important to them (Brown, 2007).
Given the facts, this study is aimed to answer the following research questions: 1) What are
the needs of the students at MPS Department IAIN Imam Bonjol Padang? and 2) How are
the content-based learning materials for the MPS students designed?
2
2.1
LITERATURE REVIEW
English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
ESP is defined as an approach to language teaching in which all decisions with regard to
content and method are based on the learners’ reasons for learning (Hutchinson & Waters,
1987). ESP has a long history in the field of language teaching, which started in the 1960s,
when General English courses could not meet the needs of language learners. There are three
reasons common to the emergence of ESP courses: the demands of Brave New World, a
revolution in linguistics and focus on the learners (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987).
2.2
The development of teaching material for ESP
The development of teaching material as one aspect in teaching English for Specific Purposes
is aimed to analyse the students’ needs and develop teaching materials that is synchronized
with their needs. Byram (2000) argues that teaching material development is a process to
identify the students’ needs and to tailor-design the material to fulfil those needs. This means
that the development of teaching material for ESP not only focuses on providing the required
material, but also on analysing the students’ needs. Hence, the material provided will prepare
and support the students to fulfil their needs in workplaces.
2.3
Content-based instruction approach
Brinton, Snow, and Wesche (in Brown, 2007) define the content-based instruction (CBI) as an
approach that integrates the content learning with language teaching aims. More specifically,
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they stated that CBI refers to the concurrent study of language and subject matter, with the
form and sequence of language presentation dictated by the content material.
The principle of CBI is to ascertain the connection between CBI and developing English
teaching materials. Richards and Rodgers (2001) claim that there are two central principles
as the basis of CBI. Firstly, people learn a second language more successfully when they use
the language as a means of acquiring information, rather than as an end itself. Secondly, CBI
better reflects the learners’ needs for teaching a second or foreign language. These two principles reveal that CBI leads to more effective language teaching and meets the student’s needs.
2.4
Needs Analysis (NA)
Needs analysis has a vital role in the process of designing and carrying out any language course
(Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). Similarly, Dudley-Evans and St John (1998) put NA as the first
stage before moving to other stages, such as course and syllabus design, material selection (and
production), teaching and learning, evaluation in the process of designing ESP courses, and
works related to designing language instruction, including developing teaching materials.
3
METHODOLOGY
This study is a research and development (R&D) one. It focuses on developing English teaching materials based on the content-based instruction approach, in which the respondents
are divided into two groups. The participants of this research are two classes of first-year
students (79 students) and one class of third-year students (39 students).
4
4.1
DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
Data analysis
Using the research and development method of the ADDIE model that includes analysis,
design, development, implementation, and evaluation, this research analysed the data with
the first four phases, excluding evaluation—through applying various instruments for different respondents. The analysis was based on descriptive statistics, such as frequency, percentage, and means. In the analysis phase, frequency and percentage were calculated to identify
the students’ needs from a set of questionnaires that covers aspects of target situation analysis and objective needs; wants, means, subjective needs analysis; present situation analysis;
lack analysis; learning needs analysis; linguistics analysis; what is expected of the course; and
means analysis. The highest percentage of the student’s responses towards the analysis was a
priority to be considered in the design phase. Before distributing the instrument to 39 thirdyear students, an expert of business content validated it.
The data from the designing and developing phases were analysed by an instrument called
validation checklists to determine the validity of the product. There were three validation
checklists to be completed by one business-content expert and two material development
and language use experts. They evaluated the design and developed materials by scoring the
content, language understanding, presentation, and writing mechanics. The scoring system
referred to the rubrics of materials development from The Guideline of Materials Development, issued by the Department of National Education in 2008. The classification of the
validity of the product was conducted with Ridgway’s category (2005).
In the implementation phase, other descriptive statistics, such as means, percentage, and average scores were calculated to summarise the practicality of the products. The scores were obtained
from the responses classified using a four-point scale: 1 for impractical; 2 for less practical; 3 for
practical, and 4 for very practical. Two sets of questionnaires were used as the instruments. The
first one was distributed to two classes of first-year students. The questionnaire was used to
evaluate the students’ perceptions regarding the compliance of time, the convenience/ease of
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use of the content-based English learning materials for business students, and the benefits of
using the content-based English learning materials for business students. Another set of instrument was given to one Business lecturer and one English lecturer with business background,
to gain the lecturers’ perceptions on the accuracy of time, the convenience/ease of use, and the
completeness of the components of the content-based teaching materials for business students.
The average scores from the two groups of 79 students and 2 lecturers were calculated
separately to find out the final score regarding product practicality from each group. The
data from each phase were then interpreted and discussed. The results in the analysis phase
were obtained from the analysis of eight aspects. The first one was personal information
about the learners and their attitudes toward English. It was revealed that 73.54% of the
students realised that English is very important. More specifically, they agreed that English
is important not only for academic, but also for professional needs. Therefore, 69.13% of the
students preferred learning English for Business Purposes as opposed to General English.
However, 74.21% of the students did not bother to make the extra efforts to improve their
English. Consequently, for the second aspect, it was revealed that their proficiency in English
and English for Business Purposes were mostly categorised as poor.
Furthermore, the third aspect, i.e. language information about a target situation, shows
that the conditions were caused by the absence of the needs analysis before class and the lack
of learning materials on business topics. For that reason, they could not improve their ability
in using English for both academic and working purposes in the business world.
The fourth aspect of the analysis was related to the situation involving English in business situations. It was revealed that the highest percentage was business-related situation at
79.29%, followed by situations involving writing CV and job application letters at 78.12%,
business reading etiquettes at 75.56%, banking administration at 71.12%, and giving instructions and directions at 64.11%. The rest of the situations—such as job interviews, requesting
information by e-mail, telephone calls, explaining customer interactions, and giving suggestions and solutions—ranked the lowest, all combined to less than 25%.
The fifth aspect was related to the need for language learning that covers language skills
and other learning activities that students need most. It was found that 82.61% of the students need to improve their speaking skills, followed by listening skills at 80.14%, reading at
79.53%, and writing at 21.78%. The learning activities they wanted the most was pair work
(82.00%). Another aspect was the analysis related to the business topics the students wanted
to learn the most. It was found that the students were interested in five topics, ranging from
84.44% to 71.11%. The findings show that the students need to improve their fluency in
English for business—for both academic and working purposes at 90.14%. The last aspect
was the means analysis. It revealed that 52.14% of the students would like to learn English
with business content materials from the first year in the second semester, and they would like
to be taught by a team of lecturers with business and English backgrounds.
Following the analysis, it was necessary to prepare a diagram as a guide in the design
phase. The design of the developed materials is illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Design process.
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Figure 1 briefly shows how the design process was initiated from the development of main
themes that the students wanted to learn the most. The themes were developed from the data
obtained from the previous phase. From the themes/main topics, 10 sub-topics were developed by a number of handouts used for one semester, with 14 meetings excluding mid-term
and final tests. The themes also became the starting points to decide on the organisation and
the contents of the developed materials. The organisation consists of four main parts, and
they are: lead in, vocabulary, language focus, and language skills. Then, the language skills
are divided into four parts covering listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. Completing the contents and tasks of each part, the activities related to selecting an appropriate
syllabus, setting up learning objectives, choosing the topics and sub-topics, collecting and
choosing the appropriate texts, making decisions with regard to learning sources, and designing tasks were all documented as the blueprint of the developed materials.
Then, the expert of material development, who later recommended some suggestions, validated the blueprint. First, the expert suggested drawing a chart to outline the organisation
of the materials. Second, the expert suggested including examples related to business contexts in the language focus section. After the design phase, the author prepared the blueprint
as printed materials in a handout model. To get a better result and a functional product,
the business content and material development experts validated the product that covers the
aspects of contents, language understandings, presentations, and writing mechanics.
Based on the experts’ evaluation and validation, the developed materials were rated as
valid. However, they suggested revising some of the elements. The first validator recommended revising the front page of each handout. She also suggested revising the level of
difficulty of the task in handout 2. Thus, the task was revised from writing a short paragraph
to rearranging jumbled words into complete sentences. The second validator advised giving
a clear explanation to prevent a misunderstanding and to ensure the students would know
what to do first. The third validator revised the materials regarding business contents and
their sequences. He suggested to include discussions about office administrations.
Based on the validators’ suggestions, the author revised and printed the materials to be a
product that would be applicable in a try-out session during the implementation phase. After
the try-out session, the author found that the lecturers and the students agreed that the developed materials were practical for business students. However, the indicator of the compliance
of time was rated at the lowest score. The highest score was obtained from the indicator of
the benefits of the material. It scored 90.94 and was categorised as very practical.
5
DISCUSSION
In this part, the author discusses the four phases of research procedure that provide the
answers to the research questions defined in Chapter 1.
5.1 Analysis
Before designing a learning material to be used in a learning process, it was necessary to conduct an NA first. Hutchinson and Waters (1987) clearly point out that the needs analysis has
a vital role in the process of designing and carrying out any language courses. Furthermore,
defining the students’ needs is the way to find out the reasons of the students to learn English
(Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998). The data on the analysis phase shows that the students at
MPS IAIN Imam Bonjol Padang needed English for Business Purposes, which would allow
them to master business subjects, as well as to prepare them to use Business English for job
purposes. However, the data revealed their masteries of English for Business Purposes were
poor. Therefore, they prefer to learn topic-related business English.
In learning English for Business Purposes, the students mostly preferred to do paperwork
for their classroom activities. In addition, the analysis also shows that they would like to
be taught English for specific business purposes by a team of lecturers with business and
English backgrounds.
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5.2
The design
Based on the results of the NA conducted in the first phase, the author continued to the second
phase i.e. the design phase. This phase was the part that inspired the author to find the answer
to the second research question: How is the content-based learning material for the MPS students designed? Therefore, in this phase, the author decided to design a course syllabus based
on the information collected in the analysis phase. Since the analysis shows that the students
prefer learning English for business purposes as opposed to English for general purposes, the
author decided to pick a content-based syllabus as a guide to develop the teaching materials. It
is based on the premise first proposed by Richards (2001), who states that with a topical syllabus, content—rather than grammar, functions, or situations—becomes the starting point in the
syllabus design. Therefore, the author listed all business topics in the questionnaire, the syllabus, and the materials that were based on the business language tasks and skills as defined in the
business curriculum structure proposed by Hussin (in Orr, 2002). The language tasks and skills
mentioned in the curriculum are explained in detail in Chapter 2. Based on the analysis of the
language learning needs and the weakness analysis, it was found that the students’ were weak
in speaking skills. Therefore, they needed more speaking-related exercises than other activities.
Thus, the author put more exercises in the speaking section. They covered not only questions
and answers, but also role-playing exercises with business related topics.
5.3
Development
After the design phase, the author prepared the learning materials, followed by a validation
process. The validation result shows that the learning materials developed on the contentbased approach for students at MPS-IAIN IB Padang were categorised as “very valid”. It
was well expected as the author had strictly followed the procedure for developing learning
materials adapted from Nunan’s procedure (1991). In the procedure, the author outlined the
activities to follow, such as selecting topics, collecting data, determining what the learners
need to do about the texts, creating pedagogical activities/procedures, analysing the texts and
activities to determine the language elements, creating activities focusing on language elements and learning skills/strategies, and creating application tasks.
5.4
Implementation
After the completion of the developed materials in a handout model, the author came to
a try-out session to see the feasibility of the developed materials in an activity called the
implementation phase. The result shows that in general, the students consider the developed
materials as “practical”. However, the indicator of the compliance of time received the lowest
score. It was categorised as “fairly practical”. The author assumed that such result was due
to the overwhelming amount of subject matters discussed in each handout. Furthermore,
the students found that the exercises were much more difficult as it was their first time using
materials tailor specifically to business-related topics.
The highest score in the “very practical” category was obtained from the benefits of using
the content-based English learning materials for business students. It means that learning
materials that encompassed the topics developed from business contexts are very helpful to
support the students’ mastery of English for both academic and business related purposes.
In line with the students’ perception, both lecturers and students also rated the compliance
of time as “fairly practical” for the same reason. However, the indicator related to the completeness of the components of the content-based teaching materials for business students
obtained the highest category, i.e. “very practical”. It was quite reasonable because the product covers the four languages skills and is complemented with language focus and vocabulary
sections, followed by relevant exercises.
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6
CONCLUSION
This is a research and development study whose aim is to develop English teaching materials
based on the Content-Based Instruction (CBI) approach for the Islamic Management and
Banking (MPS) students. Specifically, the primary objectives of the study are to find out
the real needs of MPS students, to design and develop the learning materials based on those
needs, and to find out the validity and practicality of the developed materials. As a result, the
final product of this study was a set of content-based syllabus and content-based handouts.
The findings in the analysis phase revealed the real needs of the business students. They preferred learning English for Business Purposes as opposed to General English. The findings
in the design and development phases show that the product was categorised as “very valid.”
Results in the implementation phase proved that the products were practical to use in business schools. However, the author realises that there might be some imperfections in the final
product due to the limitations of the research.
REFERENCES
Astika, G. (2012) Teacher and child talk in PAUD English class. In: M. Syafe’I, H. Madjdi, & Mutohar
(Eds.) Proceedings of the 2nd National Conference on Teaching English for Young Learners in Indonesia. Kudus, Indonesia: Muria Kudus University. pp. 46–57.
Brown, H.D. (2007) Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. 2nd Edition.
New York: Longman.
Chen, Y. (2015) Content-based business English course for EFL. The Internet TESL Journal, 16(1).
Available from: http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Chien-BusinessEnglish.html.
Crystal, D. (2003) The Cambridge encyclopaedia of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Davies, S. (2003) Content-based instruction in EFL context. The Internet TESL Journal, 9(2).
Dudley-Evans, T. & Jo St. John, M. (1998) Developments in English for specific purpose: A multi-disciplinary approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hutchinson, T. & Waters, A. (1987) English for specific purposes: A learning centred approach.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mario-Cal, V. (2010) Current issues in English language teaching and learning. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Michael, B. (2000) Teaching material development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ministry of Education of the Republic of Indonesia. (1993) Decision No. 060/U/1993.
Ministry of Education of the Republic of Indonesia. (2003) Decision No. 020/U/2003.
Ministry of Education of the Republic of Indonesia. (2012) Decision No.12/U/2012.
Nunan, D. (1991) Language teaching methodology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Orr, T. (2002) English for specific purposes. In: J. Burton (Ed.) Case Studies in TESOL Practice Series.
Virginia: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.
Polo, F.J.F., Garcia, L.G. & Martinez, I.M.P. (2010) Current issues in English language. Newcastle:
Cambridge Scholars.
Richards, J.C. (2001) Approaches and methods in language teaching. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Richards, J.C. (2001) Curriculum development in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Richards, J.C. (2005) Communicative language teaching today. RELC Portfolio Series 13. Singapore:
SEAMEO Regional Language Centre.
Riduwan. (2005) Belajar mudah penelitian guru, karyawan, dan peneliti muda (Easy learning research for
teachers, workers, and junior researchers). Bandung: Alfabeta.
Ur, P. (1991) A course in language teaching: Practice and theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Villalobos, O.B. (2013) Content-based instruction: A relevant approach of language teaching. Journal
of Innovation Education, 17(20).
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 444
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The main ideas of Muhammad Mursi’s speech at the 67th United
Nations General Assembly: A critical discourse analysis
D. Lu’lu & A.T. Wastono
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: A speech given by an orator contains certain ideas that need to be conveyed.
These ideas also include power relations. This study aims to reveal the main ideas of
Muhammad Mursi’s speech at the 67th United Nations General Assembly and to explain
the language strategies used to establish the power relations between him and his audience.
The speech was delivered in Modern Standard Arabic. The method used in this research is
a qualitative one. This study employs Fairclough’s (2010) critical discourse analysis (CDA)
as the core theory. As the core theory, it also encompasses other theories, such as van Dijk’s
macro rules (1980), Halliday’s functional grammar (2014), Nida’s components of meaning
(1979), Yule’s presupposition (2010), and the theory of power relations by Foucault (2008)
and Fairclough (2015). The result shows that there are two main ideas behind the speech,
namely Muhammad Mursi’s identity as the President of Egypt after the revolution, and
Egypt’s new visions of itself and the world. Furthermore, the language strategies used to build
the power relations were applied through the use of powerful dictions, epistemic modalities
and interjectional particles, functional imperatives, emphatic particles and nouns, statement
on the identity of the orator, knowledge, and deletion of several participants.
1
INTRODUCTION
A speech is a means of communication delivered by an orator. Through a speech, an orator
conveys the idea(s) in front of an audience. On the 26th September 2012, Muhammad
Mursi1 had the opportunity to speak at the 67th United Nations (UN) General Assembly
(GA). The theme was “Bringing about Adjustment or Settlement of International Disputes
or Situations by Peaceful Means” (“FEATURE: What does the UN General Assembly do
When the General Debate Ends?”, 2012). The speech was delivered in Arabic. Meanwhile,
the audience includes, among others, the President of the 67th UNGA, the UN SecretaryGeneral, and the heads of the UN member states.
In his speech, Mursi presented some ideas that were manifested in several discourses. They
were related to issues in the Middle East and the world, such as the condition in Egypt
after the revolution and issues on Palestine, Syria, Africa, nuclear weapon, the international
system, and the global economy. The speech deliverance showed that Mursi was engaged in a
social interaction with his audience in an effort to bring about social change.
Regarding the delivered ideas, Mursi attempted to build power relations with his audience
when he spoke. Power relations were apparent in the diction he used. For example, he used
the verb
/ad‘ū/, which means ‘I invite’ when he talked about Palestine. The word has the
same root with
/da‘wah/, which means ‘a calling, an invitation, a lecture’, which contains
the concept of an invitation accompanied by an action. Before Mursi, no Arab leaders used
that word when they were engaging with the international community to support Palestine’s
independence.
1. Muhammad Mursi was directly elected in a general election after the Egypt Revolution in 2011 as the
President of Egypt. He served as a president from 2012 to 2013.
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The diction usage indicated that Mursi used power to invite his audience, and that he was
serious to end the Palestinian conflict. It showed that the power relations built by Mursi
were the embodiment of the social struggle in the international community because power
relations are always associated with the social struggle between community (Fairclough,
2015). Based on that, the objective of this paper is to reveal the main ideas of Muhammad
Mursi’s speech at the UN General Assembly. In addition, it also endeavours to explain the
language strategies he used to establish power relations with the audience. Critical discourse
analysis (CDA) as proposed by Norman Fairclough (2010) is used as the main theory.
2
METHODOLOGY
The paper uses a qualitative method. It is chosen to expose the reality so that the real empirical facts are assumed in a socio-cultural context. Trochim (2006) states that the qualitative
method can provide results for an in-depth and detailed research on social phenomenon.
Gubrim (1992) in Somantri (2005) states that the qualitative method in CDA puts a great
emphasis on practice and context. In line with those statements, Fairclough’s CDA has two
dimensions of analyses, namely the textual dimension and the socio-cultural practice dimension that encompassed the situational, institutional, and social contexts. Both are linked with
the dimension of practical discourse.
The source of data in this paper is Muhammad Mursi’s speech at the 67th UNGA. The
data were retrieved from http://www.c-span.org/video/?308405–2/egyptian-president-morsiunited-nations-general-assembly-address, which is a broadcast of his speech. Data collection
was conducted by watching the video, preparing orthographic transcription and transliteration of the speech, and translating the text from Arabic to English. After that, the data source
was classified into three sections: introduction, content, and conclusion. The content section,
especially the propositions, was chosen as the data of Mursi’s speech. It was codified by numbering each of the discourse, paragraph, and proposition.
3
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AS THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) as proposed by Norman Fairclough (2010) was used as the
main theory in this study. The theory focuses on the formation of discourses as an attempt
to create social change (Fairclough, 2010). Fundamentally, CDA aims to investigate the relations of causality and determination between discursive practices, events, and texts, as well as
structures, relationships, and the broader social and cultural processes (Fairclough, 2010).
The objective was achieved by analysing the linking text at the micro level and the social
context at the macro level. As a mediator, Fairclough created “the bridge” for both, namely
the discursive practice. Accordingly, Fairclough designed a framework consisting of three
dimensions: (1) the dimension of text, (2) the dimension of practical discourse, and (3) the
dimension of socio-cultural practice (Fairclough, 2010). The dimension of text includes the
linguistic description of the text’s language. The dimension of practical discourse includes
the interpretation of the relationship between the discursive process and the text. The dimension of socio-cultural practice includes an explanation of the relationships between the discursive processes and the social processes (Fairclough, 2010).
With regard to the dimensions of text, there are three kinds of analyses: analysis of the
propositions, of the grammar analysis, and of the lexical analysis. Analysis of the propositions was conducted to obtain the macro-proposition in each discourse. It was obtained
by using van Dijk’s macro-rules theory (1980). There are four ways of implementing the
macro-rules, i.e. the deletion [D] rule, the selection [S] rule, the generalization [G] rule, and
the construction [C] rule (van Dijk, 1980). It should be noted, however, that the [S] and [D]
cannot be performed on the same proposition because the proposition operated by the [S] is a
proposition that is relevant to other propositions to build the macro-proposition (Renkema,
2004). Therefore, it cannot be eliminated.
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Grammatical analysis was used to reveal the relations of social identities, representations,
and the distribution of information (Fairclough, 2010) using Halliday’s systemic functional
linguistics (2014). Social relations refer to how participants interact through the language displayed in the text. Social identities are concerned with how participants identify themselves.
Halliday refers to both elements as the interpersonal function. Meanwhile, representation is
concerned with how individuals, groups, situations, or experiences are shown in the text. That
element is in line with Halliday’s view, which is referred to as the ideational function. On the
other hand, the distribution of information is related to how the information is presented. In
Halliday’s view, that element is parallel to the textual function.
Next, lexical analysis is used to identify the common and diagnostic components that
belong to the particular diction or phrases used. For that, the component analysis of meaning
offered by Nida (1979) was used. Common components refer to the components of meaning
that connect a word to others in the scope of semantics, while diagnostic components refer
to the components of meaning used to distinguish one word to another.
The dimension of practical discourse requires intertextuality, which refers to the notion
of presupposition by Yule (2010). Presupposition is defined as what an orator assumes to be
true or known by the audience (Yule, 2010). It was used to interpret the language strategies
used by the orator to establish specific power relations with the audience. This dimension also
uses the theory of power relations proposed by Foucault (2008) and Fairclough (2015).
Foucault (2008) states that power can be realized through knowledge. Knowledge always
has the effect of power. For instance, an orator who speaks to promote peace has more information and knowledge than the audience concerning the situations in a specific area that
requires assistance from other countries to bring about peace in that area. His knowledge on
the situations can be used as a tool to build power relations. It shows that power is an application of knowledge, which is manifested in a discourse.
In line with Foucault, Fairclough (2015) writes that power relations are always associated with
struggles. Such struggles refer to the process that involves individuals, groups, or institutions
with different interests. In a discourse, there are two aspects of power relations. First, power in a
discourse that focuses on discourse as a medium to carry out and enact power relations. It is suggested that a discourse is the site of a social struggle. Second, the power behind a discourse that
focuses on how the order of discourse is formed and constituted by power relations. Thus, the
discourse is put as a stake in the social struggles. Based on that, the presence of power relations
can be technically inferred in the discourse through dictions, phrases, grammar, or the order of
discourse used by the actor of the discourse. In addition, an expression of affirmation and management of topics also constitute as indicators of power relations in a discourse.
The dimension of socio-cultural practice explains the result of discourse interpretation and
its connection to the macro context (Fairclough, 2010). In this paper, the macro context was
at the situational and social levels. Situational level is the process of text production at a typical condition, so it produces a text that is different from any other conditions. Discourse, as a
result of social interaction, is considered as an act that responds to a condition. On the other
hand, social level functions are about finding out how macro context affects the production of
a discourse. Furthermore, the social level is also used to reveal how the discourse was produced.
4
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF MUHAMMAD MURSI’S SPEECH
The main ideas and language strategies were obtained after applying the three stages of
Fairclough’s CDA. At the first dimension, which is the description of the text, there are
ten macro propositions.
Language strategies practiced by the orator was revealed through the multifunctional
meaning, namely through the interpersonal, ideational, and textual functions. In the interpersonal function, the declarative mode was the grammatical mode that was used in all discourses. Its focus was the agent and the action that was taken. In the ideational function,
the data implies partisanship of the orator on the issues concerning Egypt, the Palestinian,
Syria, Sudan, Somalia, the elimination of nuclear weapons, criticism of the international
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Table 1.
Macro propositions of Muhammad Mursi’s speech.
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system that still applies the double standards that have an impact in the performance of the
United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council, and to make developing countries as the basis of the global economic governance. Meanwhile, in the textual function, the
propositions that are considered important by the orator and need attention from the audiences are signed with the emphatic particles to highlight the starting point of the messages.
Then, in the second dimension, there are 80 micro propositions, which include power relations between Mursi and his audiences. In the third dimension, especially in the situational
level, the discourse on the international forum was delivered at the 67th UNGA. The language used was the Standard Arabic language. In the social level, there are three factors
affecting the appearance of the discourse, namely peace and security in the Middle East and
the world, the culture of double standard in the international system, and the global economic governance that is detrimental to the people.
5
CONCLUSION
There are two main ideas of Mursi’s speech at the 67th UNGA: (1) the identity of Muhammad
Mursi, and (2) the new Egypt’s visions. Both of them were used by Mursi to bring about world
/al-‘adl/), truth (
/al-h
/al-h
peace that is based on justice (
․aqq/), freedom (
․urriyyah/),
dignity (
/al-kirāmah/), and social justice (
/al-‘adālah al-ijtimā‘iyyah/). Furthermore, in the speech, Mursi used several language strategies to build power relations with the
audience. The language strategies were applied using powerful dictions. For instance, in terms of
nouns, there were the use of the words
/al-h
/al․aqq/ ‘truth’ that collocates with the word
‘adl/ ‘justice’ to describe the new Egypt’s visions,
/al-juhd/, in a single form, and the word
/al-juhūd/ ‘the striving’, in a broken plural form, to describe the persistence of the efforts made by
the agents without time limit. Meanwhile, in terms of verbs, there were the use of the words
/
yunād․ilu/ ‘to struggle’ that collocates with the word
/yujāhidu/ ‘to strive’ to describe the persistence of the efforts made by the agents, the word
/ad‘ū/ ‘to invite; to call’ that has the same root
with the word
/da‘wah/ ‘an invitation; a calling; a lecture’, which indicates that the call is accompanied by an action, the word
/natanāwal/ ‘to take in hand’ which contains the concept of soon,
and the word /u’akkidu/ ‘to emphasize’, which indicates that Mursi had the discretion to use his
power because he could control the information needed to get more attention from his audience.
Moreover, Mursi used the declarative modes of functioning imperatives manifested in epistemic
modalities. He also used interjected particles ( /alā/ and /amā/) of functioning imperatives in the
beginning of the propositions. The third strategy used by him was the use of emphatic particles ( /
inna/, /anna/, /lākinna/,
/la-/, and /qad/) and emphatic nouns ( /kullu/ and
/jamī‘an/).
REFERENCES
Fairclough, N. (2010) Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. 2nd edition. London &
New York: Routledge.
Fairclough, N. (2015) Language and power. 3rd edition. London & New York: Routledge.
FEATURE: What does the UN general assembly do when the general debate ends? (2012) Retrieved
from: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=43305&Cr=General+Assembly&Cr1=&Kw1
=general&Kw2=assembly&Kw3=#.Vx19OzB97IV. [Accessed on the 25th April 2016]
Foucault, M. (2008) Ingin tahu: Sejarah seksualitas (Curiosity: History of sexuality). (Translated by
Rahayu S. Hidayat). Jakarta: Yayasan Obor Indonesia.
Renkema, J. (2004) Introduction to discourse studies. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Somantri, G.R. (2005) Memahami metode kualitatif (Understanding the Qualitative Method). Makara
Seri Sosial Humaniora, 9(2), 57–65.
Trochim, W.M.K. (2006) Qualitative measure. Retrieved from http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/
kb/qual.php. [Accessed on the 22nd April 2014]
van Dijk, T.A. (1980) Macrostructures: An interdisciplinary study of global structures in discourse, interaction, and cognition. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Yule, G. (2010) The study of language. 4th Edition. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
An ontology of violence based on moral teachings: A case
study of Salafi Wahabi radicalism and the story of Kresna Duta
(Ambassador Kresna)
Naupal
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This research begins with the problems of violence based on moral teachings.
Monism in a moral view represents the face of exclusivity and intolerance. It is believed that
there is an ideological motive behind a violent act emerging from moral teachings. Wahabi’s
teaching is considered as a radical view in interpreting religious texts. Meanwhile, from the
cultural perspective the story of Kresna Duta indicates violence based on the assumption
of the existence of non-egalitarian power relation among people with different social status.
The method used in this research is Derrida’s deconstruction and hermeneutics. Wahabi and
Kresna Duta moral teaching texts will be deconstructed to find out the hidden elements causing the distortion of the texts’ meaning. The method will also be used to show that moral
monism and single interest-loaded interpretation will become the trigger of horizontal conflicts in Indonesia and that they can be solved by using dialogues in both rational and communicative acts by participants as said by J. Habermas. This research will be a contribution
to the idea of rearranging the order of a tolerant Indonesian society.
1
INTRODUCTION
Indonesia is a country and nation composed of heterogeneous ethnic groups, religions, and
cultures. In this era of globalization, when group identity is assimilating and flowing, religious and ethnic identity is factually important to pay attention to because there are still
people who refer to their moral values on the basis of religion, ethnicity and culture. The faith
to one moral belief can still be witnessed around us and is sometimes implemented through
violence.
The issue of violence based on one moral teaching is important to be brought up as now, in
the climate of democracy, there is a strong tendency of equality in ethnicities, religions, and
classes in Indonesia. Even though we have entered the era of modernization, in reality the
problem related to ethnic, religious and racial identity still exists. This is proven by the emergence of alliances of primordialism in Indonesia rooted in ethnic, religious and racial bonds.
This does not only occur in Indonesia, but it also happens in global communities as said by
Huntington (1997, p. 28), “In this new world, the most pervasive, important, and dangerous
conflicts will not be between classes, rich and poor, or other economically defined groups, but
between people belonging to different cultural entities.”
This research becomes important because if we look at the Indonesian context, each of the
religions, ethnicities, and cultures has a moral message that is considered ideal and correct; in
this research the Salafi Wahabism moral teaching and the story of Kresna Duta will be the
focus. The diversity is an empirical reality; a reality that continues to exist in Indonesia. This
reality should be mediated seriously; otherwise, a continuous conflict will be real and present.
This is the reason why it is the right time to reinvent and identify the ontology of violence
coming from moral teachings by using the deconstruction method introduced by Derrida
(1998) and to solve these problems using the ethical discourse approach by Habermas (2007).
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1.1
Monism
A lot of violence occurs around us. The interesting part is that there is a similarity in their
ontology, namely to send a moral message and the value of truth embraced by certain groups.
One group claims themselves as being in the right side while considering other groups in the
wrong side. Nevertheless, it is an obvious fact that different groups and societies understand
and organize human lives differently. Clifford Geertz calls this a humanity based on group
pride (Geertz, 1973).
Moral monism refers to a view that there is only one way of life that is fully humane, true,
or the best, and that the others are not complete or not united (Farekh, 2000). The way of
thinking is really dichotomous, “ego” and “other”. “Ego” is emphasized, while “other” has to
be eliminated. To show that one way of life is the best, the moral of monism should be based
on something that is inter-cultural. For the followers of this belief, humans are basically the
same, even though they exist within a different time and place. For the monism community
crime, like mistakes, can take different shapes but good, like truth, only takes a single form.
In order to show that one way of life is the best, moral monism needs to spread it to
all human beings. Moreover, moral monism refers to an idea that there is universality, uniformity, and objectivity everywhere. The fact is that this philosophy is confronted with other
groups who have the same view or this philosophy will also be confronted with groups fighting for particularity, contingency, and subjectivity that believe that morality does not have to
be based on the interpretation of truth, ideology, and domination. Moral monism is in the
end no more than an ideological moral that leads to violent acts which in the end will ruin the
unity and harmony in diversity.
1.2
Moral teachings in the movement of Salafi Wahabism in Indonesia
At the beginning, when Islam entered Nusantara, it penetrated well because it could adapt
to the local culture that existed at that time like Wayang which was used as an instrument
to introduce Islam (Riddle, 2001). However, these days the face of Islam in Nusantara
has turned into a theological and fundamental Islam identified by the presence of a Salafi
Wahabism movement. With its financial power, this movement has succeeded in establishing
its foundation and educational institutions, and by using the label ahlus sunnah wajamaah in
the context of Indonesia in which Islam is the majority and is also the dominant theological
school, this movement has been able to draw the sympathy of the majority of Indonesian
Muslims. This movement initially focused on purifying faith and the integrity of individual
moral values. They implement this by interpreting religious texts literarily and practicing the
religious values formally and rigidly.
With a focus on these two issues, the Salafi Wahabism movement appears to be exclusive
and takes the position that is in the opposite direction of the majority movements in Indonesia, either from the physical side (clothes) or spiritual side (teaching doctrine/ideology).
Physically, they can be identified from the ornaments that they wear publicly in many big
cities in Indonesia; Jogjakarta, Solo, Semarang, Bandung, Depok, Jakarta, and Makassar.
The men wear jalabiyah (long robes), imamah (turbans), isban (long trousers up to the ankle),
and lihyah (long beards) while the women wear niqab (long black dress covering the entire
body) which distinguishes them from local Muslims. These clothes signify their difference
from other Muslims.
Moreover, ideologically, the basis of their moral teachings come from literal interpretation of the religious texts, such as the teaching of tauhid (purifying the faith to Allah and
the refusal of tawasul and pilgrimage to the graves), al-wal wal-barra’ (the solidarity among
followers, and refusing those who have different views), anti hizbiyyah (refusal of political
preaching, which is considered as bid’ah and thaghut), hijrah (moving from digression to correctness), and kafir and bi’dah (guiding those who deviate from the genuine teaching).
On the one hand, the moral teachings of Salafi Wahabism considers the above functions as
the ideology that imbeds social relations among the members of the group. Its moral teaching is also an identity that distinguishes them from others. From Bourdieu’s perspective, this
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identity serves as a social capital (Bourdieu, 1994), as it functions as networking or resources
because the group share the same doctrine. It can also be an adhesive that supports solidarity among the members. On the other hand, it can also become a tool to discriminate others.
More importantly, Salafi Wahabism teachings can become an ethical legitimization of social
relations. In other words, Wahabi moral teachings are true monism morality that will bring
people to possess an attitude of exclusivity where they can be categorized into two groups
only: right or wrong, God’s followers or unbelievers, the chosen ones or the sinners. The
effect of this dualism is the acts of violence as they start from a mental process when seeing
‘others’ as the different or the wrong one, then stigmatizing, humiliating, destroying, and
finally killing them (Semelin, 2005).
Hafner explains that the moral teachings of Salafi Wahabism become the central topic of
Islamic expansion and not as a religion anymore but as a political and social power. He adds
that the changes in religious culture are related to “reconstruction in political bodies or parties in which some meanings are distributed but others are neglected” (Hefner, 1987, p.78.).
The Salafi Wahabism teachings can also be considered as neo-fundamentalism by Oliver
Roy. According to him, Salafi Wahabism is an Islamic movement that tries to Islamize people
at the grass root level (Roy, 1996). John O. Voll defines Wahabism as a prototype of rigid
fundamentalism in modern Islam because this movement possesses harsh views in defining
who can be considered as Muslims. This movement also strictly differentiates religious people
from unreligious ones (Voll, 1994).
1.3
Moral teachings in the story of Kresna Duta
Puppet shows in Indonesia are closely related to the influence of Hinduism. According to
Professor Poerbatjaraka, the Mahabarata epic was brought from India to Indonesia. The
Mahabarata epic was translated into Javanese during the reign of King Dharmawangsa
Teguh in Central Java from 913 to 929 Caka (991–1007 AD) (Poerbatjaraka, 1957) and this
is the origin of the Wayang drama (Moelyono, 1975).
In the Mahabarata Epic, the figures of Pandawa in a puppet show are positioned on the
right side while the figures of Kurawa are on the left. Pandawa is a symbol that represents
‘virtue’, while Kurawa is a symbol of ‘evil’. At the peak of the show, there is a war between
the two families, which means a war between good and evil. The good will win, while the evil
will lose, and it is the message carried in the wayang show.
In the story of Kresna Duta, violence takes place between two related families, Kurawa
and Pandawa. It is clear that violence has to be the choice as the three emissaries, namely
Lady Kunti, King Drupada, and Kresna, fail to set a consensus through dialogues. The war
of Baratayuda is a symbol of truth, justice, godliness against evil, injustice, and insubordination. The war that kills many lives must take place as a result of the failure of those carrying
the mission of truth.
In the conflict between Kurawa and Pandawa, Kresna is the emissary of Pandawa. He carries an obligation to bring justice as an avatar who descends to the world. Truth and justice
have to be guarded, while injustice and wrongdoings have to be destroyed. Duryudana is
the one who does the arbitrary. His character in the play is very egoistic as he is concerned
only about himself and his hunger for power. Karna does not defend Pandawa. Although he
knows that the Pandawa brothers are his real brothers, he defends Duryudana instead.
The war has catastrophic effects to these puppet figures because the brothers kill each
other. On Kurawa’s side there are Bisma (Pandawa’s eldest) (Note: Bisma is the grandfather
of Pandawa and Kurawa), Durna (Pandawa’s guru) and Karna (the eldest brother of Pandawa). Meanwhile in Pandawa, there is Salya (Note: as far as I know Salya was tricked to
defend Kurawa by Duryudana, so he is on the side of Kurawa although unwillingly), the uncle
of Nakula and Sadewa.
Puppet show is a fantasy and imagination in which there is a story known as the lakon.
The lakon presents something that does not exist in reality (Amstrong, 2005). Although it is a
fantasy and imagination, it has a lot of moral values. Javanese society believes that the lakon
(story) of Kresna Duta contains a lot of moral teachings. The most important teaching is
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that the protection of the truth is very important. The absence of truth will cause someone to
lose intuition that becomes a drawback (Duncan, 2008). That is why truth should be fulfilled
and crystalized, even though violence and war happen like in the lakon above.
It can be said that there are some moral teachings in the story of Kresna Duta. The first one
is that truth and justice must be upheld, while injustice and wrongdoings must be destroyed
as shown in the role of Kresna. The second is that the promise of loyalty to one’s duty should
be fulfilled no matter what the condition is, even through self-sacrifice as shown in the role of
Karna’s loyalty to Duryudana. The third is that there is always a dilemmatic choice in life to
keep the existing social order as shown in the role of Salya. Salya faces the dilemmatic choice
between supporting Duryudana, his son-in-law, or supporting Nakula and Sadewa, members
of the Pandawa, who are his own nephews.
Moreover, the moral teachings in the lakon of Kresna Duta tell us that there are always
good and bad, right and wrong, in this life; and there is always the battle between good and
bad or between right and wrong, and war is the chosen path to get rid of evil. This lakon also
teaches that protection and defence of the right and truth is very important, even though
they have to be upheld with violence and war. Behind this moral teaching, there is a dichotomous perspective; right and wrong, good and bad. The truth is given the legitimacy to take a
violent action against the wrong.
1.4
Reinventing the truth claim of moral monism
From the two cases above, we realize that dogmatism and the spirit of being concerned only
about ourselves will aggressively bring us to the acts of violence. At the same time, it also
dulls our moral sensitivity. The idea that says that there is only one highest and supreme or
most humane way of life is logically unacceptable (Berlin, 1969). It is a naive assumption that
a single truth can form a unity without looking at space and time. This is due to the fact that
not all social order has the same structure.
Moral monism suffers from defects and deviations. For Wahabism, non-Wahabism and
even Muslims who disagree with the official interpretations of their central doctrines are all
wrong and have no value, and Kresna Duta illustration of such opposition to hierarchy is so
strong that it ends in war.
Moral monism makes a dangerous mistake of assessing other people’s way of life, and this
attitude can cause a hermeneutic disaster. This is caused by the shallow interpretation of
texts and the notion that their group is the most ideal group. Essentially, texts are not just a
single sign but a network of signs. This means that what we can find and know is the traces
of the truth themselves and not the truth in itself. This is what is meant by the trace concept
according to Derrida.
In his three books, Of Gramatology, Writing and Difference, and Speak and Phenomenon,
Derrida refuses the claim of the standard truth because it is often used to construct a single
meaning. Consequently, he closes himself and only accepts communities sharing the same
understanding or meaning. Derrida is not interested in accepting the transcendental truth
that is free of space and time. Through the deconstruction method, he tries to show the weaknesses of that way of thinking. There are always parts in the texts to be questioned, such as
what is the ideal, the main and the original initiatives. Derrida shows the democratic model
of thinking that is open to differences and alternatives. Thus, Derrida’s concept of ‘difference’ becomes very important because it does not only refer to alternative understanding or
difference “between...”, but his concept of ‘difference’ also refers to the uncertain steps and
directions. There is always something that is withheld in its certainty (Penolope, 2006).
Deconstruction is then implemented by putting aside the main idea of the texts to the edge
and putting the present initiatives from the edge to the centre. It is subsequently confirmed
that there is no model of binary opposition thinking, a model of thinking that prioritizes one
side and neglects the other. Furthermore, there is no part of the text that is stagnant or permanent. There is no atom in the texts. This concept by Derrida is called undecidable category.
In his deconstruction model, there is a principle that is summarized by Derrida: sans savoir,
san voir, sans avoir (does not know, does not have, and does not possess). San savoir (does not
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know) means that a text cannot always be interpreted by the interpreter in his totality, so he
does not have the authority in his interpretation. Sans voir (does not see) indicates the limitation of the five senses that a man has about the truth; this can lead us to respect differences.
Sans avoir (does not possess) reminds us that the truth is on the lap of the interpreter, but it
is disseminated through other interpreters. Why did Derrida harshly oppose the opposition
hierarchy and the claim of absolute truth and absolute moral? According to him, opposition
hierarchy and the claim of absolute truth are no more than standardizing the meaning which
is neither more nor less than personal emphasis in assignment opposition or authority. As a
consequence, the comprehension is normative and those who differ are subject to sanctions.
In other words, the special treatment of one entity over another is a product of cultural
manipulation for the purpose of political interest in a dimension of power, and this needs to
be deconstructed.
In that way, we can know the ideological content behind the texts of moral teachings,
whether it comes from religion or culture. In the history of Islam, the alliance between religion and politics can be seen in the founding of the Saudi Arabian dynasty. In this case,
Wahabism supports the authority and the government gives protection and support to
Wahabism. The authority receives religious legitimacy from the Wahabism movement as it
supports the kingdom, while Wahabism receives protection and political support from the
kingdom. The result is an absolutism of truth which is a merge between absolute religious
authority and absolute political authority.
In the case of Kresna Duta, opposition hierarchy is so strong that it ends in war. Each
party, both Pandawa and Kurawa, are firm in their positions and, hence, war is unavoidable. In the story, war is regarded as the only solution to destroy evil. Even supporting evil
to speed the ruin of evil is justified as shown by the figure of Karna. Karna is the eldest son
of Lady Kunti, which means Karna is the blood brother of Pandawa. In the lakon/story, it
is described that the reason of Karna’s support for Kurawa is that he has a very genial attitude, namely defending evil does not mean supporting evil, but his taking side to evil means
to smooth the Karma so that Baratayuda war can soon occur. In this way, evil can soon be
eliminated. There is an absolute truth that needs to be defended even though many lives will
be sacrificed.
1.5
Constructive dialogue as a key to civilized society
As described above, Indonesia is a heterogeneous country with many religions, ethnic groups,
and cultures each with their own moral teachings. Violence will still be a reality if monism
perspective remains in the mind of the majority of the Indonesian population. In regard to
this matter, a constructed dialogue is expected to be the way out and the key to civilized society.
Habermas calls this ethical discourse. Ethical discourse is not an ethical base that can provide ready answers for the moral questions presented, but it is a way to ascertain the return
of the norms of moral that become the questions (Magnis-Suseno, 2007). Ethical discourse
attempts to answer universal problems. Ethical discourse does not stop at the phase of the
implementation of universal norms, but it needs to be justified in rational discourse among
participants through understanding to reach consensus.
According to Habermas, there are two principles in ethical discourse. The first principle
is universality that depicts the moral consideration that I want to apply correctly if it is also
wanted by the majority. Second, the universal truth should be discoursed to reach a consensus
or mutual understanding. In this way, only the norms that have been confirmed in the practical
discourse to which everyone agrees can be ascertained in their truth (Habermas, 2007).
By implementing the two principles in ethical discourse, it is expected that the acceptance
of pluralism of moral teachings, coming from either religion or culture, can grow. Why does
ethical discourse become important? It is a reality that there is violence in the name of moral
teachings that come from religion and culture. Secondly, the binary opposition is intentionally used systematically by one group claiming the truth to corner other groups in a marginal
position or to label them as valueless. Thirdly, the discrimination to ‘others’ smoothens the
emergence of conflict and violence.
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This is where ethical discourse tries to fulfil the basic needs of all followers of moral teachings that exist in Indonesia. Through ethical discourse, it is essential to describe that the
formats of relations among moral teachings universally agreed upon by all parties are not
decided by cultural capital owned by the dominants which is then to be forced as referred
norms for everyone. More importantly, the moral teachings that have been agreed on are not
meant to assimilate other groups into the general moral teachings through the economic,
political, and social engineering as if the morality agreed by the dominant group will come
into priority. Ethical discourse also teaches us to agree or disagree, as well as to be tolerant
and ready for non-ending consensus.
2
CONCLUSION
Ethics are actually experience, so the practice of moral teachings will become more effective
if it is done through experience. Moral teachings can only be obtained through less meaningful cognitive understanding; thus, it brings us to false interpretation. For example, the moral
of monism that underestimates other groups can come. Values and norms should be a disposition that is incorporated inside every individual personality as a result of skills in practical
behaviour developing in a democratic and plural social environment. Thus, it is urgent that
every individual should interact socially with different religions, cultures as early as possible,
so that our younger generation can have a paradigm that life is not bordered by religion.
The perspective of monism should be changed into pluralism through constructive dialogues. The purposes of pluralism are: first, as a citizen to actively participate in all social
groups from different moral teachings; second, in relation to identity, to encourage the society to admit and accept cultural diversity so that the sense of belonging and commitment
to society can grow; third, to meet the demand for social justice. The people can only enjoy
peace and prosperity when the country can maintain social justice.
REFERENCES
Amstrong, K. (2005) A Short History of Myth. Great Britain, Canongate Books.
Berlin. (1969) Four essays on liberty. London, Oxford University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1994) Raison pratiques. Sur la theorie d l’action. Paris, Seuil.
Derrida, J. (1998) Difference. In: Rivkin, J. & Ryan, M. (eds.) Literary Theory: an Anthology. USA,
Blackwell Published Inc.
Duncan, I. (2008) Right. British, Avumen.
Farekh, B. (2000) Rethinking Multiculturalism, Cultural Diversity, and Political Theory. Houndmills,
Macmillan Press.
Geertz. (1973) “Thick Description” in The Interpretation of Culture. New York: Basic Books.
Habermas, J. (2007) Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action Translated by Christian Lenhardt
and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. UK, Polite Press.
Hefner, R. (1987) Islamic Conversion in Modern East Java. In: William R. (ed.) Islam and the Political
Economy of Meaning: Comparative Studies of Muslim Discourse. London and Sydney, Croom Helm.
Magnis-Suseno, F. (1996) Etika Jawa: Sebuah Analisa Falsafi tentang Kebijaksanaan Hidup Jawa
(Javanese Ethics: a Phylosophical Analysis of Javanese Life Wisdom). Jakarta, PT Gramedia Pustaka
Utama.
Penolope, D. (2006) How to Read Derrida. New York, WW. Norton.
Poerbatjaraka. (1957) Tardjan Hadidjaja: Kepustakaan Djawa (Tardjan Hadidjaja: Javanese Bibliography).
Jakarta, Penerbit Djembatan.
Riddle, P. (2001) Islam and the Malay-Indonesian: Transmission and Responses. London and Singapore,
C. Hurst and Horizon Books.
Roy, R. (1966) The Failure of Political Islam. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
Semelin, J. (2005) Purifier et Detruire. Paris, Seuil.
Voll, J.O. (1994) Islam: Continuity and Change in Modern World. Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The story of caliph Abu Bakr, Umar, Usman, and Ali to the battle
of Hasan and Husain in Karbala: Islamic epics from Ambon
D. Kramadibrata
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: In classical Malay Literature, Hikayat Muhammad Hanafiyyah (hereinafter
abbreviated as HMH) is classified as an Islamic epic and is influenced by Shia doctrines.
HMH is known as one of the oldest Malay manuscripts (approximately from the 16th century) and is adapted from Persian literature into Malay literature. HMH narrates the story of
Muhammad Hanafiyyah who was fighting for Ali’s descendants. The text of HMH is written
in more than 30 manuscripts and spread all over the world. According to Brakel, there are
three versions of HMH, namely (1) versio simplex (x version); (b) versio ornatior (y version);
and (c) versio orna-tissima (y1 version). HMH is very popular because some manuscripts
describe Muhammad Hanaffiyah as imam mahdi. In Haruku Island, Ambon, there is one
manuscript entitled “Hikayat Khalifah Abu Bakar, Umar, Usman, dan Ali sampai Peperangan Hasan dan Husain di Karbala” (The stories of Abu Bakar, Umar, Usman, and Ali up
to the War of Hasan and Husain in Karbala) (abbreviated as HKAUUA). This manuscript
contains the story of Muhammad Hanafiyyah and this belongs to y1 version. This paper
discusses the characteristics of HKAUUA as an Islamic epic from Ambon.
1
INTRODUCTION
The spreading of Islam in Nusantara (Indonesian Archipelago) has had an impact on
Nusantara literature. Malay literary works are enriched by literary translations from Arabic
and Parsi languages. In the world of Malay literature, there are three renown Islamic epics
(heroic tales). They are The Story (in Malay: Hikayat) of Iskandar Zulkarnain, The Story of
Amir Hamzah, and The Story of Muhammad Hanafiyyah (hereinafter referred to as HMH)
(Iskandar, 1996:124; Braginski, 1998:134). HMH emerged in Pasai in the 80s of the 14th
century (Braginsky, 1998:128). In Malay society, HMH played an important role in spreading
Islam as a religion. During the spreading of Islam, the stories in HMH served as models of
bravery for the audience.
Brakel (1975) studied the literary works of Classic Malay. Based on Brakel’s research
(1975:56), HMH is categorized as the oldest Malay text (approximately in the 16th century)
and it can be traced back to Parsi. Initially, the HMH text contained Shi’itic elements, but
Brakel concluded that the more recent texts of HMH contain less Shi’itic influence.
Brakel succeeded to collect and register 30 manuscripts that tell the stories of HMH. One
of the things that made HMH popular is the illustration of Muhammad Hanafiyah as the
mahdi (Shia’s followers’ long awaited leader).
HMH tells the story of Muhammad Hanafiyyah’s determination to defend the death of
Husayn, who was the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad in Karbala. The first Malay
readers who were exposed to the Shia mazhab, the character Muhammad Hanafiyah was
considered as the true and the devout hero of Islam. He dedicated his whole life to fight
against the disbelievers or kafir. He was also Ali’s supporter, whom, according to the Shia
mazhab, was the only family member who had the right to hold the position of the caliph
(Braginski, 1998:134).
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In HMH, the story ended with the disappearance of Muhammad Hanafiyyah in a cave
after defeating his enemy. A number of groups within the Shia mazhab who revered Muhammad Hanafiyyah as mahdi believed that he did not die, but hid in the mountains waiting for
the right time to return (Braginsky, 1998:134). Among the different Shia sects, Muhammad
Hanifiyyah is the central character revered by the Kaisaniyah sect (Brakel, 1975:6).
However, the character of Muhammad Hanafiyyah, who is lauded by the Malays in HMH,
almost does not have any connection with the Muhammad Hanafiyyah in historical records.
As a historical figure, he is the son of the Caliph Ali and a slave named Khaula from the
Hanifah tribe (Brakel, 1975:2). Muhammad Hanafiyyah lived during a period of upheaval
due to the opposition in fighting for the position of Caliph between the followers of Ali and
the Ummayah. In the dispute, however, Muhammad Hanafiyyah did not have any important
influence (Braginsky, 1998:134).
The prototype of HMH Parsi consists of two parts. The first part falls within the ArabicParsi genre known as maqtal (murder stories). This part tells the story of the tragic death
of the two of Ali’s sons, who were revered as heroes within the Shia mazhab, i.e. Hasan and
Husain. This part of the saga is read during special celebrations to commemorate the two
characters. The second part falls in the Parsi saga genre. Based on the tragic death of Husain,
the story of Muhammad Hanafiah’s revenge to Yazid, who murdered Ali’s sons, was later
written (Braginsky, 1998:135).
In the beginning, the Shi’itic elements in the HMH text constituted the main part of the
early period of Islam in Indonesia. However, more recently, due to increasing tendency of
anti-Shi’itic elements in Malay literature, the congruity and tensions in the first part of HMH
have disappeared, and they merely became a brief summary of the early history of Islam.
Wieringa (1996) calls the removal of Shi’itic elements in texts as “de-Shiazation.”
In a review on HMH, the narrative structure of HMY Malay consists of three parts
(Brakel, 1975:16). The first part is the introduction containing the Prophet Muhammad’s
biography and the early days of his leadership. Part of this story is derived from The Story of
Nur Muhammad. The second part consists of several episodes, which are childhood stories of
Hasan and Husain; the biographies of the three Calips, Abu Bakr, Umar, Usman; the biography of Ali; and the death of Hasan and Husain in Karbala. The third part contains tales of
war of Muhammad Hanafiyyah during the thirteen years he fought with his eight companions against Yazid and Marwan. The war ended with a victory for Muhammad Hanafiyyah,
the burning of Yazid in a well that he himself had dug, and the appointment of Zainal Abidin, the son of Husain. The final part tells the story of how Muhammad Hanafiyyah suddenly disappeared from the battleground and entered into a supernatural cave. The mouth of
the cave immediately closed upon him entering (read Brakel, 1975:18; Hadi, 2013: 98–100).
In his research, Brakel compliled a stemma (genealogy) to determine the kinship of the
HMH text in the Classic Malay literature. The HMH text is divided into three versions:
(1) versio simplex; (b) versio ornatior; and (c) versio ornatissima. Later Brakel grouped the
30 HMH manuscripts into the three versions, as follows.
1. Versio simplex: x is contained within manuscripts of A, E, F, I, and M;
2. Versio ornatior: y is contained within manuscripts of B, G, K, L, N, O, P, Q, R, V, W, X,
BB, CC, DD; and
3. Versio ornatissima: y1 is contained within manuscripts of C, D, H, S, T, U, Y, Z, and AA.
Brakel provided a detailed description about the x and y versions. The y1 version has not
yet been described in detail. Upon explaining the relationship among the x, y, and y1 versions,
it becomes clear that there are a number of episodes that fall into the y1 version, which are
1. The episode when Ali instructed his sons, Hasan and Husain to throw away the Zulkafar
sword into the sea.
2. The Israel King helped Husain’s family who were taken as hostages by Yazid. The Israel
King then joined the war against Yazid;
3. The episode when Yazid’s children, Said and Mahid, escaped from their father’s army.
They then assisted Muhammad Hanafiyah’s army and died as martyrs.
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One of the manuscripts that is part of the y1 version, which is manuscript H, dated back
to 1732. The y1 version comes from Riau-Johor (Brakel, 1975:84–86). In the history of
Malay literature, the Riau-Johor period took place during 1511–1779. During this period,
adaptations of many Islamic literary works into Malay language took place (read Iskandar,
1996:274 and Collins, 2005:47–49). On that account, it can be concluded that the y1 version
dated back to the 18th century.
Brakel presented the HMH edition text based on the x and y versions that were closest to
the archetype (Brakel, 1975:90). Most of the editions of the texts presented refer to the x version. The HMH edition text Brakel compiled uses a combination method.
The story of HMH consists of the following:
1. The history of the Prophet Muhammad’s life until the early days of his Prophecy. Part of
this story was written based on the Saga of Nur Muhammad;
2. Hasan and Husain’s childhood stories;
3. The stories of the Caliphs Abu Bakr, Umar, and Usman;
4. The story of Ali;
5. The death of Hasan and Husain as martyrs;
6. The story of Muhammad Hanafiyyah’s revenge;
7. The final story of Muhammad Hanafiyyah.
The HMH edition text edited by Braken began from the second to the seventh stories.
Brakel presented the HMH edition text into two main parts, as follows:
The first part consists of 26 episodes, which are:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Episodes 1–9: Hasan and Husain’s childhood
Episodes 10–16: the history of the first three Caliphs (Abu Bakr, Umar, and Usman);
Episodes 17–19: the story of Ali;
Episodes 20–26: the death of Hasan and Husain.
The second part consists of 22 episodes, which are:
1. Episodes 1–20: Muhammad Hanafiyyah’s revenge;
2. Episodes 21–22: the final story of Muhammad Hanafiyyah (Brakel, 1975:18).
As aforementioned, Brakel had not worked yet on the manuscripts in the y1 version in
detail. According to Brakel, the manuscripts in the y1 version are very complex due to the
additional stories they contain.
This paper discusses “The Story of Caliph Abu Bakr, Caliph Umar, Caliph Usman, and
Caliph Ali to the Hasan and Husain Battle in Karbala” (hereinafter referred to as HKAUUA), a manuscript from Haruku Island in Ambon. Based on its contents, the HKAUUA
text is part of the y1 version.
2
2.1
“THE STORY OF CALIPH ABU BAKR, CALIPH UMAR, CALIPH USMAN,
AND CALIPH ALI TO THE HASAN AND HUSAIN BATTLE IN KARBALA”
The manuscript in Haruku Island, Ambon
In Haruku Island, in Kabau Village, three manuscripts that are the results of Islamic literature were found. They are (1) The Story of Nur Muhammad and The Story of Nabi Bela
Bulan, The Story of Nabi Bercukur and The Story of Nabi Wafat, and The Story of Haji and
The Story of Saidina Umar; (2) The Story of the Prophet Muhammad; (3) and HKAUUA.
The manuscripts are all written in Jawi script. The three manuscripts belong to Bapak Wali
Bangsa Amanullah Ripamole, an imam and an Islamic teacher, who lives in Kabau Village in
Haruku Island, Ambon.
HKAUUA drew attention because the title portrayed that the manuscript contained the
biographies of the caliphs to the tragic stories experienced by Hasan and Husain. After being
read, the manuscript tells the story of the Muhammad Hanafiyyah’s determination to defend
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Ali’s descendants. In general, the plot of HKAUUA is the same with the plot of HMH.
However, there are some differences.
The HKAUUA manuscript was copied by Bapak Wali Bangsa Amanullah Ripamole in
1999 because the original manuscript was damaged. The text is written in Jawi script and it
has 143 pages. The text was copied on a drawing book with lines written on each pageto make
the writing neat. Nevertheless, there are a number of mistakes in the transfer, among which
are missing words and mistakes that were made while linking the pages. In this manuscript,
there are also drawings of red flowers decorating certain words, for example the name the
Prophet Muhammad and other characters.
The study of HKAUUA is based on phillology principles (read Kramadibrata, 2015).
After analyzing the text critically, the text is translated into Latin script and the content of
HKAUUA is analysed. By tracing written sources about Ambonese culture, it appears that
the characteristics of HKAUUA are closely related to the Ambonese culture.
2.2
Analysis of HKAUUA
There are a number of interesting findings in HKAUUA.
First is in terms of language. From the phonological aspect, in the HKAUUA text there
are words commonly found in the Classic Malay text. For example, the writing of the word
menengar for ‘to listen’; the use of /k/ and /g/ is often mixed, such as the word Kufah that is
written into Gufah, kendi is written into gendi; the addition of /h/ in a number of words, for
instance harang, mahu, hambah; the removal of /h/ in a number of words, such as amparan,
mara; the use of the glottal stop symbol (symbolized with hamzah) as a marker of the vocal
series, for example na’ik, ma’u, dimetera’i, pe’kerja’an; the use of the glottal stop symbol at
the beginning of a word with a vocal phoneme, such as ‘oleh.
In the text, the sound schwa (e) is symbolized with the vocals a, i, and u. For example,
benua is written as banua, the word tepi is written as tipi, and the word sembah is written
as sumbah. This kind of variation is also found in The Story of Tanah Hitu (Straver et al.,
2004:28).
In the text, a number of archaic words, such as those from the Persian language, like
darwis (Sufis who live in poverty) and paighambar (prophet), were found. Both words were
written based on the writer’s pronunciation. The word darwis became durubasa, while the
word paighambar became pangambur or pangumbar. In addition, some words were written
based on the pronunciation of the writer, who came from Ambon. For instance, the word
cincin was written into cincing, hutan was written into hutang, or the word pulang was written
into pulan.
From the morphological aspect, a number of characteristic affixations were found. For
example, the formation of the word diper-nya, which has a perfective meaning is present
in the sentence “Syahdan maka Utbah dan Ubaidullah Ziyad pun diperikutnya oleh Masib
Kaka.” In addition, irregular assimilation is also found in the preffixation of meN-. There
are affixes that are not assimilated, for instance in the word mehela for menghela. There are
affixes that assimilate with a number of uncommon assimilated pattern forms, such as the
word memerdekakan that becomes mengerdehakan and the word mengerjakan that becomes
mengerejakan.
From the syntax level, a number of passive sentence patterns were found in the Malay
language, which commonly appeared in the 18th and 19th centuries. In addition, sentence
constructions influenced by Ambonese language were also found, among them being the sentence with the structure dia punya. For example is Maka ada seorang Yazid punya hulubalang
Syahrab/Zanggi namanya, tengah empat puluh akan tingginya (Yazid has hulubalang named
Syahrab/Zanggi, and his height is fourty five).
Second of all, from the content aspect, the storyline of HKAUUA is similar to that storyline of HMH but with several differences. The story of HKAUUA began with Umar’s
death. After Umar died, Usman was appointed as the new caliph. Usman later was killed and
Ali was appointed as the caliph.
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During his caliphate, Ali repeatedly went to war against Muawiyah, who was Usman’s
brother. Due to Muawiyah’s cunningness, Ali was killed by the man who took care of his
horse. Afterwards, there was a dispute about who would be the next caliph. Ali’s group
(known in Islamic history as the Shia Ali sect) believed that Hasan, who was Ali’s son, was
entitled to become the new caliph. On the other hand, the Bani Umayyah sect, from Usman’s
group, wanted Yazid to be the new caliph.
The conflict triggered a war in Karbala. As predicted by a fortune-teller, Hasan, who was
Husain’s brother, was poisoned to death. Meanwhile, Husain had a tragic death—he was
beheaded—in Karbala. After the death of Hasan and Husain, their brother, Muhammad
Hanafiyyah sought revenge over the death of Hasan and Husain. With the help of Husain’s
spirit, Muhammad Hanafiyyah succeeded in defeating Yazid.
HKAUUA does not have the same story as the first, the second, and the third stories in
HMH. In HKAUUA, a number of episodes from the y1 version are as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
The story of Ali instructing his sons to throw away the Zulfakar sword;
The King of Israel helping “the content of the house of the Prophet”;
The beheading Kasim’s seven children to make up for the loss of Husain’s head; and
The story of Said and Mahid leaving their father’s troops.
In HKAUUA, an additional episode was found, which is about the beheading of Kasim’s
seven children to make up for the loss of Husain’s head. This episode may have existed due
to its connection with the tradition of beheading that occurred in Ambon in the past (read
Subyakto, 2007:188). Meanwhile, the story of Sahid and Mahid is an intentional interpolation, which occurs because of changing times. The last part of the HKAUUA text does not
contain the story of Muhammad Hanafiyyah’s disappearance in the cave. Thus, HKAUUA
only presents the heroic character of Muhammad Hanafiyyah as a supporter of Ali’s family,
and not as the mahdi.
Based on these elements, the HKAUUA text is included as part of the y1 version. The
y1 version dated back to the 18th century. On that account, there is a possibility that the
HKAUUA text is derived from texts dating back to the 18th century or later. There have been
conjectures that the HKAUUA text has been copied multiple times, changed, and adapted to
local conditions and culture.
2.3
Muslim society in Haruku Island
Muslim community in Haruku Island are known as Hatuhaha Muslim community. They
believe that they are Ali’s descendants (read Rumahuru, 2012, 2013). The HKAUUA text
comes from Kabau Village in Haruku Island, an area which is believed to adhere to Shia
mazhab. Initially, there were assumptions that the HKAUUA text showed characteristics
of Shia thoughts. In the text, a number of elements related to Shia, such as the Asyura celebration, were indeed found. However, based on the analysis of the HKAUUA text, it can
be concluded that the HKAUUA text does not reflect Shia perspectives, particularly the
perspective that believes Muhammad Hanafiyyah is the mahdi. The final part of the HKAUUA text does not contain any story that claims Muhammad Hanafiyyah as the mahdi.
In the HKAUUA text, Muhammad Hanafiyyah is illustrated as a heroic character, who
was committed to his duty and sought revenge for Husain’s death. After accomplishing his
duty, he immediately appointed Zainal Abidin as the king. In this matter, the removal of the
part about the mahdi can be considered as part of the process of “de-Shiazation” in the story
of Muhammad Hanafiyyah.
In relation to the belief that Hatuhaha Muslim community follows Shia mazhab, there is
a text titled “The Karbala Sermon” that shows that Hatuhaha Muslim community does not
follow Shia. They appreciate ahl al-Bait. Part of the praises in the text are addressed to the
names of Muhammad, Ali, Fatimah, and Usman. There is a part of the text which condemns
Yazid’s act, but there are no parts that condemn the three caliphs before Ali. Therefore, it can
be concluded that the influence of Shia in Hatuhaha Muslim community does not lie on the
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ideological level. Shia’s influence can be observed in Hatuhaha Muslim community only on
the cultural level, as seen in Aceh and Minangkabau.
In Hatuhaha Muslim community, Islam merged with local customs. The Muslim community in Hatuhaha is divided into two groups, Islam sharia and traditional Islam. The Islam
sharia group performs Islamic rituals based on teachings of Islam, while the traditional Islam
group performs Islamic rituals based on the local customs. This difference may lead to conflicts; however, there is one unifying tool, a traditional ceremony called ma’atenu.
Ma’atenu or cakalele is a ceremony that takes the form of a war dance which depicts the
story of a courageous struggle against a tyranny. Such courage is demonstrated by insusceptibility the dancers have for sharp weapons. Based on its history, ma’atenu is a ceremony held
to revere Ali who fought against the disbelievers. This ceremony is then linked to the historical event which occurred in Hatuhaha Muslim community who for several times fought
against disbelievers. Thus, ma’atenu ceremony is not an event related to Shia tradition to
commemorate Husain’s death, but a ceremony to revere the ancestors of Hatuhaha Muslim
community, whoare Ali’s descendants.
Based on the elaboration above, it is shown that upon being introduced into Hatuhaha
Muslim community, Islam was adapted into the local customs. The Islam that was introduced came with a Shia characteristic and was merged into ma’atenu. Along with the introduction of Islam, heroic Shia tales were also spread, as those told in HKAUUA.
3
CONCLUSION
Based on the elaboration above, from the aspect of language, it is shown that the HKAUUA
text dated back to the 18th century. Due to repeated copying up to the 20th century, there are
changes in the forms of words (affixation) and sentence structures in Malay language. From
the phonological aspect, a number of words in Malay are written based on the pronunciation
of the Ambonese language because the text was written by a person who speaks the language.
Based on the content, the HKAUUA text is not the same with HMH. According to the
classification by Brakel, the HKAUAA text is part of the y1 version. In the HKAUUA text,
there is the episode that tells the beheading of Kasim’s seven children to make up for Husain’s
beheading. This episode appeared in relation to the tradition of beheading Ambonese’s local
culture in the past.
The HKAUUA text experienced “de-Shiazation” because it did not contain any illustration of Muhammad Hanafiyyah as the mahdi. For Hatuhaha Muslim community, Muhammad Hanafiyyah is a Muslim hero who could perform his duty well. HKAUUA only presents
the heroic character of Muhammad Hanafiyyah as a supporter of Ali’s family, but not as the
mahdi.
Upon being copied repeatedly, the Shi’itic elements in the text continue to cease. Although
the main Shi’itic element in the text has disappeared, HKAUUA is a symbol of a bond
between Hatuhaha Muslim community and Ali. The copying of the HKAUUA manuscript
by Bapak Amanullah Ripamole is to maintain this bond.
REFERENCES
Braginsky, V. (1998). Yang Indah, Berfaedah, dan Kamal: Sejarah Sastra Melayu dalam Abad 7–19 (The
beauty, the useful, and the perfect: Malay literature history in the 7th – 19th centuries). Translated by
Hersri Setiawan. Jakarta, INIS.
Brakel, L.F. (1975). Hikayat Muhammad Hanafiyyah: A Medieval Muslim-Malay Romance. The Hague,
Martinus Nijhoff.
Collins, J.T. (1974). Catatan ringkas tentang Bahasa Melayu Ambon (Brief records on Ambon Malay
Language). In: Dewan Bahasa, April 1974, pp. 151–162.
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Collins, J.T. (2005). Bahasa Melayu Bahasa Dunia: Sejarah Singkat (Malay Language the World Language: Brief History). Translated by Alma Evita Almanar with the foreword by Dendy Sugono.
Jakarta, Yayasan Obor.
Hadi W.M.A. (2013). Jejak Persia dalam sejarah kebudayaan dan sastra Melayu (The trace of Persia in
Malay culture and literature history), Media Syariah XVb(1), 89–103.
Iskandar, T. (1996). Kesusasteraan Klasik Melayu Sepanjang Abad (Malay Classical Literature throughout the century). Jakarta, Libra.
Istanti, K.Z. (2008). Sambutan Hikayat Amir Hamzah dalam Sejarah Melayu, Hikayat Umar Umayah,
dan Serat Menak (The story remarks of Amir Hamzah in Malay History, Umar Umayah Story, and
Serat Menak). Yogyakarta, Seksi Penerbitan Fakultas Ilmu Budaya Universitas Gadjah Mada.
Kramadibrata, D. (2015). Hikayat Khalifah Abu Bakar, Umar, Usman, dan Ali Sampai Peperangan
Hasan dan Husain di Karbala: Edisi Teks dan Kajian Latar Belakang Agama dan Budaya (The Stories
of Khalifah Abu Bakar, Umar, Usman, and Ali up to the war of Hasan and Husain in Karbala: Text
Edition and the Background Study of Religion and Culture). [Dissertation]. Depok, Fakultas Ilmu
Pengetahuan Budaya Universitas Indonesia.
Leirissa, R.Z. et al. (1999). Sejarah Kebudayaan Maluku (Malaku Culture History). Jakarta, Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan RI.
Radjawane, A.N. (1964). Islam di Ambon dan Haruku (Islam in Ambon and Haruku). In: Sidjabat,
W.B. (ed.). Panggilan Kita di Indonesia Dewasa Ini. Jakarta, Badan Penerbit Kristen, pp. 70–85.
Rumahuru, Y.Z. (2012a). Dialog adat dan agama, melampaui dominasi dan akomodasi (Dialogue of
Customs and Religions, exceeding domination and accomodation), Jurnal Al-Ulum, XII (2), 303–316.
Rumahuru, Y.Z. (2012b). Islam Syariah dan Islam Adat: Konstruksi Identitas Keagamaan dan Perubahan
Sosial di Kalangan Komunitas Muslim Hatuhaha di Negeri Pelauw (Syariah Islam and Customary
Islam: Religion Identity Construction and Social Change in Hatuhaha Muslim Community in Pelauw
Country). Jakarta, Kementerian Agama RI.
Rumahuru, Y.Z. (2013a). Agama sebagai fondasi perkembangan masyarakat dan perubahan sosial:
studi kasus Orang Hatuhaha di Negeri Pelauw, (Religion as the foundation of community development and social change: a study case of Hatuhaha people in Pelauw Country) Maluku Tengah,
Harmoni, 12 (1), 144–160.
Rumahuru, Y.Z. (2013b). “Kebudayaan dan tradisi Syiah di Maluku: studi kasus Komunitas Muslim
Hatuhaha” (Shia Culture and Tradition in Maluku: A case study of Hatuhaha Muslim Community) in Sejarah & Budaya Syiah di Asia Tenggara (History & Culture of Shia in Southeast Asia). In:
Sofyan, D. (ed.). Yogyakarta, Sekolah Pascasarjana Universitas Gadjah Mada, pp. 255–270.
Soeratno, S.C. (1991). Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain: Analisis Resepsi (The story of Iskandar Zulkarnain: Reception Analysis). Jakarta, Balai Pustaka.
Straver, H., van Fraassen, C., van der Putten, J. (2004). Ridjali Historie van Hitu: een Ambonse
geschiedenis uit de zeventiende eeuw. Utrecht, Landelijk Steunpunt Educatie Molukkers.
Subyakto. (2007). Kebudayaan Ambon (Ambon Culture). In: Koentjaraningrat (ed.). The 22nd edition.
Manusia dan Kebudayaan Indonesia. Jakarta, Penerbit Djambatan.
Wieringa, E. (1996). Does traditional Islamic Malay literature contain Shi‘itic elements? ‘Alî and
Fâtimah in Malay hikayat literature, Studia Islamika, Indonesian Journal for Islamic Studies, 3 (4),
93–111.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Islamic discourse in German online mass media: Intra-migrant
Muslim perspective on refugee issues. Shift in the position
of three Muslim individuals: Feridun Zaimoglu, Necla Kelek,
and Navid Kermani
L. Liyanti
German Study Program, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Since the late 80s, Germany has been dealing with new social, political, and
religious issues brought in by the extended stay of its guest-workers who actually should have
returned to their home countries once their employment contract ended. These guest-workers and their family are mostly from Turkey with Islam as their most prominent identity. The
Islamic discourse has appeared in many aspects of German’s social and political life since
then. In 2006, The German Home Office initiated the First Deutsche Islamkonferenz (DIK)
aiming to build a shared future with its Muslim citizens. Not only the Islamic large organizations but also ten individual Muslims from different backgrounds were invited to this conference. My previous research focuses on DIK, the problem of representation, and the position
of the three Muslim individuals in proposing the term deutscher Islam. Meanwhile, in this
paper, their position is examined based on the new emerging phenomenon raised by the
arrival of millions of Muslim refugees in Germany. Van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis
(Ideological Square) is applied to analyze the texts.
1
INTRODUCTION
After experiencing a massive destruction due to its defeat in World War II, Germany recovered
and successfully achieved significant improvement on its economic and national development known as Wirtschaftwunder in the late 1950s–1960s. This led to the shortage of workers
and forced Germany to get additional workers from various countries, including Muslimmajority countries, such as Turkey, Morocco, and Tunisia. These workers were called ‘guest
workers’/Gastarbeiter since they were invited to work for certain times and had to go back
to their home countries after one year if the contract was not extended (Fetzer and Soper,
2005:99). However, these workers chose to stay and bring their families to Germany. In 1961,
there were 65,000 Muslim workers in Germany. In 1989, it increased to 1.8 million, and in
2002 the number of Muslims in Germany was 3.4 million (Fetzer and Soper, 2005:102); the
majority, around 1.8 million, came from Turkey (website DIK, 2009). Their presence has
brought significant changes in the history of Germany. These Muslim migrants as stated
by Martin Sökefeld are often seen as doppelfremder/double strangers and brought double
problems: cultural and religious (Soekefeled, 2004). Aside from the religious and cultural
differences, the readiness of the first generation of Muslim migrants to live together with
the German was polemical. The guest workers mostly had poor educational and economic
backgrounds. They did not have professional skills and could not speak German properly.
Since the presence of Muslim migrants’ families, the discourse of German Islam has
developed. The discussion about Islam has become tenser after 9/11. The German government
realized this situation, and they held a dialogue between the State and Muslim representatives
for the first time. During 2006–2009, the first stage of the DIK/Deutsche Islamkonferenz
was in progress as a part of the political policy to create a future together with the Muslims
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living in Germany. The German government invited some Islamic organizations along with
the German Muslims with a migration background. The main theme was Deutsche Muslim,
deutscher Islam/German Muslims, German Islam, which brought about a heated discussion
both in the conference and in mass media.
My previous research titled Gibt es einen deutschen Islam? Intra-migran Discourse in Germany questions the concept of German Islam/deutscher Islam proposed by three Muslim
individuals who were invited to the conference and appeared in German mass media. These
three Muslim individuals with a migration background are Feridun Zaimoglu, Necla Kelek,
and Navid Kermani. Feridun Zaimoglu and Necla Kelek are the children of Turkish guest
workers. They came along with their parents when they were children; Zaimoglu was one
year old, while Kelek was nine year old. Navid Kermani was born in Germany from middleclass and educated Iranian parents. By questioning the concept of German Islam, the study
covers the religious, socio-cultural, and political discourses. This is related to the concept of
image, representation, and diaspora of Muslim migrants in Germany. In this paper, the foundation of my previous research is applied to see the development based on the current social
and political situations: the arrival of refugees and asylum seekers from Muslim countries as
the Syrian civil war broke in 2011.
The website of BAMF (Bundesministerium fuer Migranten und Fluechlinge Germany)
published that throughout 2015, the number of asylum seekers was 476,649 people; this
shows the highest number since the Syrian war in 2011.1 In December 2015, there were 46,730
people who legally requested asylum, mostly from Syria (54%), Iraq (10.4%), and Afghanistan (9%). Their arrival in Germany was pushed by the political stance of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who said, “Wir schaffen es”/“We can do it”, and opened Germany to
the refugees. The tragedies experienced by the refugees also took part in the acceptance of
refugees and asylum seekers. One of them was the picture of Alan Kurdi, a 3-year-old child,
who was drowned after the ship bringing him from the gulf of Turkey to Greece wrecked.
Although there has been a warm acceptance, there has also been refusal. The increase of
crimes and the cultural differences as well as different religious values are the concerns of the
people refusing the refugees and asylum seekers. This has led to many discussions and comments including those from German Muslims having a migration background: Nekla Kelek,
Feridun Zaimoglu, and Navid Kermani.
Research Question. In this research, the position of Kelek, Zaimoglu, and Kermani in proposing their arguments on refugees coming to Germany was analyzed through their articles
in German online media.
Corpus and Justification of Corpus. The articles chosen are from online media from 2015
(the peak of the arrival of the refugees and asylum seekers) up to mid−2016. After collecting all articles of those three German Muslims in German online media, one article with an
intense discussion about the coming of refugees/asylum seekers was chosen.
Theoretical Framework. In this research, Van Dijk’s ideological square theory is applied.
Van Dijk defines ideology as socially shared cognitive resources and is fundamental for social
practices, interaction, intra and intergroup relations (Van Dijk, 2001:731). He further argues
that most ideologies are relevant in situations of competition, conflict, domination, and
resistance between groups that result in a polarization on the basis of in-group and outgroup differentiation, typically between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Moreover, this often features the
following overall strategies of what might be called the ideological square: Emphasize Our
good things, Emphasize Their bad things, De-emphasize Our bad things, and De-emphasize
Their good things (p.734). His point of the polarized differentiation of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ is
stressed in this paper as this paper aims to expose the position of the three German Muslims
with a migration background when talking about the refugees coming to Germany. I believe
the position can be very dynamic as being Germans and (once) being Muslim migrants. Both
1. The number of asylum seekers in Germany based on year: 53.347 (2011), 77.651 (2012), 127.023
(2013), 202.834 (2014).
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are parts of their identity: their position as German citizens on the one hand and their background as Muslim migrants on the other hand.
Van Dijk’s categories of ideological discourse analysis—that he used in his example when
analyzing some fragments from a debate in the British House of Commons on asylum
seekers—are applied. Some of them are: actor description [meaning], authority [argumentation], categorization [meaning], comparison [meaning], disclaimers [meaning], evidentiality
[meaning, argumentation], generalization [meaning, argumentation] (see, Van Dijk,
pp. 735–739). To see the position of the authors, the Islamic discourse in their articles was
analyzed. To define the Islamic discourse, I frame it as the opinion, argument, and thought
regarding Islam used by the speakers to negotiate their position regarding the refugees.
2
CONTEXT
As mentioned above, this paper tries to see the position of three German Muslims with a
migration background when proposing their arguments on refugees coming to Germany.
This paper is a development from my previous research which has found several main theses
as follows:
1. “The Discourse of Intra-Muslim German with a migration background in the context of
Deutsche Islamkonferenz (DIK) is the very product of hybridity within Islam in the German diaspora, showing that the hybridization of understanding Islam in the diaspora is
also influenced by the relation within the Muslim community in addition to the relationship with German and Western society or other migrant communities”.
2. Stressing on the progress within the Muslim community, the DIK also shows the improvement of the Muslims’ negotiation regarding their position in Germany as there has been
a shift from talking about Muslims to talking to Muslims and for Muslims.
3. The Discourse of Intra-Muslim German with a migration background in the political
framework of the DIK accentuates the problem of representation. Representations—as
in many other contexts–have a tendency to reduce the complexity of reality. As Zaimoglu
argues that the representation of Islam is dominated by the picture of liberal Muslims, his
counterpart, Kelek (known as a liberal Muslimah), argues that she has no place anywhere.
My finding shows a gap between the two, as the liberal Islam is more acceptable for the
Western value, it is more embraced in the political discourse as well as in media discourse;
however, since the representation of Islam in the grass-roots level seems to be more dominated by the “non-liberal” Islam representation, there is a stronger confrontation between
the value of Islam and Western values.
From these three points, the second point is the basis of this paper’s development, which is
to see the position of ‘us’ and ‘them’ of the authors.
3
ANALYSIS
To begin this research, I collected all articles from Necla Kelek, Navid Kermani, and Feridun
Zaimoglu related to the issue of refugees and asylum seekers dated from May 2015 to May
2016. The articles chosen are as follows:
3.1
Necla Kelek
One short article titled Fluechtlinge muessen sich aendern, wenn sie in dieser Gesellschaft
ankommen wollen (413 words) was published in FOCUS online2 (29th September 2015).
2. http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/gastebeitrag-von-necla-kelec-fluechtlinge-muessen-sichaendern-wenn-sie-in-dieser-gesellschaft-ankommen-wollen_id_4977927.html.
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Two long interview articles: Merkel muss darueber nachdenken, was sie uns zumutet (2367
words) was published in Die Welt online3 (12th February 2016), and Muslime brauchen
dringend Aufklaerung (4643 words) was published in Deutschlandradio Kultur online4
(13th February 2016).
3.2
Feridun Zaimoglu
One short article titled Da Kenne ich die Deutschen aber anders (582 words) was published in
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung online5 (7th September 2015).
3.3
Navid Kermani
Two long interview articles: first one titled Schaffen wir das? (4996 words) was published in
Der Spiegel 23rd January 2016 and can be accessed online6, and Kulturgespraecht, Interview
mit Kermani Einbruch der Wirklichkeit, Beobachtungen auf dem Fluechtlingtreck durch Europa
(1505 words) was published in SWR7 (28th January 2016).
Necla Kelek. Kelek’s short article titled Fluechtlinge muessen sich aendern, wenn sie in dieser Gesellschaft ankommen wollen (Refugees Must Be Willing to Change If They Want to Be Accepted
in This Society) published in FOCUS online (29th September 2015) was chosen. In this article,
Kelek discusses what needs to be done by the refugees if they want to be accepted in the German society. She begins with a statement of problematic actor description that the coming of
these refugees has brought in the potential of ethnical, religious, and cultural conflicts (Z.4).8
Then she provides evidence as she mentions the news of the dispute between the Muslims and
Christians in the camp (Z.6).9 Kelek also makes a generalization as she admits that although
some of these refugees fled from those plagues; they are culturally still the same (with those).
After making the generalization of all Muslims coming to Germany, she compares these Muslims with Germans. Islam is fundamentally different from the liberal freedom and social values
in German society (Z.16).10 Moreover, there is a disclaimer in her article as Kelek proposes that
these coming refugees must learn to respect their and others’ freedom and be willing to change
if they want to be accepted in this society (Z.19).11 It is clear that she is very critical towards the
arrival of Muslim refugees. She highlights the dispute between the Muslims and Christians at
the very beginning and continues to focus on arguing about the negative side of Islam in the
rest of her article. Stressing these beliefs as her main argument, she comes up with the solution
that the newcomers should change their attitude to be accepted by Germans.
Kelek is very critical not only towards the Muslim refugees but also towards the Islamic
organizations in Germany. There is a negative other-presentation as she states that “We must
3. http://www.welt.de/politik/article152184546/Merkel-muss-darueber-nachdenken-was-sie-unszumutet.html.
4. http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/gastebeitrag-von-necla-kelec-fluechtlinge-muessen-sichaendern-wenn-sie-in-dieser-gesellschaft-ankommen-wollen_id_4977927.html.
5. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/feridun-zaimoglu-zu-deutschlands-gastfreundschaft-13788463.html.
6. https://magazin.spiegel.de/SP/2016/4/141826761/index.html.
7. http://www.swr.de/swr2/kultur-info/beobachtungen-auf-dem-fluechtlingstreck/-/id=9597116/
did=16865244/nid=9597116/1uozh0 m/index.html.
8. Z.4 Denn mit ihnen kaemen “etnische, religioese und kulturelle Konflikte”.
9. Z.6 Die Nachrichten ueber Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Muslimen und Christen in den Erstaufnah
melagern machen nicht nur den Behoerde und freiwilligen Helfern Sorgen.
10. Z.16 Einige sind sicher auch von diesen Plagen geflohen. Aber alle kommen mit einer kulturellen
Praegung hierher, die sich von dem libertaeren Freiheitsbegriff unserer Zivilgesellschaft fundamental
unterscheidet.
11. Z.19 Sie muessen lernen, die eigene Freiheit und die der anderen zu respektieren. Sie muessen Gewohn
heiten ablegen, sich aendern, wenn sie in dieser Gesellschaft ankommen wollen.
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ensure that mosque organizations do not spread conservative Islam in the name of humanity” (Z.26).12 The negative other-presentation is stronger as she argues that these organizations integrate the migrants into their groups but not to the German society (Z.30),13 and
she warns the German society not to “let the fox guard the hen house” (Z.21–22).14 In my
previous research, her dispute with Zaimoglu over the issue of secular and conservative Muslims appears in this article as she stresses the danger of conservative Islamic organizations
in Germany.
From this article, Kelek’s position is clear. In the beginning, she tries to be neutral by
mentioning both the refugees and the aufnehmende Gesellschaft using the word “sie”/they,
but then she further uses the word “wir” and “uns” to identify herself with Germans (Z.26).
All notes about the arrival of the refugees are connected to their religion and have a negative
tone when comparing them to Germans. In this point, the ideological square from Van Dijk
which emphasizes their bad things is clearly shown.
However, it is interesting to see how Nekla Kelek introduces (or is introduced) at the end
of the articles: “German social scientist and writer Necla Kelek, born in Istanbul. She was a
member of Deutsche Islamkonferenz”.15 All information highlights Kelek’s identity as a part
of Muslim that has a migration background. The strategy to show her identity as a Muslim
and migrant can be seen as an attempt to strengthen her argument, which she really knows,
because she is part of it. From another perspective, we can read her argument in criticizing
Islam as her attempt to propose her definition of Islam that fits into the German society.
Moreover, she is a fine example for this kind of Muslim.
Feridun Zaimoglu. Zaimoglu’s article titled Da Kenne ich die Deutschen aber anders (But
I Know Germans Are Different) published in FAZ online (7th September 2015) was chosen.
Different from Kelek’s article that stands as an independent article, Zaimoglus’ article is
an answer to the previous article written by Milos Matuschek Warum macht unser Mitgefuehl schlapp? In his article, Matuschek argues that Germans do not have enough empathy
for the refugees and states that German’s Willkommenskultur (Welcoming Culture) existed
only in the 2006 World Cup and ended there. Matuschek also argues that the refugees are
mostly seen as a threat rather than an opportunity. Zaimoglu who does not agree with
Matuschek, wrote this article as an answer. Like Zaimoglu, Matuschek, who came from
Poland 33 year ago, is a German with a migration background. Having the same background as a migrant, Zaimoglu gives another side of Germans—that he knows for sure—
that German’s Willkommenskultur is not only seen nowadays, but it has been known for
a long time (Z.5),16 and indeed the hospitality of Germans in welcoming people from all
over the world is das zweite grosse Wunder des deutschen Staates (the second great wonder
of Germany) (Z.20).17 Furthermore, in his article, Zaimoglu criticizes what he calls as Elitauslaender or ‘the one who always blames’, and he is willing to teach the people who once
accepted them (Z.27).18
In his final word, Zaimoglu concludes one very interesting point, “My country is hospitable, and in my country the guest will, in the future, be the host (Z.56)”.19 This emphasizes his
important point. His voice is very positive and optimistic regarding the wilkommenkultur in
12. Z.26 wir muessen auch strickt darauf achten, dass die Moscheevereine diese Menschen nicht- unter dem
Deckmantel der Hilfe- in ihren alten Mustern des konservativen Islam bestaetigen.
13. Z.30 Mit den Islamverbaenden, die sich als Missionare von der Tuerkei, aus Kuwait, Katar und SaudiArabien finanzieren lassen, macht man den Bock zum Gaertner. Sie werden wie bisher die Einwanderer in
ihre Gemeinden integrieren, aber nicht in dieses Land.
14. macht man den Bock zum Gaertner.
15. Die deutsche Sozialwissenschaftlerin und Publizistin Necla Kelek wurde in Istanbul geboren. Sie war
Mitglied der Deutschen Islamkonferenz.
16. Z.5. Die herzliche Aufnahme wird bei uns nicht nur in diesen Tagen buchstabiert.
17. Z.20 Die Aufnahme fremder Menschen aus aller Welt das zweite grosse Wunder des deutschen Staates.
18. Z.27 Elitauslaender, kann nicht anders, als das Volk, das ihn aufnahm, geringzuschaetszen und erziehen
zu wollen.
19. Z.26: Und mein Land ist gastfreundlich. Und in meinem Land werden aus Gaesten kuenftige Gastgeber.
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Germany. He believes that in German the guests are welcomed and live a good life as in the
future they will also welcome and host others. Pointing many interesting and positive points
towards the refugees coming to Germany, Zaimouglu does not bring up the Islamic discourse
in his text but rather general consensus of migrants and refugees. This might be because he
responds to the previous article that focuses on the argument of German’s attitude and does
not mention the Islamic discourse.
Zaimoglu’s position of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in this article cannot be identified clearly as he seems
to flow between these poles. On the one hand, he identifies himself as a German using the
word “we” when writing about Germans and showing many examples of Germany’s Willkommenskultur. On the other hand, he states a positive argument towards the arrival of migrants/
refugees by providing a statement explaining that Germans with a migration background make
Germany richer.20 Zaimoglu also mentions that in the future migrants will welcome others coming to Germany, and this can be seen as a continuous process since in Germany “They” will
always become “We”. Thus, seeing from one perspective, the ideological square from Van Dijk
cannot be used properly in this regard, as the position of ‘us’ and ‘them’ here is not clear in relation to Zaimoglu and the Muslim refugees, but the position of ‘us’ and ‘them’ here is between
Zaimoglu and Matuschek. For the same reason, the categories of the ideological discourse
analysis can only be understood in terms of doing a positive self-presentation when talking
about both Germany and the refugees. Considering this argument from another perspective,
the ideological square from Van Dijk can be seen in a point of “Emphasize Our good things”.
The absence of Islamic discourse in Zaimoglu’s text is in accordance with his profile information at the end of the text. Different from Kelek who states herself as a member of Deutsche Islamkonferenz, Zaimoglu concludes the information by highlighting only his migration
background and promoting his book Siebentuermeviertel: born 1964 in Bulo Turkey, coming
to Germany when he was one year old, a child of a guest-worker, raised in Munich, and publishing his roman, Siebentuermeviertel.21
It is interesting to see why Zaimoglu promotes his book in this article. As I searched the
book, I came up with an interesting result. The book tells the story about a German man and
his son who fled to Turkey in 1939 to avoid NS and got a shelter from a Turk man in Turkey.
This is a reversal of what happens now in which Germans become a host to people (mostly
Muslims) who flee from their county to avoid a dangerous condition.
Navid Kermani. Navid Kermani is very engaged in the refugee’ issues. Since 2014, he has
been doing a project with the refugees by joining their journey from Iraq to Europe and Germany via the Balkan route to picture their journey and understand everything much better.
He wrote a report of his journey and then published it as a book titled Einbruch der Wirklichkeit, Beobachtungen auf dem Fluechtlingtreck durch Europa. He was awarded Friedenspries
des Deutschen Buchhandels for these reports (Der Spiegel: 2016, interview article Schaffen
wir das?). This project also attracts the media to write about him and his book, have him as
a speaker, or offer him an interview session. Thus, it can be understood that during this time
there was no article written by Kermani himself in German online media. From some coverage, I found two interview-articles with Kermani in online media. I chose one titled Schaffen
wir das? Because this article focuses more on the issue of the refugees, Germany and Europe,
while the others are concerned more about his book.
At the beginning of the text, there is a very interesting standpoint of Kermani as the
interviewer writes: “The writer (Kermani) proposes that if we remain calm and be realistic,
our life will be uncomfortable”.22 Furthermore, at the beginning of the interview, Kermani
starts with a comparative statement that from now on Germany will be much more interesting
20. Z.50–53 Es wird immer gesagt, dass herkunftsfremde Deutsche auf welchem Betätigungsfeld auch
immer, ob in der Gastronomie oder in der Literatur, eine Bereicherung für das Land seien.
21. Der Schriftsteller Feridun Zaimoglu wurde 1964 in Bolu in der Türkei geboren und kam als Einjähriger
nach Deutschland.Als Kind von Gastarbeitern wuchser in Muenchen auf.Soeben veröffentlichte er seinen
Roman Siebentuermeviertel.
22. Der Schriftsteller schlaegt vor, cool zu bleiben. Und realistisch: Unser Leben wird unbequem.
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and lovely in comparison to monoculturally dull Germany in the 1950s (pp. 99–104).23 He is
realistic that the life could be uncomfortable, and the danger is real (pp.315–320), but he is
also optimistic that all of those can be dealt as he quotes Hoelderlin’s words “where there is
danger, there will be a hero” (p. 436).24
In this interview, Kermani uses one interesting word unsereiner to define a person like him
(a German with a migration background). This unsereiner would lose the most if something
wrong happened in Europe, and pushing the unsereiner to leave Europe (pp.673–677).25 The
reaction of the interviewer is also interesting, saying Kermani is also a German citizen, just
like he is (p.678),26 and that Kermani belongs the Volks all these times, talks in the German
Federal Parliament, and knows more about German literature than he does (pp.687–691).27
Kermani responds in this context that the interviewer belongs to the Volksgemeinschaft that
is ideal for Mr. Gauland and Mr. Hoecke, who want to build a “pure” Germany (even if the
interviewer does not agree with that concept). Kermani argues, at the moment when the German people would be grouped between those Volks and all the newcomers or Islam, he will be
placed as the others (pp.679–686).28 This is because he believes that “if our Gesellschaftmodell
collapses, then the ethnic root will matter” (pp.692–697).29
From these points, we can see how Kermani formulates his position in the context of newcoming migrants. He identifies himself as a German, using the word “we” and “our” when
discussing about German and Germany (p.265), but shows a great empathy and hope for
“them”, showing they can add more colours to Germany and describing their suffering of
becoming refugees (p.303). Furthermore, he admits that he is part of the unsereiner, a person
who does not belong to the Volksgemeinschaft as he has an Iranian ancestor. In this context,
we can see that he is aware of the fact that his position is not fixed. He is not only part of Germans but also part of the unsereiner. The ideological square from Van Dijk here is in the same
context as in Zaimoglu’s article, which is to “emphasize Our good things”. However, after
reading and discussing Kermani’s text, I find the voice of Kermani different from that of
Kelek (that is more pessimistic) and Zaimoglu (positive-optimistic). Kermani sounds clearly
realistic-optimistic. He can see what Kelek argues as a potential conflict, and he also sees that
these people could make Germany better, similar to Zaimoglu’s argument.
Kermani’s optimistic voice is even more solid because at the end of the interview, when the
interviewer asked him about Merkel’s slogan “das schaffen wir” and whether they can really
do it, Kermani’s answered, “I don’t know, but at least we try”.30
4
CONCLUSION
As the development of my previous research’s findings, I proposed the question of Kelek,
Zaimoglu, and Kermani’s position of ‘us’ and ‘them’. To answer this, I searched their focal
23. Z.99–104 Moechte ich, mochten Sie zurueck zu einer Monokultur, gar zu einer homogenenen
Volksgemeinschaft? Mir erscheint das Deutschland von heute spanneder, auch liebenswerter als, sagen wir,
der Muff der Fuenfzigerjahre.
24. Z.436 Der Schriftsteller schlaegt vor, cool zu bleiben. Und realistisch: Unser Leben wird unbequem.
25. Z.673–677 Kermani: […] Und ausserdem: Unsereiner, also jemand wie ich, hat mehr zu verlieren als
Sie. Wo soll ich denn hin, wenn es kein Europa gibt?
26. Z.678 Spiegel: Sie sind genauer deutscher Staatsbuerger wie ich.
27. Z.687–691 Spiegel: is das nicht ein bisschen kokett? Sie gehoeren laengst dazu. Sie reden im Bundestag.
Sie wissen mehr ueber deutsche Literatur als ich. Die Bedrohung ist fuer uns dieselbe.
28. Z.679–686 Kermani: Aber Sie gehoeren nun einmal der Volksgemeinschaft an, auf die sich Herr
Gauland und herr Hoecke berufen, auch wenn Sie das vielleicht doof finden. In dem Moment, da hier
plotzlich jemand aufteilen will-die gehoeren zum Volk und all die Zugezogenen oder etwa der Islam nicht-,
gehoere ich zu den anderen.
29. Z.692–697 Kermani: Ja, das stimmt. Dennoch: Wuerde unser Gesellschaftsmodell kippen, spielten ethnische Zugehoerigkeiten eine Rolle, fiele ich auch wieder heraus. [...]
30. Z.999 SPiegel: Schaffen wir das also? Kermani: Keine Ahnung, aber versuchen wir es doch wenigstens.
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voice in their articles. I found that Kelek is more pessimistic, Zaimoglu is positive-optimistic, and Kermani is realistic-optimistic. Kelek’s position of ‘us’ and ‘them’ is very clear
(We = German, They = Muslim Refugees). Van Dijk’s ideological square can be seen in a
point of “Emphasize Their bad things” as she describes immensely how bad “They” are. In
Zaimoglu’s article, the position of ‘us’ and ‘them’ is not clear in the relation of Zaimoglu
and the Muslim refugees, but the position of ‘us’ and ‘them’ here is between Zaimoglu and
the previous writer Matuschek. In this text, we can see the shift between ‘us’ and ‘them’
(We = German and Muslim refugees) as he has drawn a positive self-presentation in talking
about both Germany and the refugees. Van Dijk’s the ideological square can be seen in a
point of “Emphasize Our good things”. The same is found in Kermani’s article in defining
his position (We = German and unsereiner, Muslim refugees). The ideological square from
Van Dijk here is in the same context as in Zaimoglu’s article, which is to “Emphasize our
good things”.
Using van Dijk’s ideological square to analyze the texts in the context of intra-migrant
context, I found that this is interesting as the people’s position of ‘us’ and ‘them’ shifts from
one side to another.
REFERENCES
Bundesamt fuer Migranten und Fluechtlinge. (2016) Asylzahlen. Nationale Asylzahlen. Retrieved from:
http://www.bamf.de/DE/Infothek/Statistiken/Asylzahlen/asylzahlen-node.html;jsessionid=563972
F506C853 ADCE64DBB849E8913B.1_cid368 [accessed on 25th August 2016].
Bundesamt fuer Migranten und Fluechtlinge. Das Bundesamnt im Zahlen. Asyl. (2015) Retrieved from:
http://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Publikationen/Broschu-eren/bundesamt-in-zahlen2015-asyl.pdf ?__blob = publicationFile [Accessed on 25th August 2016].
Deutsche Islamkonferenz. (2009) Geschichte der muslim in Deutschland in muslime in Deutschland.
Retrieved from: http://www.deutsche-islam-konferenz.de/DIK/DE/Startseite/startseite-node.html
Feridun, Z. (2015) Da Kenne ich die Deutschen aber anders. Retrieved from: Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung [Online] http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/feridun-zaimoglu-zu-deutschlandsgastfreundschaft-13788463.html.
Joel S.F. & Soper, J. C. (2005) Germany: Multiple Establishment and Public Corporation Status. In Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Kelek, K. (2015) Fluechtlinge muessen sich aendern, wenn sie in dieser Gesellschaft ankommen wollen.
Retrieved from: FOCUS [Online] http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/gastebeitrag-von-neclakelec-fluechtlinge-muessen-sich-aendern-wenn-sie-in-dieser-gesellschaft-ankommen-wollen_
id_4977927.html.
Kermani, N. (2016) Schaffen wir das? In: Der Spiegel. Retrieved from: https://magazin.spiegel.de/
SP/2016/4/141826761/index.html.
Liyanti, L. (2010) Gibt es Einen Deutschen Islam? Intra-Migrant Discourse in Germany. Universitaet
Tuebingen (Master’s Thesis).
Sökefeld, M. (2004) Das Paradigma Kultureller Differenz: Zur Forschung und Diskussion über Migranten
aus der Türkei in Deutschland. In: Sökefeld, M., (Ed.); Jenseits des Paradigmas kultureller Differenz.
Bielefeld, Transcript.
UNHCR. (2015) Global Trends Forced Displacement in 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.unhcr.org/
sta tistics/unhcrstats/576408cd7/unhcr-global-trends-2015.html.
Van Dijk, T.A. (2001) Critical Discourse Analysis. In: Schiffrin, Deborah, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi
E. Hamilton (eds). The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Blackwell Publishers, pp. 352–371.
Van Dijk, T.A. (2006) Politics, ideology and discourse. In: Ruth Wodak, (Ed.), Elsevier Encyclopedia of
Language and Linguistics. Volume on Politics and Language, pp. 728–740.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Abuya Dimyathi: A charismatic mursyid of tarekat Syadziliyah
during the New Order regime (1977–1982)
J. Syarif & Y. Machmudi
Arabic Studies Program, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Before the Indonesian presidential election of 1977, Kyai Haji Muhammad
Dimyathi, known as Abuya Dimyathi, was arrested for opposing the government’s order for
the Bantenese to support a party as he had already expressed in one of his Friday prayer
sermons. His arrest, afterward, provoked strong reactions in various social classes and led to
an outrage of violence in Banten, which the government could hardly control. However, the
situation did not last long as Abuya Dimyathi handled it calmly. The purpose of this work is
to study the life of Abuya and his role in the community, starting from his arrest during the
New Order regime in 1977 until his death in 2003. It also includes the intellectual genealogy
and the factors that motivated him to protest against the ruling regime. In this study, we use
a historical method through narrative approach. Some theories on socio-religious movement
and charismatic leadership were applied. Because of the non-availability of written sources,
the data were mainly collected by conducting in-depth interviews with the people who witnessed the historical events and the present-day public figures.
1
INTRODUCTION
Banten has a long history spanning from the beginning of Banten Sultanate to the Unitary
State of the Republic of Indonesia. With reference to local sources, Lubis (2003) noted that
the first mention of the name Banten could be found in Carita Parahyangan, which was written in 1580 (Guillot, 1990; Guillot, 2008). Because of its strategic location in the west of Java,
Banten attracted many traders from various parts of the world. According to the famous
explorer Tome Pires (1530), Banten was a bustling port city in the Sunda Kingdom, and had
been visited by people around the world long before the Banten Sultanate was founded in
1526. Ayatrohaedi revealed, as quoted by Lubis, that Banten had at least stood by the mid10th century or even the 7th century.
In an Islam community like in Banten, kyai (Islamic teacher and leader) plays important
roles in everyday life. Kyai forms an elite group, which plays not only a traditional role as a
religious leader but also a role in the sociopolitical transformation in Banten. Therefore, a
kyai is an important figure who has influenced the culture and history of the formation of
this community. To date, kyai has formed sub-social groups that play an important role in
Banten, although their traditional roles and positions have been “eroded” by modernization,
and most of the roles have been shifted to professionals or other institutions (Hamid, 2011).
However, these changes do not destroy all of their social positions and roles completely; a
kyai remains a public figure who is respected by the Bantenese.
A kyai who leads a tarekat is called a mursyid. Initially, tarekat was defined as “the way
to God”. However, this term is commonly associated with the organization or congregation encompassing the Sufism method. In this study, the term “Sufi” could be interpreted
as a tarekat teacher. They play a role in developing the teachings of Islamic esotericism that
focus on the cleanliness and purity of heart by performing acts of worship to achieve a close
relationship with God and for the fulfillment of His pleasure or approval. Their methods
focus on meditation and typical deeds (dhikr and wird). Through this development, the role
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of Sufism also extends to social activities through the tarekat movement. Mursyid is a term
used in the suluk tradition and tarekat addresses a spiritual leader within a tarekat congregation. Three criteria need to be fulfilled by an ulema to become a mursyid. First, a mursyid
needs to acquire full and comprehensive understanding of religion while being a spiritual
leader. Second, a mursyid must understand the wisdom of those possessing ma’rifat billah
in advance. Third, a mursyid must also learn the tactics and strategies applied by the rulers
(king/political leaders) (Hadi, 2010). In Banten, a charismatic mursyid is called an Abuya. A
kyai as a tarekat teacher must display and pioneer his/her role in spreading and developing
the religion through the tarekat movement and, therefore, receive a positive endorsement
from the society that drives the movement into a social power that dynamically responds to
religious and sociopolitical challenges.
The influence of a kyai is ever-increasing, depending on his/her charisma. The influence
of charismatic ulema since the Dutch colonial era has managed to annex the Banten Sultanate; hence, the position and role of kyai in the social system of the Bantenese community has
also been questioned. The position, role, and social network of a kyai have been established
through a very long historical process experienced by the Bantenese community, namely
the establishment of the Banten Sultanate, the colonialism government period, and postcolonialism era. This historical journey has created a Banten society known as a devoutly,
aggressive, and rebellious society (Kartodirdjo, 1966).
1.1 Political instability before the 1977 public election
The election fanatical attitude toward religion and rebellious spirit of Banten reemerged
when Kyai (Abuya) Dimyathi, an ulema who led an Islamic Boarding School (pesantren) in
Cidahu, Pandeglang, was arrested. This incident was related to the second round of general
election during the New Order regime and negatively affected the political condition.
Abuya Dimyathi was detained by police officers after delivering a Friday prayer sermon
for hindering the district and village heads from intimidating the Bantenese community and
its surrounding to vote for a certain party, Golkar, in the upcoming general election. The
government’s pressure on the public authorities to support Golkar was a continuation of its
efforts to stay in power by making the electoral system flexible for the government under the
reign of President Suharto. From 1973, numerous political parties that were previously sovereign in Indonesia had been forced to join one of the three major parties. The government
restructured those previous parties into only two political parties, leaving Golkar party alone.
One of the two parties was Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (PPP), which is a collaboration of
parties with Islamic ideology, such as Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Pergerakan Tarbiyah Indonesia
(Perti), Partai Syarikat Islam Indonesia (PSII), and Partai Muslimin Indonesia (Parmusi). The
other party was Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (PDI), which involves parties with ideologies of
nationalism and Christianity, such as Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI), Partai Kristen Indonesia (Parkindo), Partai Katolik, Partai Murba, and Ikatan Pendukung Kemerdekaan Indonesia
(IPKI). Abuya Dimyathi explained that the state was not Golkar, but the government and
therefore people would not support Golkar in the second-round general election in the New
Order regime (Dimyathi, 2009). On the basis of the data collected from the interview conducted on 20 January 2016 with Kyai Ariman, who has been Abuya Dimyathi’s disciple since
1975 and is also a witness of Abuya’s arrest, the arrest was unnecessary as Abuya Dimyathi
did not have any intention to provoke the people to not vote for Golkar. Nevertheless, he
emphasized that Golkar was essentially the same as the other parties, serving as a “firqoh” or
road/channel to deliver the political aspiration of the society. Apparently, the government,
however, regarded this as an act of defiance against it, which then led to the arrest of Abuya
Dimyathi and detainment without a proper judicial process.
The detainment of Abuya Dimyathi caused strong reactions in the community. Bantenese
from various classes provoked the arrest and demanded his immediate unconditional release.
The situation in Banten worsened, resulting in a riot that caused casualties among the people
of Banten. The government could hardly control the masses, although the situation did not
last long as Abuya Dimyati handled it calmly. In an interview conducted on 29 July 2016,
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H.M. Murtadlo mentioned that the efforts of Abuya Dimyathi to calm his followers originally received a huge reaction. However, they had already been out of control. According
to Murtadlo, a fistfight nearly broke out between Abuya and the authorities that seemed to
have the intention to cause turmoil (Dimyathi, 2009).
In fact, the imprisonment and detainment of Abuya Dimyathi were due to the strong
suspicion of the government against the kyais, especially those who politically opposed the
government. Before the government implemented a policy for the merging of political parties
in 1973, resulting in NU becoming part of the PPP, a prominent kyai known as the mursyid
of the tarekat Syadziliyah had not shown any active involvement in practical politics. Allegedly, he was one of the kyais who did not agree with this merging policy of the government,
which first showed a consolidation among political parties with Islamic ideologies, yet it was
part of the government’s strategy to manipulate the political life of Muslims.
Nonetheless, Abuya Dimyathi did not show his opposition for the government openly,
even to his disciples. It seems that he faced a dilemmatic position. On the one hand, if he
had been actively involved in practical politics, it would mean that he agreed and was willing
to support the ill intention of the government to weaken the political life of Islamic people.
On the other hand, if he showed disapproval openly, it would negatively influence the wellestablished communication among his fellow kyais that had been well maintained, especially
for those who supported the PPP. These considerations presumably made him to be more
focused on teaching and guiding his fellow disciples and the people around his pesantren in
the development of religious life as well as in the tarekat (Bruinessen, 1999, p. 279) through
his daily activities. Thus, it is evident that he did not support Golkar, because if he had done
so, the authority would not have detained him for frequently conducted religious lectures.
1.2
Charismatic ulema and mursyid of tarekat Syadziliyah
A charismatic leader is the most important characteristic of any religious movement. The
concept of “charisma” or authority can be used as a theoretical consideration of this study.
As proposed by Jackson (1990), together with the “traditional authority,” charisma is a
power that emerges during the interaction among individuals or groups, and at a certain
level of interaction, an actor as a patron changes the behavior of the client. In fact, Abuya
Dimyati was renowned as a kyai hikmah, who can understand secrets (Ahmad, 2007). The
kyai is believed to have mastered the understanding of the mystical secrets veiled from the
understanding of ordinary people. Therefore, he was often visited by officials from the central government. Soekarno is said to have been seeking advice to stop invaders from entering Indonesia. However, it was considered more a folklore than a fact because it cannot be
verified.
Abuya Dimyati was a prominent figure in the highly respected tarekat Syadziliyah (Hadi,
2010), which was established by Shaikh Syadzili (died in 1258 AD). His full name was Sayyid
Abil-Hasan Ali bin Abdillah bin Abdil Jabbar Asy Syadzili Asy Syarif Al-Hasani. The
tarekat was attributed to the name of its founder, Abul Hasan Ali asy-Syazili (Gumara,
Tunisia, around 593 H/1196–1197, M-Hotmaithira, Egypt, 656 H/1258 AD). Within tarekat
Syadziliah, Syazili’s lineage was associated with Hasan bin Ali bin Abi Talib. Thus, he also
had blood relationship with Fatimah, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad. In Indonesia, Shaikh Shadhili was known for the practices of aurad (wird-wird) and hizibs, which were
widely practiced by the students of the pesantren and Muslims in general.
Abuya Dimyathi also practiced Qadiriyahwa Naqsabandyah. Historically, he received
ijazah Qadiriyah in Mecca and from Syadziliyah, who was one of the ulemas who became his
teacher when he was still learning from some of the greatest scholars in West Java, Central
Java, and East Java. Tarekat indicates a person who has received a series of teachings or
inheritance of a certain lineage from the Prophet, and is deemed capable of practicing and
teaching it to others in the future. He is known as a storehouse of knowledge, especially in
ilmu hikmah. There are many interesting stories to note about Abuya Dimyathi, especially
the one associated with hikmah or karomah throughout his life that cannot be rationalized
academically (Dimyathi, 2009). Since his early years, he had been known to be religious, and
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he loved to sit and tirakat, which later made him a highly respected and great ulema. He
was famous for his words every time he was asked about the tarekat he followed, “Tarekat
aing mah ngaji...” (My tarekat is studying the Holy Qur’an) (Hadi, 2010). At the time of the
revolution, Abuya Dimyathi was directly involved in an armed battle against the Dutch and
the Allied Forces that attempted to reoccupy the recently independent Republic of Indonesia
when he joined the Tanagara Front (Dimyathi, 2009). It was mentioned that Abuya who
was still young became a member of the Hizbullah, a paramilitary unit that also took part
in maintaining the independence of the Republic. As an ulema, he was one of the targets of
the Dutch who had issues with a group of ulemas that were considered to have the potential
to spread radical teachings.
1.3
The monographs of Abuya Dimyathi
Despite not being a mualif (author of books), Abuya Dimyathi could produce small monographs that he wrote in spite of his tight lecturing schedules, and he diligently practiced
wirid throughout his life. His writing style in all of his monographs was considered strong
and subtle, filled with uslub and balaghah as well as the nuances of brilliant literary, such
as a small treatise entitled Ashl al-Qadar. This monograph contains a description of some
important figures in the War of Badr, accompanied with the munajat poetised by Abuya
Dimyathi. There is another treatise titled Rasn al-Qasr, containing messages for wanderers
and the explanation of Hizib Nasr. Another small treatise is dedicated to his disciples, ihwal
sanad, tarekat Syadziliyah characteristics, and the appropriateness for the salik in taqarrub
(intimate terms) with God titled Hadiyyah al-Jalaliyah.
Once, his son asked for his permission to write a Sharh (explanation) of Tafseer Al-Jalalayn,
but Abuya Dimyathi denied his request because of his strong belief that “spending the time
reading the Holy Qur’an is the highest of all deeds”. Furthermore, there are still several books
written by Salaf classical scholars, which have not been read and examined.
1.4 Three intentions of knowledge
Abuya Dimyathi taught his disciples to be always istighal (self-occupied) and tabahhur (selfdrown) in the oceans of knowledge. In several occasions, especially when teaching the principles of the Qur’an to his disciples, Abuya Dimyathi often explained that each disciple needed
the “trilogy of intention” in pursuing knowledge. Those three intentions were that:
1. Seeking knowledge is a manifestation of gratefulness to God for Ni’mah al-Aql (grace of
intelligence) and Ni’mah Shihhat al-Badan (grace of healthy body).
2. Seeking knowledge is to remove ignorance (li izalah al-jahli) and clean the deeds to be
valid from all the things that shall be muddied and aborted.
3. Ngaji is an obligation in its nature, as it has been commanded (masyru’iyyah). Because
it was a masyru’iyyah, the status of ngaji was different from dhikr and any other way of
worship practice (daily prayers, fasting, etc.).
1.5
Establishing Raudhatul Ulum Islamic Boarding School (pesantren)
In 1965, Abuya Dimyathi established a pesantren in Cidahu, Tanagara village, Cidasari subdistrict, after wandering in many places and studying for some time. Afterward, he settled
and actively taught as well as fulfilled his role as a mursyid for tarekat Syadziliah. His intention in founding the pesantren needs to be explored even further; it could be solely because
he had finished his study and practiced what he had learned in the tarekat, or it was possibly aimed to prevent communist influence, especially in Cidasari, Pandeglang, Banten. It is
known that, Partai Komunis Indonesia (Indonesian Communist Party or PKI)’s insurgency
broke out on 30 September 1965.
There were only 10 students at the beginning of the pesantren who studied in his modest
hut. He started by teaching the principles of the Qur’an to his children, and to his surprise,
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it spread throughout the whole village. Students from all over the place came to study the
religion (Islam), by building their own huts using wood and bamboos they carried from their
homes. The number of students increased rapidly. They were from not only Pandeglang but
also Banten and all over Indonesia. Pesantren Cidahu was formally established in 1965 with
Abuya Dimyathi as its first Chairman. It was widely known that the pesantren taught religion in a tarekat way, an inheritable manner from salafi ulema (Hadi 2009). At present, the
number of students at Pesantren Raudhatul Cidahu Ulum is approximately 1,000. In fact,
some of the former students have set up their own schools.
Even though he was strict to his children (twisting their ears for coming late for the majlis),
Abuya was known to be very gentle toward his students. Although treated with such gentle
approach, the students of Raudhatul Ulum had a highly disciplined attitude. Abuya Dimyathi remained active leading Pesantren Cidahu until he passed away on 3 October 2003. At
present, the schools are inherited to his two sons, Kyai Haji Much Murtadho Dimyathi and
Kyai Haji Muhtadi. The pesantren is now widely known for its tarekat Syadziliyah congregation led by Kyai Muhtadi.
2
CONCLUSION
To understand the political attitudes Abuya Dimyathi that strongly opposed the rulers of the
New Order regime in 1971, we should examine his role as a kyai as well as a leader of tarekat
Syadziliyah. In the terminology of Sufism, essentially, a tarekat is a practical method run
by Sufis in guiding their disciples to experience the nature of God. The pattern of teacher–
student relationship is called the social community of the tarekat congregation. The disciples
of a tarekat who usually come from different occupations show that, as followers of Sufism,
they are in compliance and their role is dedicated to the tarekat movements.
The characteristics of socio-religious movements create a sociopolitical relationship, which
eventually turns into a sociopolitical movement that takes place in a community through the
social relations that serve the political movements internally as well as toward other communities. The social movement with a religious factor is always led by a charismatic leader, that
is, through the concept of “charisma” or authority that can be used as a theoretical consideration of the socio-political movements.
“Traditional authority” as concluded by Jackson is usually held in a dyadic relationship
(in a pair) that tends to be personal, spreading, soulful, and everlasting. Dyadic relationships
are usually shown by the tendency of the elites (teachers) who require support from clients
(students) and vice versa. The study of Abuya Dimyathi shows that political behavior is
mainly based on one’s constant position in the structure of traditional authority relationships. If the traditional authority figures (teachers) are involved in politics outside the community, the followers (disciples) would mobilize and provide their rights or even physical
aids for the teachers and obey the establishment of the elected political figures embraced by
the authority figures. The commotion that appeared in Pandeglang, Banten, in the midst of
Abuya Dimyathi’s arrest can be understood from the aforementioned perspective. The strong
reaction displayed by the Bantenese society is a form of dyadic relationship, between Abuya
Dimyathi and his disciples.
The position of religious leader in the socio-religious and sociopolitical movement seems
so strong that they are usually at the connecting and supporting positions, even though they
are not the only group with the access to the outside system. The mediator position in a
complex society can also be achieved to fortify vulnerable spots in the local system with a
whole wider system. The mediator also acts in mediating conflicting groups, maintaining the
driving force, and maintaining the dynamics of the communities that are necessary for their
activities. Although it is not always the same, the mediator can also be a cultural broker and
agent of modernization actively trying to introduce new elements to public.
The government’s actions against Abuya Dimyathi during the 1977 election can be theoretically considered as a regime with a strong suspicion that the ulema (in this case, Abuya
Dimyathi) would become a mediator who would not support the regime. In fact, he turned
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out to be an agent with the potential to become harmful to the government’s structural stability at that time.
REFERENCES
Ahmad, H.M. Athoullah. (2007) Ilmu Hikmat di Bantren Studi Kasus Praktik Islam Mistik di Serang
(The Science of Hikmat in Banten: A Case Study of The Practice of Mystical Islam), Banten, Yayasan
Bvani Hanbal (Yasbah).
Ali, Mufti. Interview with the Head of Bantenology IAIN Sultan Maulana Hasanuddin Banten
(SMHB). (Personal communication 17th June 2015).
Bruinessen, M.V. (1999) Kitab Kuning, Pesantren, dan Tarekat: Tradisi-Tradisi Islam di Indonesia (Kitab
Kuning, Islamic Boarding Schools, and Tarekat: Islam Traditions in Indonesia). Bandung, Mizan.
Dimyathi, H.M.M. (2009) Manaqib Abuya Cidahu dalam Pesona Langkah di Dua Alam, without
publisher.
Guillot, C. (1990) The Sultanate of Banten. Jakarta: Gramedia.
Guillot, C. (2008) Banten Sejarah dan Peradaban Abad X—XVII (Banten: History and Civilization
between the 10th and 17th centuries). Jakarta: KPG.
H.M. Murtadlo. Interview (Personal communication 29th July 2016).
Hadi, H.M. (2010) Tiga Guru Sufi Tanah Jawa, Wejangan-Wejangan Ruhani (Three Sufis in the Land of
Java, Spiritual Teachings). Yogyakarta, Pustaka Pesantren.
Hamid, A. (2011) Pergeseran Peran Kyai dalam Politik di Banten Era New Order dan Reformasi (The
Shifting Roles of Kyais in Politics in Banten in The Era of New Order and Reformation). Jurnal
Ilmiah Bidang Keagamaan dan Kemasyarakatan, 28 (2), 340–363.
Jackson, K.D. (1990) Kewibawaan Tradisional, Islam, dan Pemberontakan (Traditional Charisma, Islam,
and Upheaval). Jakarta: Pustaka Grafika.
Kartodirdjo, S (1966) The Peasant’s Revolt of Banten in 1888 tts Conditions, Course, and Sequel, an Ease
Study of Social Movements in Indonesia. Leiden, Martinus Nijhoff.
Kyai Ariman. Interview. (Personal communication, 20th January 2016).
Lubis, N.H. (2003) Banten dalam Pergumulan Sejarah: Sultan, Ulama, Jawara (Banten in Historical
Contest: Sultan, Ulema, Jawara), Jakarta, LP3ES.
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Regional identity and cultural heritage
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Foreword by Mikihiro Moriyama
In this section, we have 21 articles of a various theme on cultural heritage in and around
Indonesia.1 Most of materials discussed here is cultural assets that show local knowledge
and regional identity. These articles based on careful research will enrich our knowledge
on cultures in Indonesia and enhance our understandings on culture in general. In fact,
Indonesian studies have greatly contributed to academia in the world. A large number of
scholars have produced numerous articles and books. Ethnographic descriptions and findings about peoples and societies in Indonesia have been global assets since colonial times.
Such knowledge of local peoples in the colonies, however, was needed for self-interested reasons, namely managing the colonies and maximally profiting from the land and the people. T.S.
Raffles, N.J. Krom, H. Kern, C. Snouck Hurgronje, C. van Vollenhoven and others wrote on
the peoples. Likewise, language studies and multiple efforts toward creating dictionaries in the
Archipelago were needed for propagation purposes by Christian missionaries since their arrival
in the 17th century. Examples are B.F. Matthes on Buginese, Taco Roorda on Javanese, H.N.
van der Tuuk on Batak, S. Coolsma on Sundanese. These research results comprise our basis
for research on cultural heritage in Indonesia, regardless of what the original purposes were.
Not only descriptions of Indonesian peoples and cultures, but also theory and important
concepts were discovered through research made by scholars from all over the world. For
instance, Clifford Geerts made a wonderful contribution through his anthropological fieldwork
in the islands of Java and Bali, and Benedict Anderson made an unprecedented contribution to
the humanities with his high command of the language and deep attachment to local peoples.
By acknowledging such great contributions, here I raise a question that researchers on
Indonesian studies are not completely free themselves from a colonial mindset. This problem
seems to persist in academia both outside and inside Indonesian society. I notice that the
term “indigenous studies” is recently used in academic circles in Indonesia. I will consider
whether this term is adequate for research on cultural heritage in Indonesia or not. First of
all, I retrace the definition of the term “indigenous” as it changes through the times—from
the colonial period through the Japanese occupation and into the 21st century.
Rethinking the Term “Indigenous”
It is useful to begin the discussion of “indigenous studies” with a brief survey of the term
“indigenous” since the Dutch colonial period. The words inboorlingen and inlanders were
used by the Dutch to denote people in their colony. Perhaps these words can be translated
as native rather than indigenous. Another word used in colonial times was inheems, which
denotes indigenous with condescending nuance. For sure, these terms clearly show a disrespectful view of the people the Dutch encountered. The Japanese did the same from their
arrival in the Archipelago in the late 19th century through the occupation period of World
War II. They used the words genjyu min (indigenous people, disdainfully) – or, even worse,
dojin, literary translated as “land man” but with a connotation of native or savage.
1. This preface was written on the basis of my presentation for the Asia-Pacific Forum for Research
in Social Science and Humanities Conference (APRiSH) 2016, at Universitas Indonesia, Depok, West
Java, Indonesia. The research was supported mostly by a grant from UI-RESOLV (Visiting Scholar
Program) of the Faculty of Humanities Universitas Indonesia, and in part by Nanzan University Pache
Research Sbsidy I-A-2 for 2017.
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These terms denoting “indigenous” in the history of Indonesia mostly connotes looking
down on others and distinguishing others from outsiders’ higher position. Those who used
the term did not see Indonesians as being in the same level as their own in terms of civilization. The “others” were considered as backward and uncivilized, so that their “masters”, the
colonizers, would enlighten them. It was quite an arrogant idea of the outsiders.
What happened here was that the newcomers found a culture and society different than their
own, and did not think that every culture and society has its own values and philosophy. They
evaluated foreign cultures with their own measuring standards. In short, the term “indigenous”
is not free from such negative connotations because of the history of how the term was used
in the colonial past: it has a discriminatory nuance when used to identify a group of people.
The next question is whom the term “indigenous” is aimed at in a global age. The term has
tended to be used by arrivals, mostly Westerners, to a foreign island or continent to identify
those who were already living there. This happened in the Archipelago too as we have seen
above. This cannot be separated from colonial history either.
Then, we will see how the term is used in the 21st century in the following. The declaration
on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the General Assembly of the United
Nations in 2007. The aims of the declaration are to protect the rights of indigenous peoples
around the globe. Article 2 reads as follows:
Indigenous peoples and individuals are free and equal to all other peoples and individuals and have the right to be free from any kind of discrimination, in the exercise of their
rights, in particular that based on their indigenous origin or identity.
An Indonesian translation read as follows:
Masyarakat pribumi dan tiap-tiap individu bebas dan setara dengan segala bangsa
dan semua individu dan mereka mempunyai hak untuk terbebas dari segala macam
diskriminasi, dan dalam pelaksanaan hak mereka, khusunya yang berdasar atas hakhak mereka, khususnya yang berdasar pada asal-usul atau identitas mereka (Pasal 2
Perserikatan bangsa-bangsa 2007).
Here the Indonesian translation for indigenous peoples is masyarakat pribumi (literally,
“local society”). This translation does not seem appropriate because the term pribumi has
been used to denote the Indonesian nation since the colonial period.2 It has even been used
to distinguish Indonesians as colonized from Europeans as colonizers. The people at whom
the declaration aims is a different group. The report of the Indigenous People Alliance of the
Archipelago reads as follows:
Indonesian laws use various terms to refer to indigenous peoples, such as masyarakat suku
terasing (alien tribal communities), masyarakat tertinggal (neglected communities),
masyarakat terpencil (remote communities), masyarakat hukum adat (customary law
communities) and, more simply, masyarakat adat (communities governed by custom).
Indigenous peoples live in forests, mountains and coasts. Some are nomadic and some are
sedentary, and they are engaged in gathering, rotational swidden farming, agroforestry, fishing, small-scale plantations and mining for their subsistence needs. They traditionally live on
their ancestral land and water. They depend on nature, as they believe the earth is a common
property that has to be protected for its sustainability. They have their own knowledge about
how to manage nature (Indigenous People Alliance of the Archipelago 2012: 1).
In this passage, the term “indigenous people” is translated as isolated peoples such as
orang Baduy (Baduy people in the Banten regency) or orang Dani (Dani people in the West
Papua Regency). The United Nations declaration means that such isolated peoples in
Indonesia should be differentiated from aborigines in Australia. Australian aborigines lived in
the island before the Europeans came, while orang Baduy are Sundanese who chose to live in
isolation when the Sundanese area was conquered by the Islamic-Javanese kingdom. Baduy
people have distinctive customs and a unique culture ensuing from their own determination.
2. Sometimes it was used as a counter-term to non-pribumi, denoting mainly Chinese Indonesian.
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My question is whether the English term “indigenous people” as stated in the United Nations
declaration is used appropriately in the context of Indonesian society. It might mislead to differentiation from or even discrimination of fellow peoples from the majority of the Indonesian nation.
Is it proper to label a group of people as indigenous because they still keep their traditional way of
life with their own customs, adat? Indonesia is a nation that consists of a large number of ethnic
groups with their own cultures, as stated and respected by the constitution of 1945.
Through history all peoples in the Archipelago were uniformly called indigenous by colonizers in various languages, despite noticing the great diversity among them. In this global
age Indonesian city dwellers call people living in isolated locations “indigenous”, as if they
were masters from the colonial past. They seem to discriminate against those who live in
an underdeveloped environment by not remembering the history of the term in their own
colonial past. It seems appropriate to use a different term to denote such peoples instead of
using the English term “indigenous people”. As mentioned above, in Indonesian law there
are Indonesian terms equivalent to the English ones: masyarakat suku terasing (alien tribal
communities), masyarakat tertinggal (neglected communities), masyarakat terpencil (remote
communities), masyarakat hukum adat (customary law communities) and masyarakat adat
(communities governed by custom).
The same holds true for Indonesian studies. It is not necessary to use “Indigenous Studies”
in English to identify ethnic studies such as Sundanese culture or anthropological studies on
remote communities like orang Baduy. The term “Indigenous Studies”’ in the Indonesian
context reminds us of a colonial mindset and a discriminatory view. Is it more appropriate,
then, to use the term “Indonesian Studies” the same way we use “Japanese Studies” for doing
research on Japanese people, culture and society in a global age?
Respect for Local Culture
Articles in this section show their attachment for a local culture and careful research on their
materials. This methodology and mindset should be respected for our further research on
cultural heritage in Indonesia or Indonesian Studies. Neverthless, we know a different methodology based on comparison.
Comparative studies between cultures could clarify the meaning of cultural practices and
possibly break through existing theories. In this method discipline plays a more significant
role for analysis and interpretation of a local culture. For instance, an anthropologist will
observe a local ritual and interpret it by comparing it with an equivalent ritual elsewhere. In
this case the researcher does not become attached to a single place for a long time and learn
the local language well. He/she will move from one place to another to test his/her hypothesis.
By contrast, another methodology consists of first learning the language of a research location and becoming involved in the society as well as deepening relationships with local people. Knowing a local culture deeply and finding a significant logic in the culture may lead to
new theories. The direction of the vector is from specific to universal. For instance, Benedict
Anderson found an idea of Imagined Communities through his Indonesian studies based on a
deep understanding of the people and a thorough command of the Javanese and Indonesian
languages. In the case of this highly talented scholar his research did not stop in Indonesia but
covered the Philippines and Thailand too. In this process, the researcher sometimes develops
an attachment to the people and they end up having a special place in his heart. Sometimes
this becomes important to support our research motivation and adds extra meaning to our life.
Either way, a researcher’s respect for the local people and an unpretentious attitude remains
significant towards getting to know cultural heritage in this global age. We have more possibilities thanks to technological innovations for research even in the field of the humanities.
At the same time, we have to be careful about our attitude and methodology for a deeper
understanding of others.
Mikihiro Moriyama
Nanzan University, Japan
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References
Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara. 2012. Country Technical Notes on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues,
Republic of Indonesia, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD); Asia Indigenous
Peoples Pact (AIPP).
Anderson, Benedict. 2116. A life beyond boundaries. London; New York: Verso.
Asian Development Bank, Environment and Social Safeguard Division, Regional and Sustainable Development Department. 2002. Indigenous People/Ethnic Minorities and Poverty Reduction, Indonesia,
Manila: Asian development Bank.
Moriyama, Mikihiro. 2005. Sundanese Print Culture and Modernity in 19th-century West Java. Singapore:
Singapore University Press.
—. 2012. “Regional Languages and Decentralisation in Post-New Order Indonesia: The case of Sundanese.” In Words in Motion—Language and Discourse in Post-New Order Indonesia, edited by Keith
Foulcher, Mikihiro Moriyama and Manneke Budiman, 82-100. Singapore: NUS Press.
—. 2013. Semangat Baru: Kolonialisme, Budaya Cetak, dan Kesastraan Sunda Abad Ke-19. Revised
version, Jakarta: Komunitas Bambu.
—. 2015. “Bahasa Sunda dalam Berdoa”, in Julian Millie and Dede Syarif ed., Islam dan Regionalisme,
pp. 107-116, Bandung: Pustaka Jaya.
Semali, Ladislaus M. and Joe. L. Kincheloe eds. 1999. What is indigenous knowledge? Voices from the
academy, New York; London: Falmer Press.
Sillitoe, Paul, Alan Bicher, and Johan Pottier eds. 2002. Participating in Development: approaches to
indigenous knowledge, London; New York: Routledge.
United Nations. 2007. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Wawacan Samun: Between the convention and the creation
of Wawacan
M. Holil & T. Pudjiastuti
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This research analyzes Wawacan Samun (WS) texts in Sundanese manuscripts with the wawacan genre. This research aims to show the tensions between convention
and creation in the texts. To achieve this objective, philology and literary theories were used.
The research found that out of five WS manuscripts, there are two story versions, i.e. pesantren scriptorium and kabupaten scriptorium. In terms of the tensions between convention
and creation, it is clearly seen that the editors of WS texts still follow the conventional pupuh
metrum writing with many errors found. The creation done by WS text editors focuses on
narrative aspects.
1
INTRODUCTION
The text of Wawacan Samun (hereinafter referred to as WS) constitutes a wawacan, which is
a literary genre known among the Sundanese after their exposure to Javanese culture (Mataram Islam) in the early 17th century (Adiwidjaja, 1950; Salmun, 1963; Ekadjati, 1983). The
occupation of Sunda land by Mataram for around 50 years had a large influence on the Sundanese language and literature. Such influence can be observed, among others, from the literary manuscripts of wawacan and guguritan (Rosidi, 1995, p. 385). A wawacan is a long story
or a saga written in a poetic style referred to as dangding. Dangding is a series of particular
poems about particular matters. A dangding consists of several particular poetic type known
as pupuh. Unlike wawacan which constitutes long epic stories, guguritan usually constitutes a
short dangding, consisting of a few stanzas, and lyrical in nature (Rosidi, 2013, pp. 28, 34).
The wawacan genre was introduced throughout Sundaland via Priangan Residency. Historically, Priangan Residency was formed from the unification of two regions, namely Galuh
and Sumedanglarang. These regions, along with Banten and Cirebon, constituted parts of
Pasundan, which since the fall of Sundanese Kingdom (1579) had never been under one
single authority. According to Ekadjati (1991), Priangan Residency was located in the southern part of West Java, stretching from Cianjur on the west to Ciamis on the east, which in a
modern day covers the regencies of Cianjur, Bandung, Garut (formerly: Limbangan), Tasikmalaya (formerly: Sukapura), and Ciamis (formerly: Galuh).
The wawacan genre was introduced throughout Sundaland via two channels, namely the
districts and Islamic boarding schools (pesantren). The wawacan spread throughout the
districts and was often written in cacarakan characters. Meanwhile, the ones that spread
throughout the boarding schools were often written in Pegon characters (Rosidi, 1966). In
the context of Sundanese manuscripts, cacarakan letters were also known as Sunda-Javanese
letters or Sunda-Mataram letters. This alphabet adopts the Javanese hanacaraka letters with
some minor adjustments, such as the elimination of two letters (tha and dha) which are not
used in the Sundanese language. Meanwhile, pegon letters refer to the Arabic letters used to
write texts in Sundanese language.
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This genre received a positive response in the Sundanese literary world. This was evident
from the increasing number of the works of Sundanese writers within this genre. The wawacan genre even became very popular, particularly from the late 18th century to the early 20th
century (Ekadjati, 1983; Rosidi, 1966; 1983; 1995; 2013; Rusyana, 1969; Moriyama 2005).
There have been a relatively large number of wawacan texts written. Among the 404 Sundanese manuscripts, which are part of the collection of the National Library of Indonesia,
Jakarta, there are 72 manuscripts of wawacan genre. Meanwhile, among the 789 Sundanese
manuscripts in the Library of Leiden University in the Netherlands, there are 114 manuscripts of wawacan genre. This number may increase if the collection of Sundanese manuscripts in the society is consulted. A number of Sundanese manuscripts in the society have
been listed by Ekadjati (1983), Ekadjati and Darsa (1999). However, the current quantity
of the listed manuscripts does not yet represent the estimated total number of Sundanese
manuscripts in the society.
In its initial development within Sundanese literature, many wawacan were reproductions
or adaptations of Javanese or Malay literatures. In the later phase, there was evidence that
wawacan writers tried to re-explore the plethora of the “authentic” Sundanese literature genre.
Between the late 18th century and the early 20th century, wawacan genre had reached
its peak of popularity. In that period, the popularity of this genre eventually motivated the
authors of wawacan to create stories based on their own creativity. No longer simply translating or adapting stories from other literatures, the authors of wawacan started to create their
own stories, as well as to embed the unique Sundanese characteristics in their works. One
method that they employed was by examining and reviewing the plethora of Sundanese literatures from the previous eras. In this context, the emergence of WS can be perceived as the
response of wawacan authors to changing times and the readers’ horizons. The WS authors
wanted to deconstruct the genre convention of wawacan by deviating from it, resulting in the
clash between conventions and creativities within their literary works.
From the manuscripts search, it is known that there are WS manuscripts. Based on this, we
can raise a question. Are those five manuscripts variants or versions? In connection with the
peak of popularity of the wawacan genre, the question that is raised now is how is the attitude
of the WS text writer in relation to wawacan genre convention.
This research is done to find out if these five WS texts are variants or versions and to know
the attitude of the WS text copyist against wawacan genre writing convention. This research
provides insights to the public and Sundanese culture researchers on the differences between
WS texts that are produced in a duchy region (kadipaten) and a school of Koranic studies
(pesantren). Furthermore, it seeks to show the attitude of Sunda literature writers against
convention of the popularity of wawacan genre.
The WS texts studied in this research consist of old literary works written in manuscripts.
Therefore, the principles of philological research are first applied to achieve a deeper understanding of WS texts, as suggested by Maas (1963) and Reynold and Wilson (1978). This
research is based on old texts. The approach used for the text edition is through the philology
research method, starting from manuscript inventory, manuscript description, text comparison, and text critique. Text critique is needed to explore texts that have long been processed
(Reynold & Wilson, 1978, p. 187). In order to present the WS text edition, text criticism has
been done with the method suggested by van der Molen (2011, pp. 82–84).
Next, WS texts are regarded as literary works. The meanings within the WS texts are
explored using the theoretical framework within the literary field, particularly the theories
that are related to the tensions between convention and creation which always exist in every
stage of particular literature history (Culler, 1975, p. 1983).
2
WS MANUSCRIPTS
There are five manuscripts containing WS texts in the manuscript inventory list, namely two
manuscripts from the collection of the National Library of Indonesia (SD. 26 and SD. 187).
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Manuscript SD. 26 (hereinafter referred to as manuscript A), while manuscript SD. 187
(hereinafter referred to as manuscript B), and three manuscripts from EFEO Bandung collections (KBN-441, KBN-70, and KBN-148). Manuscript KBN-441 (hereinafter referred
to as manuscript C), manuscript KBN-70 (hereinafter referred to as manuscript D), and
manuscript KBN-148 (hereinafter referred to as manuscript E). Based on the characters or
letters within the texts, the five manuscripts can be put into two categories: four manuscripts
written in Pegon letters (A, C, D, and E) and one manuscript written in cacarakan (B). The
Pegon letters used in the four WS manuscripts shared a number of similarities in terms of
the shapes and the vocal signs. There is no visible difference among the letters used in the
four manuscripts. Meanwhile, the cacarakan letters used in manuscript B, particularly in
terms of the vocal signs, are not known nor used at present. The cacarakan alphabet used in
manuscripts B is relatively old, and it had been used and became popular before the book of
Coolsma was published in the early 20th century (1904). Based on that, the manuscript was
estimated to be written in the late 19th century or the early 20th century.
Not all manuscripts are in good physical conditions. The order of the five manuscripts
based on their physical conditions is as follows: B, A, D, E, C. The manuscript B has very
good physical condition, clear and readable letters, and excellent cover and binding conditions. The manuscript A has good physical condition in general, clear and readable letters,
good cover and binding conditions, yet some of the right parts of the manuscript were cut
out during the re-binding process causing the loss of some letters. This impedes the reading
process of the text, since it made several letters/syllables/words unreadable. The manuscript
D is a photocopied text, so the letters are a little unclear. However, it is still readable. The
manuscript E consists of both printed digital photos and photocopied texts. The one used for
the reading is the latter. The photocopy of manuscript E is not as good as the photocopy of
manuscript D. Although some parts of the text are readable, there are also many parts that
are unreadable caused by the dark color of the paper. The manuscript C consists of prints
out from microfilms and digital photos. In both forms, the text is no longer readable. Since
the ink has faded, the letters are hardly recognizable. For this reason, manuscript C is not
examined in this research.
Each of the four manuscripts examined has their own distinguishing characteristics based
on the contents of the texts. Manuscript A constitutes the most complete, detailed, and oldest among the four. Manuscript B has a complete story from the prologue to the epilogue,
without any colophon. In addition, there are a number of irregularities related to the logic of
the story. Manuscript D and manuscript E contain incomplete stories since they only contain
25% of the full WS story.
A great deal of information has been obtained from the comparison between the four
manuscripts. First, the four manuscripts share various similarities, particularly in the main
points of the story. Therefore, the four manuscripts are assumed to have the same root. Secondly, manuscripts A, D, and E also share significant similarities. In some cases of reproduction, the choice of words in manuscript E is less complex, avoiding the mistakes of words
in manuscript A, and correcting the mistakes of the writers of manuscript A in any case of
deviation from the convention of pupuh writing. This becomes the supporting evidence for
the notion that manuscript E might be a reproduction of manuscript A. Meanwhile, despite
sharing the same chronological order of the story, the choices of words in manuscript D
are very different from those of manuscript A. The one that is very different from the rest is
manuscript B. In addition to different alphabets, manuscript B also has a different chronological order of the story. In other words, the WS text version in manuscript B is different
from those in the other three manuscripts.
Based on such philological study, it can be concluded that there are two versions in the
WS story, namely the Islamic boarding school version and the district version. The former
can be found in three manuscripts, namely A, D, E, while the latter is only found in manuscript B. From the three manuscripts with the former version, only manuscript A contains the
complete story. Therefore, only WS texts in manuscripts A and B are analyzed in the literary
aspect analysis.
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3
WAWACAN SAMUN: BETWEEN CONVENTION AND CREATION
IN THE WRITING OF WAWACAN
The writing convention of pupuh in the context of Sundanese literature is influenced by Javanese literature. Therefore, a comparison between the writing convention of pupuh in Javanese
and Sundanese literature contexts has to be drawn. From the comparison between the writing convention of pupuh in the Javanese literature context (Karsono, 2001) in the Sundanese
literature context (Coolsma, 1985; Salmun, 1963), it is found that the writing rules or conventions of pupuh in both literatures share a number of similarities. Nevertheless, there are several differences in the repertoires and conventions of pupuh in both literatures. In Sundanese
literature, there are two kinds of literature that are not known in Javanese literature, namely
Ladrang and Lambang. There is a modification in the Sundanese version of Pupuh Balabak
(Javanese), or also known as Balakbak (Sundanese) (Salmun, 1963). The rule of 12a + 3e in
Javanese and Sundanese literatures (Coolsma, 1985) changed into 15e (the sum of 12 + 3) in
the following periods. Meanwhile, the writing rules of pupuh Gurisa (Javanese: Girisa) and
Lambang, according to Coolsma and Salmun, were “switched”. However, the two varieties
of pupuh are rarely used in the writings of wawacan.
The authors/writers of WS texts of both manuscripts A and B do not seem to show the
characteristics of authors who are experts and skilled in composing WS texts. Two writers
exhibited a high degree of carelessness. There are numerous mistakes in following the writing conventions of pupuh, particularly the number of engang (syllables) in each line in which
bothlacked or exceeded the ones stated in the conventions.
There are three types of deviation from the convention of pupuh in manuscript A. The first
one is the excess of syllables, especially those which are more than one syllable. The number
of syllables used in the WS lines exceeds more than what is stipulated in the convention. The
second one is the lack of syllables, particularly those which lack one to two syllables. Lastly
is the difference in guru lagu, which is the vowel sound at the end of each line. The last vowel
sounds in a number of lines are different from those stipulated in the convention. From these
three types of deviations, the first one happens more frequently compared to the second and
third types. From 1910 deviations, 1378 cases constitute the first type of deviation. The second type of deviation is found in 348 cases, while the third type is found in 210 cases. In other
words, of all the deviations, 72.14% constitute the first type of deviation, 18.21% constitute
the second one, and 10.99% constitute the third type.
Deviations from pupuh convention in manuscript B also exhibit similar features with the
ones in manuscript A. To begin with, there are also three types of deviation from pupuh
convention. The first type is the excess number of syllables from the stipulated number in
the convention, amounting to the excess of one to three syllables. The second type is the
lack of syllables from the number stipulated in the convention, particularly those which lack
of one to two syllables. The last type is the difference in guru lagu: the last vowel sounds in
a number of lines are different from those stipulated in the convention. From these three
deviation types, the first one happens more frequently compared to the second and the third
types. From 1686 deviation cases in manuscript B, 1082 cases constitute the first type of
deviation. The second type of deviation is found in 501 cases, while the third type is found
in 103 cases.
Based on the data above, it can be seen that the deviations from the pupuh convention
in the WS texts in manuscript A and manuscript B are relatively similar. These similarities
include the types of deviations and the most frequent as well as the least frequent deviation
types.
The deviation from the pupuh convention raises a number of questions: Are the numerous
numbers of deviations from the pupuh convention really caused merely by the WS authors’/
writers’ ignorance, lack of skills, and carelessness? Or, are there any other possible factors?
The lack of skills and the carelessness of the authors/writers most likely play a part in
the occurrence of the deviations. However, in the WS context, there seem to be several other
factors.
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First, there was a decline in the popularity of the wawacan genre at the end of the 19th century, which was the period when the WS texts were written. The year when manuscript A was
written is 1299 H (1882 AD), and it is inscribed on the colophon of the manuscript. Meanwhile, manuscript B is assumed to be written at the end of the19th century or in the early 20th
century. Moriyama (2005) states that at the end of the 19th century the wawacan genre began
to be overshadowed by the prose genre introduced by the Europeans (the Dutch).
Secondly, the end of the 19th century also marked the period when many Sundanese
authors began to look back at the Sundanese literature which had for long been neglected
by their predecessors. The young authors at the time were motivated to explore the literature
repertoire of their ancestors. They became aware that the wawacan genre had been created
after and influenced by the “occupation” of a Javanese kingdom (Mataram Islam). This
motivated the new authors to rediscover the old Sundanese literature genres. One genre of
the old Sundanese literature that was studied by many of these authors was carita pantun
(Rosidi, 1966; 1995).
Thirdly, the WS texts in manuscript A and manuscript B were made/reproduced to be performed. Such assumption is made since there is “interaction” with the “audience” in certain
parts of the texts. This is also backed up by the fact that wawacan texts have often been used
in various performances, such as reading out (mamaca) or singing the written texts without
any instrumental accompaniment (beluk or gaok). The wawacan texts that are performed
might vary in every region (regencies, sub-districts, or villages) and in every social event (weddings, seventh-month pregnancy ceremonies, or circumcision ceremonies), depending on the
preferences and purposes. Apparently, WS texts have been very popular among the people
of Kadipaten, Majalengka, and the surrounding regions and are performed in various social
events (Interview with Rukmin in his house: Tarikolot, Kulur Village, Sub-district Sindangkasih, Majalengka Regency, West Java, on Saturday, 7th February 2015).
A consideration of these factors can help us understand why there are many deviations
from the pupuh writing convention in WS texts. In addition to the authors’ skills, it seems
that the authors/writers of WS texts did not really give much thought to the deviations they
made in the creation of the texts. The writers were more concerned with developing good and
interesting narratives that would condition the “audience” to focus on the storylines. Interesting narrative styles, such as the one commonly used in the character descriptions in poetic
stories, were used to arouse sympathies. Likewise, many humors inserted in the narratives
adopt the humors commonly found in poetic stories.
It is obvious that in the creation of their works, the authors/writers of WS texts used their
knowledge on poetic stories, known as carita pantun, as their source of inspiration. This
includes the narrative styles that are considered attractive to the readers or listeners of the
stories. In this matter, the authors or writers of WS texts seemed to free themselves from the
more familiar writing convention of wawacan. However, they still applied some key features
in the convention despite making many “mistakes” in their texts.
4
CONCLUSION
The tensions between convention and creation can be observed in the writing of WS texts. On
one hand, the authors of WS texts often deviated from the writing convention of pupuh, yet
on the other hand, the authors did not create any new patterns that might lead to the creation
of a new convention. These deviations might be the result of several factors. First, they might
be caused by the lack of skills or knowledge on the pupuh convention. Second, they might be
the result of carelessness. Thirdly, the authors/writers might no longer put too much thought
on the pupuh convention since at the time of the writing/reproduction of the WS texts the
popularity of wawacan genre had been waning or declining. Thus, many of them turned their
attention to old Sundanese literature genres, particularly the poetic stories of carita pantun.
They chose to focus on the creation of well-written narratives with attractive language styles
in order to be able to survive.
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REFERENCES
Adiwidjaja, R.I. (1950) Kasusastran Sunda II (Sundanese Literature II). Jakarta, J.B. Wolters–Groningen.
Coolsma, S. (1985) Tata Bahasa Sunda (Sundanese Grammar). Translation from Soendaneesche
Spraakunst (1904). Jakarta, Djambatan.
Culler, J. (1975) Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. London,
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Ekadjati, E.S. (1983) Sejarah Sunda (History of Sunda). In: Edi S.E. (eds.). Masyarakat Sunda dan
Kebudayaannya. Bandung, Girimukti Pasaka.
Ekadjati, E.S. (1983) Masyarakat Sunda dan Kebudayaannya (Sundanese Community and Their Culture).
Bandung, Girimukti Pasaka.
Ekadjati, E.S. & Darsa, U.A. (1999) Katalog Induk Naskah-Naskah Nusantara Jilid 5A: Jawa Barat
Koleksi Lima Lembaga (Main Catalogue of Indonesia Archipelago Manuscripts Edition 5A: West Java
Five Institution Collection). Jakarta, Yayasan Obor Indonesia & Ecole Francaise d’Extreme-Orient.
Maas, P. (1963) Textual Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moriyama, M. (2005) Semangat Baru: Kolonialisme, Budaya Cetak, dan Kesastraan Sunda Abad ke-19
(New Spirit: Colonialism, Printing Culture, and Sundanese Literature in 19th Century). Jakarta,
KPG (Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia) in collaboration with the Resona Foundation for Asia and
Oceania.
Reynolds, L.D. & Wilson, N.G. (1978) Scribes and Scholars. London, Oxford University Press.
Rosidi, A. (2013) Puisi Sunda (Sundanese Poems). Bandung, PT Kiblat Buku Utama.
Rosidi, A. (1995) Kasusastraan Sunda (Sundanese Literature). In Ajip Rosidi, Sastera dan Budaya:
Kedaerahan dalam Keindonesiaan (Literature and Culture: Local Culture in Indonesian National Culture). Jakarta, Pustaka Jaya. pp. 376–411.
Rosidi, A. (1983) Ngalanglang Kasusastran Sunda. Jakarta, Pustaka Jaya.
Rosidi, A. (1966) Kesusastraan Sunda Dewasa Ini (Sundanese Literature Nowadays). Jatiwangi,
Tjupumanik.
Rusyana, Y. (1969) Galuring Sastra Sunda. Bandung, Gununglarang.
Salmun, M.A. (1963) Kandaga Kasusastran. 2nd ed. Bandung/Jakarta, Ganaco N.V.
Saputra, K.H. (2001) Sekar Macapat. Jakarta, Wedatama Widya Sastra.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Piwulang teachings in Serat Darmasaloka
S. Rohman & D. Kramadibrata
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: In this study, we discuss a classic Javanese manuscript entitled Serat Darmasaloka (SD). SD is a narrative poetry known as tembang macapat. On the basis of the
content, SD is classified as piwulang. As a piwulang text, it contains several moral values
and teachings in the story. The SD text provides a good model of the story that is filled with
values of life, religion, tradition, and social system of the society. Here, we discuss the noble
ideas of the Javanese society presented in SD.
1
INTRODUCTION
Serat Darmasaloka (hereinafter referred to as SD) is a Javanese manuscript in the form
of poetry, or tembang macapat. Tembang macapat is a form of Javanese poetry that uses
new Javanese language controlled by the poetic patterns of guru gatra (the number of
stanzas), guru wilangan (the number of syllables in each stanza), and guru lagu (the last
vocal in each stanza) (Karsono, 1992, p. 8).The SD text narrates the story of Siti Maryam, the daughter of Syeh Ngabdullah, who was banished to a forest due to allegations
of adultery. The SD text contains several pieces of advice (piwulang) and teachings of
Islam.
A total of three manuscripts are found under the title Sêrat Darmasaloka. The first, a
manuscript titled Serat Darmasaloka, is kept at Keraton Surakarta library under the catalogue number KS 539 B. The second, a manuscript C titled Pethikan saking sêrat Darmasaloka, is kept at Keraton Surakarta library under the catalogue number KS 539. The third,
a manuscript titled Sêrat Darmasaloka, is kept at Universitas Indonesia Library under the
catalogue number PW 26/KS 77.
Judging from its colophon, the KS 539 B manuscript was completed on 29 Sura year
Je 1814 AJ, 29 Muharram 1302 H, or 18 November 1884 AD. The KS 539 C manuscript
was completed on Monday, 28 Ramadhan 1816 AJ or 20 June 1887 AD. Finally, the PW
26/KS 77 manuscript was completed on 25 Jumadilawal year Je 1846 AJ, or 30 March
1916 AD.
Following a careful comparison of both the readability and content by a philological study,
the SD text in the KS 539 B manuscript was chosen as the basis of text editing and content
analysis. This text was selected not only because of it being the oldest, but also because of the
coverage of materials and the quality of readability, which refers to the clarity of the text and
the least amount of deviation compared to other manuscripts. In this study, will not address
text editing.
As a piwulang text, SD contains moral values and teachings for the readers. The research
objective is associated with the moral values and teachings contained in SD. As a narrative
poem, the structure of the SD text (plot, characters, and settings) has been analyzed (see
Rohman, 2016). The storyline, conversation among characters, and settings reflect the moral
values and teachings contained in SD. According to various written sources about the Javanese culture, some of the moral values and the main teachings in the text are revealed. In this
study, we discuss the moral values and teachings contained in SD.
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2
2.1
DISCUSSION
Summary of the SD text
The story begins with the introduction of the character Seh Ngabdullah, who lived in Mecca
with his two children Abu Bakar and Siti Maryam. Seh Ngabdullah and Abu Bakar were
about to set forth on a pilgrimage to Medina, but Seh Ngabdullah did not want to leave his
daughter, Siti Maryam, alone at home. Therefore, he asked Kiai Sangit to stay at the house to
protect her. A conflict arose when Kiai Sangit advanced to Siti Maryam to commit adultery,
but the resolute Siti Maryam refused.
Kiai Sangit then met Seh Ngabdullah and claimed that Siti Maryam had propositioned
him. A furious Seh Ngabdullah ordered Abu Bakar to kill Siti Maryam without knowing the
truth of the accusation. Confused Abu Bakar decided not to kill his sister and instead banished her to a forest. He lied to his father, saying Siti Maryam was dead.
In the forest, Siti Maryam met an old widow named Ni Kalimah and went on to live with
her. One day while shepherding goats, Siti Maryam met the King of Bagedad, who fell in love
with her and wanted to marry her. King Bagedad asked Ni Kalimah for Siti Maryam’s hand
in marriage. Siti Maryam then married the king and became the queen of his kingdom. They
lived happily and were blessed with two sons.
Another conflict arose when Siti Maryam was on her way to visit her father and brother in
Mecca. During the journey, the King’s aide, Ki Patih, performed treachery and attempted to
rape Siti Maryam. Because she refused, Ki Patih killed her two sons. She managed to escape
and disguised as a coffee merchant in the kingdom of Ngedhah-ngedhah. Ki Patih returned
to Bagedad and told the king that his wife and children were dead after being preyed by tigers
in the forest.
The King was stricken with grief upon hearing the news. He asked Ki Patih to show him the
place where his wife and children died. Meanwhile, the story turns to Seh Ngabdullah, who asked
his son Abu Bakar to show him Siti Maryam’s grave. Seh Ngabdullah, Abu Bakar, and Kiai Sangit then went into the forest. In the middle of the forest, they met King Bagedad and Ki Patih.
Following the advice of a merchant from Ngedhah-ngedhah, the five men went to the
kingdom of Ngedhah-ngedhah, where they met Siti Maryam, who was still in disguise. Siti
Maryam told them a tale filled with occurrences taken from her own life experience. Seh
Ngabdullah, King Bagedad, Abu Bakar, Kiai Sangit, and Ki Patih were astonished to hear
a tale so similar to their lives. Siti Maryam then revealed her identity and disclosed all of the
wrongs that Kiai Sangit and Ki Patih did to her, who were then punished by King Bagedad.
Siti Maryam and King Bagedad then had five more children. After their children were
grown, King Bagedad suddenly left the kingdom because of a wish to devote himself to worship. After his departure from the kingdom, the royal family descended into chaos.
King Bagedad left a letter for Siti Maryam and their children, instructing his eldest son to
ascend the throne in his place. However, the prince refused to become the new king before
meeting his father. The prince went on a long journey in search of his father. During his
journey, he met a hermit named Ki Darmasaloka, whom he asked for guidance. Finally, the
prince met his father in Mecca. He returned to the kingdom afterward and became the new
king of Bagedad. The kingdom of Bagedad became more prosperous under his rule.
2.2
Values in the SD text
From the above summary, it is evident that the names of the characters originated from
Arab, for example, Seh Ngabdullah, Abu Bakar, King Bagdad, Siti Maryam, and Java: Kiai
Sangit, Ki Patih, and Ki Darmasaloka. The story takes place in Mecca, Medina, Baghdad,
and the forest. Thus, the SD text is a combination of the elements of Islamic and Javanese
origin. This section analyzes the moral values and teachings delivered through the SD text.
From the storyline and the conversation among the characters, the noble ideas contained in
the SD text are as follows.
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2.2.1 Moral lessons for women
Moral lessons for women are shown through the exemplary life of Siti Maryam, who was
a prominent character in the story. Through her character, the text describes the attitudes
deemed necessary for every woman. Siti Maryam is depicted as a very beautiful female character who is resolute, patient, obedient to her husband and father, and believes in destiny
and the power of God. Her strong character becomes apparent when she rejected Ki Sangit’s
advances and did not concede to his threats when he propositioned her.
The SD text emphasizes that a woman should primarily possess the characteristics and
qualities of Siti Maryam. This is shown when King Bagedad advised his sisters to set Siti
Maryam as an exemplary character.
The text encourages women to possess a noble character as exemplified through Siti Maryam’s behavior. Women are urged to be able to manage their feelings and to overcome and
restrain vices, such as anger, betrayal, and pride. The text further encourages women to trust
fully in destiny and the power of God, which in the end will bring awareness for them to
always surrender to God’s will.
In general, the moral values delivered through the SD text describe attitudes that women
should have in life. The story urges women not to focus only on physical beauty, but they
should also be able to control themselves against the negative aspects of human nature and
live a life of faith and trust in order to be blessed with the grace of God. Several major values
promoted in the SD text for women are determination, sincerity, patience and trust, obedience, and a strong belief in God’s power and destiny.
2.2.2 Tasawwuf teachings
The teachings of tasawwuf or Sufism are shown in the conversation between the prince of
Bagedad and Ki Darmasaloka. First, they discuss the characteristics of God’s saints (wali).
This can be understood as the efforts a person must make in order to become a noble human
being. The SD text mentions the following six efforts: (1) withstanding sleepiness; (2) withstanding hunger; (3) not being embarrassed by a state of undress; (4) being very close to God;
(5) not being afraid of death; and (6) not being afraid of one’s fellow creatures.
In the Javanese culture, the efforts are called laku tapa brata, which includes the efforts
made to achieve the perfect state of life based on the importance of controlling and suppressing carnal desires. These efforts are aimed at eliminating despicable natures and achieving
perfection of life.
Laku tapa brata is done by sleeping, eating, and drinking less, suppressing lust, as well as
managing one’s feelings in order to achieve a state of being one with God or manunggaling
kawula Gusti. The SD text metaphorically compares humans to boats in the middle of the
ocean, saying that they must control themselves to prevent them from getting lost.
In addition to laku tapa brata that has to be performed to achieve perfection of life or
manunggaling kawula Gusti, the SD text mentions the interpretation of perfection of life
through the steps of syariat, tarekat, hakikat, and makrifat. These four steps are symbolized
by the four levels or degrees of being a wali, as described in the following quote:
//Dene ingkang rumuhun/drajatipun ing wali puniku/badannira pribadi uning yen wali/tuwin
janma liyanipun/inggih ugi sami wêroh//
//Dene ping kalihipun/badanira pribadi tan wêruh/janma liyan punika wikan yen wali/dene ingkang kaping têlu/janma liyan datan wêroh//
//Badane dhewe surup/drajat wali ingkang kaping catur/dhirinira priyongga datan udani/janma
liyan tan sinung wruh/kang mirsa amung Hyang manon//(SD text, pupuh XI, stanzas 30–32)
Translation
//The first one/among the degrees of being a wali/is being self-aware that one is a wali/and so
other people/are also aware of it//
//The second one/is not being aware that one is a wali/but other people are aware of it/while the
third one/is other people not being aware of it//
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//But the person is self-aware/while the fourth degree of being a wali/is not being aware on one’s
own/and others are also not aware/only God knows//
The level of syariat is symbolized by a person who is self-aware of being a wali or feels like
one, and others are aware of it as well. The level of tarekat is symbolized by a person who is
not aware or does not feel like a wali, but other people are aware of it. The level of hakikat is
symbolized by a person who is self-aware or feels like a wali, but others are not aware of it.
The fourth level or makrifat is symbolized by a person who is not aware of being a wali, and
other people are not aware of it as well. The only one that knows is Allah.
The tasawwuf teachings present in the SD text are part of Javanese mysticism, which refers
to the tendency of ascetics to avoid worldly matters in order to achieve purity and silence, perform tapa-brata, and live with limited means as a prerequisite to become a saint of pure heart.
2.2.3 Javanese principles of harmony and respect
A particular characteristic of the Javanese culture is its ability to respond to and receive an
influx of cultural influences from outside while still maintaining its own authenticity. Javanese
values cannot simply be erased as they are part of the characteristics of the Javanese culture,
and this includes the values of harmony and respect, which have become the basis of the attitudes of the Javanese people. The principles of harmony and respect are essentially centered on
one purpose, which is to avoid conflict in order to achieve a peaceful and harmonious situation.
The moral values that are part of the principles of harmony and respect in the SD text are
apparent in the good relationship between kingdoms, whose people mutually help each other.
An example of this is the willingness of King Ngedhah-ngedhah to assist King Bagedad when
the latter was in the land of Ngedhah-ngedhah. King Ngedhah was willing to fetch King Bagedad and take him to the palace. The story describes a harmonious relationship between the
kingdoms of Bagedad and Ngedhah-ngedhah, with both kings holding mutual respect for one
another. King Bagedad was very thankful for the kindness his compatriot and the people of
the court of Ngedhah-ngedhah showed him. He then encouraged that the good relationship
between Bagedad and Ngedhah-ngedhah be maintained, reflecting an attitude of always striving
to avoid conflicts. The following quote is the message King Bagedad gave to the people of the
court of Ngedhah-ngedhah to always maintain harmony and avoid conflicts with each other:
… /Sri Bagêdad ngandika/eh ta Patih lan sagung para tumênggung/aku wèh slamêt mring sira/
lan bangêt panrimèng mami//
//Têtulungmu kabêcikan/ingkang tumrap marang sarira mami/tan kurang kapara langkung/
muga Hyang mahawasa/nglêstarèkna gyaningsun têpung sadulur/sumrambaha wadya bala/
lanang wadon gêdhe cilik//
//Bagêdad lan Ngedhah-edhah/aja ana ingkang sulayèng pikir/têrusa saturun-turun/haywa
pêgat sagotran/di kang lali den elingna kang satuhu/kang luput den ngapuraa/mangkono traping pawong sih// (SD text, pupuh VII, stanzas 52–54).
Translation
…/King Bagedad said/dear Patih and all officials/I pray for all of you to always prosper/and my
endless thanks//
//All the help and kindness/that you have given me/do not lessen but instead increase/hopefully
God almighty/allows us to be family forever/down to all the soldiers/man or woman, big or
small//
//May Bagedad and Ngedhah-edhah/stay far from disputes/stay harmonious from generation
to generation/and never be separated/if some do wrong, remind them/for those who do wrong,
forgive them/that is how people love one another//
This excerpt contains a message to always help, respect, and maintain harmony with one
another. Any person, regardless of his/her wealth and strength, still needs the help of others,
showing the human nature of being unable to live without other people.
The principle of harmony and respect can also be seen in the way King Bagedad always
consulted or deliberated with his officials before making a decision. Deliberation is defined as
a decision-making process by mutual consultation. Ideally, during the process of deliberation,
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all voices and opinions are heard and considered to be of equal importance in order to solve
a problem. Deliberation aims to give everyone a chance to express their opinions, so as not
to make a one-side decision. In this way, all parties can agree to the joint decision-making
process (Suseno, 1983, p. 51).
In addition to mutual help and deliberation, the SD text includes a message of self-restraint
that must be exercised by all people to avoid conflicts. In the text, Seh Ngabdullah was unable
to control his anger when provoked by Kiai Sangit. Because of the lack of self-restraint, Seh
Ngabdullah ordered his son Abu Bakar to punish Siti Maryam out of his anger. At first, Seh
Ngabdullah felt satisfied and relieved to be able to vent his anger; however, in the end, he realized his mistake of punishing someone without knowing the truth. He became aware that his
anger and ego rendered him unable to think of anything else or the result of his actions. Feeling remorseful and haunted by guilt, he asked Abu Bakar to lead him to Siti Maryam’s grave.
In this case, awareness and vigilance, also referred to as introspection, are emphasized for
self-control as some of the norms to prevent conflicts. A person must exercise self-restraint
to prevent any conflicts, because emotions can easily result in negative things. In addition,
self-control is necessary to perform actions or make decisions. This means that the decisionmaking process should not be rushed, and any positive or negative aspect as well as consequences must be carefully considered in advance.
These attitudes of mutually helping each other, being respectful, performing deliberation,
and controlling oneself essentially teach us the moral value to maintain the harmony of life and
avoid conflicts. This is in accordance with Geertz (1983), who identified the Javanese as a type
of people who are straightforward and tend to avoid conflicts. According to Suseno, there are
two most dominant rules determining the patterns of social association in the Javanese society.
The first rule is that in every situation a person must behave in such a way that does not lead
to conflicts. The second rule demands that a person’s way of talking and carrying oneself must
always show respect for others according to their degree and position. The first is called the
principle of harmony, and the second is called the principle of respect (Suseno, 1983, p. 38).
2.2.4 Islamic teachings
The SD text contains one of the aspects of Islamic law, namely the law of qisas. Qisas is
the law of equal punishment for perpetrators of premeditated murder or deliberate assault
causing bodily injury. In the SD text, this legal system is reflected in the punishment given to
Ki Patih, who was sentenced to death for killing two children of King Bagedad. The excerpt
describing this is as follows:
//Khukumipun Ki Sangit punapa lampus/Sèh Dullah turira/Kajawi karsa Sang Aji/Kyai Sangit
awit botên dosa pêjah//
//Lêrêsipun binucal kewala cukup/Winorkên wong kumpra/Sageda mulang agami/Pan pun patih
sampun lêrês ukum kisas// (manuscript A, pupuh VIII, stanzas 37–38).
Translation
//Should Ki Sangit be given a punishment of death/Seh Dullah said/excepting the King’s own
wishes/Kiai Sangit is not guilty of murder//
//It is best that he is banished/to live with contemptible people/so that he will learn religion/for
Patih a qisas punishment is justifiable//
Qisas is a form of punishment in the legal system commonly used in Islamic countries that
imply Islamic penal law, such as Saudi Arabia. Qisas is enforced to (1) respect human dignity by allowing equal retaliation for the loss of life and bodily injury; (2) deter hostility and
bloodshed, so that security and peace can be maintained; and (3) make people think twice
about committing crimes. The Qur’anic verses explaining the implementation of qisas are
surah (chapter) Al-Baqara ayah (verses) 178–179.
The SD text also contains a message that prohibits adultery. This is evident in the storyline
that features two attempts of adultery against Siti Maryam by Kiai Sangit and Ki Patih. However, neither of them succeeds because of Siti Maryam’s firm determination. The SD text
depicts adultery as a great sin, and anyone who commits the act shall receive God’s punishment.
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Those deemed sinful are not only the ones who tempt or suggest committing adultery but also
those who accept such advances. The Qur’anic verse forbidding adultery is surah Al-Isra ayah 32.
3
CONCLUSION
As a piwulang text, several moral values contained in the story are identified. These values
include moral values for women, tasawwuf teachings, principles of harmony and respect, and
Islamic teachings.
The content of the SD text reveals a combination of Javanese values and the teachings of
Islam. The text is based on an Islamic story, but it also includes Javanese values, such as the
mystical Kejawen teachings called manunggaling kawula gusti and the philosophy of true raos
(sense/soul). These teachings are very well known among the Javanese as practices to achieve
perfection of life.
Therefore, it can be concluded that the writer of SD tried to create a Javanese literary work
by utilizing resources from the Islamic literature (the religion of the majority of Javanese
at that time) while still maintaining Javanese values which were considered necessary to be
preserved, as Islam further developed and strengthened in the Javanese society. The author
believes that through this article the readers can further enrich their knowledge of Islam, while
still preserving existing Javanese values that had been ingrained in the Javanese society.
REFERENCES
Baried, S.B. (a), et al. (1985) Pengantar Ilmu Filologi (Introduction to Philology). Jakarta, Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa Depdikbud.
Baried, S.B. (b), et al. (1985) Memahami Hikayat dalam Sastra Indonesia (Understanding Hikayat in
Indonesian Literature). Jakarta, Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa Depdikbud.
Behrend, T.E. (1990) Katalog Induk Naskah-Naskah Nusantara Jilid I Museum Sana Budaya Yogyakarta
(Master Catalogue of Manucripts from the Indonesian Archipelago Volume I of Museum Sana Budaya
Yogyakarta). Jakarta, Djambatan.
Behrend, T.E. (1995) Serat Jatiswara: Struktur & Perubahan di Dalam Puisi Jawa1600–1930 (Serat
Jatiswara: Structure & Changes in Javanese Poetry 1600–1930). Jakarta, INIS (Indonesian-Netherlands
Cooperation in Islamic Studies).
Mulder, N. (1983) Kebatinan dan Hidup Sehari-hari Orang Jawa (Spiritualism and the Everyday Lives in
Java). Jakarta, PT Gramedia.
Pigeaud, T.G. (1970) Literature of Java: catalogue raisonné of Javanese manuscripts in the Library of the
University of Leiden and other public collections in the Netherlands. I: Synopsis of Javanese literature
900–1900 A.D. The Hague, Martinus Nyhoff.
Riffatere, M. (1980) Semiotic of Poetry. London, Methuen & Co. Ltd.
Robson, S.O. (1994) Prinsip-prinsip Filologi (The Principles of Philology). Jakarta, RUL.
Rohman, S. (2016) Serat Darmasaloka: Edisi Teks dan Kajian Isi (Serat Darmasakola: Text and Content
Analysis). [Thesis]. Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia.
Saputro, K.H. (1992) Pengantar Sekar Macapat (Introduction to Sekar Macapat). Depok, Fakultas
Sastra Universitas Indonesia.
Saputro, K.H. (2001) Puisi Jawa: Struktur dan Estetika (Javanese Poetry: Structure and Aesthetics).
Jakarta, Wedatama Widya Sastra.
Simuh. (1988) Mistik Islam Kejawen Raden Ngabehi Ranggawarsita: Suatu Studi Terhadap Serat Wirid
Hidayat Jati (Kejawen Islamic Mysticism of Raden Ngabehi Ranggawarsita: A Study on Serat Wirid
Hidayat Jati). Depok, UI Press.
Simuh. (2003) Islam dan Pergumulan Budaya Jawa (Islam and the Struggle of Javanese Culture). Jakarta,
Teraju.
Suseno, F.M. (1983) Etika Jawa Sebuah Analisa Falsafi tentang Kebijaksanaan Hidup Jawa (Javanese
Ethics: A Philosophical Analysis on Javanese Wisdom). Jakarta, PT Gramedia.
Suseno, F.M. (1987) Etika Dasar, Masalah-masalah Pokok Filsafat Moral (Foundations of Ethics, The
Main Problems of Moral Philosophy). Yogyakarta, Yayasan Kanisius.
Van Luxemburg, J., Bal, M. & Weststeijn, W.G. (1987) Tentang Sastra (On Literature). (A. Ikram,
Trans.). Jakarta, P.T. Intermasa.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Old Papuan manuscripts: A general review
T. Pudjiastuti
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Papua is one of the easternmost regions of the Republic of Indonesia.
Islamic culture started to invade Papua in the 17th century through three pathways, namely
the Sultanate of Tidore, Seram, and Raja Ampat. Written culture in Papua began since then.
Thus, traces of the Islamic culture in the form of handwritten old manuscripts can be found
in West Papua and the Raja Empat Islands. The major challenge is to find the exact number
of such manuscripts and the genre of the texts. The objective of this research was to record,
preserve, and inform about the existence of the texts and to explore about the content. The
characteristic of the research is codicology with the manuscript as the object. Previous
research has recorded and digitalized manuscripts and the properties of the aforementioned
three cultures. It is known from the perspective of the context of the texts that the majority of
the Papuan manuscripts contain Islamic teachings. The materials used are European paper
and local paper called koba-koba leaves. The letters commonly found in the manuscripts are
Arabic, Lontara, and Jawi in Arabic, Makassar, and Malay languages.
1
INTRODUCTION
Hand-written old manuscripts are a type of heritage that the Indonesian ancestors have
passed on to the future. As a cultural property, old manuscripts are artifacts that explicitly
present some inscriptions. According to Molen (1985), scripts play a very important role in
the history of mankind, our daily life, science and knowledge, power, politics, and so on.
Civilizations without and with inscription basically differ. From the perspective of cultural
heritage, ancient manuscripts are authentic evidence of the advancement of a certain community. Papua is one of the ethnic groups in Indonesia with a cultural heritage in the form
of inscription. This is not surprising because there is evidence that Papua has had a written
culture since the arrival of Islam in the 17th century. On the basis on this matter, the research
questions are: (1) where are the Papuan manuscripts located today? (2) how many are there?
and (3) what is the genre of the texts?
The main objective of this study was to inform the society that the Papuan people have
long been familiar with written culture, proven by their manuscripts. The other purpose was
to preserve the heritage of the Papuan people from being extinct (due to damage) or sold.
Furthermore, this study holds scientific interest of informing the manuscript data to scientists, which facilitate their studies based on each knowledge field.
This research is codicological with the manuscripts as the object of study. Therefore, all
Papuan manuscripts involved in this research have been studied using the codicology approach.
Every manuscript has been described and studied, and a detailed note has been taken, including its cover, size, genre, illumination (if available), and other aspects. Then, every page of the
manuscripts is digitized (their picture is taken) to be kept in manuscript CDs.
2
PAPUAN ISLAMIZATION
According to Muridan (2013), Islam came to Papua during the expansion of the Sultanate of
Tidore under the leadership of Sultan Nuku. However, according to some sources in Papua,
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Islam came through other ways too, such as Seram, Banda, and the Hadramaut (the Arab
peninsula). Islamic leaders and petuanan (kings) in Papua contend that Islam spread along the
coastal areas from Sorong and Fak-Fak. With regard to the issues of Islamization in Papua, the
following three things need to be explained: (1) the issue of the figures who brought Islam to
Papua; (2) the route that Islam had taken to enter Papua; and (3) the heritage of Islam in Papua.
The figures responsible for bringing and spreading Islam in Papua can be divided into
two groups. The first group includes those believed to have a line of descent to the Prophet
Muhammad SAW, known as the sayyid. The second group includes those of Arab descent,
known as the shaykh. During the Islamic proselytism period, both the sayyid and the syakh
married the locals and reproduced Arab-Papua and Arab-Malay descendants. The descendants of the Islamic proselytism in Papua are recognized by their surnames, namely Al-Hamid,
Al-Katiri, Assegaf, Said bin Agil, Bafadal, and Kabiran.
Islam is believed to have entered Papua through three routes, namely the Sultanate of
Tidore, Raja Ampat, and the Archipelago of Seram-Banda.
1. The Tidore Route. From the stories told by their ancestors, Papuans believe that the Sultanate of Tidore had been present in Papua long before the arrival of colonists and the
Christian missionaries in the hinterland of Papua. In fact, the Christian missionaries
came into Papua escorted by some people from the network of Tidore Sultanate. According to Andaya (1993), the Papuans associated the Tidore Sultanate with Islam. This was
illustrated through an event in 1705 when the Jogugu (Prime Minister), the sea captain
Salawati, and Waigeo of the Raja Empat Islands received the Sultan of Tidore’s envoys.
Everyone present in the event said “Amen” when the Sultan of Tidore’s envoy finished
reading the Sultan’s letter. In other words, Papuans respected the Sultan of Tidore similarly to Allah, despite the fact that only his letter was present.
2. The Raja Ampat Route. According to experts, the Archipelago of Raja Ampat was ruled
by four kings (petuanan), namely King Salawati, King Waigeo, King Misool, and King
Waigama. According to some resources from Raja Ampat, Islam arrived in Papua through
Salawati, brought into, and proselytized by Islamic proselytizers from Hadramaut who
came for the purposes of trading, seeking better sources of livelihood, or avoiding the
social and political dynamics in their homeland.
3. The Seram-Banda Route. According to most of the resource persons from Sorong and
Fak-Fak, Islam entered Papua through people from Seram-Banda, who came to Papua
and settled there, and spread along the coastal areas, such as Sorong, Fak-Fak, and the
Raja Empat Islands. While spreading Islam, some of them married the locals, eventually
reproducing descendants of mixed origins of Maluku–Papua.
3
RESEARCH RESULTS
Find traces of the Islamic culture that had been recorded in the written tradition of Papua is
a challenging task due to the following reasons:
1. The absence of figures who still recognize and keep the written tradition of their
ancestors.
2. The influence of the social and political dynamics of the colonial era that has made the
owners of the manuscripts unwilling to surrender their collection of manuscripts to
strangers.
3. The confines of customs and fear and assumptions that the old manuscripts that they
have are “sacred heritage” that is not to be read by ordinary people or is not to be taken
out from its storage anytime.
Fortunately, in some enclaves assumed to have been strongly associated with the history
of Islam in the Land of Papua, resource persons could still be found, willing to provide
information regarding the legacy of the written tradition of Papua. As a result, a number of
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ancient Papuan manuscripts and historical objects that have been stored by people have been
successfully recorded.
A total of 89 old manuscripts and three historical objects have been recovered through
research conducted in 2013 and 2014 in Sorong, Fak-Fak, Kokas, Misol, Waisai, Salawati,
Patipi, and Patimburak. The three objects are one dagger with an inscription in Arabic
written in gold ink, one piece of talisman flag with an Arabic inscription on it, and one
ceramic plate with Arabic scripts. The manuscripts and historical objects are held by 23
manuscript owners. The following are brief information about the 89 old manuscripts
and the three historical objects, their owners, and the number of manuscripts in their
collection.
The 89 old Papuan manuscripts recovered were written in Arabic, Jawi (Arab-Malay),
and Lontara (Bugis-Makassar script) scripts using the languages of Arabic, Malay, and
Bugis-Makassar.
The material used to write the text varies, namely European paper (Churchill, 1935;
Heawood, 1950), lined paper, plain paper, dluwang or Javanese paper (Pudjiastuti, 1997), and
the material used for writing the traditional Papuan manuscript is called koba-koba leaves.
Koba-koba leaves are obtained from red fruit trees (Latin: Pandanus Conoideus). The tree is
of the family pandanus (Latin: Pandanaceae), which usually grows in huddle in Papua. It can
grow up to 3 m. The following is the information about how the koba-koba leaves are utilized
as a surface to write: the leaves are cut into the desired size and dried in sunlight. Then, they
are flattened and the surface is smoothened with kuwuk (sea snail shell). Finally, they are used
as a surface to write a text or manuscript.
The Papuan texts consist of several genres, namely a history of some figures, prayers, language grammar, medicines, genealogy, tales, literature, legal treaties, and Islamic teachings,
such as prayers, tauhid, zikir (dhikr), and the Koran.
The following are the information about the owners and the number of manuscripts and
historical objects:
1. Abdurrahman Kastella
Abdurrahman Kastella from Ambon is the owner of Papuan manuscripts who lives in
Sorong, Papua, for several decades. As a mosque imam, he has stored 10 old manuscripts that
he inherited from his late grandfather. These manuscripts are mostly handwritten and partly
in the form of lithographs (stone prints), which include Risalah Hukum Jimak (Jimak Legal
Treaties), Kitab Mujarobat (The Book of Useful Medicines), Kisah Nabi Muhammad SAW
(Tales of the Prophet Muhammad SAW), Doa Tawasul (Tawasul Prayers), Zikir (Dhikr),
Kitab Nikah (the Book of Marriage), Maulud, and Kumpulan Doa (collection of Prayers).
2. Jafar Bugis
Jafar Bugis is a Bugis-Makassar descent who lives in Sorong, Papua. In addition to his position as a mosque imam, he is a trader. He has three old manuscripts, two of which were written in Arabic and Lontara scripts and Arabic and Bugis-Makassar languages, respectively,
and the third manuscript was written using three scripts, namely Arabic, Lontara, and Jawi
in Arabic, Bugis-Makassar, and Malay languages. They are Kitab Bagan Zikir (Dhikr Chart
Book), Kitab Zikir (the Book of Dhikr and Prayer), and Kitab Kumpulan Doa (the book of
collection of prayers).
3. Iman Latuconsina
Iman Latuconsina is a Papuan of Ambonese descent. He has lived in Sorong, Papua, for a
long time. As a mosque imam, he only has one old manuscript in the form of a horizontal roll
(rotulus), whose content is about Khutbah Jum’at (Friday sermons).
4. Muhammad Bafadal
Muhammad Bafadal is a Papuan of Arab descent. His great grandfather came to Papua
from Hadramaut in the 17th century to proselytize Islamic religion and conduct trading
simultaneously. As the imam of the mosque in Doom Island, he has only two old handwritten manuscripts in Arabic script and Arabic language. They are Kitab Tasawuf (the Book of
Tasawuf) and Kitab Masalah Agama Islam (the Book of Islamic Religion Issues).
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5. Ma’bud Wadjo
Ma’bud Wadjo is of Makassar origin who moved to Sorong, Papua, and has seven old manuscripts, which he borrowed from his uncle. They are Khatmal al Kajah, Maulid Barzanji,
Wirid, Tashrifan (Arabic grammar), Rahasia Shalat (the Secrets of Shalat), Ibadah (Worship), and Doa (Prayer).
6. Dra. Nursia Salim, S. H.
Nursia Salim is a judge at the religious court of the city of Sorong. She has one manuscript
that she borrowed from her late uncle, which is Doa dan Zikir (Prayer and Dhikr).
7. Hajj Abdurrahman al-Hamid (“Mister Teacher”)
Abdurahaman al-Hamid, a Papuan of Arab descent, is from the Island of Misool at the
Raja Empat Islands who lives in Sorong. In addition to his role as the mosque Imam, he is
an English teacher and hence known as “Tuan Guru” (Mister Teacher). He borrowed the
ancient handwritten manuscripts from his family living in the Island of Misool. He has five
manuscripts in total, which are Kitab Ajaran Islam (the Book of Islamic Teachings), Ilmu
Siri dan Doa (the Science of Siri and Prayer), Doa dan Maulid (Prayer and Maulid), Wirid
Abdullah Asy Syatari (the Wird of Abdullah Asy Syatari), and Catatan Kepemilikan (Notes
on Ownership).
8. Mohammad Nasib Baria
Mohammad Nasib Baria is a Papuan of Ambonese descent who lives in Sorong. He borrowed the following five manuscripts from his family: Doa Kanz al-‘Arsy (Prayer of Kanz
al-‘Arsy), Kumpulan Doa (Collection of Prayer), Kumpulan Doa Mustajab (Effective Prayers),
Doa Istigfar Rajab (Rajab Istighfar Prayer), and Doa (Prayer).
9. Haji Azis
Haji Aziz is a Papuan of Bugis descent who lives in Sorong. He has three manuscripts written in Arabic, Jawi, and Lontara alphabets in Arabic, Malay, and Bugis-Makasar languages,
namely Kitab Pengetahuan Agama (Religious Knowledge Book), Kitab Ahlak (Book on
Morality), and Kumpulan Doa (Prayer Collection).
10. Thalib Salim
Thalib Salim is Nursia Salim’s younger brother who lives in Sorong. Thalib Salim is the
Chairman of the MUI (Council of Indonesian Ulema) of Sorong branch. The three manuscripts that he has are his family’s property. They are Kumpulan Doa (Prayer Collection),
Bagan Shalat dan Doa (Chart of Shalat and Prayer), and Tahlil.
11. Ahmad Iba bin Ismail Iba
Ahmad Iba bin Ismail Iba is an indigenous Papuan. He is a petuanan (raja) of the Island of
Patipi at the Raja Empat Islands. Despite being the King of Patipi, he resides in Sorong. The
ancient manuscripts in his collection are borrowed from his father and there are 11 of them,
namely Juz ‘Amma, six Quran, Khutbah Idul Adha (Eid al-Adha Sermon), Akidah dan Kutbah
Idul Adha (Faith and Eid al-Adha Sermon), Zikir (Dhikr), and Doa (Prayers).
12. Ali Iha
Ali Iha is of the Mollucan-Papuan descent who lives in Fak-Fak. He borrowed four manuscripts from his family. They are Doa (Prayer), Maulid (Maulid), Keutamaan Doa (the Virtue
of Prayer), and Kumpulan Doa (Prayer Collection).
13. Abdillah At-Tamimi
Abdillah At-Tamimi is a Papuan who is a descendant of the Arab syaikh. He currently lives
in Fak-Fak as a trader as well as a religious teacher. The four manuscripts that he has are
borrowed from his ancestors. They are: Silsilah dan Doa (Genealogy and Prayer), Kumpulan
Doa (Prayer Collection), Kitab Fikih: Tata Cara Memandikan Mayat (the Book of Fiqh:
Procedures of Bathing Corpses), and Doa Haykal (Haykal Prayers).
14. Mohammad Taher Arfan
Mohammad Taher Arfan is not an indigenous Papuan. His ancestors moved from Tidore to
the Doom Island. He has one manuscript, whose condition is very bad. The paper has been
consumed by the ink, making it difficult to read. The sheets have stuck between one and
another so much that they can no longer be released. The title of the manuscript is Catatan
Desa Salawati dan Doa (Notes on Salawati Village and Prayer). In addition, he also has one
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piece of a talisman flag with the Arabic script in Arabic language written on it. Furthermore,
he has one dagger on which the Arabic script in Arabic language was written in gold ink.
15. Ali Umbalat
Ali Umbalat is an indigenous Papuan from Misool Island at the Raja Empat Islands, who
now lives in Sorong. He obtained two manuscripts from his family, namely Kitab Hidayah
As-Salikin and Kumpulan Hikayat Nabi (Collections of Prophet’s Tales).
16. Husen Umbalat
Husen Umbalat is Ali Umbalat’s younger brother. He lives in Misool Island at the Raja
Empat Islands. His collection of eight old manuscripts is borrowed from his family, namely:
Kumpulan Masalah Agama (A Collection of Religious Issues), Kutbah Id, Kutbah Jumat (Eid
Sermons, Friday Sermons), and five manuscripts concerning Kutbah Idul Fitri (Eid Al-Fitr
Sermons).
17. Musa bin H. Husen Salim
Musa bin Haji Husen Salim lives in Saonek Island, the capital of the Raja Empat Islands. He
is an indigenous Papuan, and the son of Saonek’s mosque Imam, Husen Salim. The manuscript that he has is the only manuscript that could be saved from the “manuscript burial”
event conducted by the local people of Saonek due to fear of keeping manuscripts that are
considered hieratic. The title of the manuscript is Kumpulan Doa Tarawih (A Collection of
Tarawih Prayer).
18. Jaelani Kuda
Jaelani Kuda is of a mixed Arab–Papua descent. He currently lives in Patimburak and Kokas
in Fak-Fak district. His family is the traditional guardian and Imam of the Patimburak
mosque that is located in Kokas district. The old manuscripts in his collection are borrowed
from his family. Apart from the manuscripts, he keeps an old ceramic plate decorated with
Arabic inscription in Arabic language. He actually has many manuscripts, but most of them
are in bad condition, and only six of them are still readable, namely Khifayatul Quran, Adabul
Quran, Tauhid, Akidah, Shalawat, and Nazam Barzanji.
19. Iksan Kuda
Iksan Kuda is the elder brother of Jaelani Kuda who also lives in Kokas district. He has only
one old manuscript, namely al Quran (the Koran).
20. Muhammad Ali Fuad
Muhammad Ali Fuad is of Arab–Papua descent and lives in Kokas district. As the imam of
Kokas mosque, he has four old manuscripts, namely Irsyadul Iman, Hikayat Nur Muhammad
(Tales of Nur Muhammad), and Kitab Mikraj Nabi (the Book of the Prophet’s Ascension).
21. Ibrahim Sagara
Ibrahim Sagara is of Arab–Papua descent. He lives in Patipi Island at the Raja Empat Islands.
As the imam of the mosque in Patipi Island, he has four manuscripts of lithographed (stone
print) Koran.
22. Saleh Barweri
Saleh Barweri is of Arab–Papua descent. He lives in Kokas district. He has only one manuscript entitled Hikayat Nabi Bercukur (Tales of How the Prophet Shaved).
4
CONCLUSION
On the basis of the above description, it can be concluded that the people of Papua have been
advanced and more civilized and had possessed a written culture long before the invasion of
colonialists.
From the perspective of resource persons and the heritage of Islamic culture in the form
of old manuscripts and historical objects found in Sorong, Fak-Fak, and the Raja Ampat
Islands, we can conclude that the majority of the Papuan manuscripts are concerned with
Islamic issues.
According to Andaya, the Papuan people associated the Sultanate of Tidore with Islam
and hence they responded by saying “Amin” when the letter of the Sultan of Tidore was read
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to the public in the 1705 event. Apparently, the expression “Amin”, which was uttered by the
Jogugu, the sea captain of Waigeo, and Salawati at that time, was not aimed at respecting the
Sultan of Tidore similarly to the uttering of the name of Allah in the Koran; however, it was
most probably because of the fact that the final part of the letter was a prayer.
From the perspective of the script and language used in the old manuscripts that were written in Arabic, Jawi, and Lontara scripts in Arabic, Bugis-Makassar, and Malay languages, it
can be estimated that the Islamic culture invaded Papua not merely because of the expansion
of the Sultanate of Tidore, Ambon, and Seram, but also because of the expansion of BugisMakassar.
The names of the manuscript owners, such as At Tamimi, Bafadlal, and others, show that
they are the descendants of the sayyid or syaikh from the past who came to Papua to spread
Islam.
The author believes that this study will be critical for scientists interested in conducting
research in eastern Indonesia, especially for those who want to know about the history, culture, and the characteristics of the Papuan society in the past. Furthermore, this study will
help complete the mapping of the Nusantara manuscripts throughout Indonesia.
REFERENCES
Andaya, L.Y. (1993) The World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modern Period. Honolulu,
University of Hawaii Press.
Churchill, W.A. (1935) Watermarks in Paper in Holland, England, France, etc. in the XVII Centuries and
Their Interconnection. Amsterdam, Menno Hertzberger.
Heawood, E. (1950) Watermarks: Mainly of the 17Th and 18th Centuries. Hilversum, The Paper Publications Society.
Muridan, W. (2013) Pemberontakan Nuku: Persekutuan Lintas Budaya di Maluku—Papua sekitar 1780–
1810 (Nuku Rebellion: Cross Cultural Fellowship in Maluku-Papua around 1780–1810). Jakarta,
Komunitas Bambu.
Pudjiastuti, T. (2006) Kertas Tradisional (Traditional Papers). In: Pudjiastuti, T. & Kartika, G.D.
Naskah dan Studi Naskah (Manuscript and Manuscript Studies). Bogor, Academia.
van der Molen, W. (1985) Sejarah Perkembangan Aksara Jawa in Aksara dan Ramalan Nasib dalam
Kebudayaan Jawa (History of the Development of Javanese Script in Javanese Literature and Prophecy). Translated by Soedarsono, Retna Astuti and I. W. Pantja Sunjata. Yogyakarta, Proyek Penelitian dan Pengkajian Kebudayaan Nusantara (Javanologi) Direktorat Jendral dan Kebudayaan.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Articulation and contestation of cultural identities in Riau
Province: The case of ‘Mandau Regency’
S. Basuki & M. Budiman
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: In this study, we discuss the articulation of cultural identities in Riau Province,
Indonesia, which—through fund transfers from the Central Government in the form of oil and
gas revenue sharing—has become a success story of decentralisation in the post-Soeharto era.
Decentralisation has provided opportunities for creating new regions, which Riau has made
uses of since 1999. However, the wish of residents of Mandau district in Bengkalis Regency to
form ‘Mandau Regency’ has yet to be fulfilled. Through the articulation of ‘Mandau Regency’,
the idea about a new regency that is separate from Bengkalis has risen in the minds of the
Mandau people. This idea is in line with the articulation that requires Mandau to stay within
Bengkalis according to the ‘native Malay population’. This contestation occurs in the middle
of a decentralisation design within the arena of authority, which is called governmentality by
Foucault. Here, we find that organisers in Jakarta still decide the fate of the Mandau people;
however, this must be done through cooperating with local organisers in Riau. The idea of
‘Mandau Regency’ will continue to exist together with new articulations of cultural identities.
1
INTRODUCTION
Decentralisation in Indonesia began when Law No.22/1999 on Regional Governments and
Law No. 25/1999 on the Balance of Finance between the central and regional governments
were issued. The regulation on revenue-sharing has caused Riau Province to gain much attention as a success story. Riau has always ranked in the top five provinces with the highest
per capita regional income in Indonesia. Bengkalis Regency, which has oil fields in Mandau
district, has become one of the few regencies in Indonesia with the highest regional income
and expenditure budget (APBD).
Decentralisation regulations also provided opportunities for creating new regions. In 1999,
Bengkalis Regency facilitated the creation of three new regencies and cities, including Dumai
City, Rokan Hilir Regency and Siak Regency. By 2009, Bengkalis Regency had already created another regency, namely Meranti Islands Regency. However, to date, the wish of the
residents of Mandau to form a new regency has yet to be fulfilled.
The ‘Mandau Regency’ issue will be discussed using a cultural studies approach, which
examines culture as a form of representation in the context of power within a society (Barker,
2011, p. 38). Culture is understood as a shared meaning on life that is vulnerable to power
domination. From the viewpoint of cultural studies, this issue is closely related to the articulation of cultural identity. Articulation (Hall, 1996, pp. 141–142) is the temporary connection
between two different elements within a certain context. The main principle is the delivery of
an idea and the temporary connection between the idea and its initiators. This connection is
related to a certain context, which in turn relates to the past as well as the future (Hall, 1990,
p. 225). The ‘Mandau Regency’ idea may be deemed appropriate or inappropriate to be connected to the Mandau people and its surroundings, depending on who connects or does not
connect them and what context is chosen by its initiators.
The temporary connection between an idea and its initiators becomes more crucial when
the idea is a cultural identity. Hall (1990, pp. 223–225) described ‘identity’ as ‘a matter of
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“becoming” as well as of “being”’, which undergoes continuous transformation on the other.
Hall (1990, p. 222) also explained that identity is not something transparent and simple;
therefore, it is more appropriate to understand identity as a never-ending process.
The people of Mandau, the majority of whom are immigrants, try to define themselves
as being one with the region where they live. The context that causes the emergence of the
articulation of ‘Mandau Regency’ is the wish to separate from Bengkalis. Nevertheless, they
also re-define themselves with Malayness as the main factor. The context is a movement
driven by the ‘newcomers’ to form a new regency without prioritising Malayness.
We argue that decentralisation is in fact a form of governmentality. The concept of governmentality, as put forth by Foucault (1991), is a policy designed in such a way that the
organisers can direct the behaviour of people. This situation of governmentality forms the
background in the ‘Mandau Regency’ issue. The creation of new regions must follow the rules
determined by the central government. We will discuss how cultural identities in Mandau are
articulated amidst the governmentality of decentralisation and how they are contested, resulting in the fact that the ‘Mandau Regency’ idea has not been realised.
2
METHOD
The author collected data by interviewing informants in Pekanbaru and Bengkalis, including
public figures, academicians, bureaucrats and journalists. Secondary data were collected by
observing the related official documents published by the central government and regional
governments. These two methods facilitated the observation of the articulation and contestation of cultural identities regarding ‘Mandau Regency’ and the complexities involved due to
the existence of governmentality in Riau Province.
3
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The centre of the Bengkalis Regency government is in Bengkalis Island, but the regency’s territory is spread out to Sumatra Island and several surrounding islands (Figure 1). The capital
of the Mandau district is Duri. The Duri Oil Field has been exploited since the 1950s by PT
Caltex Pacific Indonesia. Mandau district plays a strategic role in the economy of Bengkalis
as approximately 80% of the regency’s GRDP comes from the mining and excavation sector,
which is located mainly in Mandau. The population of Mandau district in 2011 was approximately 200,000 people, or approximately 44% (the largest share) of the total population of
Figure 1. Map of Bengkalis Regency (Bengkalis dalam Angka, 2012).
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Bengkalis. Studies supporting ‘Mandau Regency’ typically focus on the increasingly higher
population, the increasingly higher volume of economic activity and the workload of government officers. These factors are indeed the cause of the creation of new regions.
An ethnic Javanese community figure in Mandau said that the Mandau people ‘do not
have a shared cultural identity’. According to him, because of the presence of the Duri Oil
Field, most of the Mandau district residents are newcomers. The similarity among Mandau residents only lies in the economic factor of earning a living with their professions. To
this informant, Mandau people ‘tend to maintain their own subcultures without undergoing
acculturation’. Therefore, there is no specific cultural identity in Mandau. An ethnic Minang
informant also said that ‘culturally, there is no such thing as Mandau identity’. The Mandau
‘identity’ is only limited to economic pragmatism.
This study on the Mandau people is the establishment of a cultural identity, which is then
articulated as an effort to support the creation of Mandau Regency. Hall (2007, p. 2) described
that a similar view on many things and an ability to understand each other are actually qualities of people with the same culture. Therefore, a narration about cultural identity does not
have to be related to the former glory of a kingdom or a tradition that has passed on through
generations.
Meanwhile, according to Li (2000), a cultural identity can be articulated or unarticulated
depending on the situation faced by the related community. According to the community figures who support ‘Mandau Regency’, this articulation of cultural identity emerged due to the
‘threat’ of being part of Bengkalis Regency, which is considered to have exploited Mandau’s
natural resources while neglecting the welfare of people. However, we are unsure of whether
the formation of ‘Mandau Regency’ will improve the welfare of people.
The official stance of the Bengkalis Regency Government was to disapprove plans to create Mandau Regency. The reasons were that several requirements for the formation of Mandau Regency as stipulated by the law had not been met and that Bengkalis was considered
to have had too many regions separating from it. The Riau Provincial Government had the
same official stance.
During interviews with several ethnic Malay figures in Pekanbaru, the formation of Mandau
Regency was perceived as a threat to the ethnic Malay identity in Bengkalis. They were concerned about the possibility of a regional leader that is non-Malay or non-Muslim if Mandau
becomes a regency. The location of Mandau Regency near Rokan Hilir Regency, which borders
North Sumatra, has raised concerns that a Christian figure might emerge as a leader in Mandau
if it becomes a regency. These informants thought that there is financial support for the idea of a
Christian Bataknese figure to lead Mandau. This is the formation of a supporting narration for
an articulation, which is not always completely in accordance with the facts in the field.
The feeling of being threatened by a non-Malay potentially leading Mandau Regency is
then responded with an articulation of ‘anak jati Melayu or a native Malay to lead Mandau’.
An ethnic Malay academician mentioned the importance of the principle of ‘Malay as the
crown’ derived from an expression implying that a regional leader in Riau must be of ethnic
Malay descent. These explanations have prompted the author to detect a contestation of
space in Mandau.
For Malay elites in Pekanbaru, Mandau Regency is considered a ‘non-Malay element’
threatening Riau as ‘an ethnic Malay land’. Thus, they feel the need to relate Malay-ness with
the leadership in Mandau. This feeling of being threatened was practically non-existent during the process of creating Rokan Hilir and Siak Regencies.
Regarding the issue of the creation of Mandau and Christianisation, an informant who is
one of the Mandau figures supporting ‘Mandau Regency’ revealed that the Christianisation
issue was fabricated by Pekanbaru and Bengkalis to hide their failure in delivering public
service. This informant, who is a Muslim, believed that the new regency demand is motivated
more by a reason of justice instead of prioritising a particular cultural identity. Two other
Muslim informants generally agreed with this opinion, who considered the issue of cultural
identity or ethnicity, religion, race and inter-group relation (SARA) in Mandau to be too
‘high level’ because residents are generally too busy with their economic activities. According
to Mandau figures, the accusations of Malay figures in Pekanbaru about Christianisation are
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closely linked to the fact that ethnic Malays in Mandau are not adequately represented in the
bureaucratic circles or the entrepreneurial world. If Mandau Regency is created, then ethnic
Malay residents will get their access to power reduced. This opinion put forth by Mandau
figures is a counter-narration to the one from Malay figures.
A meeting with a Muslim Bataknese informant provided an opportunity for the author to
listen to the Bataknese group. According to him, there is no such conflict as stated by bureaucrats in Pekanbaru or Bengkalis. The informant also explained the system of the Bataknese
kinship, which renders conflicts among them or with other residents in Duri to be an exaggeration. The informant inferred that the perception that ‘SARA issues’ exist in Mandau
is caused by the jealousy of bureaucrats in Pekanbaru (many of whom are ethnic Malays)
against non-Malays who dominate the economy in Mandau.
The Mandau informants who are pro-regency creators have the same opinion that in the
era of decentralisation Mandau was discriminated by Bengkalis in various aspects. Mandau is
considered to be raised by the newcomers, not by the ‘pity’ of Bengkalis. Meanwhile, an ethnic
Malay informant, who is a former member of the Bengkalis Regional House of Representatives
(DPRD), admitted that Bengkalis has long treated Mandau unfairly. The regional income of
Bengkalis mostly comes from Mandau, especially from oil and gas revenue sharing. Furthermore, a waste retribution fee is imposed on Mandau residents, whereas no such fee is imposed in
Bengkalis. Despite this, public facilities for Mandau residents have yet to be improved. According to this informant, he has raised this issue since about 2008 but received no response from the
elites in Bengkalis.
This ethnic Malay informant suggested Bengkalis to release Mandau if it is not serious in
solving the problems in Duri. The informant even said that if he were a Mandau resident,
he would be at the forefront to demand Mandau to separate from Bengkalis. Everything
has a fee in Duri, and according to the informant, the fees were even higher than those in
Medan. The informant thought that Bengkalis should not mind if Mandau (as the source of
the largest share of income for Bengkalis) separates itself, as long as large infrastructures in
Bengkalis are built by the central government.
Decentralisation regulations have caused the creation of new regions in Bengkalis Regency
to be managed by the Bengkalis Regent and DPRD, as well as the Riau Governor and DPRD.
This authority was given to them through the Government Regulation No. 129 of 2000, which
is a technical regulation on creating new regions as stipulated by the Law No. 22 of 1999. In
line with the revision of the Law No. 22 of 1999 by the Law No. 32 of 2004, the Government
Regulation No. 129 of 2000 was also revised by the Government Regulation No. 78 of 2007.
Executive and legislative officials in Bengkalis and Riau are the decisive authorities on whether
Mandau people’s aspirations can be delivered to the central government and the DPR.
The author’s opinion is that the issue of the creation of new regions is not simply a technical matter of whether the requirements in the regulation can be met or not. This issue is part
of governmentality, where, for common prosperity, the behaviours of the people of Mandau,
Bengkalis and Riau are directed in such a way according to the will of those who designed
decentralisation in Jakarta. However, Foucault (1991, p. 102) reminded us that this situation
is a ‘very specific albeit complex form of power’ that requires careful calculation in order
to run smoothly. The complexity is apparent in the case of ‘Mandau Regency’. Apart from
the interactions between local actors, the creation of new regions also includes the design of
interactional patterns between local actors and players in the DPR.
Although the official stance of the Bengkalis Regency and Riau Provincial governments
stated that Mandau district had yet to fulfil the requirements to become a regency, the articulation of ‘Mandau Regency’ had a certain position of power. This position was then directed
into political practice. Lobbies from Mandau figures to the DPR in the 1999–2004 period
caused legislators to issue a Right for Initiative in proposing a Draft Law (RUU) on the
Creation of Mandau Regency. Former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono even issued a
Presidential Mandate (Ampres) No. R.01/Pres/2007 on 2 January 2007. Ampres is a cover letter for the representatives of the central government who are present in the DPR to deliberate
a draft law, in this context on the Creation of Mandau Regency. This caused the rejection
expressed by Bengkalis figures to Vice President Jusuf Kalla in January 2007.
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The contestation of political lobbies has so far been won by the ethnic Malay figures in
Bengkalis and Pekanbaru, resulting in the central government and DPR to discontinue the
deliberation of the RUU on the Creation of Mandau Regency during the 2004–2009 and
2009–2014 periods. Until October 2013, the proposal to deliberate the creation of Mandau
Regency still had not been included in the agenda of DPR. Several administrative requirements, including a recommendation from the Bengkalis DPRD (as the parent regency), had
yet to be fulfilled.
The Riau Gubernatorial Election of 2013 aspirated the supporters of the formation of
Mandau Regency, as several governor candidates supported the cause, including Annas
Maamun, who was later elected Governor. During the campaign period, the ‘Mandau
Regency’ idea was declared by the candidates to be a suitable element to be connected with
the Mandau people. The connection ended when Governor Annas Maamun preferred Mandau district to become ‘Duri City’ rather than ‘Mandau Regency’. Annas’ concept is another
counter-articulation against the ‘Mandau Regency’ idea, which has been expressed openly,
even in various demonstrations.
4
CONCLUSION
A cultural identity does not have to be related to histories of kingdoms or century-old traditions. A shared view on societal issues and an ability to understand each other are qualities
of people with the same culture. This is the basis that can be used to form a narration on
cultural identity, which is then articulated. A number of informants from various ethnicities
apparently see a common ‘threat’ if Mandau remains in Bengkalis; hence, they articulate the
‘Mandau Regency’ idea. At the same time, the ethnic Malay figures, especially in Pekanbaru,
feel that ‘Mandau Regency’ will threaten Malay-ness; therefore, they articulate the idea of
a ‘native Malay to lead Mandau’. As a result, contestation occurs between the two articulations of cultural identities.
The case of ‘Mandau Regency’ shows that governmentality of decentralisation in the issue
of creating new regions provides an opportunity for political practices that local elites in
Riau are often unable to control. However, they also have the opportunity to cooperate with
actors in Jakarta. The targets of governmentality are able to cooperate with their organisers in the central government. Governmentality by the central government has limitations,
wherein cooperation with local organisers in the regency and provincial level is required so
that Jakarta can direct the people in Mandau and Bengkalis. Although not directly expressed,
the main reason for cooperation of organisers in the Mandau context is oil exploitation in
Duri, which is practically under the control of the central government. Cooperation in governmentality between central and regional actors will still place the central government in the
most advantageous position.
The idea about ‘Duri City’ may drive the emergence of contestation between articulations
of cultural identities in new patterns. There can be a contestation of ideas between Mandau
residents living in Duri and Mandau residents outside Duri. New actors may emerge in Duri
as well as in Bengkalis, thus driving new cooperation patterns between the targets and the
organisers of governmentality. The arrest of Annas Maamun by the Corruption Eradication
Commission (KPK) caused the leadership in Riau Province to be shifted to Deputy Governor Arsyadjuliandi Rachman, who was called Acting Governor until 2018. Therefore, this
results in an even wider possibility for contestation between articulations of cultural identities involving Mandau residents.
REFERENCES
Barker, C. (2011) Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice, 4th edition. London, SAGE Publication Ltd.
BPS Kabupaten Bengkalis. (2012) Bengkalis dalam Angka 2012 (Bengkalis in Numbers 2012). Bengkalis,
Badan Pusat Statistik Kabupaten Bengkalis.
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Foucault, M. (1991) Governmentality. In: Burchell, G., Gordon, C. & Miller, P. The Foucault Effect:
Studies in Governmentality. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press. pp. 87–104.
Grossberg, L. (1996) On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall. In: Morley, D.
& Chen, K-H. Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. London, Routledge. pp. 131–150.
Hall, S. (1990) Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In: Williams, P. & Chrisman, L. Colonial Discourse &
Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. London, Harvester Wheatsheaf. pp. 222–237.
Hall, S. (1997) Representation. London, Sage Publications and the Open University.
Li, T.M. (2000) Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal Slot.
Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, 149–179.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Utilization of the Senjang tradition as cultural identity of the
people in Musi Banyuasin, South Sumatra
A. Ardiansyah & T. Christomy
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: In this article, we examine the utilization of Senjang as the cultural identity
of Musi Banyuasin (Muba), South Sumatra. The transfer of authority in the fields of culture and education facilitates strengthening the identity of each area. The district government of Muba seeks opportunities in the autonomous policy by utilizing cultural aspects to
strengthen the identity of Muba through Senjang, which is one of the living oral traditions
among the people of Muba district, South Sumatra Province, usually performed in special
occasions, such as wedding ceremonies, thanksgivings, and local government’s ceremonial
agenda. It is called Senjang because the verses and music are sung and played alternately.
Senjang is performed in Musi language, and performers of Senjang are called Tukang
Senjang. The objective of this study is to investigate the utilization of Senjang as a means to
understand the cultural identity of Muba. The study found some utilizations of Senjang by
the local government and community as part of local political processes.
1
INTRODUCTION
In the beginning of 2010, after the district separation, the author had a chance to be part of
a wedding reception in the city of Sekayu, Muba Regency, South Sumatra, during which, he
witnessed a performance called Senjang by the Sekayu people. A man and a woman gave a
unique Muba performance on the stage after they were called by the master of ceremony.
The man was wearing a high-collared suit or beskap and tanjak as the head cover, and the
woman was wearing a modern kebaya, high-heeled shoes, and tengkuluk as the head cover.
First, they bowed their heads to show respect, greeted the audience, and signaled the single
organ player to start the music. Then, they danced by moving their hands and legs following the
rhythm of the music. After the music stopped, the man started to recite Sampiran the Senjang
verses, about four to five lines, and then stopped, and the music was played again. The music
accompaniment and the verse recital were done alternately until the end of the performance.
The author also noted that the guests enjoyed and responded to the verses recited by the
performers by saying setuju (agree) and beno (correct), accompanied by gestures of approval
such as clapping, giving thumbs up, and shaking heads.
The show lasted for approximately 15 min and gained positive response from the audience.
The performance had a special impression on the author, who is a non-speaker of the Musi
language and not from Muba, which then leads to the following questions: What kind of
art is that? What is the intention behind the performance of this art? Is this art the identity
of Muba? Why did the master of ceremony say that this art was originally from Muba? The
questions ultimately led the author to explore about this Muba art further.
In 2002, the Muba Regency was divided into two districts, namely the Musi Banyuasin
district (Sekayu) and Banyuasin (Pangkalan Balai). The division did not only mean a political separation of the areas, but also affected those regions culturally. The political separation eventually led to contested cultural symbols. Competitions among different traditions
also took place. Indirectly, there were competitions to determine an identity. This happened
because all traditions could not represent a region simultaneously.
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Muba district, before the separation, had some oral cultural expressions. A study conducted
by Gaffar et al. (1989, 13–21) shows that those traditions were, among others, Senjang, Andaiandai Panjang, Mantra, Serambah, and Nyambai. The medium used in those traditions was
the Musi language. Senjang is the only cultural expression that still exists today.
The main reason for the survival of Senjang is that it is included as a local content in the
local literature course in the school-based curriculum of the 2004 Curriculum by the education policy makers of Muba district. Another reason is that the district has consistently
held the annual Randik Festival, one of the most important agenda of which is the Senjang
competition among the sub-districts in Muba district. The people also play a significant role
in increasing the re-popularization of the Senjang oral tradition. The support of the people
can be observed in public occasions, like wedding ceremonies, where Senjang is common, just
like the one the author witnessed.
In addition to the original questions, finally, it is recognized that there are many issues
behind the tradition. The presence of Senjang does not only fulfill the art in Musi Banyuasin,
but is also used as a communal cultural identity in Musi Banyuasin.
With regard to this central question, the purpose of this study is to show whether Senjang
can be used as a medium to understand and represent the cultural identity of Musi Banyuasin following the division, because the changes cannot be separated from political and cultural interests in Musi Banyuasin, given the different formation of cultural identity.
Here, we use a qualitative method with an ethnographic approach. During this study, the writer
conducted interviews with informants, including Senjang artists, public figures, and bureaucrats.
Observation–participation and interview were the main techniques used in this study.
2
RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
Muba community and culture have not attracted adequate attention of researchers worldwide. According to the author, Senjang tradition and Muba have been rarely mentioned in
the literature, among them are the studies on the oral tradition of Muba conducted by Zainal
Abidin Gaffar et al. (1989) titled Struktur Sastra Lisan Musi and by Ahmad Bastari Suan
et al. (2008) titled Sastra Tutur Sumatra Selatan: Peran dan Fungsinya dalam Masyarakat
Ogan Komering Ilir dan Musi Banyuasin.
The study conducted by Gaffar demonstrates the structure of the Musi oral literature. It
focuses only on folk tales and their components. Gaffar et al. did not explain other kinds
of oral tradition in Muba. It only documents some folk tales and analyzes the components
that build the folk tales. Suan et al. (2008, pp. 97–101) explained some oral traditions in two
districts, namely Ogan Komering Ilir district (OKI) and Muba district; however, the research
has not explained traditions in Muba completely. Suan et al. described the oral traditions in
Muba that still exist together with their functions and roles. One of them is the Senjang oral
tradition. The article written by Oktaviany (2008, pp. 1–10) titled Senjang: Tradisi Lisan yang
Masih Eksis di Musi Banyuasin discusses the topic specifically. Overall, the research about
Muba community and culture so far, as shown by the above overview, has generally been
beyond the social and cultural contexts that cover them, and has not been explored in depth.
Some existing cultural research focuses on the challenges faced by traditions and arts outside of Muba, which is related to the struggle of social and cultural groups and identity
determination. The dissertation of Anoegrajekti (2006), for instance, discusses Banyuwangi
Gandrung (a traditional dance from Banyuwangi). Anoegrajekti explained that Gandrung
is being hegemonized by three powers—market, bureaucracy, and religion—so that the art
represents a combination of all three powers with the domination of market. In such a context, identity is something that is not just created politically, but something that also moves
forward. The dissertation also shows the powers that compete for identity, which are market
gandrung, tradition gandrung, and religion gandrung.
Meanwhile, the unique role played by the local government in the formation of a region’s
identity is highlighted in the study conducted by Eri and Hasmi (in Ninuk 2008, p. 119),
which concludes that if the elites in the region come from or are close to certain communities
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or ethnic groups, a kind of extra attention is given to the culture in their home areas. This
attention can be in the form of allocating a large amount of budget.
To address the issues related to oral tradition, the author consults the results of the study
conducted by Tuloli (1990). This study observes the relationship between the community and
culture that encompasses it. According to Tuloli, all oral traditions that are maintained by
their respective communities must have functions in them. A tradition having functions in the
community will last longer, whereas the one with functions not in accordance with the wishes
of the people will disappear.
States that function and appear are very much influenced by who the doers are, for whom
the tradition is performed, and how much involvement do the participants or interpreters have
in the performance. A traditional performance may have some functions as well, namely (1) to
strengthen and attack political authorities, (2) to strengthen or be against tradition, (3) to
satirize, (4) to be used as propaganda, (5) to fulfill daily needs, (6) to be proud, (7) to express
beauty and love, (8) to complain, (9) to express issues that cannot be expressed openly, (10) to
avoid difficult conditions, (11) to find oneself or one’s identity, (12) to entertain, (13) to unite
and separate people, and (14) to be used as religious guidance (Finnegan 1992, pp. 126–127).
The situation is the same with Senjang, which still exists and is guarded by the community
because it still has functions. The community, especially the local government, sees Senjang
not just as entertainment, but also as a means of propaganda, social criticism, collective solidarity, and cultural enhancement, which are all used to form the cultural identity of Muba.
The people of Muba make use of Senjang as a means of propaganda to campaign several
things that are related to the programs conducted by the government of Muba district. The
propaganda is very visible in the Senjang lyrics and verses that are performed in the Senjang
competitions initiated by the government of Muba district. One example is shown in Figure 1.
The propaganda is seen clearly in the lyrics/verses of Senjang performed by Ema and
Manto in the Sriwijaya Festival in Palembang in 2014. The delivery of the Senjang lyrics/
verses in an occasion attended by people from all districts in South Sumatra proves that
Muba district is considered different from other districts and cities in South Sumatra. In
addition, in the text, Ema and Manto also mentioned the progress achieved by Muba and
mentioned a superior program of their district, the Permata program, which was believed to
lead the people to a better and more prosperous life.
Figure 1. Example of propaganda in the Senjang lyrics/verses.
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The One Billion One Village program is claimed by Muba district as one of its kind in
South Sumatra. The following is an excerpt of Senjang that contains Permata, one of the
programs of the pair of Pahri Azhari and Beni Hernandi, which was performed in the Randik
Festival by the representatives of Sanga Desa sub-district (Figure 2).
The above-mentioned Senjang lyrics/verses contain the program conducted on by the government under the administration of Pahri and Beni (2012–2017), which is Permata Muba
2017. Permata Muda is the acronym of Penguatan ekonomi kerakyatan, Religius, Mandiri, Adil
dan Terdepan maju bersama (the strengthening of public economy, religious, independent, fair,
and being at the very front). In carrying out the Permata Muba, the government launched the
One Billion One Village program in Musi Banyuasin. The program is claimed to be the first
and foremost program and acts as a differentiator that separates Muba from other districts in
South Sumatra. They call it the Pioneer of Village Development. Traditional art performance
is quite effective in delivering messages, especially for the village people or the people in general.
In addition to being used to convey messages about development, Senjang is used as a
medium to convey social criticism. This is interesting because Muba people still consider it
taboo to criticize somebody directly, particularly when the person being criticized is a leader,
a superior, or a relative, as well as taboo to criticize the current condition of the country.
As already explained above, Muba district has a vision called Permata 2017. The vision is then
translated into missions, which are (1) the strengthening of the public economy on the basis of
local resources and wisdom, which are independent, competitive, and religious; (2) developing
centers of growth and creative service that are supported by information technology and communication; (3) enhancing the equity of sustainable development that is fair and environmentally friendly; (4) developing quality human resources and religious sociocultural environment;
and (5) creating a trusted, clean, honest, professional, and democratic governance.
To explain the vision and missions through the Permata Muba program, the community
recites the following Senjang lyrics/verses (Figure 3).
Figure 2. One Billion One Village program in Senjang lyrics/verses.
Figure 3.
district.
Senjang conveyed in the 2013 Randik Festival by representatives of the Plakat Tinggi sub-
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To the community, the Permata 2017 program can be achieved if the rubber price is high
because, if the rubber price is low, their living is affected. Looking at such a condition, criticism can be done through Senjang. How will they achieve the Permata Muba if the rubber
price is low and the rubber is totally sapless? Because the community needs a solution to the
problem, the head of sub-district is asked to call the district head directly in order to find
a solution to solve the problem of low rubber price and high prices of daily commodities.
With Permata Muba 2017 as a way to create democratic governance, the head of a subdistrict can call the first person in the Bumi Serasan Sekate so that he may find a solution
in no time.
Beni Herniadi (Acting District Head of Muba) explained the author that it was easier for
him to remember what the Senjang performers described because through that he finally
understood what the Muba people wanted. A certain road that was damaged somewhere was
repaired directly because it had never been reported by the related service. With the existence
of Senjang, finally, the problem was being attended to be solved as soon as possible.
According to Beni, Senjang was very relevant for the current condition, especially for those
who understood the words that were expressed, from humorous lyrics to lyrics laden with
moral preachings. He added that Senjang was supposed to be used by people to express their
aspiration so that they would not need to demonstrate, as criticism was sufficiently delivered
through Senjang. For Uzer Effendi (the Chairperson of the Local Parliament for the period
2008–2014), the criticism expressed by Senjang performers was in accordance with the prevailing facts. If there was criticism, it must have been based on a real incident, especially on
unfulfilled campaign promises.
The utilization of Senjang as a means to express criticism is common in Muba. Local
officials understand well that there would be criticism expressed by Senjang performers if
they are invited to perform. So far, there has been no report of any Senjang performer being
arrested because they criticize the government. This is because the following format is followed by the performers: first, they ask for permission to start and apologize; second, they
ask for permission to leave and apologize. Accompanied by music and dance during the performance, the criticism expressed by the Senjang performers was sensible. Senjang criticizes
but does not hurt, and controls but does not dishonor the parties that are being criticized.
Furthermore, it is agreed that is the performance of Senjang is usually relevant with the current condition of the community.
The Muba people wish for a secure, peaceful, and prosperous community. Therefore,
Senjang is used to build collective solidarity of the people of Muba. The emergence of the
collective solidarity is caused by the nature of Senjang that goes beyond differences in age,
sex, and social status. Senjang is not only entertainment but also a means to keep the people’s
sense of solidarity and the bonds among people attending the performance.
Through Senjang, the people of Muba become close. This is proved when people from the
city of Palembang responded to Senjang very enthusiastically. One reason was that the audience was mostly Muba people relocated to Palembang. Those people who left their hometown long ago felt entertained.
In addition, in some festivals, the chosen themes were those aimed at increasing Muba people’s sense of solidarity, unity, and togetherness, such as in the 2014 Randik Festival with the
theme of “Through the Randik Festival We Foster the Unity among Sub-Districts in Musi
Banyuasin District”. This is related to the motto in the symbol of Muba district, Serasan
Sekate, which means always prioritizing on discussions to make one unanimous decision. The
aim of the festival itself is to sustain and develop the local art and culture and enhance the
creativity of art activism in Muba district.
With regard to the aim and the theme that have been planned in the festival, the position taken by Muba district in the effort to utilize traditional art becomes more obvious.
To achieve that, the unity among people and among sub-districts in Muba district is also
important because so far only Muba district had held Senjang competitions. Senjang is still
performed in some areas that are in the border between Muba district and Musi Rawas district, which is Muara Rupit area, which borders Sanga Desa village. That is also the case in
Banyuasin district that borders Muba district or in areas that still use the Musi language on
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a daily basis, such as in the Rantau Bayur area. However, Musi Rawas and Banyuasin cannot
claim that Senjang comes from their areas because no Senjang festival had been held there.
The following is a Senjang text delivered by Ema with Irsan in a wedding reception
(Figure 4).
Senjang performers who delivered the above Senjang lyrics/verses wanted to convey that the
Senjang art is their culture. The word kami (we) in the text refers to Ughang Muba or the people
of Muba. The word kami only refers to the speakers and does not include people whom they
converse with. In the next line, it is emphasized by the words “cultural heritage, old culture”.
Our (kami) cultural heritage is still developing. This emphasis is also evident in the text that was
delivered in the Senjang performance at a wedding reception in Sekayu, which can be read below.
On the basis of the text presented above, at the beginning of the Senjang performance, the
Senjang performers asked the audience for permission to perform Senjang. Senjang is the original culture of Muba, and the use of the word original (asli) refers to something that is original,
as it is not mixed. The word original can also mean something that is possessed from birth,
not acquired. Therefore, because the art is originally from Muba, it belongs to the people of
Muba, and it is presented in an occasion that is related to customs, like in wedding ceremonies.
In wedding ceremonies, all relatives, friends, and guests bless to bring luck and throw away bad
luck. The Senjang lyrics/verses show that this traditional art indeed belongs to Muba and is
performed at occasions in relation to customs, such as wedding ceremonies and thanksgivings.
The Senjang tradition in Muba community is utilized to confirm the culture that belongs
to them. This confirmation is also supported by the government, in this case, the Ministry of
Education and Culture decreeing that Senjang is an intangible cultural heritage belonging to
Muba. The decision was made in 2015. This decision proves that Senjang as the confirmation
of culture is also supported by parties outside of the community. The decision was based on
the fact that the tradition still exists and has maestros and supporters. In addition to being
the mandate of the 1945 Constitution, Article 32, the decision has the aim to encourage
governors, the heads of government in the provincial and district levels, stakeholders, and the
general public to participate in sustaining culture, by taking care of, protecting, and managing the culture in the best possible way.
Figure 4. Senjang lyrics/verses for wedding reception.
Figure 5. Senjang lyrics/verses delivered by performers.
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3
CONCLUSION
From the information provided above, it can be concluded that people from Muba use
Senjang tradition as a tool for propaganda, social criticism, collective solidarity, and affirming culture. As the tool of propaganda, Senjang is used to campaign for something that
is related to programs undertaken by the Government of Muba. Senjang is also used to
convey a message of development, and the gap is also used as a medium to deliver the social
criticism. Senjang is also used as a means of conveying criticism that has become a common
practice in Muba. In addition, it is used to build the collective solidarity of people in Muba.
The emergence of solidarity in the society in performing Senjang can neglect all differences
in gender, age, and social level. Senjang is not only an entertainment but also a tool to maintain the sense of solidarity and the bonds of the community attending the show. Moreover,
the attitude of consultation becomes the culture affirmation in this community. The use of
Senjang tradition as a tool to validate the culture can be seen from the adoption of Senjang
by the government in 2015 as an intangible cultural heritage belonging to Muba.
Thus, using a number of these types of tradition, we arrive at the formation of the cultural
identity of Muba communities that is stated in Senjang lyrics/verses that have been well performed in the customary and traditional events.
REFERENCES
Anoegrajekti, N. (2006) Gandrung Banyuwangi: Pertarungan Pasar, Tradisi, dan Agama Memperebutkan
Representasi Identitas (Gandrung Banyuwangi: Market Competition, Tradition, and Religion Competing
Identity Representation). [Dissertation]. Depok, FIB Universitas Indonesia.
Finnegan, R. (1977) Oral Poetry. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Finnegan, R. (1992) Oral Traditions and the Verbal Art. A Guide to Research Practices. New York, Routledge.
Gaffar, Z.A. Subadiyono, Supriyadi, Yusuf, H. & Nurbaiti. (1989) Struktur Sastra Lisan Musi (Oral Literary Structure of Musi). Jakarta, Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan.
Haris, Y. (2004) Bumi Serasan Sekate dan Penduduknya (Bumi Serasan Sekate and its inhabitants). Pemerintah Kabupaten Musi Banyuasin, Sekayu.
Hastanto, S. (2010) Budaya Identitas Bangsa, Identitas Budaya Bangsa (Culture of National Identity, Cultural Identity of the Nation). In: Nurhan, K. (ed.) Industri Budaya, Budaya Industri. Kongres Kebudayaan Indonesia 2008 (Cultural Industries, Industrial Culture. Indonesian Culture Congress 2008).
Jakarta, Kementerian Kebudayaan dan Pariwisata Republik Indonesia.
Irawan, E. & Baharuddin, H. (2008) Jenggirat Tangi, Politik, dan Imajinasi tentang Perempuan (Jenggirat
Tangi, Politics, and Imagination about Women). In: Kleden, N., Rohman, A.A. (eds.). Etnografi Gandrung: Pertarungan Identitas (Gandrung Ethnography: Identity Battles), Depok, Desantara Press.
Isaacs, H.R. (1993) Pemujaan terhadap Kelompok Etnis: Identitas Kelompok dan Perubahan Politik (Idols of
the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change). Jakarta, Yayasan Obor Indonesia.
Lord, A.B. (2000) The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, Harvard University Press.
Oktavianny, L. (2008) Senjang: Tradisi Lisan yang Masih Eksis di Musi Banyuasin (Senjang: Oral Traditions
that Still Exist in Musi Banyuasin). Palembang, Pusat Penelitian Balai Bahasa Palembang.
Ong, W.J. (1989) Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London and New York, Routlegde.
Paeni, M. (2011) Melihat Kembali Nasionalisme Indonesia dalam Konteks Masyarakat Plural Melalui
Perspektif Sejarah (Recalling Indonesian Nationalism in the Context of Plural Society through a Historical Perspective). In: Lan, T.J., & Manan, M.A. (eds.). Nasionalisme Ketahanan Budaya di Indonesia: Sebuah Tantangan (Nationalism of Cultural Resilience in Indonesia: A Challenge). Jakarta, Yayasan
Obor Indonesia.
Pudentia, M.P.S.S. (2008) Metodologi Kajian Tradisi Lisan (Methodology of Oral Tradition Studies).
Jakarta, Asosiasi Tradisi Lisan.
Sims, M.C. & Stephens, M. (2005) Living Folklore: An Introduction to Study of People and Their Traditions.
Utah, Utah State University Press.
Suan, A.B., et al. (2008) Sastra Tutur Sumatra Selatan: Peran dan Fungsinya dalam Masyarakat (Oral Literature of South Sumatra: Role and Functions in Society). Palembang, Dinas Pendidikan Provinsi Sumsel.
Teeuw, A. (1994) Indonesia antara Kelisanan dan Keberaksaraan (Indonesia between orality and literacy).
Jakarta, Pustaka Jaya.
Tuloli, N. (1990) Tanggomo: Salah Satu Ragam Sastra Lisan Gorontalo (Tanggomo: One of the Varieties
of Gorontalo Oral Literature). [Dissertation]. Depok, FIB-Universitas Indonesia.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Colophon in the Hikayat Pandawa manuscript
M. Buduroh & T. Pudjiastuti
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Since the beginning of the tradition of manuscript copying in Malay in the
14th century, the copyist or authors have often been unknown. In general, the manuscripts
only contain information regarding the kings or their superior who ordered the copying process. And the copyist did not write their identity on the copied manuscripts. However, this
situation has changed since the 19th century, as they included their identity on the copied
manuscripts. This also happened in the tradition of manuscript writing in Betawi, as is evident from the identity of the authors found in the last part of these manuscripts. Nevertheless, this did not occur in Hikayat Pandawa manuscripts, which form part of the collection of
the Republic of Indonesia National Library. Through investigating manuscript colophon, in
this study, we will describe the identity of the authors and its association with the tradition
of writing Malay manuscripts in Betawi.
1
INTRODUCTION
The colophon is an important part of the manuscript identity in the tradition of manuscript
copying in Malay, through which a researcher can identify the author, the time of writing,
and the method of writing of a manuscript. This information is important in the study of
Malay manuscripts to know their history of copying, which facilitates the analysis. However,
there has been less attention paid to the colophon on the study of Malay manuscripts. In
other words, when there is only one indicator of the manuscript identity, it is considered
without further consultation on any other source that may also exist in the colophon of the
manuscript. Nevertheless, sometimes the colophon itself contains very limited information
or sometimes no information regarding the colophon.
The exact time of emergence of colophons in the tradition of copying Malay manuscripts
is not known. However, its form reveals that the tradition of writing colophons is presumably influenced by the tradition of copying manuscripts from Persia or the Middle East. The
colophon on Malay manuscripts can be identified through the form of writing. It is usually
located at the end of the manuscript, resembling an inverted triangle. In addition, there are
words, such as “the end” or “this is the end”, which mark the end of the story, followed by
time and the name of the author.
Chambert-Loir (2014, 263) in his article “Malay Colophons” described colophons as the
“last paragraph” written deliberately by the copyist. He further explained that the information found in the colophon is related to the copied work (i.e., the text), the author, the place
and date of writing, the circumstance and the purpose of writing and copying itself (the
manuscript), the date of copying (Islamic and CE; the name of the day; hour), the name
of the copyist; the location of copying, the details of the manuscript (paper; format), the
owner of the manuscript, and the source text (date, owner). Furthermore, Chambert-Loir
revealed that, from the viewpoint of literature, colophons show the presence of texts in a
particular place. In other words, colophons contain information about the place where the
text is known and appreciated, and from the viewpoint of codicology, colophons illustrate
the role of copyists in the Malay world (2014, 269). In order to address these problems, we
will describe the colophon contained in a manuscript entitled Hikayat Pandawa coded Ml. 15
in the manuscript collection of the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia.
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2
COLOPHONS AND LITERARY ACTIVITIES
The Hikayat Pandawa manuscript contains part of the Mahabharata. The story begins with
information about a king named Maharaja Bismaka ruling a country named Mandirapura.
Maharaja Bismaka had three daughters, namely Dewi Amba, Dewi Ambawani, and Dewi
Ambalika, for whom he conducted a contest for the princes who would like to marry them.
Dewabrata, prince of Astinapura, won the contest. The story ends with information about
Gatotkaca who flew to a country named Pringgodani, whereas the Pandawa gathered in
heaven and had a good time there.
The manuscript was written in Malay language using Arabic–Malay letters with black and
red inks. Scratches of black ink look thin with red rubrication. The manuscript contains 475
pages. European paper sized 31 × 20 cm was used for the writing. Two types of paper were
used, as is evident from the two different paper stamps in the manuscript, namely a woman
carrying a spear paper stamp (No. 50 with the year of production 1848) and a lion carrying
a sword paper stamp (No. 102 with the year of production 1846) (Voorn 1960). The name of
the author and the time of writing are not found in the colophon.
The colophon on the manuscript is a poem consisting of 15 stanzas. The writing of
colophon in a poetry form is indeed a reminiscent of the shape of colophons in the
manuscripts found in Pecenongan area. In the 19th century, this place was specially
known for manuscript copying initiated by the Fadli family, in which there were four
copyists and writers, namely Sapian bin Usman, Sapirin bin Usman, Ahmad Beramka,
and Muhamad Bakir. Unfortunately, the colophon does not contain information on any
of the four names. A similar finding was observed in the search for Pecenongan’s collection of manuscripts that have been compiled in Katalog Naskah Pecenongan Koleksi
Perpustakaan Nasional, Sastra Betawi Akhir Abad ke-19 (National Library Collection
of Pecenongan Manuscripts Catalogue, Betawi Literature End of 19th Century), and
the manuscript of Hikayat Pandawa is not included in this collection. As the content of
the manuscript is on Wayang stories, there are nine manuscripts that are contained in
or sourced from the Mahabharata. The manuscripts are Hikayat Angkawijaya, Hikayat
Asal Mulanya Wayang, Hikayat Gelaran Pandu Turunan Pandawa, Sair Perang Pandawa, Hikayat Agung Sakti, Hikayat Maharaja Garbak Jagat, Lakon Jaka Sukara, Hikayat Wayang Arjuna, and Hikayat Purusara.
The colophon also shows a problem of the manuscript borrowing. It is mentioned that the
text should not be borrowed for a long time, and is limited to only 5 days, before which the
borrower/reader should return it. It is quoted in the following lines:
bunga tunjung teram-teram
bunga kesturi bunga delima
jangan dipinjam terlalu lama
a-n-t-h hari kelima
ambil kaca di dalam pakan
anak belibis segera kandangkan
siapa yang membaca sembah pasukan
jikalau habis segera pulangkan
Lending or renting manuscripts was unusual in the tradition of copying Malay manuscripts. This is especially true in the tradition of copying Malay manuscripts in Betawi. Some
texts, especially the works of Muhamad Bakir, reveal that the scripts he copied were also lent
with the amount of time, with the amount of rent specified in the colophons. Unlike the
Hikayat Pandawa text, the information about lending or renting the text does not mention
the amount of rent to be paid by the borrower.
In addition to providing information related to manuscript borrowing, the manuscript contains a description of the origin of the copied story. The story in this Hikayat Pandawa manuscript originally came from Java. The story was “transferred” from Javanese language into
Malay, which could be seen on the first page of the following manuscript: “Once upon a time
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there was a story of our ancestors which was told in Javanese language before transferred into
Malay” (p. 1).
Information about the origin of the story is also confirmed in the colophon by mentioning
the Javanese language elements in the story. Besides, the copyist admitted that the story was
different from its rules. Here is an excerpt.
Telah dikarang ceritera Pandawa
bahasanya campur Melayu Jawa
Jikalau tuan membaca jangan tertawa
sebab aturannya janggal banyak kecewa.
Pandavas or Pandawa are basically the figures featured in the Mahabharata originated in
India. The story started spreading in the 5th century CE in Asia and is still well known globally. Furthermore, the epic story can be found in various forms, such as movies, serials, and
books. This is possible because the story changed during its spread because of the difference
of cultural settings between the origin of the story in the Mahabharata found in Java and the
form of kakawin, such as Kakawin Bharata Yudha. The story is about the battle between
Pandavas and Kauravas or Kurawa and written in Old Javanese by Mpu Panuluh and Mpu
Sedah in 1157 CE. It is written in the form of kakawin, which is different from the parwa form.
Kakawin is considered as the source of the copy of Hikayat Pandawa Jaya, the manuscript
coded Ml. 91 from the collection of the National Library of Indonesia. The copying of manuscripts from Javanese language to Malay language might have happened around the second half
of the 14th century. During the process of copying the manuscript from Javanese language to
Malay language, a shape transformation occurred and new characters that were not featured in
the Mahabharata text originating from Java emerged. Cultural transformation can also occur in
the process of copying. For the Javanese, Mahabharata was sometimes considered to be sacred,
whereas in the tradition of Malay literature, it was regarded as profane. In addition, the relationship between the characters in the story is different because the characters were often considered
to have links with the real life in the Javanese tradition, which is achieved by attributing the
genealogy of the kings into the life story of the Mahabharata, whereas in the Malay tradition,
it is still regarded as not related to the kingdom. However, in terms of linguistics, the characters
in Kakawin Bharata Yudha can be still found in Hikayat Pandawa Jawa (Tjiptaningrum 2004).
In the tradition of manuscript copying in Java, Kakawin Bharata Yudha was copied by a
master craftsman, namely empu, referring to a person with expertise as a writer in the kingdom. However, the situation is different in Hikayat Pandawa, that is, the story was copied by
a person who was not only a writer, as indicated in the following quote.
Cerita ini hamba terhentikan
sedang banyak kerja yang dipikirkan
bi dan kurang tuan maafkan
…ti yang kasih jangan ubahkan.
Another important issue in the colophon of this manuscript is writing thin scratches,
which is also a form of writing. The thin scratches indicate technical problems in writing.
Other problems were the limited availability of ink as a material for writing and the problems
with writing instruments, such as a broken pen. This is stated by the author in the final stanza
of the colophon as follows:
Bakar setanggi di dalam surat
pecahkan piring dalam pelita
apalagi hendak dikata
dakwatnya kering kalamnya patah.
In another part of the colophon, the author also suggested that the story should be read only
under the light so that the reader can clearly see the script, as described in the following quote:
Pandawa susupan telah terlarang
membatu lirani sembarang-barang
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dakwatnya putih hitamnya kurang
tuan membaca itu tempat yang terang.
Writing scratches are important for the form of writing in the manuscript because of their
unique characteristic of being owned by a single copyist or a scriptorium. For example, in a
script that was copied on the initiative of the Algemeene Secretarie in Batavia in the 19th century, the form of writing is unique based on the standards of the institution. Although they
were copied by different people, the manuscripts had some similarities in terms of writing.
Their time of copying and writers were recorded, which include Muhammad Cing Saidullah
(1819–1828), Mohammed Sulaiman (1819–1830), Muhammad Hasan bin Haji Abdul Aziz
(1834), and Abdul Hakim (1819–1826) (Rukmi 1997).
Given the form of writing scratches and the activities of manuscript copying in these institutions, it seems that the Hikayat Pandawa manuscript does not belong to the category of
manuscripts copied by those copyists. On the basis of the time of copying, they generally
worked as copyists in the early 19th century. Meanwhile, the paper stamp on the Hikayat
Pandawa manuscript confirms the time after the aforementioned period. The investigation
on the paper stamp used showed that the paper was produced between 1846 and 1848. Estimating that the paper arrived and was used in Batavia approximately 5–10 years later, the
Hikayat Pandawa manuscript was possibly copied in the 1850s or the 1860s.
It can be predicted from the characteristic feature of the manuscript colophon that it was
copied in another place, Batavia or Betawi. Especially, Pecenongan area was one of the manuscript-copying places, where several manuscripts were copied. This activity in this place
was started by Sapirin bin Usman or Guru cit. He actively copied manuscripts from 1858 to
1885. He taught his expertise in copying to his son, Ahmad Beramka, and his nephew, Muhamad Bakir, who actively involved in copying and even produced works of new compositions,
including the story that originated in the Mahabharata. One characteristic of the writing of
Muhamad Bakir is that he included his name in the manuscripts he wrote or copied. Therefore, it is most unlikely that the Hikayat Pandawa manuscript, which does not include the
name of the author, is the work of Muhamad Bakir.
Special attention is paid to the writing scratches in the Hikayat Pandawa manuscript, the
writing form of which is similar to that of the woks produced by Muhamad Bakir. However,
the size of the writings is smaller and more tightly written. One can see the striking differences
between the forms of writing on the Hikayat Sultan Taburat (Ml.183 D) manuscript copied by
Sapirin bin Usman and Muhamad Bakir by comparison. The form of writing of Hikayat Pandawa is more likely to be found on the manuscript written by Sapirin bin Usman or Guru cit.
3
CONCLUSION
Colophon in a manuscript is actually the information about its identity, which includes the
name of the author, date of writing, and the method of writing. However, sometimes we
cannot find all the information explicitly in the colophon. Therefore, it is required to have
a supplementary section in the manuscript to explore the necessary information about the
identity of the manuscript. By analyzing the form and content of the colophon, which is then
combined with information about the form of writing and paper stamp used in the Hikayat
Pandawa manuscript, the writer and the place of writing can be identified. It is probable
that this manuscript was written by Sapirin bin Usman, the author of the early generation
in Pecenongan area. Thus, the text is also one of the manuscript collections of Pecenongan,
although it is not included in the catalog of Pecenongan manuscripts.
REFERENCES
Chambert-Loir, H. (2009) Hikayat Nakhoda Asik (Sapirin Bin Usman) dan Hikayat Merpati Mas
(M. Bakir) (Tale of Asik the Skipper (Sapirin Bin Usman) and The Tale of the Golden Pigeon (M.
Bakir). Jakarta, Masup.
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Chambert-Loir, H. (2014) Iskandar Zulkarnain, Dewa Mendu, Muhammad Bakir, dan Kawan-kawan:
Lima Belas Karangan tentang Sastra Indonesia Lama (Iskandar Zulkarnain, Dewa Mendu, Muhammad
Bakir, and Comrades: Fifteen Essays on Old Indonesian Literature). Jakarta, Kepustakaan Populer
Gramedia.
Fitzgerald, J.L. (1983) The Great Epic of India as Religious Rhetoric: A Fresh Look at Mahabharata.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 51 (4), 611–630, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1462584.
Accessed: 24th August 2010 at 01:05.
Hassan, T.F. (2004) Sastra Melayu Bersumberkan Kakawin Jawa Kuno (Malay Literature Based on
Ancient Javanese Kakawin). In: Sedyawati, E., Sugono, D., Zaidan, A.R., Djamaris, E. & Ikram,
A. (eds.). Sastra Melayu Lintas Daerah (Cross-country Melayu Literature). Jakarta, Pusat Bahasa,
Departemen Pendidikan Nasional.
Iskandar, T. (1996) Kesusastraan Klasik Melayu Sepanjang Abad (Classical Malay Literature Throughout the Ages). Jakarta, Penerbit Libra.
Karim, N., Purwanto, D., Isyanti, D. & Nurita, Y. (2015) Katalog Naskah Pecenongan koleksi Perpustakaan
Nasional: Sastra Betawi Akhir Abad ke-19 (National Library Collection of Manuscript Catalogue: Betawi
Literature End of 19th Century). Jakarta, Perpustakaan Nasional RI.
Rukmi, M.I. (1997) Penyalinan Naskah Melayu di Jakarta pada Abad XIX: Naskah Algemeene Secretarie
Kajian dari Segi Kodikologi (Copying Malay Manuscripts in Jakarta in the 19th Century: Algemeene
Secretarie Manuscript of Codicology). Depok, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Indonesia.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Bismaprawa: An Old Javanese text from the Merapi-Merbabu
tradition derived from Adiparwa
A. Kriswanto & D. Puspitorini
Department of Philology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Bismaprawa is a codex unicus originating from Merapi-Merbabu manuscripts
written around 1669 AD. Bismaprawa is now kept at the National Library under the registration number 6 L 145 which is grouped into Merapi-Merbabu manuscripts. Bismaprawa is a
manuscript of the Merapi-Merbabu tradition, and its story comes from Adiparwa. It is recognizable by the fragments of the story in it. However, it does not mean Bismaprawa always
adheres to the framework of the source text because both are still different. The difference is
caused by the presence of new elements that could be borrowed from other texts or elements
derived from Bismaprawa itself, which is not contained in Adiparwa. The Bismaprawa and
Adiparwa intertextual relationship can be traced from two aspects, namely the relationship
related to character and the relationship associated with the event. Based on both relationships, it can be concluded that the new figures and new events that appear in Bismaprawa
are not sourced from Adiparwa. Bismaprawa text creation can be seen as an attempt for the
reader and writer to interpret Adiparwa as the source text. Interpretive effort by creating new
elements is considered to represent a living tradition of text inheritance according to the situation of supporters.
1
INTRODUCTION
The Bismaprawa manuscript is currently maintained at the National Library of the Republic of
Indonesia and is included as part of the library’s collection of Merapi-Merbabu manuscripts.
The Merapi-Merbabu manuscript collection is a set of manuscripts discovered on the
western slopes of Mount Merbabu which was integrated into the collection of Bataviaasch
Genootschap around 1852 (Bleeker, 1852, p.6). Mount Merbabu and its surrounding areas
were the centre for the studies of Hindu-Buddhist literature and religion. However, this did not
mean that the community shut itself from external influences. This is proven by the existence
of Islamic texts which were created in these regions (van der Molen and Wiryamartana, 2001,
p. 55). Based on date indicators found in several texts with colophons, it is evident that the
texts produced by the Merbabu scriptorium were written or copied between the second half
of the seventeenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth century (Wiryamartana,
1993, p. 506). However, these texts do not provide clear indication about the time when the
Merbabu scriptorium first came into existence; that is, whether the literary community was
established not long after the ruin of Majapahit or long before the foundation of Mataram
kingdom in Central Java (van der Molen and Wiryamartana, 2001, p. 55).
The Merapi-Merbabu manuscript collection consists of texts which were written in
various Javanese traditional literary forms, such as kakawin, parwa, and kidung. Bismaprawa
was written in old Javanese language in the form of parwa, similar to Korawasrama, Tantu
Panggelaran, Nawaruci, and others (Poerbatjaraka, 1952, pp. 57–71). The story in Bismaprawa
was inspired by the story in Adiparwa, an Old Javanese prose work originating from an Indian
text (Ras, 2014, p. 143) which was written in the Old Mataram Kingdom around 991–1009.
Bismaprawa literally means “the story of Bisma,” but Bismaprawa does not merely tell a
story of Bisma because it is more related to the stories in Mahabharata, particularly those in
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Adiparwa. The story recounted in Bismaprawa was inspired by the story recounted in Adiparwa. However, Bismaprawa does not seem to be adhering to the narrative framework of the
source text because both texts are different in many respects. Bismaprawa is different from
Adiparwa because it displays some distinctive features, such as borrowed elements from other
texts or elements unique to Bismaprawa itself, which do not exist in its source text. Thus, Bismaprawa cannot be properly read without understanding the background of its source text,
Adiparwa. However, readers must bear in mind that the most important thing is not the borrowed elements themselves, but the way they are integrated into the new narrative structure
and whether their meanings remain the same or have undergone certain changes. This is a
very interesting subject of investigation (Zaimar, 2014, p. 93).
The production of Bismaprawa as part of the Merapi-Merbabu tradition demonstrates
that the Javanese society has also inherited the story of Adiparwa, albeit in a different literary
form and plotline. This finding is significant because so far we only know Adiparwa from Balinese literary tradition (Juynboll, 1906, pp. III-VI). It is, therefore, obvious that the discovery
of Bismaprawa must be considered as an important development in the studies of Javanese
literature because it is through Bismaprawa that the traces of Adiparwa can be finally identified years after its alleged disappearance from the Javanese literary tradition.
1.1 Relationship between Bismaprawa and Adiparwa
The story of Bismaprawa was inspired by the story of Adiparwa. However, this does not mean
that Bismaprawa always adheres to the narrative framework of Adiparwa because Bismaprawa
has its own narrative framework. According to Julia Kristeva, this may happen because of
productive reading, which means that Bismaprawa’s writer had his own reading materials as
the sources for rewriting the story. Therefore, the relationship between Bismaprawa (as the
resulting text) and Adiparwa (as the source text) may be considered as intertextual in nature.
The intertextuality between Bismaprawa and Adiparwa as observed in this study is not constructed on the basis of similarities, but on the shifts or changes occurring during the production of Bismaprawa and the factors which cause such shifts or changes. This is in line with
Julia Kristeva’s argument that the intertextual relationship is built, among others, by a dualface reality which consists of the process of reading and the process of writing. The shifts and
changes which are indicated by the existing differences between Bismaprawa and Adiparwa
aptly demonstrate that both reading and writing processes actually took place during the
production of Bismaprawa as a form of intertextual relationship between the two texts.
The intertextuality of Bismaprawa and Adiparwa is observable through certain objective
criteria, such as characters and events. The criterion of character may take two forms: (1)
the introduction of new characters or places in the resulting text (Bismaprawa) and (2) any
additions of or changes in the names of characters already existing in the source text (Adiparwa). Changes in the names of characters which only involve spelling or pronunciation
modifications are not included in our analysis. An example of this is the modification from
Durgandini (Adiparwa) to Drigandini (Bismaprawa). The criterion of event may take two
forms: (1) events which affect the course of the narrative in certain fragments of the story and
(2) new events which were added to already existing events in certain fragments of the story.
If both criteria are present simultaneously, they should be regarded as a single criterion of an
event because basically both criteria are inseparable in any narrative works.
The character-based relationship, the intertextual relationship between Bismaprawa and
Adiparwa, generated new characters who originated from other texts or created by the writer
of Bismaprawa. They are as follows:
1.2
Citrasena
In Adiparwa, the main character Bisma had siblings named Citranggada and Citrawirya. In
Bismaprawa, Bisma’s siblings were Citranggada and Citrasena. In other words, the character
Citrawirya in Adiparwa was replaced by Citrasena in Bismaprawa. The name Citrasena is,
however, can be found in other older texts, such as Korawasrama. Korawasrama is estimated
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to be written in around 1635 AD (Swellengrebel, 1936, p. 47). Below is a quotation from
Korawasrama which mentions Citrasena:
gĕmuh kakayang ring pupu kiwa, palinggihanira sang Citranggada, gĕmuh kakayang
pupu tengen, palinggihanira sang Citrasena
‘round and bent on the left thigh, [that was] the seat of Citranggada; round and
bent on the right thigh, [that was] the seat of Citrasena.
The names Citrasena and Citranggada as mentioned in Korawasrama and Nawaruci are
apparently not intended to refer to Bisma’s younger siblings, but to certain gods or other
heavenly beings because Bismaprawa also implicitly mentions that Citrasena actually bore
the same name as that of a heavenly being, and this fact prompted the being to kill Bisma’s
younger sibling, as shown in the following passage.
Dan ucapĕn widadara sang Citrasena, ya ta ingilangakĕn antĕn sang Prabata ri gatining amama a dewata.
‘And it is told that the gallant Citrasena, Prabata’s younger sibling, was slain
because of his god-like appearance.’
The word Citrasena as the name of a heavenly being may be traced back to old sources
from Hindu mythology (Williams, 2003:101). Citrasena was a musician in heaven who
played many roles in both Purana and epic literature. The name Citrasena in Korawasrama
came from Hindu mythology known long before the production of Korawasrama itself. The
appearance of the name Citrasena in the 17th century Old Javanese narrative literary work
might have been due to the influence of tutur, another type of the Javanese literary text.
Thus, the first mention of Citrasena as the name of a heavenly being has been found, but
the first mention of Citrasena as Pandu’s son or Bisma’s younger sibling in Bismaprawa did not
take place until its appearance in the Cantakaparwa text as indicated in the quotation below.
Tan warnan lawasnira sang prabu makuren, ya ta masiwi kakalih sami jalu, ingaran
sang Citranggada Citrasena.
It is not told how long the King had been married, but he had two sons named
Citranggada and Citrasena.
Cantakaparwa is a narrative text whose manuscripts can be found in the Balinese tradition.
In terms of characters, Bismaprawa is related to Cantakaparwa, although it is unknown
which text was produced first. Based on this intertextual relationship, it can be said that the
name Citrasena did not originate from Bismaprawa, but from the same narrative tradition
which also gave rise to Cantakaparwa. The change of the character’s name from Citrawirya to
Citrasena demonstrates that the intertextual relationship between Bismaprawa and Adiparwa
is marked by the presence of new characters from other related texts.
Preta. In Bismaprawa, Preta is the name used by Kunti before she became a priestess following the death of her husband, Maharaja Pandu. This is mentioned in the following passage:
Sang Prĕta sira arĕp alabuwa sira api, atang Bagawan Bisma Bagawan Dyuwasa tan
pasung sira tumuta, akon sira wikĕn angganya, sangaskrĕtanira pan ita Ba ari Kun i.
Preta wished to jump into the fire, but Bagawan Bisma and Bagawan Dyuwasa
prohibited her; they told her body to become a wiken (priestess), and her ordained
name being the priestess Batari Kunti.
The name Preta and the sequence of events leading to its transformation into Kunti cannot be found in Adiparwa. In Adiparwa, Kunti is the name of a daughter of King Kuntaboja,
a king in Kuntawisaya.
Ana ta anak sang Kuntaboja stri, inaranan sang Kunti, kanya sĕ ĕng ahayu.
‘It was told of a daughter of Kuntiboja named Kunti, a beautiful girl.’
According to a source from the Indian Mahabarata, Preta or Prita is another name for Kunti
(Dowson, 1888, p. 42). The name Patah in Cantakaparwa or Preta in Bismaprawa actually
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came from India and was not created by the writers of both Javanese texts. The name Preta
does not exist in other manuscripts from the Merapi-Merbabu tradition. The name Kunti
appears as a replacement for the name Preta in Bismaprawa as the result of the death of
Preta’s husband, Pandu. This event does not exist both in Adiparwa as the source text and in
Cantakaparwa as another text from the same literary tradition.
The fact that both Cantakaparwa and Bismaprawa give a similar treatment to Adiparwa—
that is, that both texts feature the names Preta and Citrasena, which had previously appeared
in older texts, proving that there is an obvious intertextual relationship between Cantakaparwa and Bismaprawa, even though both texts originated from different literary traditions.
1.3 Nama Widura
In Bismaprawa, it is told that Pandu had a step brother named Nama Widura. In Adiparwa,
this Pandu’s brother was simply called Widura, as shown below.
sang Widura makebu anakning mantri patih.
‘Widura, whose mother was a maid in the palace’
A character named Widura also appears in other texts, such as Korawasrama, as shown below.
sang Widura pwa makapurohita sang Pandawa.
‘Widura became Pandawa’s teacher,
However, Korawasrama once refers to Widura by using the name sang anama Widura, even
though the phrase may have been intended to mean ‘the one with the name Widura’:
antĕnira, sang anama Widura pinakatuwa-tuwa de sang Pandawa.
‘the younger brother, whose name was Widura, was made a leader by Pandawa.’
Even though the writer of Korawasrama did not intend to give additional words to Widura’s name, the writer of Bismaprawa may have copied those words and intended them to be
part of Widura’s proper name. If this was the case, the transformation of the verb anama (‘to
name’) into the noun Nama (‘name’) seems plausible. Such pattern of word class shifts was
common in the transformation of other Merapi-Merbabu manuscripts. For instance, in the
transformation of Arjunawiwaha into Wiwaha Kawi Jarwa, several patterns of shifts were
generated out of the writers’ creativity, such as the introduction of new characters and places
whose names were derived from the names of other entities which are not characters or
places, the provision of names for previously nameless entities, and adaptations in the form
of conversations (Wiryamartana, 1990, pp. 229–232).
Based on the similarity of term usage found in Bismaprawa and Korawasrama and the
similarity of word class shift patterns between Bismaprawa and other texts from the MerapiMerbabu tradition, it can be concluded that the name Nama Widura in Bismaprawa comes
from the phrase ‘anama Widura’ in Korawasrama. This is supported by the fact that several
Korawasrama manuscripts were also discovered amongst the manuscript collection produced
the Merapi-Merbabu scriptorium, the same literary society which gave rise to Bismaprawa.
2
2.1
EVENT-BASED INTERTEXTUALITY
Events leading to the transformation of Bisma’s name
Events which led to the transformation of Bisma’s name are related to the title of the text itself,
even though Bisma only takes a prominent role in one fragment of the text. Interestingly, this
“Bisma fragment” in Bismaprawa recounts a different story from the story recounted in Adiparwa.
In Bismaprawa, it is told that when Prabata won a competition and brought three princesses to be married to his younger siblings, he promised that if any of his younger siblings
did not want to marry one of the princesses, he would marry her instead. Both of Prabata’s
two younger siblings chose Amba’s two sisters to be their respective wives, and they did not
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wish to have any more marriages. Amba demanded Prabata to honor his promise and marry
her, but he refused although his teacher, Bagawan Parasu, forced him to do so. Amba then
always followed wherever Prabata went. One day Prabata tried to frighten her by stretching
out a bow and an arrow in the hope that she would no longer follow him. Unfortunately, the
arrow was shot by accident and struck Amba’s heart, causing her to die. Before dying, Amba,
at Prabata’s own request, put a curse on Prabata that he would never die until the appearance
of a princess who bore a bow. After her death, Prabata was later given the name Bisma.
The change of name from Prabata into Bisma in Bismaprawa is mainly driven by romantic
factors because, in this text, Prabata had never taken a vow not to marry again (as is the case
in Adiparwa), because he was able to make a promise to marry any princess whom his brother
did not want to marry. However, it turned out that Prabata broke his promise and refused to
marry Amba who was not chosen by his brothers.
It is also mentioned in Bismaprawa that Bisma was a hermit. After Amba’s death, Prabata
immediately went to Wirakanda to perform meditation. This episode does not exist in Adiparwa. In another part of the text, Wirakanda is described as a mandala, which is indicated
in the phrase ‘man alaning Bisma ri Wirakan a’ (p. 175). Mandala was a village for religious
people, which was commonly established in the middle of a forest (Sedyawati (ed.), 2001,
p 102). In Wirakanda, Bisma meditated for a long time. He decided to lead the life of a recluse in Wirakanda because he was filled with deep remorse for accidentally killing Amba and
for requesting Amba to put a curse on him. In this regard, Bismaprawa seems to put more
emphasis on Bisma’s status as a hermit or priest. It is also implied in another part of the text
that Bisma had actually received the title of a priest (bagawan):
Sang Prĕta sira arĕp alabuwa sira api, atang Bagawan Bisma, Bagawan Dyuwasa tan
pasung sira tumuta.
‘Preta wished to go into the fire, Bagawan Bisma and Bagawan Dyuwasa came
and forbade her to die.’
Bisma’s depiction as a hermit does not exist in Adiparwa or in any other texts which feature the
character of Bisma. This shift of Bisma’s characterization to a hermit signifies the image of the
Merapi-Merbabu society as the abode of hermits, the place where Bismaprawa manuscripts were
written. Mount Merbabu was in fact a centre of Hindu-Buddhist literature and religion. According to an Old Sundanese source, the Merbabu or Damalung area was the place for a religious
community which was visited by Bujangga Manik for the purpose of studying religious teachings
(Noorduyn, 1982, pp. 416–418). The status of a hermit was attached to Bisma as an attempt to
represent the image the hermits or religious people who lived in the Merapi-Merbabu area, along
with their respective backgrounds. Therefore, the use of the name Bisma in Bismaprawa is neither
a coincidence nor a copying error, but serves as a kind of symbolic representation of a society.
2.2
Events leading to the end of Parasara’s meditation
At the beginning of Bismaprawa, there is a fragment about Batara Pramesti and Batari Uma
who transformed themselves into white sparrows to distract Parasara in his meditation. This
fragment about Batara Pramesti and Batari Uma’s transformation, which led to the meeting
of Bagawan Parasara and Sayojanagandi, does not exist in Adiparwa. Adiparwa only narrates
that Bagawan Parasara met Sayojanagandi because the former requested Sayojanagandi to
take him across the river, as shown in the following passage.
Ana ta rĕsi Bagawan Parasara ngaranira, anak Bagawan Sakri, putu de Bagawan
Wasista. Sira ta mangadĕg i pinggir ing Yamunatoya, mamalaku aliwatakna ring lwah.
‘There was a hermit named Bagawan Parasara, the son of Bagawan Sakri and the
grandson of Bagawan Wasista. He was standing by the river Yamuna, asked to be
taken across the river.’
In Bismaprawa, the meeting of Parasara and Sayojanagandi was preceded by an event as
recounted in this following passage.
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Dyan ucapĕn Ba ara Prames i mangucap lawan Ba ari Uma, tumingal ring Bagawan
Parasara. Ayun sira bancanaha, dadi ta sira prit putih ingaran sang Kawruhta, wadon
sang Priyawati. Asusuh sira ring ja a, mangantiga manak alunga ameta mangsa, sang
Priyawati mangiringi sang Parasara, lunga sang Priyawati lawan sang Kawruhta.
Mangkana matĕlasan sang Parasara mara pya ri desa sunya angupayaha istri.
Katingalan sira sang Drigandini, katrĕsna retanira tumiba ri siti, ingiringakĕn maring
tĕlĕng muwah maring ya pĕtung.
And it was told that Batara Pramesti spoke to Batari Uma, (upon) seeing Bagawan Parasara. They wanted to tempt him, (so) they transformed themselves into a
white male sparrow named Kawruhta and a female sparrow named Priyawati. They
set a nest in jata, laid eggs that hatched, and then went for preys; Priyawati accompanied Parasara, and then Priyawati and Kawruhta went away. Thus Parasara ended
his meditation; off (he) went to a quiet village to find a wife. As he saw Drigadini, he
was aroused and his sperm fell on the ground, flowed to the base, and onto a bamboo.
This fragment is a new element which does not exist in either Adiparwa or other texts contemporary with Bismaprawa. The event of Parasara’s arrival on the bank of the river Yamuna
by the assistance of a god in the disguise of a bird is necessary for establishing a connection
amongst other previously existing narrative elements, so that the logical relationship between
new and old elements, as well as the natural orders of events in the text, can be maintained.
Thus, we can conclude that events leading to the end of Parasara’s meditation are actually
new elements introduced by the Bismaprawa’s writer and do not exist in the source text.
3
CONCLUSION
The intertextuality between Bismaprawa and Adiparwa has given birth to new elements as the
result of re-reading and re-writing processes. The intertextual relationship between the two
texts is observable in two dimensions - the criterion of characters and the criterion of events.
The criterion of characters consists of new characters and changes in or addition to the names
of existing characters in Adiparwa. Based on the analysis of the criterion of characters, we
can conclude that the names of new characters in Bismaprawa (1) originated from other texts
related to the epic of the Pandawas and Korawas and (2) were created by the writer of Bismaprawa because they do not exist in any other texts which were derived from Adiparwara.
The criterion of events consists of new events which change or add to the existing plotline
in certain fragments of Bismaprawa. Based on the analysis of the criterion of events, we can
conclude that the new events recounted in Bismaprawa were created by the writer of Bismaprawa because they do not exist in any other texts which were derived from Adiparwa. These
new events are actually the reflection of elements and circumstances beyond the text itself—
that is, of the Merapi-Merbabu tradition in which Bismaprawa was composed.
On the one hand, one might argue that the changes introduced by the Merapi-Merbabu
scriptorium may be considered as corruption of the original text. On the other hand, these
changes may also be considered as part of a conscious attempt to preserve a literary work by
adopting it to the real situations of the supporting society (Wiryamartana, 1990:198). Thus,
the creation of Bismaprawa may be considered as an effort on the part of the readers, who
in turn became the writers, to understand and interpret Adiparwa as a source text within the
context of Merapi-Merbabu literary tradition. Therefore, the presence of these changes in
Bismaprawa does not only reflect the writer’s interpretation of the source text but is also a
form of collective consciousness of the members of different communities which give a similar treatment to existing literary works.
REFERENCES
Acri, A. (2011) Dharma Pātañjala: A Śaiva Scripture from Old Java: Studied in the Light of Related Old
Javanese and Sanskrit Texts. Gonda Indological Studies, Groningen, Forsten.
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Allen, G. (2000) Intertextuallity. London & New York, Routledge.
Ash Shiddieqy, T.M.H., Kriswanto, A., & Mansyur, M. (2012) Gita Sinangsaya: Edisi teks dan terjemahan
(Gita Sinangsaya: Text and translation edition). Jakarta, Perpustakaan Nasional RI.
Bleeker, P. (1852) Verslag der werkzaamheden van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, van September 1850 tot April 1852, namens het bestuur des Genootschaps voorgelezen in
de algemeene vergadering op den 27 sten April 1852. VBG 24.
Creswell, J. W. (2009) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. 3rd
edition. California, Sage.
Culler, J. (1981) The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, literature, deconstruction. London & New York, Routledge.
Dowson, J. (2002) A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion, Geography, History and
Literature. London, Routledge.
Edmunds, L. (2001) Intertextuallity and the Reading of Roman Poetry. Baltimore and London: The
Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ensink, J. (1967) On the Old-Javanese Cantakaparwa and its tale of Sutasoma. ‘s Gravenhage, Martinus
Nijhoff.
Juynboll, H.H. (1906) Ādiparwa, Oudjavaansch prozageschrift. ‘s Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff.
Molen, W. van de. (1981) Aims and Method of Javanese Philology, Indonesia Circle, 26, 5–12.
Molen, W. van de. (2011) Kritik Teks Jawa, sebuah pemandangan umum dan pendekatan baru yang diterapkan kepada Kunjarakarna (Javanese Text Criticism, a general view and a new approach applied to
Kunjarakarna). Jakarta, Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia.
Molen, W. van de. & Wiryamartana, K. (2001) The Merapi-Merbabu manuscripts: A Neglected Collection. Bijdragen tot de Taal—, Land-en Volkenkunde, 157(1), 51–64.
Noorduyn, J. (1982) Bujangga Manik’s journeys through Java: topographical data from an Old Sundanese source. Bijdragen tot de Taal—, Land-en Volkenkunde, 138, 413–442.
Pigeaud, Th.G.Th. (1924) De Tantu Panggĕlaran. Een Oud-Javaansch prozageschrift, uitgegeven, vertaald
en toegelicht. ‘s Gravenhage, Smits.
Poerbatjaraka. (1952) Kapustakan Djawi. Djakarta, Penerbit Djambatan.
Poerwadarminta. (1939) Baoesastra Djawa. Groningen, Batavia, J.B Wolters.
Ras, J.J. (2014) Masyarakat dan Kesusastraan di Jawa (Society and Literature in Java). (Achadiati, Ed.).
Jakarta, Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia.
Reynolds, L.D. & Wilson, N.G. (1991) Scribes and Scholars; A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and
Latin Literature. 3rd edition. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Riffaterre, M. (1984) Intertextual representation: On mimesis as interpretive discourse, Critical Inquiry,
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that comes from Kakografi). Majalah Ilmu-ilmu Sastra Indonesia, 2 (2), 177–186.
Swellengrebel, J.L. (1936) Korawāśrama, een Oud-Javaansch prozageschrift. Uitgegeven, vertaald en
toegelicht. Santpoort, Mees.
Teeuw, A. (1986) Translation, Transformation, and Indonesian Literary History. In: Grijns and Robson, (eds.) Cultural Contact a Textual Interpretation. Dordrecht-Holland/Cinnaminson-USA: Foris
Publications. [VKI 115].
The Old Sabhāparwa, a summary and reconstruction of its manuscript. (2005) In: Seminar Internasional
Jawa Kuna 8-9 Juli 2005. Depok, Universitas Indonesia.
Tjahjani, J. (2013) Ambiguitas Genre dalam Trilogi Les Romanesques Karya Alain Robbe-Grillet (Genre
Ambiguity in the Trilogy of Les Romanesques by Alain Robbe-Grillet). [Dissertation]. Depok, Universitas Indonesia.
Williams, G.M. (2003) Handbook of Hindu Mythology. California, ABC-CLIO.
Wiryamartana, K. (1990) Arjunawiwaha Transformasi Teks Jawa Kuna lewat Tanggapan dan Penciptaan
di Lingkungan Sastra Jawa (Arjunawiwaha Transformation of Ancient Java Text through the Response
and Creation in Javanese Literature). Yogyakarta: Duta Wacana University Press.
Wiryamartana, K. (1993) The scriptoria in the Merbabu-Merapi area. Bijdragen tot de Taal, Landen
Volkenkunde 149, 503–9.
Worton, M., & Still, J. (Eds.). (1990) Intertextuality theories and practices. Manchester and New York:
Manchester University Press.
Zaimar, O.K.S. (2014) Semiotika dalam Analisis Karya Sastra (Semiotics in the Analysis of Literary
Works). Depok, Komodo Books.
Zoetmulder, P.J. (1983) Kalangwan Sastra Jawa Kuno Selayang Pandang (Ancient Javanese Kalangwan
Literature at a Glance). Jakarta, Djambatan.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Uttaraśabda in Java and Bali
A. Kurniawan & D. Puspitorini
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The aim of this research is to provide access to less well-known Javanese
literary text, Uttaraśabda, which can be categorised as a tutur (utterance) text. It contains
dialogues on religious speculation, which is also valuable for the study of religions in
Indonesia. To make the text readable, textual editions should be arranged. However, the
previously-necessary step taken is to explain the cultural background of all material evidence.
It also stands as a consequence on the textual analysis. Uttaraśabda is documented in fifteen
copied manuscripts: eight from Java and seven from Bali. If it is assumed that a manuscript
is as an equal textual variant, then careful observation of each manuscript can be expected to
give explanation on cultural-background peculiarities. Particularly, there are two manuscript
groups from different cultural loci: Java and Bali; therefore, this research will apply a
philological approach based on textology. The approach will provide comprehension about
textual problems and the history of textual development. Thus, the understanding on the
reception process to a tutur text, at least in two different cultural loci, can be dug up. Hence,
this research wishes to contribute generally in the study of tutur which so far still has been
polarised only on Balinese or Javanese traditions.
1
INTRODUCTION
There is an undeniable fact that we have not obtained a comprehensive portrayal about the
history of Javanese literature which has been going on for more than a thousand years. There
are a number of literary works which have been discussed before. One of them is Uttaraśabda.
The previous scholarly works are just kept silent, except for some catalogues which contain
information about its material evidence: manuscripts (Cohen Stuart, 1872; Poerbatjaraka,
1933; Pigeaud, 1967–70; Behrend, 1998; Setyawati et al., 2002). However, every catalogue
only provides limited information. To make Uttaraśabda accessible, textual editions need to
be prepared.
Is it worth making Uttaraśabda accessible? First, it is less known. Other materials which
record its text are unfamiliar to the present-time readers. Meanwhile, research about this text
will make an important contribution to the study of the religion development in Indonesia.
Uttaraśabda is a pre-Islamic work. It can be categorised as tutur: a genre of a philosophical
text on theological speculation, and it sometimes contains religious manuals for ritual (see
Acri, 2009; Soebadio, 1971, pp. 3–4). Uttaraśabda contains dialogues between Uttaraśabda
and his elder brother, Ajñān
․aśura, about those subjects. Analyzing Uttaraśabda and its textuality will give a comprehensive understanding about the dynamics of thoughts on a religious
concept, particularly in the society where its text is produced.
Indeed, the efforts to make Uttaraśabda accessible began when a Dutch philologist, A.B.
Cohen Stuart, was employed as a manuscript conservator in the Batavian Society of Arts and
Sciences (Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, abbreviated as “BG”)
from 1862 to 1871 (Behrend, 1993, p. 423). With the assistance of Radèn Panji Suryawijaya
and Radèn Mas Samsi (Suryawijaya’s son), he made a copy of many palm-leaf manuscripts
in a Buda script which was brought from Mt. Merbabu, Central Java, in the middle of the
19th century. They transliterated from Buda into the type of script which was used commonly
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for a Javanese text at that time: Modern Java script. In spite of that, there were no scholars
interested. Uttaraśabda was considered as a minor literary work.
Pigeaud did a very limited analysis in the first volume of his catalogue that was published
in the late 1960s. Uttaraśabda is classified as a Javanese tutur from Bali in this catalogue
(Pigeaud, 1967, pp. 69–74). However, he had a reason for his classification because it was
based on two copied manuscripts compiled by Proyek Tik (Tik Project) which were kept at
Leiden University Library, the Netherlands. Is it true that Uttaraśabda was written in Bali
as argued by Pigeuad? From the dating of the manuscripts, the Javanese materials are a few
centuries older than the Balinese ones.
From this step, we uncovered that Uttaraśabda developed in two sets of traditions: Javanese
and Balinese. These two different traditions share similar historical trajectories in literature,
specifically pre-Islamic literature. Some colonial orientalists, such as Kern (1900) and Gunning (1903), argued that pre-Islamic Javanese literature should be depended on the text of
Balinese tradition which has more superior quality than Javanese tradition itself. They positioned Bali as conservation space for Javanese culture before Islam established its domination
along Java Island. However, this theory would be rejected later. Every tradition has potential
and rules to grow in each scope. Thus, every textual artifact should be positioned as a variant
which has certain functions in a specific historical phase. One manuscript: one variant. Hence,
fifteen manuscripts which document Uttaraśabda text should be examined thoroughly.
This article will discuss the manuscript distribution in Java and Bali and when those manuscripts were produced. Those categories will be very useful in reconstructing the genotext
(which could be called as cultural context) which encloses the production process of each
phenotext (manuscript). The discussion has been limited on the palm-leaf manuscripts from
those traditions. The copied manuscripts in Java script and from Proyek Tik are not included
because their functions are different from the original function intended by the text. Information about where and when a manuscript was produced could be identified from the colophon or any external sources.
This is just a beginning step of the ongoing research. Its aim is to make a crude mapping
connected to textual transmission and reception in every historical stadium. The comparison
of each manuscript will be discussed in another occasion. We will start the discussion about
the textuality of Uttaraśabda from this step. Furthermore, by this discussion, we can decide
the most suitable edition model for this text.
2
MANUSCRIPTS FROM JAVA
Five palm-leaf manuscripts are of Javanese traditions, and they are included in the manuscript
group named Merapi-Merbabu collection. This collection was discovered by authoritative
colonials for the first time in 1822 through a survey initiated by Van der Capellen, a Governor-General who ruled from 1816 to1826. In 1852, thirty years after being discovered in the
western slope of Mt. Merbabu, there was a report that those manuscripts existed in Batavia
and became the first collection of BG library. In total, there were 400 palm-leaf manuscripts
in Buda and Java scripts, which covered many genres of texts: kakawin, kidung, tutur, pawukon,
and mantra (Van der Molen, 2011, pp. 141–148; Wiryamartana and Van der Molen, 2001,
pp. 53–55). Five manuscripts which document Uttaraśabda text are PNRI 6 L 46, PNRI 7 L
49, PNRI 1 L 170, PNRI 1 L 225, and PNRI 86 L 334. Four manuscripts contain the complete
text, but PNRI 7 L 49 is in a poor-conditioned bundle of fragments from several manuscripts.
There are just five folios (lempir) which contain the text (cf. Setyawati et al., 2002, p. 38). All of
them are heavily damaged. PNRI 7 L 49 will not be discussed in this article.
2.1
The origin of the manuscripts
Although excavated from Mt. Merbabu, information from the colophon shows that the text
was copied (or produced) in several different locations. PNRI 6 L 46 and PNRI 1 L 170 were
copied in Rabut Pamrihan, an ancient name for Mt. Merbabu (Noorduyn, 1982, p. 416).
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More precisely, PNRI 1 L 170 was copied in the northwest slope (imbang bayabya), in the
hermitage (panusupan) called Wanakarya. Other manuscripts, i.e. PNRI 1 L 225 and PNRI
86 L 334, were copied in Sang Hyang Giri Mandharagěni (ancient name of Mt. Merapi) and
Sang Hyang Giri Karungrungan (ancient name of Mt. Ungaran).
Terminologies such as ‘rabut’ and ‘panusupan’ can explain the status of the scriptorium.
Both refer to a religious center or a place for spiritual education in the past. We can trace
this back to a Middle Javanese prose work, Tantu Panggělaran (Pigeaud, 1924), or from an
Old Sundanese poem, Bhujangga Manik (Noorduyn and Teeuw, 2009). In the last text, for
example, one part of the story describes a main character named Bhujangga Manik who
came back from the east area of Pasundan in West Java, after studying religions in Pamrihan
located in Mt. Damalung (Noorduyn and Teeuw, 2009, p. 292). This brief explanation can
clarify what kinds of environment in which Uttaraśabda text was produced and what its role
was. Of course, it had a relation with religious activities in that society.
2.2
Dating problems
Among the four complete manuscripts, only two manuscripts have dating evidence: PNRI 1 L
170 and PNRI 1 L 225. It should be noted that the dating element which will be emphasised
is the year. The colophon of PNRI 1 L 170 informs that the text was already written in 1585.
Thus, through the chronogram “watu sina(m)bi hoyěging wong” (the stone was accompanied
by the trembling man), we know that the text in PNRI 1 L 225 was already written in 1611.
Unfortunately, there is no definite conclusion from previous scholars about how to convert
the Merapi-Merbabu calendar system to the common system (AD calendar). Van der Molen
(2011, pp. 93–108) and Wiryamartana (1984) have tried to convert it by comparing it with the
Těnggěr calendar system, especially Pasuruan Těnggěr. However, these efforts are not reaching the precise system yet, because the Těnggěr calendar system is also still undecided (see the
reconstruction by Proudfoot, 2007).
As stated by Wiryamartana (1984), even though there are a number of pre-Islamic texts
from the Merapi-Merbabu collection, the dating evidence from the manuscripts indicates that
they were actually from the later period, i.e. Mataram era, from the 17th to the 18th century.
The sufficient evidence comes from PNRI 32 L 313 which also includes the Merapi-Merbabu
collection. The Gita Sinangsaya text in this manuscript was copied in 1592 and represented in
a variety of chronograms (sěngkalan). The colophon also explains that the year 1592 was the
same year in which the Prince of Madiun, Wiramanggala, was murdered and the ammunition warehouse (paobatan) was exploded. These incidents happened in 1670 AD as recorded
in babad stories and colonial archives (Ricklefs, 1978, pp. 179–180). Thus, Gita Sinangsaya in
PNRI 32 L 313 was written after the aforementioned incidents, perhaps a few months after.
Thus, the year 1592 was in close proximity to the years 1585 and 1611.
Therefore, the time when the Uttaraśabda from the Merapi-Merbabu collection was copied—
and also had a particular function in its society—was approximately during the second part of
the 17th century, between the reign of Amangkurat I/Sinuhun Těgal Arum (1645–1677 AD)
and Amangkurat II (1680–1702 AD). At that period, obviously, the Islamic influence had
been spread out all over Java. However, the existing pre-Islamic text in Java in that period
can trigger a question: what kinds of societies that became its proponents? Interestingly, in
the Merapi-Merbabu collection, there are both Islamic and pre-Islamic texts, and they come
from the same period.
Another interesting aspect which can be taken into account is the use of Buda script (for
more explanation about this script, see Pigeaud, 1970, pp. 53–60; Van der Molen, 2011,
pp. …). At the period when Merapi-Merbabu manuscripts were written, Java script had
already been well acknowledged massively. In several manuscripts of this collection, Java
script was also used, even though it was not as much as Buda script. There was a possibility
that the writer or copier of the manuscripts knew Java script very well despite the use of Buda
script. Therefore, it is not surprising to find one or two Java scripts among the lines of
Buda script in a manuscript. They might have made some mistakes in their work. Using the Buda
script was their conscious choice, and it also had certain functions in their society.
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However, the reasons behind making this conscious choice have not yet been known. Previous theories claim that there were particular societies that lived in exile after Islam spread
out all over Java. They maintained their old way of living conservatively. Unfortunately, that
theory can no longer be used because the Islamic influences had also infiltrated into the literary work in the Merapi-Merbabu collection. The society in this literary environment was
more open than the conservative. The use of Buda script could be considered as having a
function as an identity marker besides the written devices to make limited communication
among this society.
2.3
Manuscript materials
Manuscripts of the Merapi-Merbabu collection were produced in a place high above the sea
level. However, these manuscripts were made from the materials which could not be grown in
such environment. The Palmyra (Borassus flabellifer) only grows in lowlands which is hot, dry,
located about 500 meters above the sea level, and particularly in a coastal area (Ensikolopedi
Indonesia IV, 1992, p. 2046). If the palm-leaf manuscripts were produced in highlands, where
did they get the materials from? Van der Molen (2011, pp. 108–110) estimated that they got
these materials from the coastal area in north Java where Palmyra plants can be grown well.
It is important to take into account that the members of literary society chose palm leaves
as the writing sheet rather than other materials which they were also familiar with, such as
tree-bark paper, gěbang, and so on. It is possible that palm leaves had social and religious
functions, or other functions related to identity.
3
MANUSCRIPTS FROM BALI
The existence of Uttaraśabda manuscripts of Balinese traditions is related to Gedong Kirtya
in Singaraja, which was established in 1928 at a convention held in Kintamani. Dutch scholars, brahmana, and local aristocrats attended this convention. Through this institution, palmleaf manuscripts which contain Uttaraśabda of Balinese traditions—which were originally
disseminated as personal collections—were able to be accessed by public.
Four Balinese manuscripts used in this research belonged to Gedong Kirtya. These manuscripts were coded with Roman number “III” which implies that they were included in the
tutur or wariga group. This categorisation was made by a Dutch scholar, Roelof Goris, when
he was working as a curator for this institution in 1931 (Swellengrebel, 1966, pp. 205–228).
It could be used as the basis to identify what literary genre that Uttaraśabda of Balinese
traditions should be included.
So far there are only two manuscripts that can be accessed which are (1) K 247 and
(2) T/xxiv/5 DOKBUD (the second manuscript will be named as “lontar Pusdok” in this
article). Three other manuscripts will only be identified through secondary sources that provide information about them. It is still ongoing research. It still needs more new data to
accomplish our understanding on the function of Uttaraśabda in Balinese traditions.
3.1
The origin of the manuscripts
As a matter of fact, information about where each manuscript comes from could be identified
from internal evidence (colophon). In the first folio of K 247, there is information in Malay
written in Roman character: “dapat dibeli dari curator Kirtya di Moenggoe [Badoeng]”
(could be bought from Kirtya’s curator in Munggu, Badung). There is no other detailed
information in this manuscript. According to a regular report from Kirtya, there was a
pědanda (Balinese priest) from Munggu, Badung, who was employed as an administrator
in Kirtya, i.e. Ida Pědanda Gde Pěmaron Munggu (Palguna, 1999, p. 281). Perhaps this
manuscript comes from him.
The colophon of lontar Pusdok provides more comprehensive information. This
manuscript comes from Desa Dencarik, Kecamatan Banjar, in Kabupaten Buleleng. Someone
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named Putu Ngurah Měrta was considered as the writer. Unfortunately, we do not know
who he is. The writer’s profile can reveal in which social group the Uttaraśabda text became
functional. These problems still wait for further research. Moreover, three other manuscripts’
origin can be discerned from the catalogue.
The Palm-leaf manuscript which became the exemplar of K 6527 originated from Griya
Pěmaron, Munggu, Měngwi. K 6538 took its exemplar from the palm-leaf manuscript possessed by Makele Tarěna, Puri Kawan, Singaraja. Its location is so close to Gedong Kirtya.
K 1525 was a copy of a palm-leaf manuscript from Bakung, Sukasada, Buleleng. Hence,
there were three manuscripts from North Bali (K 1525, K 6538, and lontar Pusdok), and two
others from South Bali (K 247 and K 6527). Moreover, there were two scriptorium categories
where the manuscripts of Uttaraśabada were produced: griya and puri.
To Balinese societies who recognise warna as the divisional system in social roles, the concept of griya has always been associated with the priesthood (brahamana). A griya is where
priests (pedanda in Balinese) used to abide in, where any priesthood activities—especially
literary—were held inside. On the other hand, a puri is associated with a place where ksatria or a group of noblemen used to live in. They also had a particular activity related to
literature. This difference would definitely constitute the literary characters and genres which
developed each scriptorium.
We can roughly assume that the types or genres of literary works developed in a griya were
adjusted to the needs of the priest group. Textual genres, such as tutur, mantra, babad, or
stories about a figure of priest, or even texts on ethical codes in priesthood, were developed
in griya’s. Meanwhile, the literary genres, such as kakawin, kidung, laws, ethics, and babad or
history about kings’ genealogy, were developed customarily in puri’s.
This division was maybe significant to explain the functions of these texts. By considering the substance of Uttaraśabda which is about religious speculation and ritual manual,
it would have been appropriate if such a text was developed in a griya. Its function can
be related to priesthood religious activities. Nevertheless, that text was also living in a puri.
The question remains: why did a tutur text, like Uttaraśabda, also exist in a ksatria circle?
What was its necessity? This problem should be further investigated. This problem will be
adjourned for a while by considering that the exemplars of K 6527 and K 6538 have not been
physically accessed.
3.2
Dating problems
Uttaraśabda manuscripts of Balinese traditions are not as old as those of Javanese. The dates
in these manuscripts could be acquired from internal information, which is the colophon.
However, lontar Pusdok was the only manuscript that has dating information in its colophon.
We have not found any such information from K 247 and also K 1525. These manuscripts were
recorded in the list of the Kirtya Liefrick-Van der Tuuk manuscript collection which was published in 1948. Consequently, it could be predicted that both manuscripts were produced at the
beginning of the 20th century. The copies of both manuscripts were also produced in the early
1960s through Proyek Tik which was conceived by Christiaan Hooykaas and Kětut Sangka.
Meanwhile, the Uttaraśabda text in lontar Pusdok was already completely inscribed by
19th November 1988, coincided with the birthday of Goddess Saraswati (piodalan Saraswati): Saniscara Umanis, wuku Watugunung, in 1910 Śaka. According to Hindu-Balinese
traditions, any kinds of literary activities, either reading or writing, were not allowed from
sunrise to sunset. During this time, people gave some offerings in front of literary works, such
as palm-leaf manuscripts (lontar). The purpose of this ritual was to wish for the blessings of
science from Sarasvati—who was believed as the protector of art and science—that would be
descended into the literary works. Any literary activities would be permitted again after the
sunset in the evening. Literary texts would be read during the night.
Thus, why was lontar Pusdok finalised during the celebration of piodalan Saraswati?
When was the exact time it was finished if any literary activities were not allowed until the
sunset? If the writers of this manuscript revered to the tradition, there is a possibility that the
manuscript was finalised a day before the celebration. The expression “wus puput sinurat”
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(has already been inscribed) can be interpreted as on the celebratory day, and the manuscript
was finalised and existed.
4
CONCLUSION: TUTUR IN TWO TRADITIONS
According to the previous explanations, besides evidence which has already been discovered,
it could be concluded that Uttaraśabda of Javanese traditions was older than of Balinese
traditions. In Java, Uttaraśabda was developed approximately at the end of the 17th century,
in the religious circles living in the serene of a mountain area. Afterwards, the Uttaraśabda
tradition seemed to have stopped, and its manuscripts were not found outside of MerapiMerbabu scriptoria.
However, if we pay a closer attention to the text, there are a lot of elements which could
also be found in suluk texts of Javanese Islam mysticism traditions. The use of simile expressions (tamsil) concerning God-and-human relationship can support these arguments. We
may know that the depiction of the relationship between fish (humans) and water (God)
in Uttaraśabda could also be found in Sěrat Sastra Gěn ing by Sultan Agung of Mataram.
Moreover, the relationship between shadow puppets (wayang) and its puppet master (dalang)
was very popular in suluk texts (see Zoetmulder, 1991). It is no wonder that Raden Mas
Samsi, the writer of the copied manuscript CS 78, also named Uttaraśabda as Suluk Lon ang,
even though these words do not exist inside the text. When we read it briefly, we would come
up with an impression that the “horizon of expectation” of its copier was directed to Suluk
Lon ang. In his view, both works share many similarities. An intertextual analysis will potentially reveal these problems. The textual connection between two literary genres, i.e. tutur and
suluk, will rise up as the gain of those attempts.
Meanwhile, in Balinese traditions, Uttaraśabda was developed in the early of the 20th
century, although we could not really identify the precise time. Was the movement of this text
from Javanese traditions to Balinese traditions related to Dhang Hyang Nirartha who went
to Bali after the widespread of Islamic influence to eastern part of Java in the 16th century?
There has not been any clue yet. However, when van der Tuuk was living in North Bali for
a long period in the second half of the 19th century and collecting hundreds of palm-leaf
manuscripts from many Balinese people for his lexicography projects, there was no palm-leaf
manuscript entitled Uttaraśabda or Partha Ajñān
․aśura (see Brandes, 1901–26). In reality,
three of five manuscripts come from North Bali. Therefore, it is possible that Uttaraśabda
was brought into Bali, and obtained its proponents, at the beginning of the 20th century, or
as late as the last 19th century. In present time, Balinese people recognise Uttaraśabda as the
tutur text.
Thus, it is still ongoing research that needs more data to solve any problems internally.
An in-depth analysis on this text—specifically on its dynamic structure, function, and
dissemination—will give a thorough depiction about how a religious text was read and
accepted in a specific society, specific time, and space. The understanding of its dynamics
will open up new perspectives about how Indonesian people—especially in Java and Bali—
comprehended the religious way and other related discourses of it.
REFERENCES
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Old Javanese and Sanskrit Texts. [Ph.D. Dissertation] Leiden University.
Barthes, R. (1987) Theory of the text. In: Robert Young (ed.) Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist
Reader. London & New York, Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Behrend, T.E. (1993) Manuscripts production in nineteenth-century Java. Codicology and the writing
of Javanese literary history. In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-,Land en Volkenkunde, 149 (3), 407–37.
Behrend, T.E. (1998) Katalog Induk Naskah-naskah Nusantara Jilid 4 Perpustakaan Nasional Republik
Indonesia (The Main Catalogue of Archipelago Manuscripts of the 4th edition of the National Library
of the Republic of Indonesia). Jakarta, Yayasan Obor Indonesia.
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Brandes, J.L.A. (1901–26). Beschrijving der Javaansche, Balineesch en Sasaksche Handschriften aangetroffen in de Natalenschap van Dr. H.N. van der Tuuk, en door hem vermaakt aan de Leidsche Universiteitsbibliotheek, 4. Batavia, Landsdrukkerij.
Cohen Stuart, A.B. (1872) Eerste vervolg catalogus der Bibliotheek en Catalogus der Maleische,
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Batavia, Bruining & Wijt; s’Gravenhage, Nijhoff.
Ensiklopedi Indonesia, vol. 4. (1992) Jakarta, PT. Ichtiar Baru—Van Hoeve.
Goedenleer. 7 L 49. Palm-leaves, Buda script. Jakarta, Perpustakaan Nasional RI.
Gunning, J.G.H. (1903) Bharāta-Yuddha: Oudjavaansch Heldendicht. ‘s-Gravenhage, Nijhoff.
Kern, H. (1900) Rāmāyan
․a, Oudjavaansch Heldendicht. ‘s-Gravenhage, Nijhoff.
Molen, W. van der. (2011) Kritik Teks Jawa: Sebuah Pemandangan Umum dan Pendekatan Baru yang
Diterapkan kepada Kunjarakarna (Javanese Text Critiques: A General Perspective and New Approach
Applied to Kunjarakarna), Achadiati Ikram (trans.). Jakarta, Yayasan Obor Indonesia.
Noorduyn, J & A. Teeuw. (2009) Tiga Pesona Sunda Kuna (Three Charms of Ancient Sunda), Hersri
Setiawan (trans.). Jakarta, Pustaka Jaya.
Oettarasabda. 1 L 334. Palm-leaves, Buda script. Jakarta, Perpustakaan Nasional RI.
Oettarasabda. 33 L 225. Palm-leaves, Buda script. Jakarata, Perpustakaan Nasional RI.
Palguna, IBM D. (1999) Dharma Śūnya: Memuja dan Meneliti Śīwa (Dharma Śūnya: Worshipping and
Researching Śīwa). Denpasar, Yayasan Dharma Sastra.
Parimbon Arabisch, Javaansch en Soendasch. 6 L 46. Palm-leaves, Buda script. Jakarta, Perpustakaan
Nasional RI.
Partha Ajñān
․aśura. K 247/IIIb/9. Palm-leaves, Balinese script. Singaraja, Gedong Kirtya.
Pemerintah Kabupaten Buleleng. (2011) Buku Katalog Salinan Lontar UPTD Gedong Kirtya
(A Catalogue Book of the Palm-Leaf Copy of UPTD Gedong Kirtya). Singaraja, Dinas Kebudayaan
dan Pariwisata Kabupaten Buleleng.
Pigeaud, Th. (1924) De Tantu Panggělaran: Een Oud-Javaansch Prozageschrift, uitgegeven, vertald en
toegelicht. ‘s-Gravenhage, H.L. Smits.
Pigeaud, Th. (1967) Literature of Java: Catalogue Raisonné of Javanese Manuscripts in the Library of the
University of Leiden and Other Public Collections in the Netherlands, Volume I: Synopsis of Javanese
Literature 900–1900 AD. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.
Poerbatjaraka, R.Ng. (1933) Lijst der Javaansche handschriften in de boekerij van het kon. Bat.
Genootschap, Jaarboek Bataviaasch Genootschap 1, 269–376.
Proudfoot, I. (2007) Reconstructing the Těnggěr Calendar. In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-,Land en
Volkenkunde, 163 (1), 123–33.
Ricklefs, M.C. (1978) Modern Javanese Historical Tradition: A Study of an Original Kartasura Chronicle
and Related Materials. London, School of Oriental and African Studies University of London.
Sěrat Oettara-sabda. 1 L 170. Palm-leaves, Buda script. Jakarta, Perpustakaan Nasional RI.
Setyawati, K., Wiryamartana, K., & Molen, W. van der (2002) Katalog Naskah Merapi-Merbabu Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia (The Merapi-Merbabu Manuscript Catalogue of the National
Library of the Republic of Indonesia). Yogyakarta & Leiden, Penerbitan Universitas Sanata Dharma
& Opleiding Talen en Culturen van Zuidoost-Azië en Oceanië Universitiet Leiden.
Soebadio, H. (1971) Jñānasiddhānta. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff. [Bibliotheca Indonesica 7].
Swellengrebel, J. (1966) In memoriam Dr. Roelof Goris (with a bibliography by R.S. Karni). Bijdragen
tot de Taal-,Land en Volkenkunde,122 (2), 205–28.
Uttara Sabda Amrěta. K1525/IIIb/36. Palm-leaves, Balinese script. Singaraja, Gedong Kirtya.
Uttara Sabda Amrěta. T/xxiv/5/Dokbud. Palm-leaves, Balinese script. Denpasar, Pusat Dokumentasi
Budaya Bali.
Wiryamartana, I.K. & Molen, W. van der (2001) The Merapi-Merbabu manuscripts: A neglected
collection. In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-,Land en Volkenkunde, 157 (1), 51–64.
Wiryamartana, I.K. (1984) Filologi Jawa dan kuñjarakarna prosa (Javanese philology and kuñjarakarna
prose), Basis, 33, 255–72.
Wiryamartana, I.K. (1990) Ajunawiwāha: Transformasi Teks Jawa Kuna Lewat Tanggapan dan
Penciptaan di Lingkungan Sastra Jawa (Ajunawiwāha: Ancient Javanese Text Transformation through
Responses and Creation in the Javanese Literary Environment). Yogyakarta, Duta Wacana University
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Zoetmulder, P.J. (1991) Manunggaling Kawula Gusti: Pantheisme dan Monisme dalam Sastra Suluk Jawa
(Manunggaling Kawula Gusti: Pantheism and Monism in Javanese Suluk Literature), Dick Hartoko
(trans). Jakarta, Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Loloda in the world of Mollucas: The decline of the political entity
in Loloda from Kolano to Sangaji
A. Rahman
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The objective of this article is to describe the decline of the Loloda Kingdom
in terms of power in the regions of the North Mollucas during the 17th to 20th century, which
was marked by the change of leadership from Kolano (King) to Sangaji (District Chief). We
argue that the following four important factors caused the decline: (1) the weak control of the
Loloda Kingdom over its territory; (2) the exploitation of its natural resources; (3) the steady
decline of population due to political conflict, war, and migration; and (4) the political and
military intervention of foreign (European) powers in the Mollucas, which directly affected the
sovereignty of Loloda. These four factors contributed to the decline of the Loloda Kingdom
in the Mollucas region. The research methodology used here is derived from the stage-wise
history of science: heuristics (searching for, finding, and collecting data); criticizing the source
internally and externally; interpretation of resources; and historiography (writing history).
1
1.1
INTRODUCTION
The alliance of Moti and Moloku Kie Raha without Loloda
Loloda was an ancient kingdom in the Moluccas World, but it was not included in the Moti
Alliance (1322–1343). This alliance is well known as the Moloku Kie Raha (MKR), which
means “the communion of the four mountain kingdoms of the Moluccas”, including the
kingdoms of Ternate, Tidore, Bacan, and Jailolo. The Moti Alliance, formed in the 14th century, was initiated by the Seventh King of Ternate, Sida Arif Malamo (1322–1332). If Loloda
had been included in the alliance, then it would have become the Moloku Kie Romtoha (the
five mountain kingdoms of the Moluccas).
However, the MKR concept was not consistent with the statement of the Governor of the
Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC) in Moluccas,
Robbertus Padtbrugge (1677–1682), in his memorandum of the handing-over to his successor,
Jacob Loobs (1682–1686). Padtbrugge reminded Loobs that there were five major kingdoms
in the Moluccas World with their own specific names, including “Loloda, toma ngara mabeno” (royal ruler of the north gate of the Moluccas), “Jailolo, Jiko ma-Kolano” (royal ruler
of the bays), “Tidore, kie ma-Kolano” (royal ruler of the mountains), “Ternate, Kolano of
Maluku” (ruler of Moluccas), and “Bacan, Dehe ma-Kolano” (royal ruler of the south end
of the Moluccas) (see also Andaya, 1993, pp. 51, 93, & 232; van Fraassen, 1987, pp. 18–24).
According to the local oral tradition as a mythology, Loloda is the oldest and largest kingdom in the region. There were two local traditions that described the supremacy and greatness of Loloda, namely the tradition of Biku Sagara and the Four Eggs of the Sacred Dragon
(Galvao, 1544, in Jacobs, 1972: 80) and Kroniek van het Rijk Batjan (Chronicle of Bacan ) by
Coolhaas (1923: 480–481). Genealogically, the parent lineage of the Loloda kings is in line
with the parent lineage of the MKR kings; however, geohistorically, the Loloda Kingdom
had been “the ruler of the mainland and island of Halmahera” in the Moluccas since the
13th century. However, in reality, Loloda was then “eliminated and had disappeared” from
the political arena of the Moluccas World with the decline of the political entities from being
the Kolano (King) to becoming the Sangaji (District Head). This decline severely worsened
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after the territorial status of Loloda was also weakened during 1909–1915. Here, we attempt
to address the reason for this decline, its mode of occurrence, and its consequences.
1.2
The king’s weakness in the regional control system
The era of the Loloda Kingdom in the Moluccas World can be divided into the following
several periods: (1) the mythological period (from the 13th century to the late 16th century);
(2) the Portuguese–Spanish period (1512–1666); (3) the period of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie/VOC) (1607–1800); (4) the period of the transitional government from Dutch Government to the British Government (1801–1817); (5) the
period of the transitional government from the British Government to the Dutch Government (1818–1908); and (6) the period of the decline of Loloda’s sovereignty from the Kolano
position (King) to the Sangaji leadership (District Head) (1909–1915).
The basic government structure of Loloda was the same as that of MKR, including important positions such as the Kolano (King), Jougugu (Prime Minister), Kapita Lao (Warlord),
Bobato (Tribal Councils), Hukum (Judges), Sowohi (Supervisor of the Royal), and Alfiris
(Secretary) (H.A. Usman, interview, 7 January 2016). This structure had not changed much
until the 12th generation, since the period of Kolano Tolo Usman Malamo (1220) until Kolano
Syamsuddin (1915). Despite the transformation by the Dutch to adopt a political structure of
the sultanate of Ternate, Loloda retained its cultural freedom and moved dynamically to exit
from the Ternate structural restraints (see also Susanto Zuhdi, 2010, p. 3).
Geographically, the administrative center of Loloda was based in Soasio, the capital city
of Loloda, on the northwest coast of Halmahera with a territory covering the whole island
of Halmahera and Morotai. The three main villages, namely Laba, Bakun, and Kedi (M.W.
Hamad, interview, 7 January 2016) were the nearest villages to the center of the Loloda
Kingdom, which had a very strong historical link that will later define Loloda’s sovereignty
in the period 1909–1915.
Laba and Bakun were the two main villages that became targets of the “attack and siege”
strategy of the Dutch Army in 1909, because the people of these villages were involved in
a rebellion under the leadership of a Loloda royal navy commander, Sea Captain Sikuru.
Although not included in the MKR alliance, Loloda was an integral part of a group of local
kingdoms in the Moluccas World, mythologically, genealogically, and geohistorically, which
was the basis of its sovereign power. Unfortunately, such forces could not guarantee the continued existence of Loloda as a sovereign kingdom in the Moluccas World.
Geohistorically, Halmahera and Morotai Islands belonged to the Loloda Kingdom before
they were conquered by the Ternate Sultanate. Nevertheless, since the late 19th century, only
the King of Loloda had the power over the rest of the territory spreading from the Cape of
Bakun to the Tobo-Tobo Bay, where the Loloda ethnic group was the predominant settlers.
Restriction of the Loloda territory proved that these regions had been occupied by the Sultanate of Ternate and Tidore. The two kingdoms were always competing to gain control over the
two Loloda regions because Loloda was the oldest kingdom and the true heir of Halmahera.
In the oral tradition of Ternate, the following poem describes the territorial boundaries of
Loloda: “gudu-gudu tomamie; Susupu, Gamkonora, Tobaru se Tolofuo; Bantoli se Mandioli; Doitia se Doitai; Morotia se Morotai; Kolano Loloda o Gugumakuci” (Far away in the
North; of Susupu, Gamkonora, Tobaru and Tolofuo; Bantoli, and Mandioli; Doi mainland
and Doi overseas; Moro mainland and Moro overseas; King Loloda rules) (Hasan, 2001,
pp. 172–173). This poem indicates that Ternate (with its own identity) was recognized on the
Loloda territory, covering the mainland of Halmahera from the north to the west. Susupu,
Gamkonora, Tobaru, Tolofuo, and Bantoli were in the west, whereas Doitia (Doi mainland),
Doitai (Doi Islands), Morotia, and Morotai were in the north.
The aforementioned poem was supposedly to be presented before the British colonial government in the Moluccas during 1801–1817. The Loloda community indeed had several oral
traditions using their own language; however, so far, not all of these traditions have been
identified because of the history, culture, customs, and Loloda traditions (Y. Toseho, interview, 5 January 2016).
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The end of the power of the Loloda Kingdom over these territories was estimated around the
late 19th century (during the restructuring of the Dutch East Indies in 1866); however, during
the VOC period (1607–1799), areas such as Susupu, Gamkonora, Tobaru, and Tolofuo were
under the control of the Ternate Kingdom together with Loloda and Jailolo. During this period,
the District Chief of Loloda still held the title of “Kolano” instead of “Sangaji” (see Leirissa,
1996, p. 64).
This situation is particularly relevant to the present-day situation in which the Loloda language is still used by the residents of these territories spreading from the northern part to the
western part of Halmahera (Hueting, 1908; Masinambow, 2001, pp. 142–144). In the early 17th
century (1606–1608), Loloda was attacked by Spain, which marked its weakening, and soon
after that, it was conquered by Jailolo, as a new kingdom in North Halmahera (see also Lapian,
1948, p. 18). However, the sovereignty status of Loloda remained as a kingdom led by a Kolano.
From the 18th to the 19th century, Loloda was still actively involving in politics of the local
inter-kingdom as the vassal of Ternate; however, the Kolano of Loloda was unable to maintain
and govern the entire regions under his empire. In the early 20th century, Loloda experienced
a total decline of its leadership, from Kolano to become Sangaji, together with the change of
its status from a kingdom to merely a district under the pressure of the Ternate Sultanate and
pacification politics of the Dutch as a form of its Pax Nederlandica in the Moluccas.
1.3 Natural resources and the dominance of Ternate
J.H. Tobias (1857) in the memorandum of the handing-over to his successor, C. Boscher
(1859), wrote “Den inkomsten die Z.H. de Sulthan van Ternate wettig, van zijn gebied op
Halmaheira trekt, zijn de volgende: Van Loloda: In waren: 6–10 katjes vogelnetjes in diensten...” (Sultan of Ternate, the ruler of Halmahera, always receives bounties from the Loloda
people, such as 6–10 packages of bird’s nest regularly). This shows that Loloda as the subordinate of Ternate has potential natural resources, such as bird’s nest, which was considered
precious at that time, at least in the opinion of the Sultan of Ternate (see MvO, from J.H.
Tobias (1857) to C. Bosscher (1859), 1859 in ANRI, 1980, p. 183).
According to Baretta (1917: 80), Loloda was also included as a potential producer of sago
and resin, whereas various types of fish, sea cucumbers, and other varieties of marine biota
as shown by the various sea catch of the local fishermen were produced from the marine sector. The condition of water in Loloda was also described by C.F.H. Campen (1888, p. 155).
According to De Clerq (1890) and Van Baarda (1904), the economic life of the rulers of
Loloda depends on the economy of the people. In the socioeconomic aspect, this means that
the relationship between the Kolano (king) and their Bala (people) was built on the power
authority and legitimacy of the people toward their leader. Therefore, the people as the infrastructure could strengthen the political system and the position of the Kolano. Moreover, a
Kolano as a political superstructure ensured guarantee and economic protection for his people. In this context, people could manage economic resources on the territory of the kingdom
(aha kolano) and the royal treasury (raki kolano).
Soerabaia Handelsblad (1908) mentioned the Residency of Ternate and its territory in
the archives of 15th October to the end of November 1907. According to this report, there
were many bamboo and sago forests along the Loloda River. These two types of plants also
grew well on the muddy soil. Besides resin, several other forest products were also common,
namely cane, sandalwood, ironwood, and teak. Sago and coconut trees grew wild everywhere.
Clove trees also thrived in the region besides rice and corn. Bird nest caves were common in
West Loloda. Over time, these commodities have been exploited by the people of Ternate
and the orders of their Sultan. Apparently, the economic security of the natural resources of
Loloda depended on the Ternate Sultanate, which was under the control of the Dutch.
1.4 Political conflict and demographical consequences
During the reign of Amir Al-Mukminin Hamzah Nazarun Minallahi Shah (Sultan Hamzah,
1627–1648), there were several rebellions in some territories of Ternate, such as in Seram,
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Ambon, and the East Coast of Celebes. In addressing this problem, Hamzah had massively
evacuated the people of Loloda from Halmahera Island to Jailolo since 1628, as Jailolo was
abandoned by its own people as a protest against the liquidation of their kingdom by the Ternate Sultanate. The next mass evacuation of the Loloda people to Jailolo occurred in 1662,
which led to a significant population decrease with only 200 people remaining in Loloda. The
migration of the Loloda people was also due to the expansive policy of the Ternate Sultanate.
On the basis of a 17th-century folk tale, a Loloda prince named Sibu was believed to have lived,
who escaped with his followers from Loloda to the east coast of Celebes, that is, to Manado and
Bolaang Mongondow (Mapanawang, 2012: 133–134). From the story of the oral tradition of
Loloda, Prince Sibu was King Loloda Mokoagow (1653–1689), who was well known and influential during his reign. Loloda Mokoagow (1653–1693) was the origin of the Manoppo dynasty
in the Bolaang Mongondow Kingdom (Dunnebier, 1984, pp. 27–39 & Supit, 1986, pp. 70–115).
1.5
A determinant rebellion: “Sikuru of Laba” (1909)
As revealed from the local oral tradition, the rebellion of Sikuru of Laba village was believed
to have started in 1908. However, from the source of written history, this event was discovered in early 1909. In the period 1909–1915, Loloda suffered a decline to the lowest degree
of sovereignty and political status, from Kolano to Sangaji, as a result of the rebellion. A
number of Dutch newspapers of that period reported that this social movement was led by
Kapitan Laut (Kapita Lao) Sikuru of Laba in 1909.
As mentioned above, several Dutch newspapers had reported the revolt for the first time,
two of which were Nieuwe Amsterdamsche Courant, Algemeen Handelsblad, Zaterdag, 13
Maart 1909; and Nieuwe Amsterdamsche Courant, Algemeen Handelsblad, Mandaag, 15
Maart 1909. These events had major implications for the sustainability and sovereign political entity of Loloda in the Moluccas World, which in turn further strengthened the Ternate
on Loloda with support from the Dutch colonial government.
The Loloda rebellions in 1908–1909 led by Kapitan Laut Sikuru Laba of Laba Village
caused a number of casualties. Three Dutchmen, a tax officer and two policemen, were
killed, and eight others from Loloda were injured. A total of 30 fully armed Dutch soldiers
were sent from Ternate to Loloda under the leadership of Lieutenant Meihuizen to end this
rebellion, as described in the following newspaper report:
“De resident van Ternate seinde den 9en Februari via Gorontalo: vier dezer bericht
van posthouder Djilolo: Politie-adsistent Loloda 2 dezer in huiz Radja te Soa
Sioe door bende Alfoeren kampong Laba overvallen en met twee politie opassers vermoord; militaire patroille, 30 man, onder Luitenant Meihuizen van Ternate
gezonden, over viel nacht 5 op 6 dezer versterkte kampong Laba; kwaadwilligen
vluchtten met achterlating van twee dooden, een geweer en veel blanke wapens;
onzerzijds geen gewonden. Beide kampongs bezet....” (On 9th February, the Resident of Ternate via Gorontalo announced that four pieces of news have been delivered by the supervisors of Jailolo region, namely two police officers were suddenly
killed in the palace of King Loloda in Soasio by a group of Alifuru people from
the Laba village; as many as 30 military patrols were sent from Ternate under the
leadership of Lieutenant Meihuizen, to blockade the Laba village for 5 to 6 nights;
after killing two people, the criminals fled with many guns and weapons; from our
side, no one was injured. We occupied two villages....) (See: Nieuwe Amsterdamsche
Courant, Algemeen Handelsblad, Mandaag, 15 Maart 1909: 13).
This rebellion led to the dismissal and exile of Syamsuddin, the last Kolano of Loloda, in
1909, to Ternate, who was exiled together with his wife and children. The Sikuru with the other
rebel members were punished by the Dutch. Within a period of 6 years until 1915, the sovereign
status of Loloda as a kingdom was formally abolished and then integrated into the Kingdom
of Ternate due to the Dutch colonial political pressure.
The Kolano title for the Loloda ruler was changed to Sangaji in 1909, and in 1915, Loloda
was officially integrated under the reign of the Ternate Sultanate, coinciding with the death
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of Syamsuddin in 1915. The rebellion had actually been recorded in the Kolonial Verslag van
Nederlandsch (Oost) Indie 1909, as reported below:
“......Lolode werden in Februari 1909, zonder bekende aanleiding, de ten laste van de
lanschapskas in dienst genomen assistent an twee gewapende politiedienaren door
de bevolking van Laba vermoord. Nadat de kampong door an militair detachement
uit Ternate bezet was, waarbij op eenig verset werd gestuit, dat den aanvallers op 3
dooden en 8 gewonden te staan kwam, verbeterde de toestand spoedig. De gevluchte
bevolking keerde terug en werkte, onder leiding van de nieuwent assistent, aan wegen
en bruggen. Een onderzoek bracht aan het licht dat de radja, de djogoegoe en de
kapitein Laoet van Loloda de hand in het gebeurde de moeten hebben gehad. Zij
werden ontslagen en met de hofdschuldigen aan den moord naar Ternate gezonden”
(.....in February 1909 in Loloda, due to an unknown cause, two armed policemen
were killed by people from the Laba village. After that, the village was occupied by
a military detachment sent from Ternate, the attack killed three people and injured
eight others. The situation was soon amended, the displaced people went back to
work under the guidance of a new assistant, to build roads and bridges. An investigation revealed that the king, Jougugu, and Kapitan Laut of Loloda were involved
in the incident. They were fired and sent to Ternate for punishment as they were
considered guilty of being involved in the killing) (See: KV (Oost) Indie, 1909, p. 77).
The aforementioned quote states that in February 1909, there was a sudden rebellion
by the people under the leadership of Kapitan Laut (naval commander) of Loloda named
Sikuru, which killed three people, a tax officer and two Dutch policemen, and wounded
eight people inside the palace of Loloda, in front of Kolano Syamsuddin and his empress,
Jou Boki Habiba, in Soasio. This event caused the dismissal of the Kolano (king), Jougugu
(prime minister), and Loloda navy commander from their position and their punishment by
the Dutch ((M. Mansyur, interview, 12 February 2015). Kolano Syamsuddin was also sent to
Ternate to serve his sentence until his death in 1915.
Local oral sources mentioned that the revolt had already commenced in 1908 (H.M.J.B.
Usman, interview, 4 January 2016) and no written sources reported it. It was stated that
Sikuru, the naval commander who led the rebellion, was assisted by his two colleagues,
namely Bagina and Tasa (Sulaeman, interview, 3 January 2016). This revolt was quelled by
the Dutch on 15 March 1909. In fact, some Dutch newspapers reported the event; however,
there were no details on the time and place of this insurgence.
The Loloda rebellion emerged due to the tax system (belasting) and the forced labor imposed
by the Dutch on the Loloda people at that time. This event, which occurred in the period
1908–1909, marked a major historical movement in Loloda, which resulted in the decline of
the Loloda Kingdom. The story of “Kolano Madodaga” or “the end of the Loloda Kingdom” is known as an expression in many local traditions that has been used still.
2
CONCLUSION
Five important steps had been taken by the Loloda Kingdom to maintain its sovereignty in
the Moluccas World until the early 20th century, including fighting against the Spanish in the
early 17th century that almost destroyed the kingdom and migrating due to political conflict.
However, the roots of social, cultural, political, and geohistorical traces of Loloda in Halmahera were still upheld. People migrated from Loloda only to survive by building a new “political space” and “space politics”. Loloda had built a new political entity in the eastern coast of
Sulawesi, which spread in Manado and Bolaang Mongondow, by establishing an alliance with
Nuku (Tidore), Jailolo, the British, and several other districts in Halmahera to resist the expansion of Ternate and the Dutch as the “enemies” in the northern part of Halmahera (1780–1810).
The relationship pattern of the “allies and enemies” as an “instability settling” was also used
by the authorities of Loloda, causing a rebellion by the people led by Kapita Lao Sikuru from
Laba village (1908–1909) against Ternate and the Dutch in Soasio. The rebels were against the
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taxing policy of Ternate and the Dutch imposed on the people of Loloda. This is because they
thought that both the Ternate Kingdom and the Dutch were external parties and that taxes
could only be collected by, from, and for the Loloda people themselves, and they continued to
maintain its traditional indigenous governance structures, even though it was under the authority of Ternate. This has been evident in every election of Jougugu (leader) in Loloda. It is possible that in addition to the rebellion other factors have also contributed to the deterioration
of the sovereignty of Loloda; however, further research is required to determine these factors.
According to the study of the Moluccas World, Loloda has left no trace in history. However,
a study conducted by the author using the latest historical resources of North Moluccas proves
that Loloda has still “existed” as a kingdom with a political entity configured formally into the
structure of the Ternate Sultanate. However, its existence has been forgotten and left unrevealed.
REFERENCES
Abdurachman, P.R. (2008) Bunga Angin Portugis di Nusantara: Jejak-Jejak Kebudayaan Portugis di Indonesia (The Portugese Wind in Nusantara: Traces of Portuguese Culture in Indonesia). Jakarta, LIPI PressAsosiasi Persahabatan dan Kerjasama Indonesia-Portugal dan Yayasan Obor Indonesia.
Andaya, L.Y. (1993) The World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in Early Modern Period. Honolulu, University
of Hawaii.
Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia. (1980) Ternate: Memorie van Overgave (MvO), J.H. Tobias (1857) dan
Memorie van Overgave, C. Bosscher (1859). Jakarta, ANRI.
Baarda, M.J. van. (1904) Het Loda’sch, in Vergelijking met het Galela’sch Dialect op Halmaheira. BKI. 56 (1).
Baretta, J.M. (1917) Halmahera en Morotai Bewerk Naar de Memorie van Den Kapitein van Den Generalen
Staf. Mededeeling E.B.-Aflevering XIII. Batavia, Javasche Boekhandel & Drukkerij.
Campen, F.C.H. (1888) Beschrijving van de Westkust van Het Noorder Schiereiland van Halmahera. BKI. 37 (1).
De Clercq, F.S.A. (1890) Ternate the Residency and Its Sultanate (Bijdragen tot de kennis der Residentie Ternate), Translated from the Dutch by Paul Michael Taylor and Marie N. Richards. Washington, D.C.,
Smithsonian Institution Libraries Digital Edition, 1999.
Dunnebier, W. (1984) Over de Vorsten van Bolaang Mongondow (Mengenal Raja-Raja Bolaang Mongondow)
(Introducing the Kings of Bolaang Mongondow). Translation, Responses, and Review from R. Mokoginta
and F.P. Mokoginta. Kotamobagu, DPRD Kabupaten Dati II Bolaang Mongondow.
Hasan, A.H. (2001) Aroma Sejarah dan Budaya Ternate (The Historic and Cultural Aroma of Ternate).
Jakarta, Antara Pustaka Utama.
Hueting, A. (1908) Iets over de Ternataansch-Halmaherasche Taalgroep, BKI, 60 (I), 369–411.
Jacobs, H.T.M. (1971) A Treatise on the Moluccas (c.1544): Probably Preliminary Version of Antonio Galvao’s Lost, Historia Das Moluccas, Edited, Annotated, and Translated in to English from the Portuguese
Manuscript in the Archivo General de Indies, Seville. Rome, Italy: Jesuit Historical Institute via dei Penitenzieri 20 00193, St. Louis University, St Louis, Mo. 63103, USA.
Lapian, A.B. (1994) Bacan and the early history of North Maluku. In: Visser, L.E. (eds.) Halmahera and
beyond: Social science research in the Moluccas. Leiden, KITLV Press. pp. 11–20.
Leirissa, R.Z. (1996) Halmahera Timur dan Raja Jailolo: Pergolakan Sekitar Laut Seram Awal Abad Ke-19
(East Halmahera and the King of Jailolo: The Rebellion around the Seram Sea at the Beginning of the 19th
Century). Jakarta, Balai Pustaka.
Mapanawang, A.L. (2012) Loloda Kerajaan Pertama Moluccas (Sejarah Kerajaan Loloda Maluku) (Loloda
the First Moluccas Kingdom [The History of the Loloda Kingdom Maluku]). Tobelo, Yayasan Medika
Mandiri Halmahera.
Nieuwe Amsterdamsche Courant, Algemeen Handelsblad, Mandaag, 15 March 1909, No. 25827, editie van 4
uur, 82e jaar, on the part of Onze. Oost, Nederlandsche Mail, Java-blaaden, 13–17 Febr., p. 13.
Nieuwe Amsterdamsche Courant, Algemeen Handelsblad, Zaterdag, 13 March 1909, 825 editie, van 2 uur,
Ternate deel, p. 3.
Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia. Soerabaiya Handelsblad, Tuesday, 21 January 1908, Third Sheet.
Supit, B. (1986) Minahasa: Dari Amanat Watu Pinawetengan sampai Gelora Minawanua (Minahasa: From
the Watu Pinawetengan to the Gelora Minawanua Decree). Jakarta, PT. Sinar Harapan.
Yakub A.L. (1985) Bukti-bukti Kerajaan Loloda yang paling besar dan yang paling tua dan meliputi seluruh Halmahera (Proof of Loloda as the largest and oldest kingdom and covering the entire Halmahera). (The Rise
and Fall of Loloda Kingdom) (Manuscript). Ternate, Kantor Kebudayaan Kota Praja Ternate, 1980–1985.
Zuhdi, S. (2010) Labu Rope Labu Wana: Sejarah Buton yang Terabaikan (Labu Rope Labu Wana: the Ignored
History of Buton). Jakarta, Radja Grafindo Persada.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Votive tablets in Buddhist religious rituals in the Nusantara
archipelago from the 7th–10th centuries AD
A. Indradjaja & W.R. Wahyudi
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This paper discusses the function of votive tablets found in many Buddhist
sites in the Nusantara archipelago from 7th–10th AD. As a ceremonial object, a votive tablet’s
function is analyzed through specific analysis and context. The result shows that the function
of votive tablets in relation to religious rituals, besides having the primary function as a media
ceremony (offering), it is also used to “turn on” the sacred building (stupa) and as supplementary Garbhapātra. The function of votive tablets found in the religious ritual is known to be
the result of hybridization between the Buddhist faith and the belief of local communities.
In addition, the presence of votive tablets in religious ceremonies along with stupika and seal
tablets is associated with the view that in any religious ritual, the figure of Buddha should be
present along with every object associated with the Buddha such as votive tablet representing
rupakaya (physical element) and mantras of the Buddha representing dharmakaya (spiritual
element). It is the unification of the two elements (rupakaya and dharmakaya) which will turn
on Buddha in the religious rituals.
1
INTRODUCTION
The intensive maritime trade in Southeast Asia brought a “blessing” to the spreading of
Buddhism into the Indonesian archipelago (Poesponegoro and Notosusanto, 2009: 21–26).
According to Claire Holt, a researcher of Indonesian arts, the period between the 7th–10th
centuries AD is an important period for our knowledge of Buddhism and Buddhist art in
Indonesia (2000: 35). Besides leaving a trail of monuments and statues of Buddha, some
devout Buddhists left numerous relics/artifacts related to the religious activities at that time,
including votive tablets.
Votive tablets are small-sized Buddhist icons usually made of clay and sometimes mixed
with ashes, then printed with press technique, and subsequently burned or simply dried and
used as ceremonial objects. According to Robert Redfield, an icon is defined as a sign to the
object it represents. Icons are not always in the form of depictions or expressions as known in
the Greek Orthodox Church, but they can also be an analogy (1971: 42; Sedyawati, 1985: 44).
Icon in Buddhism is a form of visual object representing certain concepts, and to some
extent, some icons are adapted from other traditions, for example the statue of Bodhisattva
Avalokiteshvara is influenced by the figure of the Hindu god Siva (Sedyawati, 2009: 85).
The finding of votive tablets is often accompanied by stupika and a seal tablet. Stupika is
a miniature stupa made of clay and a seal tablet is a short inscription containing Buddhist
mantras (verses), which is also made of clay.
The findings of votive tablets in Indonesia were first reported in 1896 in the area around
Yogyakarta and later published in Oudheidkundige Verslag (OV) around 1931–1935, which
mentioned the existence of several votive tablets in Jongke Village, located around 7 km north
of Yogyakarta.
The interest of researchers on the findings of votive tablet was first demonstrated by W.F.
Stutterheim toward the votive tablet found in Pejeng in 1920 (Stutterheim, 1930: 4). Other
researchers also wrote about the findings of votive tablets, among others A.A.Gede Oka
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Astawa, Hariani Santiko, Issatriadi, Endang Sri Hardiati, and Peter Ferdinandus from the
National Archaeological Research Center.
The research on the votive tablets can contribute to the understanding of the existence
of Buddhism in the archipelago. In the context of Buddhism in the Nusantara archipelago,
Edi Sedyawati (2009: 87) explained that Buddhism at that time had absorbed the Javanese
culture into the universal Buddhism mixed with the local culture (Java). In terms of ceremonial objects, one of which is a votive tablet, this study attempts to explain the relationship
between the function of votive tablets within Buddhist religious rites and their position in
Buddhist religious rites in the Nusantara archipelago.
2
THEORY AND METHOD
According to Christopher Dawson, to understand the cultural influence of a society, one
must first understand the religion professed by the community:
“Religion is the key to history. We cannot understand the essence of social order
without understanding the religion the community embraces. We cannot understand
the results of their culture without understanding the religious belief into the background. In every age the main results are based on the culture of religious ideas and
immortalized for religious purposes” (Zoetmulder, 1965: 327; Munandar, 1990: 2).
In other words, to understand the cultural objects closely tied to the religious aspect, it is
essential to first know the prevailing concepts in the religion.
The word “religion” in anthropology also has a variety of meanings. Tylor describes the
essence of religion as the belief in spiritual beings which can be interpreted as magic and that
everything in nature has a soul. The belief in spirits then evolves into a belief in the gods of
nature. Furthermore, the belief in the gods of the nature evolves into various ranks of gods
from the lowest to the highest (Agus, 2006: 120–121).
According to Melford E. Spiro, religion is an institution consisting of culturally patterned
interaction with culturally postulated superhuman being (Spiro, 1977: 96–7).
Interaction, according to Spiro, has two senses, namely: (1) the activities which are believed
to carry out, embody, or be consistent with the will or desire of the superhuman beings of
powers and (2) the activities which are believed to influence superhuman beings to satisfy the
needs of the actors. The concept of superhuman beings refers to the belief in the entities that
own supreme power and can do good or bad things, and have relationships with humans.
All institutions consist of (a) belief system, i.e. an enduring organization of cognitions
about one or more aspects of the universe, (b) action system, an enduring organization on
behavior pattern designed to attain ends for the satisfaction of needs, and (c) value system, an
enduring organization of principles by which behavior can be judged on some scale of merit
(Spiro, 1997: 97–98). The religious actors not only believe in the truth of propositions about
superhuman beings, but also believe in these beings. They not only believe in the truth of
religion propositions, but also – and more frequently—to certain practices (Spiro, 1997: 106).
According to Spiro, the existence of religion can be explained causally and functionally.
Religion persists not only because it has functions, in which it does, or is believed to, satisfy
desires; but also because it has causes, namely the expectation of satisfying these desires
(1977:117).
According to Koentjaraningrat, there are five religious components that can always be
found in all denominations. The five components can also be referred to as a religious identity of a religious group because the five components may differ from one particular religious
group to other groups. The five components are: religious emotion, belief systems, system of
rites and ceremonies, equipment of rites, and communities (Koentjaraningrat, 1980: 80–3).
Among the five components that have been outlined by Koentjaraningrat, the equipment
of rites component, which in this case is the votive tablet, will be the focus of the discussion.
Of course, with the assistance of other data, votive tablet functions in religious rites can also
be reinterpreted.
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The source of research data was obtained through data collection from the Segaran V,
Batujaya Temple, Karawang, West Java; Borobudur Temple, Magelang; Kalibukbuk Temple,
Bali; Gentong Temple, Mojokerto and Gumuk Klinting site, Banyuwangi.
The stages of research conducted in this study were adapted from the archaeological
research method introduced by K.R. Dark (1995), where each artifact or structure (findings)
can be seen as data containing archaeological information. However, the data only inform
about their own existence and cannot necessarily be treated as archaeological evidence. The
new archaeological data become archaeological evidence after being put into the framework
of interpretation (1995: 36).
2.1 Archaeological data
The findings of votive tablets in the Nusantara archipelago can be classified into six groups. In
the broadest sense, classification can be understood as to enter different units into a certain class
or type that has not been previously determined. If a certain number of artifacts are categorized
into one type, it means that such artifacts can be described as a group having the same attributes,
which are different from other types. The classification or categorization of the findings of
votive tablets is based on the opinions of Brew and Rouse, who stressed that the classification
of a type was entirely based on the design made by the researchers, but it is not something that
is already available in the data (Sedyawati, 1985: 22–8). The classification of the type of votive
tablets is based on the depiction of relief. Broadly speaking, the depiction of relief on a votive
tablet can be grouped into relief of figures and non-figures. The grouping of relief figures on
the votive tablets follows the “divine arrangement” known in Buddhism. There are three divine
arrangements namely, Tathagata (Dhyani Buddha), Dhyani Bodhisattva, and Manusi-Buddha.
Beyond the three divine arrangements, there are also known other deities such as Tara. Identification of figures was done by analyzing the iconography, such as the postures, the attributes
of that subject, and others that may be used for classification. The purpose of the identification
and classification of characters in the votive tablet is to identify the characters depicted on the
votive tablets and their position in the Buddhist pantheon. The research only found two nonfigure depiction relief in the votive tablets, namely on the stupas and kundika, which then fell
into their own category of types. Thus, the classification of types of votive relief tablets becomes
Tathagata, Dhyani Bodhisattva, Manusi Buddha, Tara, Stupa, and Kundika.
In the context of archaeology, votive tablets were found in several places, among others in the base of the temple such as the one found in the Kalibukbuk Temple, in wells, or
“sumuran”, of the temple such as the one found in the Gentong Temple, under the base of
the north-western side and the corner of the east wall of the temple such as the one found in
the Segaran V, Batujaya Temple, and in the courtyard of the temple such as the one found
at Borobudur Temple. In addition, there are votive tablets that were found in the grave in
Gumuk Klinting Site.
2.2
Votive tablets as offerings
Votive tablets found in the courtyard of Segaran V Temple, Batujaya Temple, and the courtyard of Borobudur Temple are likely to be associated with religious activities conducted at the
temples, i.e. the offering brought by the pilgrims to the holy places. This may be analysed by
drawing a comparison with the practice of using tablets as a votive offering in Tibet. Votive
tablets in Tibet are found around the stupa and always associated with the activity of pilgrims
traveling to the holy shrines. They always bring a votive tablet mold and after arriving at the
holy places, they will collect clay and then mold it. They always recite a mantra during the
making of votive tablets until it is completed. Votive tablets have been created and used in religious activities during their stay around the shrine and then the votive tablets will be placed at
the edge of the stupa as an offering and partly taken home as a souvenir (Li, 1995: 2).
The cultic practices of giving offerings in the area of the stupa have been performed continuously for a long time, making votive tablets deposit found in considerable numbers when
they were rediscovered (Chipravati, 2000: 183).
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In an archaeological context (the context of making, using, and disposing), their religious
rituals to provide some offerings were conducted in the stupa, and the votive tablets were used
as part of the offerings. Therefore, many votive tablets were found around the stupa. After
the ceremony is completed, the object of this offering is cleared from the altar for worship.
As an offering of a sacred object, it certainly must be carefully cleaned. Ethnographic studies conducted by Walker about ritual discard found after ceremonies, the entire ceremonial
objects would be cleaned and then dumped or buried outside the ceremonial site (1995:
67–79; Wahyudi 2012: 219) and offerings that are difficult to dispose of will be deposited in
one particular place.
Thus, the findings of votive tablets in a hole created around the base of the stairs and
the walls of the Segaran V, Batujaya Temple and on the west side of the Borobudur temple
courtyard could be the result of worshipping around the stupa area using votive tablets as
offerings, which were placed not only in front of a stupa but in certain places around the
stupa. Another possibility is that the collection of votive tablets is the result of the cleaning
activity in front of the stupa after the ceremony is completed. Regarding the sacredness of
votive tablets, to clean up the effigies of votive tablets would require specific places around
the stupa to keep them.
2.3
Votive tablets as “Peripih”
The findings of votive tablets on the base and in the wells of a temple are associated with
the founding ceremony of the stupa itself. It is also associated with the position of the votive
tablets, stupika, and seal tablets as sacred objects. In India, the practice of establishing a stupa
is a tradition that has lasted for thousands of years even before the time of the Buddha and
is known as caitya or dhātugarbha (Dorjee, 2001: vii). The stupa was then intended to save
physical relics (dhatus), which construction was ordered by the Buddha in the manuscript of
Mahaparinibbana Sutta (Dorjee, 2001: viii).
The records on the regulations for erecting stupas are the Raśmivimala and Vimalosnīsa
manuscripts which original version is drafted in Sanskrit language and then copied into
Tibetan language (Dorjee, 2001: 23–4).
Raśmivimala states that votive tablets used to appear only after the pre-construction phase
has been completed. Before a votive tablet is placed, the foundation hole, which is called
singgasana or throne, is first created. In the middle of the throne, votive tablets are prepared
together with other holy objects, such as precious stones, seeds, and soil (Dorjee, 2001: 41).
After votive tablets are placed in the throne, the hole is closed by a cover called the throne.
A staircase is built on the top cover and its center is empty. The empty middle part is then
filled with as many other holy objects as possible including votive tablets, stupika, and seal
tablets. It is said that the number of votive tablets stored in the domes affect the levels of
power and blessings of the stupa (Dorjee, 2001: 42).
After the stupa construction is completed, the ritual of purification is performed. The
purpose of this purification ceremony is to embrace the wisdom of the Buddha through
the power of meditation practice, the power of the ritual, and the loyalty of the followers. The
lessons drawn are then consecrated into the Buddhist stupa and tied in the stupa by certain
ritual procedures (Dorjee, 2001: 42).
The construction process of stupa which positions the stupika and votive tablets under the
base of the ancillary Kalibukbuk Temple, could lead to the conclusion that the Kalibukbuk
Temple seems to have the same procedure. This is due to the fact that votive tablets, stupika, and
a seal tablet were found in certain positions arranged in the base of the Kalibukbuk Temple.
The position of the votive tablets at a slightly different base stupa was found in Gentong
Temple, Trowulan. In this temple, votive tablets containing Buddhist mantra were discovered
in the temple along with the stupika wells. The position of the votive tablets in the wells of
the temple seems to have similarities with the tradition of Hindu temple construction in Java
in the 8th–10th centuries AD.
In the Hindu religion, the temple construction is noted in a number of books of Vastusastra, among others, Mayamata, Manasara, Matsya-purana, and Bhuvanapradīpa (Anom
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1997: 104). The process of pre-construction is followed by the laying of the foundation stone
in the central hole (ārdhāsila). After the foundation hole (pitting) has been filled with soil
up to ¾ of its depth, the ārdhāsila is topped with nidhikalaśa (container of wealth) made of
stone or bronze. Adhārasila is then covered with the building of the temple (Kramrisch I,
1946: 110–12).
Apparently, the same approach is applied in Gentong Temple with the temple’s wells/
sumuran at Gentong Temple which is filled with stupika and votive tablets. Other findings
in these wells are ash, fragments of gold, and precious rocks. All of these findings may be
considered as the content of peripih (pendeman) commonly found in Hindu temples. The
similarity between the contents of peripih in Hindu temples with stupika and votive tablets
and other findings (ash, fragments of gold, precious rocks) in Gentong Temple is that both
are considered sacred objects that required to bring the gods.
As sacred objects in the wells of the temple, the purpose of laying stupika and votive tablets in a Gentong temple well is likely to be similar with the laying of a peripih at a Hindu
temple. Peripih functions to “turn on” the temple building. Without peripih, sacred buildings
cannot be used as a place of worship. Through the ceremony, the magical powers of the gods
are gathered into one in the peripih seed and completes the establishment of the new temple
(Soekmono, 1989: 217–8).
2.4
Votive tablets as supplementary to Garbhapātra
In Buddhism, a person’s death is seen as a process to achieve freedom. The manuscript of
Maha Parinibbanasutta elaborates how to handle the bodies of the Buddha who passed away,
how to handle the fire, and how to put relics in a stupa (Blum, 2004: 205).
The common funeral rites before the presence of Hindu-Buddhism in the Nusantara archipelago included burying the bodies. In practice, the deceased is buried along with a number
of everyday objects, which are called the burial gift. The belief in the survival in the afterlife encourages people to send the departed soul with burial gifts (James, 1957: Soejono,
2008: 83). In addition to everyday objects, the burial gifts in certain cases also include sacred
objects such as a ceremonial axe. (Soejono, 2008: 104). Upon the arrival of Hindu-Buddhism
in the archipelago, Javanese people were introduced to the funeral ceremonial procession of
cremating the corpse (Bernet Kempers, 1970: 213).
The burial practice ceremony in Gumuk Klinting Site shows hybridization between Buddhism belief and non-Buddhism (local indigenous beliefs). The existence of Buddhist teachings
is shown by the ashes found stored in a bronze cupu. The indication of this ash being the ash of
a corpse is hinted by other findings such as a small knife, glass beads and hair, which in Buddhism are known as paribhoga—the objects owned by the figure of Buddha during his lifetime.
The whole paribhoga is then put in a terracotta container called garbhapātra or ritual vessel.
In Gumuk Klinting Site, ash and paribhoganya stored in a garbhapātra are not placed in a
stupa but buried. Then, garbhapātra containing the ashes and paribhoga are stockpiled by the
arrangement of votive tablets, stupika and a seal tablet to a depth of two meters. The practice of burying the ashes with votive tablets, a seal tablet and stupika is totally unknown in
Buddhist tradition, considering that votive tablets, stupika and seal tablets are seen as sacred
objects. There is a possibility of inclusion of votive tablet, and a seal tablet and stupika in the
graves of Buddha figures as a complement of paribhoga. It is hoped that buried figures will
get the blessings of the Buddha, so that in the next life they obtain a good position.
The burial practices of the Buddha figure in Gumuk Klinting Site that includes paribhoga
seem to have similarities with the traditions of the local communities that include objects
used in everyday life and in the case of particular figures coming with sacred objects.
2.5
The role of votive tablet in Buddhist religious ritual in Nusantara
One role of the votive tablets that is considered important is being a medium to obtain merit
easily on an unlimited scale. It appears that the votive tablet as a medium to obtain merit can
fulfill the wishes of his/her supporters in order to prepare for a better life after death.
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The presence of votive tablets became important and mandatory in every stage of the
religious rites, including votive tablets that are considered to represent the Buddha himself.
In practice, votive tablets are always accompanied by a mantra, and it can be understood that
the votive tablets are considered as rūpakaya (physical manifestation) of Buddha and mantras as Dharmakaya (spiritual beings). The unification between rūpakaya and Dharmakaya
is essential to invite “the presence of ” Buddha who seems to be present in the religious rites
where the rituals are performed.
The necessity to invoke the “Buddha” in any religious ceremony prompted the creation of
votive tablets to represent the presence of “Buddha” in the ceremony. Thus, it can be said that
the role of votive tablets becomes very important in any religious activities.
3
CONCLUSION
In Nusantara, votive tablets are known to have important roles in religious rites. Based on
the archaeological findings of votive tablets, it is indicated that the votive tablets are used for
religious rituals, where they are utilized as offerings placed within the area of enshrinement,
or stupa, in order to gain merit. It can be seen from the findings of votive tablets around
Segaran V, Batujaya Temple, and Borobudur Temple. Votive tablets are also used to fill the
foundation of the temple as the ones found in the Kalibukbuk Temple, Bali and Gentong
Temple, Mojokerto. It is also used to invoke the power and blessing of Buddha. Votive tablets
are also used as a complement to garbhapātra for the deceased Buddhist figures.
The practice of placing votive tablets in the wells of the temple as “peripih/ pendeman” and
the burial practices using votive tablets as a complement to garbhapātra indicate that the Buddhism that flourished in the archipelago was the Buddhism that had adapted to the ancient
local tradition and intertwined with the local belief adjusted to the community needs.
REFERENCES
Agus, B. (2006) Agama dalam kehidupan manusia: antropologi agama (Religion in the life of man: religious anthropology). Jakarta, Rajawali Press.
Anom, I.G.N. (1997) Keterpaduan aspek teknis dan aspek keagamaan dalam pendirian candi periode
Jawa Tengah (studi kasus utama Candi Sewu) (The synergy of technical and religious aspects in the
construction of temples in the Central Java period) (primary case study of Sewu Temple). Dissertation.
Yogyakarta, Universitas Gadjah Mada.
Blum. (2004) Death in Encyclopedia of Buddhism. In: Buswell & Robert (eds). New York, Macmillan
Reference. pp. 203–210.
Chipravati, P. (2000) Development of Buddhist traditions in Peninsular Thailand: a study based on
votive tablet (seventh to eleventh century). In: Nora A.Taylor (ed) Studies in Southeast Asian Art:
essay in honor of Stanley J.O.Connor. New York, Cornell University. pp. 172–193.
Chutiwongs, N. (1984) The Iconography of Avalokitesvara in Mainland South East Asia. Leiden.
Damais, L.C. (1995) Agama Buddha di Indonesia (The Buddhist Religion in Indonesia). In: Epigrafi
dan sejarah Nusantara (The Nusantara Epigraphy and History). (pp.85–99). Jakarta, Pusat Penelitian
Arkeologi Nasional.
Dark, K.R. (1995) Theoretical Archaeology. New York, Cornell University Press.
Djafar, H. (2010) Komplek Percandian Batujaya: Rekonstruksi sejarah kebudayaan daerah pantai utara
Jawa Barat (The Batujaya Temple Complex: Reconstruction of the cultural history of the north coast
of West Java). [Dissertation]. Bandung, Kiblat.
Dorjee, P. (2001) Stupa and its technology a Tibeto-Buddhist perspective. New Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass
Publishers Private Limited.
Guy, J. (2002) Offering up a rare jewel: Buddhist merit-making and votive tablet in early Burma. In:
A green and T.R. Blurton (ed.) Burma, art and archaeology. London, The British Museum Press.
Holt, C. (2000) Melacak jejak perkembangan seni di Indonesia (Tracing the art development in Indonesia).
Soerdarsono (trans.) Bandung, arti.line.
Koentjaraningrat. (1980) Sejarah teori antropologi I (The History of Anthropological Theory I). Jakarta,
Universitas Indonesia Press.
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Kramrish, S. (1946) The Hindu temple Vol. 1. Calcuta, University of Calcutta.
Li, J. (1995) Image of earth and water: the tsa-tsa votive tablet of Tibet. Retrieved from: https: //www.
asianart.com/li/tsatsa.html [Accessed on 21st June 2016].
Munandar, A.A. (1990) Kegiatan keagamaan di Pawitra gunung suci di Jawa Timur abad ke 14−15.
(Religious activities in the Pawitra of the sacred mountain in East Java during the 14th–15th centuries).
Depok, Program Studi Arkeologi.Universitas Indonesia.
Oudheidkundig Verslag (1931–1935) Oudheidkundig Verslag uitgegeven door den Oudheidku ndige Dient
van Nederlandsch-indië 1931–1935.Weltevreden, Albrecht;’s-Gravenhage, Nijh off.
Poesponegoro, Djoened, M., & Notosusanto, N. (2009) Sejarah Indonesia II (Indonesian History II).
Jakarta, PN. Balai Pustaka.
Sedyawati, E. (1985) Pengarcaan Ganeśa masa Kadiri dan Sinhasãri: Sebuah tinjauan sejarah kesenian.
(Depiction of Ganesha Statues during the Kadiri and Sinhasari: A historical review) [Dissertation].
Depok, Universitas Indonesia.
Sedyawati, E. (2009). Saiwa dan Bauddha di masa Jawa Kuna (Saiwa and Bauddha during the Ancient
Javanese period). Denpasar, Widya Dharma.
Soejono. R.P. (2008) Sistem-sistem penguburan pada akhir masa prasejarah di Bali (Burial systems during
the prehistoric period in Bali). [Dissertation]. Jakarta, Pusat Penelitian dan Pengembangan Arkeologi Nasional.
Soekmono, R. (1974) Candi fungsi dan pengertian (The function and meaning of temples). [Dissertation].
Jakarta, Universitas Indonesia.
Soekmono, R. (1989) Sekali lagi: Masalah peripih (Once again, the issue of peripih). In: Pertemuan
ilmiah arkeologi V (Vthe Scientific Archeological Meeting). Jakarta, Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi
Nasional. (pp. 217–225).
Spiro, M.E. (1977) Religion: Problems of definition and explanation. In: Anthropological approaches to
the study of religion. London: Tavistock Publications. pp. 85–125.
Stutterheim, W.F. (1930) Oudheden van Bali (vol. 1). Singaradja, Uitgegeven Door De Kirtya Liefrink.
Wahyudi. W.R. (2012) Tembikar upacara di candi-candi Jawa Tengah abad ke-8-10 (ceremonial ceramics
in temples of Central Java during the 8th–10th centuries). Jakarta, Wedatama Widya Sastra.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Tracing religious life in the ancient Bali period: An epigraphical
study
N.K.P.A. Laksmi & W.R. Wahyudi
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: In this study, we investigate ancient inscriptions written by kings in the
ancient Bali period. Data in the ancient inscription were collected, selected, and interpreted
in accordance with the following aspects: the models of holy places in the ancient Bali period,
the relationships between the holy places mentioned in the ancient inscriptions and the ones
that are still found in Bali, and the relationships between holy places and the society in the
ancient Bali period. The ancient inscriptions show that the holy places in the ancient Bali
period were built on peaks of mountains/hills, at riverbanks, near water springs, at lake
banks, and around residential areas. They consist of main and additional buildings and some
of them can still be traced from their physical existence, such as the Puncak Penulisan Temple
at Kintamani, the Gunung Kawi Bathing Complex, the Tirtha Mpul, the Goa Gajah, the
Bhatara Da Tonta at Trunyan, and the Kedharman Kutri Temple. The ancient Balinese society had very much associated with these holy places, especially in protecting, maintaining,
and preserving them. Such functions are being continued by the modern Balinese society by
performing laku langkah (working together), sending bakat-bakat (offerings), and performing religious rituals/ceremonies as stipulated in the ancient inscriptions.
1
INTRODUCTION
Ancient inscriptions not only show historical data, but also religious data. Traces of Hinduism and Buddhism can be found since the 8th century as found in religious ancient inscriptions. Nevertheless, pre-Hinduism traditions still remain to date. Holy places built in the
ancient Bali period are physical evidence of the period having close relationships with the
local communities.
We will first focus on the patterns of the holy places of the ancient Bali period. Then, we
will also discuss the relationships that these holy places have with the communities surrounding them and their obligations in maintaining the holy places both physically and upholding
the rituals.
2
2.1
DISCUSSION
The patterns of holy places in the ancient Bali period
2.1.1 Types of buildings found at the holy places of ancient Bali
In general, no clear or precise direction is available to be used as the basis for identifying
religious holy places in the ancient Bali period. Nevertheless, there are some criteria that can
be used for that purpose. The first criterion is designations, some of which are used in both
single and mixed manners. The designations are as follows:
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1. Hyang/Sang Hyang/parhyangan1: In some ancient inscriptions of the ancient Bali period,
the holy places and/or gods the people worshipped had the title Hyang/Sang Hyang/parhyangan placed before the name. Examples are Hyang Api, Hyang Tanda, Hyang Karimama
(Bangli Kehen Temple A), Hyang Tahinuni (Gobleg Batur Temple A), Sang Hyang at
Turuñan (Turuñan AI), Sang Hyang Wukir Kulit Byu (Batur Abang A/Tulukbyu Temple
A), Sang Hyang Mandala ri Lokasrana (Bangli Kehen Temple C), and Sang Hyang Candri
ring Linggabhawana (Selumbung).
2. Bhatara2: Examples are Bhatara Da Tonta (Turuñan AI), Bhatara Puntahyang (Sembiran AI), Bhatara ring Antakuñjarapāda (Dawan), Bhatara Dharma Hañar (Sukawati A),
Bhatara Bukit Tunggal (Gobleg Desa Temple AII), Bhatara Kuñjarasana (Tejakula),
Bhatara i Tuluk Byu (Abang Abang Temple B/Tulukbyu B), and Bhatara Partapan Langaran (Langgahan). Similarly to Hyang/Sang Hyang, the designation of Bhatara is often
used to refer to a designated holy place and/or god.
3. Ulan: This designation is only found in an ancient inscription of Sukawana AI (804 Ś),
which is ulan at Cintamani Mal (a holy place at Kintamani Hill).
4. Dangudu/Pangudwan: This designation can be found in an ancient inscription of Bangli
Pura Kehen A in “dangudu kibhaktyan sang ratu di hyang karimama” (Goris, 1954a: 59)
meaning “a holy place worshipped by king at Hyang Karimama”. The designation of pangudwan (pangudwan bhatāra i baturan) can be found in the ancient inscription of Batuan.
5. Partapān/patapan: Examples are the Partapan at Bukit Ptung (Babahan I), Patapan i thani
Latêngan (Angsri B), and Partapān Langgaran (Langgahan).
6. Tirtha: The designation of tirtha is only found in an ancient inscription of Manukaya
(884), namely the tirtha in (water) mpul.
7. Katyagan: The designation of katyagan is only found in an ancient inscription of Tengkulak A (945 Ś) and Tengkulak E (1103 Ś) in katyagan ring amarawati.
In addition to the aforementioned designations, there are some terms that are possibly
used to refer to holy places/holy buildings, such as sambar3, prasādā4, wihara5, sanga6, śalā7,
meru8, and parpantyan. However, these terms do not clearly refer to any specific location
(toponymy).
2.1.2 Locations/toponyms of the holy places in the ancient Bali period
On the basis of the information obtained in the ancient inscriptions, some locations/toponyms of holy places from the ancient Bali period exist even today, such as:
Hills of mountains and hills. Bukit Cintamani, now known as Bukit Kintamani, is at Kintamani District, Bangli Regency, where the Pucak Penulisan Temple is located. The temple is
also known as Tegeh Koripan Temple or the Panarajon Temple. Another hill is Bukit Karimama, which is located in Simpat Bunut Village, Bangli District, Bangli Regency. There is a
temple on the hill called Kehen Temple. Meanwhile, Bukit Tunggal, also known as Gunung
Sinunggal, is located in Tajun Village, Buleleng Regency, where a holy place known as the
Gunung Sinunggal Temple is found. Finally, Bukit Kulit Byu, named as Abang Mountain, is
located in Abang Village, sub-district of Kintamani, Bangli Regency.
1. Hyang = dewa, betara, holy soul, a designation for gods or holy souls; parhyangan = holy building, a
place for worshipping gods or holy souls (Granoka, et al., 1985:44).
2. The word “bhatara” comes from Sanskrit, meaning (1) “god”, (2) “king” who has passed away and
purified or identified as the god; (3) the king who is still alive or active in ruling; (4) a site or holy place
for worship (Goris, 1954b:223; Granoka et al.,1985:16; Mardiwarsito, 1986:125).
3. Sambar = temple (holy place) (Granoka et al., 1985:93).
4. Prasādā = prasada, meru (Granoka et al., 1985:82).
5. Wihara = temple, dormitory (Granoka et al., 1985:117).
6. Sanga = holy place for worshipping God (Granoka et al., 1985:93).
7. Śalā = temple, holy place (Granoka et al., 1985:92).
8. Meru is a type of buildings served as a place for worshipping as the symbol of Mahameru Mountain.
The style prioritizes its beauty of the terraced roofs called tumpang. The roofs are always uneven in
number as 3, 5, 7, 9, or 11 (the highest).
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Riverbank. To date, 13 parts of the temple have been found on the banks of Pakerisan
River, in addition to 3 temple buildings, 47 meditation caves, and 4 springs of holy water
(Srijaya, 1996:97). The Goa Gajah site is located on the banks of Petanu River, and various
holy buildings were found also on the banks of Penet River, such as the Balinese temples of
Pucak Bon, Pucak Tinggan, and Taman Ayun, which contain several archaeological relics
from both prehistorical and historical periods (Srijaya, 2010: 198–199).
Springs. In addition to riverbank areas, some holy places can be found near water springs,
for example, at Tirtha Empul. The ancient inscription mentions that it is “the holy water in
the water” (Goris, 1954a: 75), which may refer to Yeh Mengening Spring, in Tampaksiring
Village, Tampaksiring District.
The edge of the lake. Information of ancient inscriptions of Turuñan AI, AII, B, and C
proves that the villages around the Batur Lake were unified through the shared responsibilities or obligations toward the holy place of Sanga Hyang at Turuñan, in Terunyan Village.
In addition to the Batur Lake, the bank of Tamblingan Lake consists of a holy place and
residential area.
Around the residential area. The holy places or holy buildings located around residential
areas are Hyang Api and Hyang Tanda, which were places of worship. Worshipping Hyang
Api and Hyang Tanda is often mentioned in the inscriptions of the ancient Bali period. Hyang
Api and Hyang Tanda could be located separately; however, in some residential areas, they are
worshipped together besides other holy places.
2.1.3 Buildings of holy places in the ancient Bali period
Originally, holy places built in the ancient Bali period were not constructed together with
other supporting buildings. There is an indication that the buildings were built gradually to
meet the needs and considering the capacity of the worshippers. The use of organic materials
has made the survival of some of the buildings impossible. Only the buildings made of andesite materials, stones, and bricks can relatively endure. In addition, the dynamic characters of
the Balinese people, who still use such certain religious buildings, have caused much changes
to the ancient holy buildings. Nevertheless, according to Nyoman Gelebet (2002:10):
“traditional architecture is a reflection of space for doing human activities with
repetitions on styles from generation to generation with little or no change at all
that is caused by religious norms and based by local traditions and inspired by the
condition and potency of the nature.”
On the basis of the information of the ancient inscriptions and archaeological remains that
can still be observed and supported by the present condition used as comparison, the condition
in the ancient Bali period can be formulated. The buildings at the sites of the holy places in
the ancient Bali period are categorized into two types, namely main and supporting buildings.
2.1.3.1 Main building
The main building is the representative building and/or stana that is “worshipped or purified” at the site of the holy place. This building is also known as the pewayangan (shadow)
or persimpangan (temporal place to stay). On the basis of this concept, existence of various
types of main building styles is possible, from simple buildings to larger, more beautiful, and
complicated ones. It should also be noted that the buildings could either stand by themselves
or complement other buildings. The buildings are as follows:
Bebaturan. After the spread of Hinduism and Buddhism in Bali, the belief system in the
perundagian period that was based on worshipping ancestors still continued to persist in the
ancient Bali period and even now. Various buildings used for the purpose of worshipping
ancestors in the perundagian and megalithic periods still continue to develop dynamically.
For example, construction of a stone altar consisting of one or more stone standings as
the base and one or more laying stones as the place to sit without holders had developed
vertically so as to become a terraced stone throne consisting of some stone layers, completed with holders. The people of Bali now recognize such simple construction as bebaturan.
The stone throne previously used as the throne of the soul of ancestor in the megalithic
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society is considered as the early form of padmasana, the throne of the Sun God in the
present society (Bernet Kempers, 1977:180; Sutaba, 1995: 226).
Lingga-yoni. Lingga can be defined with various concepts, such as a “sign” (“sign” male
sex), “principle of maleness”, and “symbol of fertility” (Liebert, 1976:152). In Lingga
Purana, lingga is defined as a “sign”, “phallus”, and “cosmos substance” (prakerti or
pradhana) (Kramisch, 1988: 162). Meanwhile, yoni means “sex of female”, “vulva”, and “sign
of womanish” (Liebert, 1976: 355). In terms of iconography, lingga is depicted in the form of
a cylinder; however, previously, lingga was depicted to have vertically arranged three parts,
having a round form in the upper part, eight sides in the middle part, and four sides in the
lower part. Furthermore, there are other variants, such as lingga face mask or lingga that is
given certain decorations to resemble karavista. From iconographical aspect, yoni is a lapik or
the base of a lingga with various shapes, such as rectangle, square, round, or octagon.
Arca. On the basis of their forms, arcas, or statues, found in Bali can be grouped into five
categories as follows:
Arca as the God Representations, which is an arca having certain laksana (sign or attribute)
based on iconographies of Hinduism and Buddhism. The gods are the personifications of
Brahman, and in their concrete forms, they are manifested in the forms of arca. Therefore,
their presence also becomes the symbols of truth and is considered the ruler and creator of
nature (Radha Krishman, 1971:38; Setiawan, 2008:50).
Arca as the Representation of Priest or Rsi, which is an arca of a holy figure and is usually
depicted as bearded men. Priest or rsi is a holy person who usually receives revelation from
the God and teaches Hindu religion, such as Rsi Agastya.
Arca as Representation of Ancestors, which is the arca of the soul of the ancestors or those
who are respected and have been sacrificed. The arcas wear clothes and jewels similar to
god arcas, but they do not have any attributes that can be connected with the arca of certain gods with two arms. In general, their hands hold flower buds or they are in meditation
position and frozen as a dead body.
Arca of Animal, which seems to be included as complementary arca or wahana for the
gods or the figures of the main arcas.
Candi. In Bali, sites of candi, or temple, are built in the forms of candi carvings and candi
buildings. Candi carvings are the candis built by carving stone cliffs at the edges of the rivers.
Meanwhile, candi buildings are candis built using standard materials and the ideas of the builders.
2.1.3.2 Complementary buildings
Complementary buildings are those built with the purpose of supporting praying activities. The buildings can be temporal, semi-permanent, or permanent. In fact, it is difficult to
describe them, because the artifact data that can be observed are still limited. However, in the
ancient inscriptions, some buildings are identified as follows:
1. Satra: The form of this building is not known to date. It may be made of organic materials, such as bamboos and/or woods. It serves as the resting place and praying area. In the
ancient inscription of Sukawana AI on page IIb line 4, it is mentioned:
…“paneken ditu di satra pyunyanangku, kajadyan pamli pulu, tiker pangjakanyan anak
patikern anak atar jalan almangen”… (Goris, 1954a:53–54).
which means:
“the offering there at satra I present is made to buyer of pulu (rice container), mat, to be cooked
(rice) by people who cook (camp), those who do travelling until late at night”.
Such information is described at ancient inscription 10 Duasa, Pura Bukit Indrakila AI
on page IIa lines 4–6.
2. Bantilan/Wantilan is a large and open building usually containing terraced roofs used for
public meeting (Granoka, et al., 1985: 14). Bantilans/wantilans can still be found in Bali,
but they may not come from the ancient Bali period. All wantilan buildings found today
have newer styles. The function of the building is to hold public meetings, art performances, and cock fighting as part of temple ceremony.
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The Patterns of Holy Places in the Ancient Bali Period are related to their kinds, their locations (toponymy), the buildings that possibly exist inside the holy places, and the relations of
every building at the holy place site based ancient inscription data. Humans have skills and
make efforts to use what nature provides for their lives. They also maintain balanced relationships with their fellow humans, their environments, and the spiritual realm (superhuman
beings). Therefore, they build various buildings with different styles and functions, such as
buildings dedicated to the superhuman beings believed to influence their lives.
Buildings are constructed at the places considered holy or sacred and they are made for
the purpose of worshipping. Since the prehistorical period, Balinese people have considered
hills and mountains to be the places where their ancestors live, and they constructed various
buildings from large stones (megalithic), such as dolmen, menhir, stone room, stone grave,
and terraced holy place (Soejono, 1984:205–208; Setiawan, 2002:203). After the introduction
of the Indian culture to Bali in the 8th century, it seems that the practice of constructing religious buildings at the holy places on the peaks of mountains/hills still continued, although
with new styles supported by the stories of the gods living in the mountains. In addition, the
existence of water is also one of the important elements in choosing the locations of holy
places, not too far from the residential area.
Relationships of holy places with ancient Balinese society. The ancient Balinese society has
close relationships with holy places. The ancient inscriptions show that relationship can still
be seen from the obligation of each community. The obligation of each community related to
the existence of the holy place in the ancient Bali period can be described as follows:
The king. He is the one who holds authority with a capacity to hold the tradition with his
knowledge on the holy books as the basis of his decisions. The king was obliged to solve any
arising problem, including those related to religious matters. For instance, when there was
population decrease due to some factors, which in turn affected the existence of the holy
place and prevented people from performing ceremonies, the king had an obligation to maintain and protect the holy places in his area, including the related tradition. The king had the
right to instruct his people and kingdom.
Religious leaders. In addition to the obligation to promote the religion, religious leaders
had the capacity to lead and provide “religious services” at the holy place for the people. The
in-depth knowledge possessed by religious leaders facilitated them to become teachers in
various subjects besides religious matters, such as in government, architecture, and arca arts;
however, theoretically, those were not their real fields.
Nonreligious leaders. Different from religious leaders, nonreligious leaders tend to play the
role of executive. For a long time, these leaders had been obliged to leading the activities in
the building or maintaining processes of the holy places. These leaders were responsible for
promoting religious decisions to their subordinators and the society. They were also informed
of the complaints from the society that were delivered to the king.
People (society). They constituted the majority group in the kingdom/the country. In the
development and the maintenance processes of the holy place, the majority group had the
obligation to provide goods, money, and actions given for the sake of the holy place. Those
were carried out, for example, by performing laku langkah (working together), sending bakatbakat (offerings), and performing religious rituals/ceremonies regularly as stipulated in the
ancient inscriptions.
On the basis of the ancient transcription, it is known that the ancient Balinese society has
close relationships with holy places around them. These relations can include the right to
worship, both personally and collectively.
3
CONCLUSION
On the basis of the data obtained from the ancient inscriptions, it is concluded that, in the
ancient Bali period, the religious holy places were built on peaks of mountains/hills, at riverbanks, near water springs, at lake banks, and around residential areas. The holy places consist
of main and complementary buildings. Some of them can still be traced, such as Puncak
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Penulisan Temple (Kintamani), Percandian Gunung Kawi Compound, Tirtha Mpul, Goa
Gajah, Bhatara Da Tonta (Trunyan), and Kedharman Kutri Temple. People in the ancient
Bali period had very close relationships with the holy places, because each society plays a very
significant role to foster, maintain, and preserve the integrity of the holy places so that they
can be in a good condition.
REFERENCES
Gelebet, I.N. (2002) Arsitektur Daerah Bali (Bali Area Architecture). Badan Pengembangan Kebudayaan dan Pariwisata Deputi Bidang Pelestarian dan Pengembangan Budaya Bagian Proyek Pengkajian dan Pemanfaatan Sejarah dan Tradisi Bali.
Goris, (1954b) Prasasti Bali II (Bali Inscription II). Bandung, NV. Masa Baru.
Goris, R. (1954a) Prasasti Bali I (Bali Inscription I). Bandung, NV. Masa Baru.
Granoka, I.W.O., et al. (1985) Kamus Bali Kuno-Indonesia (The Ancient Balinese-Indonesian Dictionary). Jakarta, Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Jakarta.
Kempers, B.A.J. (1977) Monumental Bali. Introduction to Balinese Archaeology Guide to the Monument.
Den Haag, Van Goor Zonen.
Kramrisch, S. (1946) The Hindu Temple. Calcuta, Calcuta University.
Setiawan, I.K. (2002) Menelusuri Asal-Usul Tempat Suci di Bali dalam rangka Pengelolaan Sumber
Daya Budaya (Exploring the origin of holy places in Bali in order to manage the cultural resources).
In: Manfaat Sumberdaya Arkeologi untuk Memperkokoh Integrasi Bangsa (Advantages of archeological resources to strengthen national integrity). Denpasar: Upada Sastra.
Srijaya, I.W. (1996) Pola Persebaran Situs Keagamaan Masa Hindu-Buda di Kabupaten Gianyar, Bali:
Suatu Kajian Ekologi (The spreading pattern of religious sites during the Hindu-Buddhism Era
in Gianyar Regency, Bali: An ecological study). [Thesis]. Program Studi Arkeologi Bidang Ilmu
Pengetahuan Budaya. Universitas Indonesia.
Srijaya, I.W. (2010) Faktor-faktor yang Mempengaruhi Keletakan Situs Arkeologi di Kabupaten Badung
(Factors influencing the location of archeological sites in badung regency), In: Mutiara Warisan
Budaya Sebuah Bunga Rampai Arkeologis (Cultural heritage pealr: an anthology to archeology).
Arkeologi Fakultas Sastra Kerjasama dengan Program Studi Magister dan Program Doktor Kajian
Budaya. Denpasar, Universitas Udayana.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Ancient water system and reservoir at the Muarajambi
archaeological site
C.M. Arkhi & W.R. Wahyudi
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Muarajambi is an archaeological site that had experienced numerous events
of archaeological ruins in the period of 9th–12th century AD. The structural ruins at this
site showed the influence of Buddhism on both the layout and art in the structures, buildings and sculptures. On the basis of the influence of Buddhism on these premises, this site
was considered a Buddhist archaeological site. This claim was supported by the latest theory,
according to which the Muarajambi archaeological site was a Mahavihara, that is, a Buddhist
teaching centre in Nusantara. The theory was developed on the basis of the archaeological
ruins and the historical information collected from the journals written by I-Tsing in the 7th
Century AD. I-Tsing was a Buddhist monk who travelled from China to India and lived in
Muarajambi for 6 months. Thus, we can assume that the greater area of the Muarajambi
site was also populated by quite a number of people and, therefore, it required some type of
water resource to support the activities taking place inside the Mahavihara. The hypothesis
that the site was located near a water resource could be true because of the presence of a river
watershed near the site. In addition, there were traces of water channels, ponds and reservoirs
on the site, all of which were likely built by the monks who lived there in the past.
1
INTRODUCTION
As an archaeological site, Muarajambi has a great and varied collection of archaeological
findings that have been originated from the classical archaeology era of Indonesia. Some of
the artefacts included beads, potteries, ceramics, bronze structures, stone statues, slabs, brick
buildings or structures and earth-mounds, which may have hided the ruins of brick structures
(commonly referred to as menapo in the local language). The most recent research conducted
on the subject was presented in a dissertation by Agus Widiatmoko (2015) entitled “Muarajambi Site as the Mahavihara from VII—XII AD”, which compares the ruined archaeological
sites in Muarajambi with the archaeological sites in Nalanda and Wikramasila in India. Widiatmoko used a historical archaeology method and a historical analogy technique simultaneously by analysing a documented records of a Chinese monk named I-Tsing, written during
his pilgrimage from China to India to study the true teachings of Buddhism in its birthplace.
The author also used a similar approach for this study.
The information collected from the documents of I-Tsing mentioned a stopover in a town on
the island of Suvarnadvipa (historians and archaeologist agreed that Suvarnadvipa is the Sanskrit name for the island of Sumatera in the past) before heading to India. The town was called
Fo-Shi. I-Tsing mentioned that he sailed down a river to reach Fo-Shi, which may indicate that
the town was located in the hinterland part of the island and there might be a watershed nearby.
He also mentioned that the town was surrounded by a fortress and there were thousands of
Buddhist monks practicing the teachings of Buddha as in Madhyadesa, India. It is evident
from the documents of I-Tsing that thousands of Buddhist monks studied in Fo-Shi; therefore,
it could be assumed that the town had facilities to support their lives and activities.
To date, several archaeological sites with Buddhist characteristics have been found in Sumatera, such as the Padanglawas site in North Sumatra Province, the Muaratakus site in Riau
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Province and the Muarajambi site in Jambi Province. I-Tsing’s further narrowed down to two
archaeological sites from the classical era with a high concentration of archaeological ruins
located near watersheds, the Batanghari River and the Musi River. However, more number of
archaeological ruins were found in the site located near the Batanghari watershed, specifically
in the Muarajambi area. Archaeological findings in this site showed strong Buddhist characteristics either in written objects, such as the Buddhist mantras inscribed on the golden plates,
or in the form of a Buddhist figurine of Prajnaparamitha, and curved structures of stupas
made of bricks that can be found in several archaeological structures. This fact assured earlier
researchers and writers that the ruins in the Muarajambi site are the archaeological remains of
Fo-Shi from the past.
1.1 Problem formulation
Muarajambi is an attractive landscape, surrounded by ponds, lakes and streams. In his documents, I-Tsing mentioned a tradition followed by the monks in Fo-Shi that resembles a tradition practiced in India. If this was true, then it was possible that the daily activities performed
by the monk community in Fo-Shi were similar to the ones practiced in Nalanda monastery,
India. Furthermore, he cited the routines performed by the monks in Nalanda monastery
and the tradition of building bath ponds, which was used by the monks every morning upon
waking up (Takakusu, 2014: 241–242). I-Tsing also mentioned other activities such as washing hands after a meal and screening insects from the water obtained from the water source.
These assumptions were confirmed by the fact that many of the archaeological findings were
located near rivers and other water sources.
In archaeology, different approaches are followed for handling or reviewing a particular
landscape. Historical archaeologists are often divided between the natural environment and
artificial environment. This fact is probably based on the positivist perspective that always considers the interactions between humans and the natural environment as a process of environmental adaptation. Later, from the viewpoint of hermeneutics, we also have a differentiated the
concepts of ‘space’ and ‘place’. ‘Space’ can be interpreted as the environment where people live,
whereas ‘place’ is the space that has been interpreted by humans (Hoed, 2011, p. 110).
The proximity to the archaeological ruins and the landscape of Muarajambi provide a base
for the assumption of associations between water and the presence of streams, ponds and lakes.
From the viewpoint of hermeneutics, we aim to conceive the landscape as a ‘place’ that has
significance through the memory and values constructed by the past inhabitants. To achieve
this objective, the author proposed the formulation of the research problem in the following
statements:
1. What is the significance of the proximity between the archaeological remains and the
water channels and reservoirs in Muarajambi?
2. What is the significance of water with respect to religious activities of the Fo-Shi monks
in the past in Muarajambi?
2
RESEARCH METHODS
In general, archaeology is the study of life in the past using documented archaeological evidence (Dark, 1995, p. 1). However, not all material evidence (artefacts) found in an archaeological research can be regarded as archaeological data. Only the evidence of archaeological
material that has information related to the one found later can be regarded as archaeological
data. Furthermore, archaeological data must first clear an interpretation framework to be
considered as archaeological evidence (Dark, 1995, p. 36), that is, archaeological data in a
study should be placed within a systematic framework so as to justify it scientifically. In this
case, the new archaeological data can be interpreted only if it is placed in the right context, in
a good spatial context, time context, as well as cultural context. By following this sequence,
the research can be divided into four phases, namely:
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1.
2.
3.
4.
Determination of data sources
Collection of archaeological information on the data source
Establishment of the archaeological evidence
Interpretation.
The first stage of determining the source of data was carried out by reviewing the available
literature works on the subject, the findings from previous studies as well as the restrictions
on the problems, the formulation of the coverage area of the research and the availability
of data in the area of research. This was done to segregate data resources that can only be
obtained as a set or in a singular form (datum), which would later be used in this archaeological research. This study included data on water channels, ponds, reservoirs and the ruins—
found in the archaeological area of Muarajambi.
After determining the data sources, the relevant archaeological information was extracted
from them through describing the location and the shape and size of the data unit. This
description was made to obtain an important aspect of the research, namely shaping the
context of the archaeological data from its provenience. As mentioned by Dark, context is
important in understanding archaeological data. To obtain a context, an archaeologist should
determine the significant relationship between the findings and the surrounding environment
(Hodder, 1991, p. 43). Therefore, at this stage of the formation of archaeological evidence,
we processed the archaeological information obtained from the data source and combined
them with other related archaeological data. This was done by plotting the archaeological
features found along the waterways. The subjects in this case are the ruins of ancient brick
structures and the menapo. A similar procedure was carried out on the artefacts located along
or near the ponds and reservoirs in the Muarajambi site. Therefore, by effective engineering,
we could distinguish potential water sources from less potential water sources. After obtaining the archaeological data, the next phase is interpreting them as archaeological evidence.
One of the approaches used in the data interpretation process for this type of research is
analogy, which is generally used to describe an unknown object by comparing it to another
object with similar identifiable characteristics for reference (Sharer & Ashmore, 2005, p. 455).
In other words, an analogy refers to a comparison of two identical objects, between the archaeological data and reference objects, by focusing on their similarities. The analogy process used
in this study is direct historical analogy, the purpose of which is to describe the identity or the
relationship between the archaeological data and the reference object used in the comparison
by observing the common traits shared by the object. Furthermore, the particulars of the activity are recorded in the historical sources (Gamble, 2001, p. 87). In this study, the author compared the archaeological evidence and the description provided by I-Tsing in his documents.
2.1
Environment description
Administratively, the Muarajambi archaeological site is located in the district of Muarajambi, Jambi Province, at approximately 40 km from the city of Jambi. In 2013, this area was
designated as the National Heritage Area by the Regulation of the Minister of Education
and Culture (Kepmendikbud No.259/M/2013). Geographically, the region of Muarajambi
is located on the banks of the Batanghari River with an altitude of 8–12 m above sea level.
Astronomically, the region of Muarajambi lies at 1° 24’ South Latitude–1° 33’ South Latitude and 103.22’ East Longitude–103.45” East Longitude (Geographic Coordinate System)
or 48 M 346839 mT–356779 mT; 9833468 mU–9840765 mU (Universal Transverse Mercator). The site is located in the area of a natural dike (flood plain) where floods flow from
alluvial deposits from the Batanghari River (BPCB Jambi, 2004, p. 7). The physiography of
Muarajambi mostly consists of a gently sloping plateau (67.72%), followed by choppy and
bumpy hills. Most areas of the plains in Muarajambi are at an altitude of 10–100 m above sea
level (74.95%), and only a few areas (4.50%) have an altitude >100 m above sea level (BPCB
Jambi, 2004: 9). The level of surface water is higher in the eastern part than the western part
because of the topographic nature of the land; the eastern part of Muarajambi is a basin and
a swampy area and therefore water does not get absorbed immediately by the soil and it flows
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as a runoff. The stream patterns in Muarajambi, depending on the intensity of the rainfall, is
secondary to the risk posed by stream floods that occur when the main river cannot support
the water tributaries (BPCB Jambi, 2004, p. 10). Therefore, we may conclude that, in general,
Muarajambi is a lowland area that is prone to floods.
2.2
Data
Data obtained in this study can be grouped into the following three categories: water channels, ponds and reservoirs. The following is the description of the terms used in this article.
2.2.1 Water channels
In this study, a water channel is defined as a long basin of water flowing through the archaeological area of Muarajambi. The 17 water channels and their local names (see the list and
map in the appendix) in the region are grouped into the following classifications of parit,
buluran and sungai. The distinction in the local names is most likely associated with the width
of the stream; however, obtaining the true meaning of their names is beyond the scope of
this study and may require more studies involving toponomy or other similar approaches.
2.2.2 Ponds
In general, a pond refers to a broad alcove on the ground, which contains water. In this article, a
pond is considered a niche or a recess on the ground, where a small amount of water is collected.
In the area under study, there are 10 ponds (see the list and map in the appendix).
2.2.3 Reservoirs
A reservoir refers to a huge water storage used for satisfying human needs or managing water
distribution. In this study, reservoirs refer to large water bodies located in the archaeological area, including dano (lake), payo and rawa (local terms). In the study area, there are six
reservoirs (see the list and map in the appendix).
2.2.4 Features
As previously mentioned, Muarajambi is an archaeological site where several evidences of
archaeological ruins have been found, including some large structures. In general, the archaeological structures with ruins found in the area were made of bricks. To date, approximately
12 archaeological structures and 69 menapo have been found and registered by the BPCB
(Balai Pelestarian Cagar Budaya/the Agency for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage) Jambi
(see the list and map in the appendix).
2.3
Data association
The framework of interpreting the historical analogy was obtained by understanding
the value of and information found in the archaeological evidence. For this purpose, the
author used relevant historical sources, including the travelogues of I-Tsing, which contained some information related to the tradition of Buddhism practiced in his motherland,
China, countries of the southern island, Fo-Shi, as well as India. Among the many traditions observed by him, I-Tsing claimed that the traditions practiced by the monks in Fo-Shi
matched those practiced in India. He noted that the monks in Fo-Shi maintained conformity with the sutras (a type of religious literature) similar to that of India, which is evident from his documents. Regarding water, I-Tsing mentioned that there were two types of
water for daily activities, namely water for drinking (Kundi) and water for rinsing (Kulasa)
(Takakusu, 2014, p. 130). Both could be obtained from wells, ponds or streams, according to the rules written in the Book of Discipline or the Vinaya Sutra. The synchronic
phenomenon was demonstrated by combining the archaeological data and the description
shown by the historical data taken from the documents of I-Tsing. Therefore, they can be
elaborated in the following discussion.
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2.4
Association of water channels with the features
The first step in limiting the geographical scope of processed data in this study was grouping
the water channels with potentially stronger linkages with the archaeological features. This
was done by re-grouping the remaining water channels located at a distance of ± 100 m from
the banks of the waterways. This argument is based on the assumption that human activities
related to water could not be carried out too far from the water source. The total number of
features after re-grouping is listed in Table 1.
The highest number of features for a water channel indicates that the particular channel
has potential association with human activities related to water in the past. The channels with
the highest number of features are Sungai Jambi, Sungai Parit Sekapung and Parit Johor.
Thus, the next set of water channels which also have potential association with human activities directly intersect with the aforementioned three channels. They also have a number of
features distributed along the vicinity (see the map in the appendix), including Sungai Terusan, Sungai Melayu, Buluran Paku and Buluran Dalam. There are also other channels with
connecting drains to the trenches that surround a feature, such as Parit Candi Sialang (which
is connected to the trench around Candi Sialang) and the Parit Koto Mahligai (connecting
Sungai Terusan Channels to the trench of Candi Koto Mahligai). Moreover, the water flow
in some channels shows an anomaly of a reverse flow at some points, such as the inflows in
Table 1.
Total number of features.
No.
Water channel
Total number of features
in the range of ± 100 m
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Buluran Paku
Parit Bukit Perak
Parit Candi Sialang
Parit Sekapung
Sungai Amburanjalo
Sungai Berembang
Sungai Danau Ulat
Sungai Kemingking
Sungai Medak
Sungai Selat
Sungai Selat II
Sungai Seno
Sungai Terusan
Parit Johor
Sungai Jambi
Sungai Melayu
Buluran Dalam
7
1
1
14
2
0
0
5
0
2
0
0
1
13
34
2
1
Further details can be found in the appendix.
Table 2.
Interconnected water channel(s).
No.
Reservoir in the
Muarajambi area
Interconnected water channel(s)
Total number of interconnected
water channel(s)
1
2
3
4
5
6
Rawa Buluran Kli
Dano Kelari
Dano Ulat
Payo Rimbo Terbakar
Payo Rawang Bato
Payo Terjun Gajah
Parit Johor
Sungai Jambi and Sungai Selat
Sungai Selat II
Sungai Melayu
Parit Sekapung
–
1
2
1
2
1
0
Further details can be found in the appendix.
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Sungai Selat from the Batanghari River. The reverse flow also occurred in the intersections of
Sungai Terusan, from Parit Sekapung to Sungai Jambi channel, and it might indicate human
intervention or human engineering in the past.
Another category of the water channel in the Muarajambi area which the author suspects to have an association with human activities is the reservoirs. In general, the region of
Muarajambi is a swampy area, which is prone to floods; therefore, if the Batanghari River
overflowed during heavy rainfall, then the water will simply go to the watersheds. Every
reservoir in the area has a connection to one or two water channels, as illustrated in Table 2.
Because of this phenomenon, reservoirs found in the Muarajambi area might be naturally
formed or artificially constructed to address similar issues. Nevertheless, compared to the
results of earlier analysis on the waterways combined with data of the features, hypothetically, there should be a network of dams in the Muarajambi area intersecting with the water
channels, forming a potential association with community activities in the past.
2.5
Association of features with ponds
The presence of ponds around Muarajambi is also of interest for archaeological findings.
Some of the features were found within a radius of ± 100 m around the ponds. The use of the
± 100 m range as the perimeter in the analysis of features–ponds association is related to the
earlier analysis. The results are presented in Table 3.
The above-presented recapitulation results show that some ponds have potential associations with the features due to their proximity, namely Kolam Parit Johor I, Kolam Parit Johor
II, Kolam Telago Rajo, Kolam Sangkar Ikan, Kolam Sungai Jambi, Kolam Candi Tinggi and
Kolam Pemandian Ayam 2. Another argument to support the author’s hypothesis of the presence of humans around these ponds is the aspects related to their size, length and width, which
seemed to support the fact that any activity requiring water would be carried out as close as
possible to the abundant water sources. This conviction was also supported by the findings
from an earlier hydrological study conducted by Sutikno, Aris Poniman and Maulana Ibrahim
revealing that the base of Telago Rajo ponds (Kolam Telago Rajo) were cut crossing the layer
of groundwater surface, so the overflow of groundwater would be directed to the pond. This
finding provides strong evidence that Kolam Telago Rajo is manmade (Sutikno, 1992: 117).
After reviewing the study cited above, we might surmise that a pond or kolam with a similar
shape and size to Kolam Telago Rajo might also be artificially made in the past.
The documents of I-Tsing about the routines of the monks in Nalanda monastery, India,
mentioned a tradition of building a bath pond of the size of 1 yojana (15 km); there were about
20–30 ponds with the size of 1 mu (0.84 m2) to 5 mu (4.2 m2) (Takakusu, 2014: 241–242). The
monks would go to these ponds every morning with a bath cloth (because nudity is prohibited
in Buddhism). On the basis of an analogy about traditions performed in Fo-Shi and India with
Table 3.
Association of features with ponds.
No.
Ponds in muarajambi
Amount of features
in the range of ±100 m
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Kolam Parit Johor I
Kolam Sungai Selat
Kolam Sungai Jambi
Kolam Candi Tinggi
Kolam Parit Johor II
Kolam Pemandian Ayam
Kolam Pemandian Ayam 2
Kolam Sangkar Ikan
Kolam Telagorajo
Kolam Tanjaan Galah
4
0
2
2
4
0
1
2
4
0
Further details can be found in the appendix.
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regard to the liturgy, we may surmise that the reason for adjacent arrangement of ponds as seen
in the features in Muarajambi was to follow the traditions of pond-making in India.
3
CONCLUSION
Historical data in the form of travelogues from I-Tsing, a Chinese scholar, have provided the
information and reference in the research on the archaeological ruins at the Muarajambi site.
By using the hermeneutics approach that had previously been referred to in the introduction
of the archaeological environment, the archaeological site is considered to have not only a
‘space’ but also a ‘place’, which support the values of the monks in the past. Therefore, on the
basis of this fact, we may draw the following conclusions.
The waterways, ponds and reservoirs in Muarajambi were of significance for the monks
who lived at the time, because they provided the means for performing their religious activities and routines.
The water channels that were closely associated with the activities of the monks in the past
were Sungai Melayu, Buluran Paku, Buluran In, Parit Temple beehive and the branching
river channels to the temple features of Koto Mahligai.
Reservoirs intersecting the water network of channels in the second point are closely associated with the function of the water channels. In addition, reservoirs in the region support the management system in overcoming the outburst of floods during heavy rainfall in
Muarajambi.
Clearly, Kolam Telago Rajo is an artificially constructed pond, the shape and size as well
as the historical data of which imply the presence of other similar artificial ponds in the area.
The Muarajambi site, which has been designated as a National Heritage Area, is one of
the major references in the history of Buddhism in the archipelago, as demonstrated by the
numerous archaeological ruins in the area. The author believes that this study will lay the
foundation for further studies in this area, and using scientific tools, we will learn more about
the reversal of water flow and the integrated water networks in the Muarajambi site.
REFERENCES
BPCB Jambi. (2004) Naskah Master Plan Wilayah I Situs Muarajambi, Kecamatan Marosebo, Kabupaten
Muarojambi, Propinsi Jambi. (Master Plan Area I of the Muarajambi Site, In Sub-District Marosebo,
District of Muarojambi, Province of Jambi) Jakarta, Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Dark, K.R. (1995) Theoretical Archaeology. New York, Cornell University Press.
Gamble, C. (2001) Archaeology: The Basic. London, Routledge.
Hodder, I. (1991) Reading the Past, (Second Edition). Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Hoed, B.H. (2011) Semiotik dan Dinamika Sosial Budaya. (Semiotic and Dynamics of Socio-Culture)
Depok, Komunitas Bambu.
Sharer, R.J. & Ashmore, W. (2005) Fundamentals of Archaeology. California, The Benjamins/Cummings
Publishing Company.
Sutikno, Poniman, A., Ibrahim, M. (1992) Tinjauan Geomorfolog-Geografis Situs Muarajambi dan
Sekitarnya. (A Geomorphological-Geographical Review on the Muarajambi Site and its Vicinity)
Proceeding: Seminar on Ancient Malay History Jambi, 7–8th December 1992. Jambi, Province of
Jambi.
Takakusu, J. (2014) A Record of the Buddhist Religion as Practiced in India and the Malay Archipelago
(A.D 671–595). Jakarta, Kemendikbud. (Ministry of Education and Culture).
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 566
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Association of Borobudur Temple with the surrounding
Buddhist temples
N.A. Izza & A.A. Munandar
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Borobudur Temple is a masterpiece exemplifying the excellence of architecture in the Indonesian civilization in the past. Unsurprisingly, it is recognized by
UNESCO as a tangible World Cultural Heritage Site. Several studies have been conducted
by scholars and experts, and according to one of them, Borobudur Temple is associated
with other temples, such as Pawon and Mendut Temples. In this study, we offer a new
interpretation on Borobudur and its surrounding temples as a cohesive unit for sacred
procession. Factors such as location, religious background, ornaments, and statues are
common in Borobudur and Ngawen Temples. Here, we use an archeological method,
and data were collected from Borobudur and three other temples. The facets of location,
religious background, ornaments, and statues of these temples were studied in depth to
collect the necessary data. The collected data were then applied in the context of the
Mataram Kuno (Ancient Mataram) period using a religious framework. The last step
encompasses interpretation of the data. The author believes that this study will provide
a new interpretation on the roles of Borobudur and the surrounding Buddhist temples as
monuments for sacred procession in the ancient times in addition to the role of the former
as a World Cultural Heritage Site.
1
INTRODUCTION
Borobudur Temple is a masterpiece of the ancient Indonesian people. It was recognized as
a World Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1991 (Ramelan et al., 2013, p. 28). In addition to its historical and cultural value, Borobudur was once the center of religious rituals
of Mahayana Buddhism, which was corroborated by the existence of other temples with
Mahayana Buddhism around it (see Map 1).
Map 1. Four temples from left to right (source: www.maps.google.com).
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The first study on Borobudur was conducted during the Dutch East Indies era by Van Erp
and N. J. Kroom, which coincided with the temple’s restoration project (Ramelan et al., 2013,
p. 27). The study indicated an association between Borobudur Temple and two other temples
located nearby, namely Pawon Temple and Mendut Temple. This was based on the similarities
with regard to the architectural style and ornamentation of the three temples, indicating that
they were built in the same period, that is, the Sailendra dynasty era (Moens, 2007, p. 2). The
next study was conducted by J. L. Moens in the 1950s (2007, pp. 93–99), which connected the
three temples with Banon Temple, a Hindu temple located near Pawon Temple. Furthermore,
it shows that Borobudur, Pawon, and Mendut Temples were all ritual centers of Mahayana
Buddhism, whereas Banon Temple was a place for the followers of Siwa-Siddhanta. Another
study conducted by IGN Anom imaginarily connected Borobudur, Pawon, and Mendut Temples, showing that the three temples were built along a straight line (Anom, 2005: 28). Totok
Roesmanto also conducted a study on the location of Borobudur and the other temples surrounding it (2011: 99–120), which shows that the three temples are positioned along a single
straight line, which was organized during the construction of Mendut Temple. It is also shown
that the imaginary line connecting the three temples is linked to Mount Merapi.
Studies on the temples surrounding Borobudur show a similarity with regard to the period
of construction, which is the era of Mataram Kuno (Ancient Mataram), as well as their religious affiliation, that is, Mahayana Buddhism, which excludes Banon Temple as it is filled
with statues of Hindu Gods (Moens, 2007, pp. 94–98). These studies led to an interpretation
that Borobudur Temple is highly associated with Pawon and Mendut Temples located in the
east. The association between Borobudur and the two surrounding temples also identifies
that the three temples were the centers for religious rituals in the past.
Geographically, Ngawen Temple is located in the east of Borobudur Temple. However, no
study has been conducted revealing the association between Borobudur, Pawon, Mendut, and
Ngawen Temples in the past. To further observe the association between the four temples,
this study will focus on their location, religion, ornaments, and statues. The author believes
that this research would provide a new interpretation of Borobudur and the surrounding
Buddhist temples as monuments for sacred procession in the past and as a world heritage in
the future.
2
METHODOLOGY
This study is conducted to explore the association between Borobudur and the other surrounding temples, especially Ngawen. On the basis of the framework established by K. R.
Dark (1995, pp. 37–38), ensuring the availability of data resources in accordance with further
discussion and the possible generation of data from the observation are crucial. These data
will then be considered evidence for the context of the research. In the process of adhering
the collected data to the context, relevant theories will be used as tools. Then, the evidence
will be interpreted. The first step of this study was to conduct a survey on the data resources,
including a field observation of the four temples, namely Borobudur, Pawon, Mendut, and
Ngawen. The survey is intended to collect data regarding the association, religion, ornaments, and statues. The second step following data collection was to use them as evidence, in
accordance with the periodical context of the research. In this stage, the theory regarding the
belief of Mahayana Buddhism was used. Third, after matching the data, theory, and context,
the analysis and interpretation phase took place to address the research objectives.
3
3.1
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Association of the positioning of Borobudur Temple with the four nearby temples
Borobudur Temple is located in the west of Elo River (see Map 1). The temple possesses
several meanings related to the belief of Mahayana Buddhism. Moreover, in the past,
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Borobudur had served as the center of other sacred buildings surrounding it (Huntington,
1994, p.136). Within a distance of 5 km around the temple, there are three other temples affiliated with Mahayana Buddhism, among which are Pawon Temple (1,150 m from Borobudur)
and Mendut (2,900 m) (Kaelan, 1959: 122). Borobudur, Pawon, and Mendut Temples are
located in the west of Elo River, and Ngawen is, in fact, located in the east side of the river,
which is, in turn, 4 km away from Borobudur (see Map 1).
According to previous studies, Borobudur, Pawon, and Mendut Temples are positioned
on a straight line and they form a triadic (a group of three) of sacred buildings affiliated
to Mahayana Buddhism. However, according to Totok Roesmanto (2011, pp. 99–120), the
imaginary axis connecting the three temples is not a straight line, and it is interpreted that
they were the centers of religious rituals and processions in the past. Furthermore, it is suggested that the three temples were closely associated with Mount Merapi. Nevertheless, further examination of the map (Map 1) shows an addition temple called Ngawen Temple, from
which a parallel imaginary axis can also be drawn, connecting it to the other three temples.
Thus, on the basis of this fact, it can be interpreted that, in the past, the procession of the
religious rituals might begin in Ngawen Temple and end in Borobudur.
3.2
Religious associations of Borobudur Temple with other nearby temples
Discussions on structures built during the Hindu–Buddhist era are highly associated with
religious context. Revealing the religious background of a structure requires an observation
of the components of the building. According to Soekmono (2005), temples in Indonesia
can be classified in two major groups, namely Hindu and Buddhist temples. One of the main
features of Buddhist temples is the existence of the stupas. A stupa is a bell-shaped structure
of the shrine, which is a unique feature of Buddhist temples. Nevertheless, to explore more
about the religious affiliation of a specific structure, we need to focus on the statues, reliefs,
sketches, and other ornaments of structures.
The existence of stupas in the main body and reliefs of the temple (Photos 1 and 2) shows
that Borobudur is a Buddhist temple. Stupas are also found in Pawon, Mendut, and Ngawen
Temples.
In Pawon and Mendut Temples, the stupas are located on the top of the structures (Photos 3
and 4). The arrangement of the stupas is similar to that in Borobudur (Photo 5). Although
the top part of Mendut Temple is not intact, stupas can still be found. Ngawen Temple, on
the contrary, does not have a roof, but the ruins clearly show many stupa motifs (Photo 6).
Two major schools, namely Mahayana and Hinayana (Theravada), are found in Buddhism. Mahayana Buddhism is described as the “great vehicle”, in which a holy man stays
Photos 1 and 2. Stupas on the Arupadhatu level of Borobudur Temple (left) and stupa motifs on the
reliefs of Borobudur Temple (right) (source: N.A. Izza, 2016).
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Photos 3 and 4. Pawon Temple with stupas (left) and stupas on the roof of Mendut Temple (right)
(source: N.A. Izza, 2016).
Photos 5 and 6. Stupas at the Langkan fence of Borobudur (left) and stupa ruins in Ngawen (right)
(source: N.A. Izza, 2016).
Photos 7, 8, and 9. Bodhisattva in Pawon Temple (left), Mendut Temple (center), and Ngawen Temple
(right) (source: N.A. Izza 2016).
on the Earth, rather than going to heaven, in order to be able to help others (Irons, 2007: 17).
Moreover, in Mahayana Buddhism, it is believed that a savior visits the Earth in the future,
whereas Hinayana Buddhism or Theravada is described as a “small vehicle”, in which the
Buddha is merely the Buddha himself, without the presence of Bodhisattva.
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In Borobudur Temple, there are relief panels about the life journey of Buddha, one of
which is derived from the sacred text of Sutra Gandavyuha. This shows that Borobudur is
a temple of Mahayana Buddhism (Irons, 2008; 17 & 57). In Pawon, Mendut, and Ngawen
Temples, many of the relief panels depict the Bodhisattva (Photos 7, 8, and 9). This implies
that these four temples are affiliated with Buddhism and follow the Mahayana school. In
other words, the four temples located on the same imaginary axis are associated with one
another on the basis of their religious affiliation, which leads to an interpretation of the four
being the locations for sacred religious rituals in the past.
3.3 Association of the ornaments found in Borobudur Temple with other nearby temples
The ornaments include kala-makara, kala-reliefs, pillar ornaments, sculptures, stupa ornaments, antefixes, and other types of carving that decorate the temples. In this section, we will
discuss from the smallest to the biggest temples because more ornaments can be found in
bigger temples.
A staircase is found in Pawon Temple, whose left and right sides are adorned with reliefs,
most of which, unfortunately, have faded. On the right side of the staircase, reliefs with kalamakara motifs are found (Photo 10). At the base of the staircase, most of the reliefs have
also faded. The ruins of the reliefs show an image of kinara-kinari (heavenly creatures in the
form of half-human half-bird) and some spiral plants. The relief panels are restricted to the
pillar ornaments. In the body of the temple, two types of relief panels can be found with
narrow pradaksinapatha, without balustrades. The first is a relief of the Bodhisattva, whereas
the second relief is a depiction of the tree of life, with apsara-apsari (angels) at the top and
kinara-kinari at the bottom (Photo 11). A long square hole is found on the second panel. On
both relief panels and on the surface of the hole, pillar motifs can be seen. Inside the temple,
there is a chamber for placing statues and recesses containing statues with the head of kala
(Photo 12). On the upper section of the relief, ornaments (quirlande) depicting square-shaped
flowers can be found. The antefix ornament with a jaladwara is found on the top in each of
its four corners. At the very top, there is a composition of small stupas with bigger stupas
placed in the middle (Photo 3).
Ngawen Temple is an installation consisting of five temples of the same size facing the
same direction. Ngawen Temple was buried 1.5 m below the ground. Four of the temples’
structures are in ruins, with only their base or foot visible, except for Ngawen II, which has
been successfully restored. Each temple has a staircase with two sides containing ornaments
depicting the makara with the same pattern of the kala-makara reliefs in Pawon Temple. At
the base of the stairs, the reliefs of Bodhisattva are found with the tree of life in the middle,
below which there is a jagged seam ornament surrounding the temple’s structures (Photo 13).
On the four sides of the temple foot, there are lion statues, each with a distinguished feature
Photos 10, 11, and 12. Kala-Makara in Pawon Temple (left), the tree of life reliefs in Pawon Temple
(middle), and recesses of statues in the chamber of Pawon Temple (right) (source: N.A. Izza, 2016).
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Photo 13. Jagged seam ornament surrounding the Ngawen Temple (source: N.A. Izza, 2016).
Photos 14, 15, and 16. Lion statues in Ngawen Temples I and V (left), in Ngawen Temples II, III, and
IV (middle), ribbon garland motifs in Ngawen Temple II (source: N.A. Izza, 2016).
depending on its location; these lion statues can be found on temples I and V, as well as on
temples II, III, and IV.
(Photos 14 and 15). In the body of the temple, there are recessed spaces filled with statues
on both sides of the entrance, which is adorned with a carving of kala head containing pillars on each side. The upper part is adorned with ribbon garland motifs (Photo 16). Inside
the chamber of Ngawen Temple II and in the ruins of Ngawen Temple V, there is a statue of
Buddha in padmasana position without head and hands (Photo 17). The upper part is decorated with an antefix, whereas the roof of the temple has collapsed. The stupa is assumed to
contribute to the ruins of the temple’s roof (Photo 6).
Mendut Temple consists of a large main temple and smaller adjoining temples, only the
bases of which are visible at present. The base of the temple is decorated with relief panels depicting a golden womb; the tree of life, surrounded by heavenly creatures; and jagged seams, surrounding the structure, which is the same as the ornaments found in Ngawen
Temple (Photos 11 and 13). The reliefs on Mendut Temple follow a zigzag pattern between
flowers and the tree of life.
The staircase in the main temple is adorned with kala-makara ornaments, which are bigger
on Mendut than on Borobudur. The base of the relief panels is decorated with flowery carvings. On the first terrace, a balustrade can be seen. On the outside of the chamber located in
the body of the temple, three large relief panels covering the three sides of the wall are found.
The pattern of the panels on Mendut is the same as that of the panels on Pawon, which differ only in size. Relief ornaments on Mendut show the figure of Bodhisattva and the tree of
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Photo 17. Statues in the main chamber of Mendut Temple (source: N.A. Izza, 2016).
life, whereas the reliefs outside the temple’s body are unreachable to human hands. The right
and left sections of the main chamber of Mendut are adorned with the depiction of yaksa
(Moens, 2007, p. 88). The reliefs are located on both sides of the entrance and are reachable
to hands. The entrance of the main chamber has recessed niches without statues. The remaining statues are Bodhisattva statues on both sides as well as a Buddha statue in the middle. The
Buddha statue in Mendut is the focal statue that depicts Buddha in Dharmacakramudra position (Photo 17). The front of the statue consists of an engraved ornament of a wheel between
two deer. This is an illustration of the dharma wheel and the deer garden in the life story of
Buddha (Moens, 2007, p. 88). The rooftop of Mendut Temple is partly in ruins; however, it
shows that the top part of Mendut was once decorated with stupas as its peak with antefixes
around it (Photo 4).
Borobudur does not have any chamber similar to that in the other temples. Moreover, the
stupas in the other three temples are unreachable to human hands, with no statues inside,
whereas those in Borobudur are arranged in different ways. According to A.J. Bernet Kempers (1976, p. 142), the stupas in Borobudur have a distinguished structure and arrangement
that differs from that of other temples in Indonesia. The base or foot section of the temple is
adorned with Bodhisattva figures. However, on the next terrace, the sculptured reliefs depict
the life story of Buddha.
On both sides of the staircase located in all four sides of the temple, kala-makara ornaments are found. The reliefs on Borobudur are also dominated by engravings depicting the
tree of life and heavenly creatures. The space between one panel and the next is adorned by
pillars with shapes similar to the ones found in the other three temples. Antefixes in Borobudur are also similar to the ones found in the other three temples. Borobudur has much decoration along its circumference, as well as the decoration similar to the ones found in the other
three temples.
Temple ornamentation may provide a clue for the identity of the temple. Agus Aris
Munandar (2011) stated that from the viewpoint of architecture and style of the ornamentation, temples in Java may be grouped into two categories, namely temples built in the Old
Classic era (including Buddhist temples in Central Java) and the ones built in the Modern
Classic era. Furthermore, a study conducted by Marijke J. Klokke (2008) reveals that Buddhist temples that are the relics of Sailendra dynasty in Central Java show a distinct ornamentation characteristic. Earlier discussion on the ornamentation in Pawon, Ngawen, Mendut,
and Borobudur Temples shows a similarity between one type of ornamentation and another
with respect to the shape of the kala-makara, kala heads, antefixes, and reliefs of the tree
of life and the decoration along the circumference. This similarity, according to Marijke J.
Klokke (2008, pp. 159–161), shows that the four temples are Buddhist relics of the Sailendra
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dynasty. This ornamentation similarity confirms that the four temples were built in the same
era with the same religious affiliation, namely Mahayana Buddhism.
3.4
Iconography association of the statues in Borobudur Temple with other nearby temples
One important aspect to be considered when observing temples is the existence of statues.
According to Edi Sedyawati (1980, p. 209), a number of entities will be defined as the same
characteristics of iconography, some of them are being created in the same period and on the
same geographical location, having the same surroundings, belonging to the same religion,
and being created under the same authority and by the same artists. Because Pawon Temple
no longer has statues, the discussion in this section will be limited to Borobudur, Mendut,
and Ngawen Temples.
Borobudur Temple comprises Tathagatha and lion statues. The Tathagatha statues in
Borobudur are similar to the ones found in Ngawen Temple. The only difference lies in the
backrest of the statues (Prabhamandala) found in Ngawen Temple because the statues found
in Borobudur do not have Prabhamandala (Photos 18 and 19). In addition to the Tathagatha
statues in Mendut, there is a statue of Buddha in sitting position with hands in a Dharmacakramudra position and two Bodhisattva statues.
(Photo 17). Statues in Mendut were made of stone types different from the ones used in the
making of Borobudur and Ngawen statues. Statues in Mendut were made of colorful stones
with soft pores and are bigger than those in Borobudur and Ngawen, which are about the
size of an adult human. Statues on Mendut are depicted as wearing jewels, whereas the ones
in Borobudur and Ngawen are not.
Lion statues on Borobudur are depicted as standing with three legs and one of the front
legs raised (Photo 20). Lion statues on Ngawen Temples I and V are depicted in a standing
position with front and hind legs bending; meanwhile, on Ngawen Temples II, II, and IV,
they are illustrated in a standing position with their hind legs and front legs supporting the
temple (Photos 14 and 15). Although they were crafted to be in different positions, lion statues on Borobudur and Ngawen have the same facial expression and body shape.
Borobudur supposedly had two Dwarapala statues located around Dagi Hill (Picture 1),
one of which is now in the Bangkok National Museum (Miksic, 2012: 18). Because the other
statue has not been found, the Dwarapala statue was not included as the observation object
of this study. In addition to the statues of Buddha and lion on Ngawen Temple, we found
statues of Nandi, identical to those found in Hindu temples; therefore, it is assumed that the
statues are an original feature of Ngawen Temple. This may be related to a series of disasters
that destroyed Ngawen and buried it 1.5 m below the ground.
The study results of associations among the four temples from the perspectives of their
positioning, religion, style of the ornaments, and iconography of the statues are presented
in Table 1.
Photos 18 and 19. Buddha statue in Borobudur without Prabhamandala (left) and Buddha statue in
Ngawen with Prabhamandala (right) (source: N.A. Izza, 2016).
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Picture 1. The Painting of Dwarapala Statue in Dagi
Hill near Borobudur (Source: H.N. Sieburgh in Miksic,
2012: 18).
Photo 20. Lion Statue on
Borobudur Temple. (Source:
Nainunis Aulia Izza, 2016).
Table 1.
Summary of similarities among Borobudur, Pawon, Mendut, and Ngawen Temples.
Temple’s
name
Placement
Religion
Ornament
Borobudur
Farthest west
Buddha
Mahayana
Pawon
1.15 km east of
Borobudur
Buddha
Mahayana
Mendut
2.9 km east of
Borobudur
Buddha
Mahayana
Ngawen
4 km east of
Borobudur
Buddha
Mahayana
Ornaments existing
in other temples can
be found in Borobudur
Kala heads, kala-makara,
pillar, Bodhisatva, tree
of life, heavenly creatures,
and stupa summit
Kala heads, kala-makara,
pillar, Bodhisatva, tree of
life, heavenly creatures,
stupa summit, jagged seam
Kala heads, kala-makara,
pillar, Bodhisatva, roof in
shape of stupa summit,
jagged seam
4
Statue
iconography
Tathagatha and
lion statues
–
Tathagata with soft
manufacturing
Tathagata, and lion
statues in two styles
CONCLUSION
To conclude, Borobudur, Pawon, Mendut, and Ngawen Temples are located adjacent to each
other and connected by an imaginary axis. Ornamentation style in Ngawen Temple shows a
similarity among the four temples. The shapes of statues in Borobudur and Ngawen are also
similar. Therefore, we may conclude that Borobudur is not only associated with Pawon and
Mendut, but also correlates with Ngawen Temple in terms of religious affiliation, positioning, ornamentation style, and iconography as well as the structures that were used as locations for sacred Buddhist rituals during the Ancient Mataram era.
In addition to the association of Borobudur and the other temples, the association between
Borobudur and Mount Merapi and the hills surrounding the temple is observed. More studies need to be conducted on Bubrah, Lumbung, and Sewu Temples. The similarities and
the different patterns of association among Bubrah, Lumbung, Sewu Temples as well as
the association between the Buddhist temples around Borobudur and those around Sewu
Temple need to be studied.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author is grateful to Universitas Indonesia for providing a grant for this study through
the indexed Hibah Publikasi Internasional program for the final projects of the students of
Universitas Indonesia in 2016, without which the publication of this study would be impossible. Furthermore, the author thanks LPDP for providing a scholarship for the Master’s
program and also thanks all the lecturers at the Department of Archaeology, Universitas
Indonesia, as well as the Borobudur Conservation Center for providing references and
research permits.
REFERENCES
Anom, I.G.N. (2005) The restoration of Borobudur. Paris: UNESCO Publishing.
Dark, K.R. (1995) Theoretical archeology. New York: Cornell University Press.
Huntington, J.C. (1994) The iconography of Borobudur revisited: The concepts of Slesa and Sarva
[Buddha] Kaya. In Ancient Indonesian sculpture. M.J. Klokke and P.L. Scheurleer. Leiden: KITLV
Press. pp: 136–150.
Irons, E.A. (2008) Encyclopedia of Buddhism. New York: Infobase Publishing.
Kaelan. (1959) Petundjuk tjandi: Mendut Pawon Borobudur (Temple guidelines: Mendut, Pawon,
Borobudur). Yogyakarta: Tjabang Bagian Bahasa, Djawatan Kebudajaan Departemen PP & K.
Kempers, A.J. (1976) Ageless Borobudur Buddhist mystery in stone. Servire: Wassenaar.
Klokke, M.J. (2008) The Buddhist temples of the Sailendra dynasty in Central Java. Art Asiatiques,
tome 63, 2008. pp. 154–167.
Map Source: www.maps.google.com
Miksic, J. (2012) Borobudur: Golden tales of the Buddhas. New York: Tuttle Publishing.
Moens, J.L. (2007) Borobudur, Mendut, and Pawon and their mutual relationship. (M. Long, Transl).
Retrieved from www.borobudur.tv.
Munandar, A.A. (2011) Catuspatha: arkeologi Majapahit (Catuspatha: Majapahit archeology). Jakarta:
Wedatama Widya Sastra.
Ramelan, W.D.S. (ed.). (2013) Candi Indonesia: Seri Jawa (Indonesian Temples: Javanese Series).
Jakarta: Direktorat Pelestarian Cagar Budaya dan Permuseuman (Directorate of Conservation of
Cultural Heritage and Museums).
Roesmanto, T. (2011) Keletakkan Candi Borobudur dan candi sekitarnya (The positioning of Borobudur
Temple and the temples surrounding it). Magelang: Balai Konservasi Borobudur (Borobudur Conservation Hall).
Sedyawati, E. (1980) Pemerincian unsur analisa seni arca (The elaboration of the elements of the statue
art analysis). Pertemuan Ilmiah Arkeologi I (the First Scientific Archeological Meeting). Jakarta:
Proyek Penelitian dan Penggalian Purbakala Departemen P dan K (Research and Ancient Excavation Project, Department of Education and Culture).
Soekmono, R. (2005) Candi, fungsi, dan pengertiannya (Temples, functions, and understanding about
them). Jakarta: Penerbit Jendela Pustaka.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Forms and types of Borobudur’s stupas
A. Revianur
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Candi Borobudur (Borobudur Temple) is the world’s largest MahayanaVajrayana Buddhist temple, which is located in Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia. It was
built by the Sailendra dynasty between the 8th and 9th centuries A.D. The temple was built
with 10-step pyramid terraces, which are decorated with 2,672 relief panels, 504 Buddha statues, and 1,537 stupas. In this study, we aim to examine the forms and types of the stupas of
Borobudur, which are composed of 1,536 secondary stupas and 1 primary stupa compared
to those of other stupas found in Java and Bali islands. The stupas at Borobudur located
from the second to ninth terraces are called the secondary stupas, whereas the one located
on the tenth terrace is called the primary stupa. They are symbolic stupas, which consist of a
base (Prasadha), a bell-shaped body (anda), a top support (harmika), and a top (yashti). The
stupas are divided into four types, namely plain stupas, hollow space-square stupas, hollow
space-diamond stupas containing the Dhyani Buddha Vairocana that represents the turning wheel of the dharma and the single main stupa that becomes the centre of Borobudur
Temple reflecting Sailedra art-style. Here, we use a qualitative method, which is based on field
observation and historical sources. The objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive
description of the stupas in Borobudur from the perspective of historical archaeology.
1
INTRODUCTION
Candi Borobudur (Borobudur Temple) is known as a Mahayana-Vajrayana Buddhist archaeological site located in Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia. Borobudur was built between the
8th and 9th centuries by the Sailendra dynasty and was re-discovered by Sir Thomas Stamford
Raffles in 1814 (Soekmono, 1976). Opinions of historians and archaeologists on the real name
of Borobudur differ greatly. Raffles (1830) named it Boro Bodo, which means ‘the name of the
district’ (Boro) and ‘ancient’ (Bodo). Thus, Boro Bodo can be interpreted as the ancient Boro
(Raffles, 1830). The manuscript Negarakrtagama canto 77 (LXXVII) written by Mpu Prapanca in the 14th century mentions the domain of a Vajradhara or Vajrayana-Buddhism sect
named Kabajradaran Akrama in Budur. This place is most likely the present-day Borobudur
(Pigeaud, 1962; Soekmono, 1976). De Casparis (1950), on the basis of Dasabhumika Sutra,
argued that Borobudur was built with 10 stages or dasa bhumi, and is named in relation to
Kamulan i Bhumisambharabhudhara, which is mentioned in the inscriptions of Sri Kahulunan,
dating back to the mid-8th century. Kamulan is a Sanskrit word, which means a root, origin,
sacred place or shrine to worship ancestors. Bhumisambhara is interpreted as a barrow, hill or
the level of the building that is identified with the temple called Borobudur. On the basis of
the statements of de Casparis, Kamulan i Bhumisambharabhudhara can be interpreted as the
temple of the Sailendra dynasty people located in Borobudur, which was built with 10 stages.
Nevertheless, the original name of Borobudur is still under debate among scholars.
Borobudur Temple was built on a hill surrounded by several mountains, such as the
Menoreh, Sumbing, Sindoro and Merbabu Mountains and Mount Merapi, and bordered by
the Progo and Elo rivers. Borobudur could be linked to Kunjarakunjadesa in South India. Sands
and andesite fractions lay the foundation of the hill where the Borobudur Temple is located
(Moertjipto and Prasetyo, 1993). The temple was built as a stepped pyramid or punden berudak
structure with six-square terraces and topped with three circular courtyards (Chihara, 1996).
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The structure and function of Bodobudur Temple have been described in the literature. Borobudur could be regarded as a Vajradhatu–mandala and is, in turn, related to
Mendut Temple, which is identified as a Garbhadhatu-mandala. The pair of mandalas is called
Dharmadhatu-mandala (Chihara, 1996, Prajudi, 2009). According to a study conducted by
Hoenig (as cited in Coomaraswamy, 1965), Borobudur was built as a temple. It was built with
a nine-stepped structure, which served as a place of worship. Parmentier (1924) proposed
that Borobudur was built as a monument crowned with a great stupa. However, because
the large stupa structure could not withstand the huge weight, it was disassembled to attain
the present-day structure of Borobudur (Chihara, 1996). Soekmono (1979) explained that
Borobudur probably was not built as a temple, but as a place of pilgrimage where ancient
Javanese Buddhists could gain knowledge. Magetsari (1997) argued that Borobudur was not
established for the commoners, but only for a Yogin. Borobudur has a special place in the
southwest area for the commoners and priests to accumulate a virtue. It could be seen that
the spirit of the Monastic movement in India was materialised in this structure, which is
influenced from the eastern school of India and the architecture of Bengal. Furthermore,
Borobudur represents not only the creativity of Javanese geniuses but also one of the world’s
greatest constructional and artistic masterpieces (Brown, 1959).
Borobudur Temple has three levels representing the three worlds in the universe, namely
kamadhatu or the world of desire, rupadhatu or the world of appearance and arupadhatu or
the world without visual existence. At the level of rupadhatu, a man has left his desires but
still has ego and resemblance. Arupadhatu is a world where ego and resemblance no longer
exist. At this level, a man has been released from samsara and decided to break his affiliation
with the mortal world. At Borobudur, kamadhatu is found at the foot of the structure, the
five steps above it are described as rupadhatu and the third round terraces are described as
arupadhatu (Stutterheim, 1956; Soekmono, 1974).
Similar to the Mahayana and the Tantric Buddhism, Vajrayana was practiced in Borobudur
during ancient times, whose evidence could be found in the statues of Pancatathagata at
Borobudur Temple, and it is related to Guhyasamaja-tantra. Another evidence is the teaching
of Paramita, which is embodied in the relief of Lalitavistara, Avadana and Jataka. The implementation of Yogācāra and Pramitayana with Tantric philosophy is depicted by the relief of
Gandavyuha and Bhadracari. The ability to integrate the philosophy of Tantric or Vajrayana
and Mahayana through reliefs and sculptures in the temple indicates the high intelligence of
Borobudur’s architect. This is a unique feature of Borobudur (Magetsari, 1997).
The main component of a Buddhist temple, including Borobudur, is the stupa. The stupa, in
the period before Buddha, would have served as a tomb and later became the symbol of Buddha’s life. It was originally built to bury the relics of Buddha shortly after his body was cremated.
In its further development, a stupa was used to store not only the relics of Buddhist monks
but also Buddhist objects (Coomaraswamy, 1965; Soekmono, 1974). A stupa, which describes
the concept of Buddhism, has several sections, namely the basis of the stupa (Prasadha),
the parts of the ball (dagob) or bell (genta) and the top or crown (yashti) (Dehejia, 1972;
Moertjipto and Prasetyo, 1993). The stupa was also decorated with parasols (chattra) at the
top of the yashti (Fogelin, 2015). Kempers (as cited in Mentari, 2012) showed that Borobudur
Temple is covered by stupas on its terraces. The stupas in Borobudur have a form different
from that of other stupas in Indonesia. Borobudur, as the legacy of the Sailendra dynasty, has
1,537 stupas, which could be subdivided into 1,536 buffer stupas and 1 main stupa.
Many research studies on the stupas of Candi Borobudur have been carried out by various
scholars. Academic discussions on the meaning of the stupas at Borobudur are integrated
by Magetsari (1997), who stated that the stupas of Candi Borobudur represent the Parinirvana and emphasise the philosophy of Vajrayana and Mahayana Buddhism. The mini-thesis
research conducted by Mentari (2012) describes the classification of the forms and types of
Borobudur stupas. It intends to complement the research on the stupas of Borobudur by
expanding it with historical archaeology studies as the framework. The stupas of Borobudur
are compared to those of other Buddhist temples such as Mendut, Pawon, Ngawen, Kalasan,
Sari, Lumbung and Sewu Temples as well as the Ratu Boko archaeological site and Pura
Pegulingan in Bali.
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Figure 1. Stages of research on the stupas of Borobudur.
2
METHOD
In this study, we focus on the stupas at Borobudur Temple and their comparison with stupas
in other archaeological sites such as Mendut, Pawon, Ngawen, Kalasan, Sari, Lumbung and
Sewu Temples as well as Ratu Baka archaeological site and Pura Pegulingan in Bali. We use
a qualitative method, which is based on archaeological research such as the stages of data
gathering, data processing, analysis and interpretation (Ashmore & Sharer, 2010).
The data were gathered from the sites in Borobudur, Mendut, Pawon, Ngawen, Kalasan,
Sari, Lumbung and Sewu Temples; the Ratu Boko archaeological site and Pura Pegulingan;
furthermore, and an archaeological survey approach was applied. This stage was followed
by data processing. In this stage, the stupas were observed, described, classified and assessed
by comparing them with others. The classification of stupas in Borobudur is based on the
research conducted by Mentari. In the third stage, the meaning and function of stupa were
analysed. In the final stage, the stupas at Borobudur Temple and in other archaeological sites
were interpreted on the basis of the comparison of each stupa.
3
DISCUSSION AND DATA ANALYSIS OF BOROBUDUR’S STUPAS
Borobudur has 1,537 stupas located from the second-level terrace to the tenth-level terrace.
The number of stupas on each terrace varies, as shown in Table 1.
Table 1 shows that the number of stupas on each Borobudur terrace is different. The third
terrace has the most number of stupas (416). On the basis of this evidence, it can be concluded that the number of stupas on each terrace is the multiples of 8, except on the second,
fifth and tenth terraces. The perforated stupas are erected from the seventh to the ninth terrace (Balai Konservasi Peninggalan Borobudur, 2004).
Mentari (2012) classified the stupas of Borobudur into four types. The author suggests
that there are two forms and four types of stupas in Borobudur. The forms are plain and perforated. The plain stupas can be found from the second to the sixth terrace and in the tenth
terrace, where the great stupa is located. The number of plain stupas is 1,465, whereas the
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Table 1.
Stupas of Borobudur on each terrace.
No.
Terrace level
Number of stupas
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Second terrace
Third terrace
Fourth terrace
Fifth terrace
Sixth terrace
Seventh terrace
Eighth terrace
Ninth terrace
Tenth terrace
Total number of stupas
116
416
352
316
264
32
24
16
1
1,537
Source: Center for Borobudur Archaeology Conservation (2004).
number of perforated stupas is 72. The stupas of Borobudur can be classified into four types,
namely type A, type B, type C and type D. These four types are the plain stupas (type A),
the hollow space-diamond stupas containing the Dhyani Buddha Vairocana that symbolises
the turning wheel of dharma (type B), the hollow space-square stupas (type C) and the single
main stupa that becomes the centre of the Borobudur Temple (type D).
Mentari (2012) described that the plain stupas or type A have a Prasadha with ornate lotus
seams (dalla) and a semi-circle (kumuda), solid Anda, rectangular harmika and basic circleshaped yashti. This type of stupa is the smallest in Borobudur. There are 1,464 stupas of this
type, which are located from the second to the sixth terrace on the ledges, niches and roofedgates or paduraksa. The hollow space-diamond stupas or type B stupas are characterised by
a Prasadha with a flat seam (patta), lotus (gentha-side), ornate lotus (dalla) and semi-circle
(kumuda), and the hollow space-diamond stupas are characterised by an Anda, a rectangular
harmika and a basic circle-shaped yashti. There are 56 stupas of this type, which are located
on the seventh and eighth terraces. The type B stupas contain a statue of Dhyani Buddha
Vairocana with the mudra or hand gesture of Dharma Chakra Parvatana. The hollow spacesquare stupas or type C stupas are characterised by a Prasadha with a flat seam (patta), lotus
(gentha-side), ornate lotus (dalla) and semi-circle (kumuda), and the hollow space-square
Anda, by an octagonal harmika and basic octagonal-shaped yashti. There are 16 stupas of
this type, which are located on the ninth terrace. This type of stupas contains no statues. The
main stupa or type D is characterised by a Prasadha with a flat seam (patta), a lotus (genthaside), an ornate lotus (dalla) and a semi-circle (kumuda). The Anda is a solid, rectangular and
octagonal harmika, with basic octagonal-shaped yashti.
The Yashti on the main stupa has not been fully restored since the discovery of the temple.
The reconstruction of the yashti was carried out on the basis of a picture showing that it
previously contained three parasols (Chatra). However, the reconstruction was disassembled
because there were many wrong interpretations, and the original stone of the Chatra was not
suitable for reconstruction (Soekmono, 1976). There is a main stupa, with a belt adorned
with vines, which is located on the tenth terrace. It has been suggested that the main stupa
should be stylised with a parasol. The types of stupas and their position on each terrace are
described in Table 2.
It has been found that the plain stupas (type A) are located from the second to the sixth
terrace. In the author’s opinion, the plain stupas on these terraces are probably used as the
boundary between the ledge (Vedika) and the floor (pradaksinapatha). The hollow spacediamond stupas are located on the seventh and eighth terraces, and a statue of Vairocana
inside them holds a religious meaning. According to the text of the Vairocanabhisambodhi
Sutra (2005), Vairocana is placed in the centre of the mandala. It is suggested that the circular
structure of Borobudur, which contains Vairocana statues, is part of the centre of mandala.
Magetsari (1997) explained that Vairocana with Dharmacakra-mudra hand gesture meditates in the Mayotama-samadhi position. It is suggested that Vairocana has reached Buddha.
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Table 2.
No.
Forms and types of stupas and their position on each terrace.
Terrace level
1
Second terrace
2
Third terrace
3
Fourth terrace
4
Fifth terrace
5
Sixth terrace
6
Seventh terrace
7
Eighth terrace
8
Ninth terrace
9
Tenth terrace
Number of plain stupas
Number of perforated
stupas
Total number of stupas
Stupa form
Plain stupas
Plain stupas
Plain stupas
Plain stupas
Plain stupas
Perforated stupas
Perforated stupas
Perforated stupas
Plain stupas
1,465
72
Number of stupas
116
416
352
316
264
32
24
16
1
Stupa type
Plain stupas
Plain stupas
Plain stupas
Plain stupas
Plain stupas
Hollow space-diamond stupas
Hollow space-diamond stupas
Hollow space-square stupas
Main stupa
1,537
Figure 2. Images of the four types of Borobudur’s stupas.
(Source: Aditya Revianur (2016)).
Thus, Buddha has carried out his activities through his body as an intermediary. This argument is visualised in the temple in the form of type C stupas or the hollow space-diamond
stupas. The Dhyani-Buddha Vairocana statues placed in this position show the ambiguity
between the being and nothingness or maya. Buddha was visualised in the arupadhatu stages,
but he is still able to carry out his activities. The activities presented in arupadhatu, which
teaches Dharma, finalise and liberate all beings. They are manifested from the seventh to the
ninth terraces. The Vairocana Buddha statue is placed in this stupa in order to demonstrate
his activity; Buddha teaches all beings and to all directions.
The hollow space-square stupas, which do not contain a Buddha statue, hold a higher
position than the hollow space-diamond stupas. They have become a symbol of the last level
arupadhatu, eventually reaching a Parinirvana stage, which is symbolised by the main stupa.
According to Parinirvana Sutra (as cited in Magetsari, 1997), Buddha of Kamadhatu went
to the top, and after passing through various levels in arupadhatu, he entered the level of
arupadhatu to eventually reach the level where feelings no longer exist. Then, Buddha went
down from the top to the lowest level of rupadhatu. Then, he again reached the highest level
of rupadhatu to finally enter Parinirvana.
3.1
Comparison between the stupas of Borobudur and other temples
Stupas are also found in other Mahayana-Vajrayana Buddhist temples, such as Mendut,
Pawon, Ngawen, Kalasan, Sari, Lumbung and Sewu Temples, as well as the Ratu Boko
archaeological sites and Pura Pegulingan. The form of plain stupas found in all of these sites
is similar to that of Borobudur. Meanwhile, the form of perforated stupas can only be found
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in Borobudur. Table 3 shows a comparison of the form of plain stupas in Borobudur and in
other temples and sites.
Table 3 shows that plain stupas can be found in Mendut, Pawon, Ngawen, Kalasan, Sari,
Lumbung and Sewu Temples. It has been found that the plain stupas in Sewu Temple are similar to those of Borobudur, which are placed on the ledge. They reinforce the opinion about
their function at Borobudur as a boundary between the ledge (Vedika) and floor (pradaksinapatha). The Sewu Temple was built in the late 8th century having Vajradhatu-mandala
structure, with a great number of Dhyani Buddha figures (Suleiman, 1981, Chihara, 1996).
However, there was limited information on the essence of Boddhisattva who was worshipped
in the temple because the inscription of Kelurak, which was found at Sewu Temple, provided
information only about a temple named Manjusri-grha or the house of Manjusri, and it
could be built to worship Manjusri (Magetsari, 1981). On the basis of the similarities found,
it can be suggested that Borobudur and Sewu Temples are most probably correlated and
were erected at the same time. Both temples also represent Sailendra art and Mahayana and
Vajrayana sects, such as stupas on the ledge and Vajradhatu-mandala structure.
The author found the main stupas or type A stupa at Pawon, Kalasan, Sari, Lumbung and
Sewu Temples, as well as at the Ratu Baka archaeological site and Pura Pegulingan. The main
stupas at Mendut and Ngawen Temples were built during the ancient times. The main stupas
in both temples have collapsed or been damaged and cannot be reconstructed, as well as the
Figure 3. Vairocana statues inside a hollow space-diamond stupa.
(Source: Aditya Revianur (2016)).
Table 3.
Stupa forms of Borobudur and other Buddhist temples.
Stupa forms of Borobudur
and other Buddhist temples
No.
Temples/sites
Plain stupas
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Mendut Temple
Pawon Temple
Ngawen Temple
Kalasan Temple
Sari Temple
Lumbung Temple
Sewu Temple
Ratu Baka archaeological site
Pura Pegulingan
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
Main stupa
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
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main stupa at Kalasan Temple, but several parts of the Prasadha, the slotted-square Anda,
Harmika and parts of the damaged Yashti can still be seen. The main stupa at Pura Pegulingan in Bali, which is similar to a miniature of stupa, can be found at these sites.
The miniature of stupa at Pegulingan is probably related to the statues of Pancatathagata,
which itself is related to the Vajrayana Buddhism doctrine, and it could be seen on the Dhyani
Buddha statues that are placed on the four corners of the stupa (Astawa, 1996). The Ratu
Boko Temple was built as a vihara and named Abhayagirivihara; it still preserves the legacy
of Buddhism (Magetsari, 1981). The author found the type of the main stupa at Ratu Boko,
but it has been reconstructed ever since its discovery. Meanwhile, Ngawen, Mendut, Pawon,
Kalasan, Sari, Lumbung and Sewu Temples have one main stupa surrounded by plain smaller
stupas. The main stupas at these temples are the symbols of Parinirvana. It has been found
that these main stupas in each temple were not decorated with parasols or chattra.
4
CONCLUSION
The stupas of Borobudur Temple have two forms and four types. The two forms are plain
and perforated stupas. The plain stupas are located from the second terrace to the sixth
terrace and serve as the boundary between Vedika and Pradaksinapatha. A similar function is also found at Sewu Temple. The perforated stupas and the main stupas of Borobudur Temple are related to the teachings of both the Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism
sects. These stupas, which are located on the seventh and eighth terraces, serve as a preparation stage to enter the Parinirvana, which is symbolised by a single main stupa. The
Dhyani-Buddha Vairocana statues that are placed inside these stupas indicate the symbols
of the Vajrayana sect. According to Parinirvana Sutra, the hollow space-square stupas
symbolise the last level of arupadhatu, which eventually leads to the Parinirvana stage
that is manifested by the main stupa. The stupas of Borobudur Temple and those found
in other Buddhist sacred sites in Java represent the art of the Sailendra dynasty, which
dates back to the period between 7th and 10th centuries. No parasols of the stupas have
survived, and because of the limited archaeological evidence and references, it is impossible to reconstruct the parasols of the stupas. Borobudur itself was erected in the late 8th
century on the basis of the comparison of its stupas with those at Candi Sewu. The stupas
of Sailendra are related to the development of the Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism
that were practiced not only at Borobudur but also in other Buddhist temples in Indonesia
between the 7th and the late 14th centuries, according to Negarakrtagama, which mentions Vajrayana temples in Java and Bali.
REFERENCES
Ashmore, W. & Sharer, R. J. (2010). Discovering our past: A brief introduction to archaeology. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Astawa, A.A.G.O. (1996). Agama Buddha di Bali kajian artefaktual (Buddhism in Bali: An artifactual
analysis). [Thesis]. Depok: Fakultas Sastra Universitas Indonesia.
Balai Konservasi Peninggalan Borobudur (Borobudur Heritage Conservation Hall). (2004) Data ukuran
bagian-bagian candi Borobudur: Ukuran dalam meter (Measurement data of Borobudur temple parts
in meter). Magelang: Balai Konservasi Peninggalan Borobudur.
Brown, P. (1959). Indian architecture, Buddhist and Hindu periods. Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala Sons &
Co. Private Ltd.
Chihara, D. (1996). Hindu-Buddhist architecture in Southeast Asia. Leiden: Brill.
Coomaraswamy, A. K. (1965). History of Indian and Indonesian art. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
De Casparis, J.G. (1950). Inscripties uit de Cailendra-tijd: Prasasti Indonesia I. Bandung: A.C. Nix & Co.
Dehejia, V. (1972). Early Buddhist rock temples. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
Fogelin, L. (2015). An archaeological history of Indian Buddhism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Giebel, R.W. (2005). The vairocanabhisambodhi sutra. Berkeley, California: Numata Center for Buddhist
Translation and Research.
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Magetsari, N. (1981). Agama Buddha Mahayana di kawasan nusantara (The Buddha Mahayana religion in the Indonesian archipelago). In Ayatrohaedi (Ed.) Seri penerbitan ilmiah 7. Jakarta: Fakultas
Sastra Universitas Indonesia. pp. 1–28.
Magetsari, N. (1997). Candi Borobudu rekonstruksi agama dan filsafatnya (Borobudur Temple: Religious
reconstruction and the philosophy). Depok: Fakultas Sastra Universitas Indonesia.
Mentari, G. (2010). Bentuk dan tata letak stupa di Candi Borobudur (The forms and positions of stupas at
Borobudur Temple). [Mini-Thesis]. Depok: Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya Universitas Indonesia.
Moertjipto & Prasetyo, B. (1993). Borobudur, Pawon, dan Mendut (Borobudur, Pawon, and Mendut).
Yogyakarta: Kanisius.
Parmentier, H. (1924). Dv A. Hoenig: Das formproblem des Borobudur. In Bulletin de’Ecole Francaise d’Extreme-Orient, 24, 612–614. Retrieved from http://www.persee.fr/doc/befeo_0336–1519_
1924_num_24_1_3038.
Pigeaud, T. G. Th. (1962). Java in the 14th Century: The Nagara-Kertagama by Rakawi Prapanca of
Majapahit, 1365 A. D. Leiden: Koninklijk Institut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde.
Prajudi, R. (2009) Perjumpaan dengan budaya India dan Cina (The meeting with the cultures of India
and China). In Gunawan Tjahjono (Ed.). Sejarah kebudayaan Indonesia: Arsitektur (The cultural history of Indonesia: Architecture) (pp. 159–235). Jakarta: Rajagrafindo Persada.
Raffles, T. S. (1830). History of Java vol II. London: John Murray.
Soekmono. (1978). Candi Borobudur (Borobudur Temple). Jakarta: PT Dunia Pustaka Jaya.
Stutterheim, W.F. (1956.) Studies in Indonesian archaeology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff
Suleiman, S. (1981) Monuments of ancient Indonesia. Jakarta, Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Variety of distinct style scripts in inscriptions found in Mandalas
of the late Majapahit era: An overview of the paleography to mark
religious dynamics
N. Susanti
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The late Majapahit era is found to mark the decline of Saivaism and Buddhism. In the late 15th century, Buddhism started to decline, whereas Saivaism was still
developing, despite experiencing a decline. Trailokyapuri II and Trailokyapuri III inscriptions, which were issued by the King, mentioned names of figures and gods other than Siva,
namely Sang Rsiswara Bharadhwaja, Bhatara Wisnu, Bhatara Yama, and Bhatari Durga.
Literature works have also suggested life perspectives and “indigenous” religiousness as well
as the establishment of religious buildings with mountain top features (punden berundak) and
pyramidal architecture, such as the constructions in the slopes of Mount Penanggungan and
Mount Lawu. Distinct script styles found in brief inscriptions in several sites that served as
centers of religious activities (mandala) may confirm the assumptions regarding the religious
life lead in the late Majapahit era. The content of the inscriptions provides hints of holy
places/mandala, names of figures and gods, and moral teachings of the time. Paleographic
analyses carried out using a dynamic method for the distinct script styles found in brief
inscriptions from the late Majapahit era may provide information regarding the types of the
currently existing mandala. Previous studies show that every mandala normally possesses a
unique script style together with its diacritical symbols. The analysis of the content of the
inscriptions reveals the figures, gods, and moral teachings of the era. Ultimately, the variety
of distinct script styles may contribute to the information related to the life outside the palaces of the late Majapahit era, especially the religious life.
1
INTRODUCTION
The late Majapahit era has marked the decline of two religions, namely Saivaism and Buddhism. In the late 15th century, the role of Buddhism as an official religion started to decline,
whereas Saivasim sustained and flourished up to the late 15th century, despite experiencing a
decline. The inscriptions and literature works of that time have also revealed the existence of
figures and gods belonging to neither Saivaism nor Buddhism.
For instance, the content of Trailokyapuri II and III inscriptions issued by King Girindrawarddhana Dyah Ranawijaya mentions the existence of other figures and gods, such
as Sang Rsiswara Bharadhwaja, Bhatara Wisnu, and Bhatari Durga. Literature works have
also suggested views of life pertaining to an “indigenous” religion and the establishment of
religious structures, including those with mountain-like and pyramidal shapes, such as some
constructions found in the slopes of Mount Penanggungan and Mount Lawu.
When Hinduism and Buddhism were introduced in Nusantara, they grew in an environment that had developed its own faith system, namely the worship of the spirit of the ancestors. Together with the development, these three systems of faith influenced each other,
which was reflected in not only the system of the ideas but also the ritual activities and the
material manifestation of the objects used to support such activities (Sedyawati & Djafar,
2012, p. 286).
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Centers of religious development from the early stages were distinguished into three categories based on the environment where the religious teachings were developed, namely the
palace area, the hermitage area, and the village area. Two groups of religious leaders were
involved in palaces, namely the court priests and the high officials in charge of religious
affairs. Hermitage sites that were later also referred to as mandala are religious activity sites
located somewhat away from the living areas, normally deep in the forest, in mountain slopes,
or in caves. The caves, for example, which were situated in the high plateau of Dieng and
Ratuboko, are assumed to be the oldest centers of worship in Java. The word Dieng or Dihyang (ancient Javanese language) would possibly indicate the dwelling place of the spirit of
the ancestors or hyang. The proximity of such caves and the oldest Hindu religious building
compound and the finding of prehistoric ritual equipment, such as copper drum (nekara),
possibly indicate the area having been used since prehistoric time by a group of people
(Sedyawati & Djafar, 2012, pp. 286–295).
The description of hermitage life was obtained later, especially from the ruling era of King
Airlangga and the era of the Majapahit Kingdom through the content of inscriptions and
literature works conducted in the two eras.
On the basis of manuscripts of the Janggala-Kadiri era, namely Bhomantaka and Sumanasantaka, and those dated from the Majapahit era, such as Nagarakrtagama, Rajapatigundala, Arjunawijaya, Tantu Panggelaran, and Pararaton, some terminologies are indicated to
relate to the naming of such religious centers, namely mandala, kut.i, dharmasala, karĕsyan,
wanaśrama/asrama, patapan, and kadewagurwan. Santiko (1990, p. 159) assumed that wanasrama or dormitory refers to a sacred place of hermits or karĕsyan, whereas mandala is another
term for kadewagurwan (Sedyawati & Djafar, 2012, p. 292).
Soepomo (1977, pp. 66–67) distinguished patapan from mandala and stated that patapan
is a quiet place of retreat that a person visits and stays for a certain period for a certain
intention, whereas mandala is a compound of housing for hermits that is more of a permanent base and the occupants are referred to as tapaswi and tapi (Sedyawati & Djafar, 2012,
p. 293).
Religious centers that flourished during the ancient Javanese era as well as served as places
of learning and teaching are referred to as widya gocara as mentioned in the book Sutasoma.
The book Sarasamuccaya describes a place of hermitage or patapan as the one that served
as the dwelling place of a master (Mpu) and his students (sisya). Furthermore, it is described
as being surrounded by a fence made of solid walls and having a gate, a pond, and a large
banyan tree, under which the students played (Sedyawati, 2012, p. 302). Several types of
other religious centers are also described in the literature works, for instance, kadewagurwan
is described as being located at the base of a mountain and was occupied by a family of religious leaders or dwija (Brahmana) and holy women.
The educational system followed was similar to that of gurukula, with a single student
being directed by his teacher at a hermitage. Literature works denote an interactive learning–
teaching process, involving direct verbal communication between the teacher and the students. The materials taught were related to religion and the literature. The book Pararaton
lists the subjects taught to the students, which included scripts, knowledge on the use of
vocals, consonants, and change of sound of scripts or candrasangkala; elements of calendar
system; and so on. It also includes the teaching of good characters, truth, and proper behaviors (Gonggong, 1993, pp. 101–117).
Further studies on the inscriptions of the late Majapahit era would find that there are
several inscriptions that have distinct characters, indicated in their size and shape. These
inscriptions are not as large as other inscriptions in general, which have a height of >1 m,
and the shape is less regular. Examples include inscriptions made on natural stones that
are relatively small. Scripts carved on these inscriptions are short, and their form has specific motifs different from those used to record king’s announcements. The language used is
ancient Javanese of Middle dialect. Unlike that of inscriptions issued by the royal palaces, the
content of these inscriptions is not related to king’s announcements, the elements of which
are arranged chronologically. These inscriptions contain names of places, gods, and priests,
as well as moral teachings, which leads us to assume that these inscriptions were made and
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issued by people who lived in mandala, comprising priests, students, and sages (Susanti, 2008;
2011, pp. 3–4; Rahayu, 2016, p. 13).
On the basis of several previous studies, it is assumed that there were religious centers, such
as mandala, kadewagurwan, kuti, and patapan, during the late Majapahit era, as mentioned in
the manuscript of Nagarakrtagama. By linking the sites where these inscriptions were found,
the information obtained from Nagarakrtagama, and the journey of Bujangga Manik, the
locations of those religious centers can be deduced. The chronological data of the mandalas
may be concluded from the hints found in the content of the inscriptions and the development of the shape of the scripts.
The development of the script style can be observed by two methods, namely static method
and dynamic method. According to the static method, introduced by de Casparis, the script
is a hierarchy of lines. Thus, in analyzing, observing the scripts one by one is sufficient. The
simplest script is the latest (de Casparis, 1975, p. 66). According to the dynamic method,
introduced by Jean Mallon, the script is not just one line, rather a result of hand movements.
The script consists of real and unreal elements. For example, in order to make a real line to
attract a specific direction, the hand needs to be lifted first to make a real line on the different sides. The script changes can be seen from the combination of real and unreal elements
(duktus). Increasingly complicated ductus indicates the younger characters of script style (van
der Molen, 1985, pp. 9–10).
Bujangga Manik was a Sundanese Hindu priest who lived in the late 16th century. He went
wandering overland from his place of origin in Sunda region to the eastern tip of Java and to
Bali, and went back to West Java. He wrote his experience in a kind of travelogue (Noordijn,
1984, p. 1).
Anton Wibisono (2006) studied the development of scripts of different styles using the
dynamic method, that is, by studying scripts on the basis of their shapes, script typeface (ductus),
corners, size, and thickness. Inscriptions discussed at the time were Gerba, Widodaren, 1371
Śaka Damalung inscriptions, and Pasrujambe inscriptions. This research concluded that the
oldest scripts with distinct styles found in various sites in East Java and Central Java were
those of the Sukuh group of inscriptions.
From the temple compound of Sukuh, 10 inscriptions and statues as well as independent
reliefs were found. According to the experts, the inscriptions and construction elements were
of the same era, namely between 1361 Śaka, as mentioned in one of the reliefs, and 1363
Śaka, as written on the rear part of the statue of Bhima. In the travel journal of Bujangga
Manik, he mentioned that during the westbound trip he went past villages in the southern
part of Mount Wilis and Mount Lawu. Despite the names of the villages mentioned here
being not recognized as the Sukuh temple compound is situated in the slope of Mount Lawu,
there would most probably be scriptoria/mandala near the temple compound (Susanti, 2010,
p. 6). Figure 1 shows the shapes of the scripts of inscriptions found in the compound of
Sukuh temple.
More recent mandalas were believed to be located near Malang based on the finding of
Gerba inscription in the village of Gerba in the regency of Malang and the finding of Widodaren inscription in the village of Widodaren. The names of these two inscriptions come from
the villages where they were found. The shapes of the scripts used in these two inscriptions
are the same, and so is the language used, namely ancient Javanese with Middle dialect. The
content of these inscriptions is about moral teaching. Gerba inscription deals with sincerity
in marriage life that is described as having the weight of heaven and earth and balance. Widodaren inscription addresses religious teachings and marriage life. Bujangga Manik shows
that, on his return from the east, he went past the east–west part of East Java, east from Panarukan that covers the Ijen mountain compound. The journey expanded to Mount Raung in
the area (lurah) of Telaga Wurung and straight to Balungbungan, where he stayed for more
than 1 year to meditate (Noordijn, 1984, p. 26). Kasturi, Kukub, and Sagara are the names of
three mandalas located near Mount Mahameru (Semeru) as mentioned in Nagarakrtagama
(Pigeaud, 1924, p. 33) as well as in Batur inscription that is made of metal. The deciphering
of Batur inscription reveals that the mandalas in Kasturi, Kukub, and Sagara indicate the
same school of religious teachings (Hardianti, 2015). Is there any possibility that Gerba,
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Figure 1.
Figure 2.
Widodaren, and Batur inscriptions were issued by the mandala located in the slope of Mount
Semeru? Figure 2 shows the shapes of the scripts of Gerba and Widodaren inscriptions.
Both Gerba and Widodaren inscriptions do not bear any year. However, on the basis of the
paleographic analysis using the dynamic method, it can be estimated that the scripts of the two
inscriptions originated from a period between Sukuh inscription and Damalung inscription.
Damalung inscription was found in the village of Ngadoman near Salatiga, Central Java.
This inscription bears the year 1371 Śaka. It mentions that the word Damalung, which implies
a mountain, is assumed to be Mount Merbabu (Wiryamartana, 1993, p. 1), one of the mandalas visited by Bhujangga Manik to deepen his religious knowledge (Noordijn, 1984, p. 7).
Several mandalas were found in Mount Damalung and were spread in the base, slope, and
top of the mountain. These mandalas continued their existence as proven by the finding of
400 palm leaf manuscripts containing literary work. Unfortunately, the Damalung inscription was the only inscription found at the site. The shape of the scripts indicates their unique
characteristics (Figure 3), and the language used is Ancient Javanese with Middle dialect. The
content of Damalung inscription included praises to goddess Saraswati and moral teaching
on recommended human characters (Susanti, 2010, pp. 6–7).
Pasrujambe inscriptions were found in the village of Pasrujambe, the regency of Lumajang, comprising 19 inscriptions with distinct styles. The content of these inscriptions consists of names of Figures (2) and names of gods and goddesses (6). Three of the inscriptions
mention names of holy sites (rabut pĕthak, rabut walang taga); seven contain brief sentences;
two bear the year of 1391 Śaka; and one of the inscriptions contains advice on life. In his
travel journal, Bhujangga Manik revealed that he took a route along the southern beach of
Java through Padangalun and reached Mount Watangan that faced the island of Barong
(Nusa Barong). From there, he reached Sarampon, mentioned in Nagarakrtagama as Sarampwan, a place where King Hayam Wuruk stopped over while he was visiting Sadheng for
several days (1359 Śaka). Afterward, Bhujangga Manik went past the village of Cakru on
the beach south of Lumajang and reached the lurah of Kenep (not yet confirmed) and the
area of Lamajang Kidul. Lamajang could probably have been the present Lumajang. It is
assumed that there were several mandalas used as religious centers in Lamajang, judging by
the numerous brief inscriptions found in this location. Figure 4 shows the shape of the scripts
of Pasrujambe inscriptions.
The four groups of inscriptions mentioned above would most probably describe religious
centers in the late Majapahit era as they all bear similar characters. This assumption is supported
by the information contained in the literary works of the same era, at least in Nagarakrtagama
and the travel journal of Bhujangga Manik. Nevertheless, the precise locations of several other
inscriptions with scripts of distinct styles that were found sporadically in East Java, namely Tempuran, no. D 62, and Condrogeni inscriptions, as well as several brief inscriptions of distinct
style scripts that are housed in the Majapahit Museum in Trowulan remain unknown.
Condrogeni inscription is part of the collection of Jakarta National Museum and has not
been clearly deciphered. The scripts are of ancient Javanese with a unique style, and the language used is ancient Javanese of Middle dialect. The content of the inscription is believed to
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consist of religious teachings and advice that include praises to goddess Bathari. It was found
in the village of Condrogeni, the regency of Ponorogo. Other discoveries in the proximity of
the inscription include pieces of the statue of goddess Durga and stone inscription that bears
the year of 1376. Figure 5 shows the shape of the scripts of Condrogeni inscription .
The place where D 62 inscription was found remains unknown. It has a quasi-linga shape
and is part of the collection of the Majapahit museum in Trowulan. This inscription has
distinct style scripts and uses ancient Javanese language of Middle dialect. It contains several
words implying the existence of religious rituals and is assumed to have dated in 13 (12) Śaka.
Several brief inscriptions of a rectangular shape with unique style scripts and measuring approximately 20 cm × 60 cm can be seen at the Majapahit museum. These inscriptions bear the names of places such as prapyanga, rĕksaguna, and rĕsi bhalajangidhwang.
Mount Penanggungan or Pawitra (holy) is mentioned in Sukci inscription (929 M) and in
the ancient Javanese manuscripts of Nagarakrtagamaand Tantu Panggĕlaran. According to
these sources, the Hindus and Buddhists treated the mountain as a sacred place. Numerous
archaeological artifacts were found in the mountain constituting constructions and bathing facilities (petirtan), caves (ceruk), and hermitage (Aris Munandar, 1990). Hence, such
brief inscriptions that constitute part of the collection of the Majapahit museum would most
probably have originated from the sites of Pawitra or Mount Penanggungan.
The different shapes of the scripts in these inscriptions may have resulted from several factors, such as automatic intrinsic changes, or changes taking place in the writing instruments
or materials used to make them, intentional factors such as the creativity of the writer in
manifesting the values developed during certain eras, with the innovation made by a person or
a group of persons who created new scripts, and the creation of new variations in the shape
of the scripts offered by a group of people living far away from the center of the kingdom
(the coastal communities or the mandala communities). According to a study conducted on
the writers of Ulu manuscripts in Bengkulu, in every scriptorium or center of literary work,
writers pay special attention to the creation of the shape of scripts and the punctuation marks
in their manuscripts. As such, it would be highly possible that a person who understood the
script of Ulu would yet face difficulties in deciphering and distinguishing such differences.
Figure 3.
Figure 4.
Figure 6.
Figure 5.
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On the basis of the content of inscriptions with unique style scripts that originate from
the mandalas of the late Majapahit era, a conclusion can be drawn on the different functions
of the inscriptions. In general, they served as markers or reminders of names of places or
indicators of the years when the inscriptions were written. Some also contain the names of
gods to remind the readers (individuals or communities) of the gods people worshipped at
the time. The names of gods also served as a means of concentrating in performing yoga
exercise. Inscriptions such as Gerba, Widodaren, and Damalung served as reminders as they
contain advice (Rahayu, 2016, p. 20).
Various unique style scripts in inscriptions originating from the late Majapahit era may
contribute to the reconstruction of religious activities and religious centers located outside
the royal palaces. For instance, a study conducted by Andriyati Rahayu on brief inscriptions
containing unique style scripts in the temple compound of Sukuh describes the inauguration ceremony and religious rituals, namely the inauguration of Bagawan Gangga Sudhi
to become a better person. The manuscript of Rajapatigundala mentions an obligation for
conducting such ritual, whereas the manuscripts of Tantu Panggelaran and Calon Arang
mention that, in order to become a priest, a person would possess an inauguration robe, an
umbrella, and a pair of earrings (Rahayu, 2016, p. 18).
A close observation of the Pasrujambe inscriptions led to the following three assumptions.
First, the existence of three places had different functions in terms of religious life, namely
rabut that might have been the residence of religious community, samadi that served as a place
.
for individual meditation, and paηyaηηan sarga that was an object of certain worship. Second,
artifacts found at the Pasrujambe site consisting of ritual instruments, such as jewel boxes,
bowls, bells, plates, pots, and trays, also serve as indicators of the existence of religious activities
at the site. Third, on the basis of the content of the inscriptions and the mentioning of names
of figures such as Sang Kurusya and Sang Kosika, it can be assumed that the religious concept
observed by the community was of the Pasupata school because the above-mentioned figures
were students of Lakulisa, the founders of the Pasupata school (Rahayu, 2016, p. 20).
Studies of the inscriptions that have unique style scripts in terms of a variety in scripts and the
language as well as the content play important roles in supporting the reconstruction of religious
life that existed at a certain era, particularly the Majapahit era. The spread out locations of the
inscriptions with unique style scripts may also provide us with the description of the identification and chronological data about the sites and enrich us with information about the religious
life at that time far from the center of authority that remains rarely discussed to date.
REFERENCES
De Casparis, J.G. (1975) Indonesian
Palaeography, a History of Writing in Indonesia from the Beginnings
..
~
to C A.D. 1500. Leiden/K
ln, E.J. Brill.
Fic, V.M. (2003) From Majapahit and Sukuh to Megawati Sukarnoputri. New Delhi, Shakti Malik
Abhinav Publications.
Gaur, A. (1979) Writing Materials of the East. The British Library.
Gonggong, A. (editor). (1993) Sejarah Kebudayaan Jawa (The History of the Javanese Culture). Jakarta,
The Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture.
Munandar, A.A. (1990) Kegiatan Keagamaan di Pawitra: Gunung Suci di Jawa Timur Abad ke-14–15
(Religious Activities in Religious Sites: Holy Mountains in East Java in the 14th – 15th centuries).
Unpublished Master’s thesis for the Department of Archeology, Graduate Program, Post-graduate
Program of Universitas Indonesia, Depok.
Pigeaud, Th.G.Th. (1960–1963) Java in the 14th Century a Study in Cultural History: The Nagarakertagama by Rakawi Prapanca of Majapahit, 1365 AD. Volume I-V. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.
Prasodjo, T. (1991) Kajian Paleografis terhadap Prasasti-Prasasti Candi Sukuh (Paleographic Study on
Inscriptions at the Sukuh Temple), Research Report, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Gajah Mada,
Yogyakarta.
Rahayu, A. (2016) Kehidupan Kaum Agamawan Masa Majapahit Akhir: Tinjauan Epigrafis (The Life
of Religious People of the Late Majapahit Era: An Epigraphic Review). [Unpublished Dissertation]
Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok.
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Santiko, H. (1986) Mandala (Kadewagurwan) pada Masyarakat Majapahit (Mandalas in the Majapahit
Society). A paper presented at the Scientific Workshop of Archaeology IV, Cipanas.
Sedyawati, E & Hasan, D. (2012) Indonesia dalam Arus Sejarah (Ed. Vol. 2). (Indonesia in the Flow of
History). Bandung, PT. Ichtiar Baru van Hoeve.
Sedyawati, E. (2001) Masalah Pusat dan Pinggiran dalam Sastra Jawa (Central and Outskirt Issues in
the Javanese Literature, in Sedyawati et al. (ed) Sastra Jawa, Suatu Tinjauan Umum (The Javanese
Literature, A General Review). Jakarta, Indonesia Language Center and Balai Pustaka.
Sidomulyo, H. (2007) Napak Tilas Perjalanan Mpu Prapañca (Tracing Back the Journey of Mpu
Prapañca), Penerbit Wedatama Widya Sastra in collaboration with Nandiswara Foundation of the
Department of History, the Faculty of Social Sciences, UNESSA.
Susanti, N & Agung, K. (2006) Damalung: Skriptoria pada Masa Hindu-Buddha sampai dengan Islam
(Scriptoria from the Hindu-Buddha Era up to the Islamic Era), Proceeding at the International Symposium of Manuscript Community of Nusantara (Manassa), Bandung.
Susanti, N. (2010) Skriptoria Masa Majapahit Akhir: Identifikasi Berdasarkan Persebaran Prasasti
(Scriptoria of the Late Majapahit Era: Identification Based on the Distribution of Inscription), Proceeding at Seminar on Guided Chronology in Archaeology, Kuala Lumpur.
Susanti, N. (2012) Prasasti dari Desa Widodaren, dalam M.Suhadi (editor), Aksara dan Makna: Membaca dan Mengungkap Kearifan Masa Lalu (Scripts and Meaning: Deciphering and Revealing the
Past Wisdom). Jakarta, The Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture.
Susanti, N. (2016) Script and Identity, Prosiding 10th International Conference on Malay-Indonesia
Relations; A Decade Promoting Bilateral Prosperity, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University
of Malay, Kuala Lumpur.
Susanti, N., Titik, P. & Trigangga (editors). (2015) Inscribing Identity, the Development of Indonesian
Writing Systems. Jakarta, The National Museum of Indonesia.
Wiryamartana, I.K. & W. van der Molen. (2001) The Merapi-Merbabu Manuscripts: A Neglected Collection, BKI, 157–1, pp. 51–64.
Wiryamartana, I.K. (1993) The Scriptoria in Merbabu-Merapi Area, BKI, 149, pp. 503–509.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Religious communities in the late Majapahit period at Pasrujambe
site, Lumajang
A. Rahayu & N. Susanti
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: There are 24 short inscriptions discovered in PasruJambe, Lumajang, East
Java. The scripts used in these inscriptions are different from the scripts used in inscriptions issued by the king. The inscriptions are very short and only mention one word such
as the names of gods (batharamahadewa, batharamahisora, and bathariprtiwi), holy places
(rabut macan pethak, and rabut walang taga), saints (bagawancaci and bagawancitragotra),
the rsi (sang kurusya and sang kosika) and moral teaching. Those characteristics indicate
that the inscriptions were not issued by the king but produced by religious communities. This
paper discusses the site of PasruJambe, where the short inscriptions were found. The method
used is the epigraphy method, which includes collecting data, making transliteration of the
inscriptions, and interpreting the data. This paper also uses manuscript and archeological
remains as supporting data. The result is that PasruJambe was once a place of a religious
community, where clergymen and their pupils learned about religious texts and issues. This
kind of community was plenty in Majapahit era, and PasruJambe was only one of them.
1
INTRODUCTION
Inscriptions are among the types of data in archaeological research. According to Boechari
(2012, p. 4), inscriptions are historical sources that are originated from the past and were
inscribed on stone or metal media. They were the king’s announcements about certain events
that were inscribed on stone or metal media (Boechari, 2012, p. 4; Susanti, 1996, p. 6).
Inscriptions are very important for Indonesian ancient history because they are the primary
sources which can provide rich information about the social and cultural conditions in the past,
such as structures of kingdoms, bureaucracy, religions and beliefs, communities, economic
matters, and traditional customs in ancient Indonesian societies (Boechari, 2012, pp. 6–7).
Most of the contents of the inscriptions from the Old Javanese period assign an area
as sīma (Susanti, 1996, p. 20; Boechari, 2012, p. 6). Sīma inscriptions are those that mention a king’s or a ruler’s declaration to change the status of an area in relation to building
maintenance, maintenance of religious buildings or public facilities, as well as a king’s gratitude/compensation to an individual or a group of people. Examples of sīma inscriptions are
among others Kudadu and Sukamerta inscriptions (Boechari, 2012, pp. 13–14).
Information in parts of the inscriptions, if studied meticulously, can give very interesting
portrayals about the structures of kingdoms, bureaucracies, societies, and economy as well
as religions, beliefs, and traditional customs of ancient Indonesian communities (Boechari,
2012, p. 25).
In PasruJambe, about 24 stone inscriptions were found in six different locations. From
the date, which is 1371 Śaka (Suhadi, et al., 1996/1997, pp. 16–17), it is known that the stone
inscriptions originated from the Majapahit period. However, the inscriptions of Pasru Jambe
have different characteristics from the other inscriptions from the Majapahit period. The
differences are from the aspects of physical appearance and content. An example of physical
difference is that Pasru Jambe inscriptions were carved on un-worked natural stones while
Majapahit inscriptions were carved on natural stones that had been worked on. Second, the
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scripts used in Pasru Jambe inscriptions have different shapes from those used in Majapahit ones in general. Third, Pasru Jambe inscriptions only consist of several lines, so they
are called short inscriptions. Fourth, Pasru Jambe inscriptions contain the names of gods,
names of religious figures, and religious advice while Majapahit inscriptions in general contain kings’ statements/decrees. It is these differences that have led to the assumption that
Pasru Jambe inscriptions were issued by religious communities outside the central kingdom.
This is supported by the artefacts found in Pasru Jambe sites, such as lidded-boxes, bowls,
trays, pots, plates, and stones with yantra picture on them, which are thought to be a series
of ceremonial implements.
Those short inscriptions are the main sources to understand how life during the Majapahit
era was from the point of view of communities outside the royal court. The contents of the
inscriptions can provide information about life around the several places where they were
issued, which in turn can give us new understanding about Majapahit during that period and
more data to lead to a more complete picture of life history during the Majapahit era.
There have been many studies on communities in the Indonesian archipelago in the past,
among others about the bureaucracy, laws, economy, and so on. However, those studies have
focused on the communities within the royal court and their cultures. Studies on the cultures
of communities outside the royal court area have rarely been done despite the fact that the
cultures of the Indonesian archipelago as a whole were established not only by the communities who lived within the centres of kingdoms but also by those who lived outside them.
1.1
Problems
This paper will discuss the short inscriptions found in Pasru Jambe site and the reconstruction of the communities that issued those inscriptions.
1.2
Research methods
The research methods of this study used approaches proposed by Robert J. Sharer and Wendy
Ashmore in Fundamental of Archeology (1979, pp. 114–120). The following are the phases of
the research, which include among others:
1.2.1 Data collection
During this phase, all data regarding this study, which are inscriptions from the Majapahit
era, were collected. First, references and literature connected to the research objects, transliterations, and translations of inscriptions from the Majapahit era, as well as records and
experts’ opinions about those inscriptions, were pulled together. The bibliographical data
focus on articles about PasruJambe inscriptions. In addition, secondary data in the form of
transliterations and translations of manuscripts related to the research aim were also used.
Afterwards, a field study was carried out to obtain the data, particularly the short inscriptions of PasruJambe site. During this phase, surveys were conducted to know the locations
of the short inscriptions as the main source of the data. The inscriptions of Pasru Jambe are
now being kept at MpuTantular Museum in East Java.
1.2.2 Data processing
The results of the data collection, which are bibliographical data and field data, were then
processed to be used as the material of data analysis. The processing of bibliographical data
was done by classifying resources relevant to the research aim. The next steps were transliteration and translation processes. Meanwhile, critical analyses were also done to determine
whether there were anachronism or inconsistency with the period and whether or not the
written sources were original.
The method to do the processes was comparing the inscriptions used as the data of this
research with other inscriptions from the same period. In other words, every element, both
a physical element and content, of the inscriptions used as the main data was compared
with those of the other inscriptions from the same period to see whether or not there was a
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significant difference. If there is no significant difference, it can be assumed that the inscription is from the same period while if there are many significant differences then the originality or authenticity of the inscription is questionable.
1.2.3 Data analyses
A contextual analysis was done by observing the pattern found in the inscriptions and their
relations to other artefacts. During this phase, observation was also made to see whether
there were supporting artefactual data, for instance whether or not there were artefacts found
at the location where the special-typed inscriptions were found. It was also during this phase
that it was known that the data to be used in the reconstruction of the religious group’s life
were the inscriptions from Pasru Jambe.
Analyses on the pattern characteristics and contents of the inscriptions that are the objects
of this research were also carried out. Furthermore, the contents were analysed, particularly
the contents of those that have a different pattern from the inscriptions from the centre of the
kingdom. The content analysis would show who issued the inscriptions and how their culture
was. Furthermore, the factors that might have caused the differences were also scrutinised to
see the reasons behind the characteristic differences among the inscriptions. From the results
of the analyses, the life of the communities that issued the inscriptions was reconstructed.
1.2.4 Data interpretation
Data interpretation was conducted with the help of other textual and artefactual sources,
namely manuscripts and artefacts. The manuscripts used were particularly those that
contain information about the life of religious groups, among others Nāgarakr
․tāgama,
Rajapatigun
․․dala, Calon Arang, Arjuna Wijaya, and Tantu Panggelaran. Manuscripts greatly
helped in the reconstruction of the life of the religious groups because data from the inscriptions are limited. Translating the manuscripts was as much as possible done by the authors
although there were some that were translated by other people.
The artefactual finds that were used in the data interpretation are religious buildings and
ceremonial implements. Those finds are very important in the process of interpretation as
evidence of religious life at the location. Based on the analyses, a depiction about the religious environment during the period was made with the help of data from manuscripts and
artefacts. The results of the interpretation provided a conclusion based on the contents of
the inscriptions, manuscripts, and archaeological finds at the location where the inscriptions
were found, which in turn can provide a portrayal of the life of religious communities during
the Majapahit era. The following is a diagram of the research framework.
2
RESULTS
The following are the results of transliteration and translation of Pasru Jambe inscriptions:
No
Name of inscription
Transliteration
1
Pasru Jambe 1
Walěrińa babadwoŋ samadi
2
Pasru Jambe 2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Pasru Jambe 3
Pasru Jambe 4
Pasru Jambe 5
Pasru Jambe 6
Pasru Jambe 7
Pasru Jambe 8
Sań = anawakr
n) dha
hyaṅakasa
BathariPrtiwi
°isaka 1371
Dhudhukuna
°isaka 1371
dhudhukuna
that (is) the border of a place where
people meditate
The Bearer of Cepuk (lidded-box)
The Sky god
The Earth goddess
The Śaka year of 1371
Go to the healer
The Śaka year of 1371
Go to the healer
(Continued )
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(Continued )
No
Name of inscription
Transliteration
9
Pasru Jambe 9
Rabutmacan pěthak
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Pasru Jambe 10
Pasru Jambe 11
Pasru Jambe 12
Pasru Jambe 13
Pasru Jambe 14
Pasru Jambe 15
Pasru Jambe 16
Bathara mahi sora
Batharamahadewa
BagawanCaci
Bagawan Citra Gotra
Saŋku rusya
RabutLita
Paŋyaŋńan Sarga
17
18
19
Pasru Jambe 17
Pasru Jambe 18
Pasru Jambe 19
Rabut walaŋ ta ga
Saŋko sika
ikipaṅestu
yaŋmami guru
guru yen arabi den
kadibotiŋńakasalawanpr
․tiwi
papa kabuktihi
20
Pasru Jambe 20
Sakā bala sariwu
21
Pasru Jambe 21
Riŋmaja loka
22
23
24
Pasru Jambe 22
Pasru Jambe 23
Pasru Jambe 24
Bathara Wisnu
nilapaksi
Rabut sida
A holy place called macan
pethak
The god Mahisora
The god Mahadewa
A holy man named Caci
A holy man named Citra Gotra
Sang Kurusya
A holy place named Lita
Object of worship (to god) (for)
common people1
A holy place named WalangTaga
Sang Kosika
This is a blessing (from) god, we
(the) teachers If having a wife
(you are) supposed (to be) like
the weight of the sky and earth
Misfortune (will) be proven (for
those who disobey)
Come
Troops or forces A thousand
at maja
loka
The god Wisnu
Blue bird
A holy place named Sida
Based on the scripts being used, the inscriptions of Pasru Jambe are assumed to be from the
same period. Although the places where they were found are different, the distance between
one location and the others is not very far. Thus, it can be concluded that those inscriptions
are from the same spatial and temporal contexts.
There is some information that in 1986 in the trench near the location where the inscriptions were found, a set of ceremonial implements made of bronze and ceramics were found.
They are ceremonial bells, plates, boxes with a cover, a lid of a flask, bronze bowls, pots, and
trays (Suhadi, M. et al., 1994/1995, p. 10).
Based on the function of each artefact found, the artefactual finds at the site of Pasru
Jambe are assumed to be a set of ceremonial implements. This is closely related to the fact
that one of the contents of Pasru Jambe inscriptions is Saṅanawakr
․ndha, which means ‘the
cepuk (box with cover) bearer’, and one of the artefactual finds at Pasru Jambe site is a box
with cover known as cepuk. Besides a set of ceremonial implements mentioned above, at
Pasru Jambe a stone with the picture of yantra on it, which is 39 cm long, 28 cm wide, and
7 cm thick, was also found. Yantra is a type of implement to help in meditation.
Information obtained from the contents of Pasru Jambe inscriptions provides names of
places, gods/goddesses, and figures, as well as advice.
In the inscriptions of Pasru Jambe, three places, each with a different function, are
mentioned.
Rabut. According to the Old Javanese Dictionary, Rabut is a sacred place or a place that
has supernatural power (Zoetmulder, 2006, p. 897). There is no further information about
the term Rabut.
A Place for Samadi. A place for samadi is mentioned in Pasru Jambe 1 inscription as
walěrikababadwoŋsamadi, which means the border of a newly cleaned place for people to do
samadi (meditate). Probably in the past this location was used as a place for people to meditate; a special place to meditate individually (alone).
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Paŋyaŋṅan Sarga. The word paŋyaŋṅansarga means a worshipping place for many people.
Maybe in that location there used to be an object that was worshipped by many people. At
the same location was found an inscription that mentions the kosika and an inscription that
contains advice. Unfortunately, only a few other artefacts were found. There is only a report
about the discovery of a set of ceremonial implements, such as ceremonial bells, plates, boxes
with a cover (cepuk), bowls, pots, and trays made of bronze and ceramics. There was no
lingga or other features that could have served as an object worshipped by many people. It is
possible that the object was made of perishable material.
From the entire inscriptions of Pasru Jambe there is information that the establishment
of religious places was carried out in the same year, which is 1371 Śaka, but there is no additional information or more exact date regarding the establishment of those religious communities or religious places that were dispersed at several locations at Pasru Jambe. Information
from several inscriptions only mentions years, which all refer to 1371 Śaka. Presumably all the
religious places were built at the same time or within the same short period of time.
From the mentioning of the names of figures in the contents of Pasru Jambe inscriptions,
it can be concluded that there was a hierarchy of holy figures within the religious environment, which can be seen in the following diagram.
Batharas had the highest position as the worshipped gods; the Pasru Jambe environment
worshipped Mahadewa, Wisnu, and Mahisora (an epithet for the gods, Śiwa or Visnu). In
the second position were goddesses or bataris as the companions (sakti) of the gods, but only
one goddess that is mentioned in the inscriptions, which is Pratiwi. In the third position were
sang Kosika and sang Kurusya, who were two of Lakulīśa’s disciples. Lakulisa is the founder
of Siva Pasupata, a school of Sivaism. In the fourth position was dhudhukuna (dukun) or
shamans/witchdoctors, who are no ordinary human beings because in the inscriptions there
is advice to go to a shaman (witchdoctor). In general, a shaman’s function in Javanese communities is to cure illnesses. Meanwhile, there are other more important roles of shamans
in Javanese communities, for example in Tengger where shamans lead purifying ceremonies
during the Kasadha festival (Smith-Hefner, 1992, pp. 239–240). In the fifth position were
Bagawans, who were holy people in a high level, usually kings who left their worldly life to
dedicate themselves to religious life and became wikus (Zoetmulder, 2006, p. 185); they can
also be categorized into rs
․i.
The short inscriptions of Pasru Jambe which mention the names of places indicate that
there were religious locations dispersed within the area. One of the contents of the inscriptions
mentions the opening of a landscape to be made into a place to do samadi (meditation), which
means that it was the initial opening of a landscape to be made into a place to meditate for an
individual or several people in a small group. They were established in separate locations, but
still within the same area, which is Pasru Jambe. Thus, Pasru Jambe was probably a religious
community that consisted of several religious places, each with its own function. From the
information obtained from the contents of Pasru Jambe inscriptions, we learned that there
were three places, namely Rabut, Samadi, and paŋyaŋṅansarga. It is unfortunate that there
is no further information from the inscriptions that provide information about those places.
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One of the contents of Pasru Jambe inscriptions, “walěrikababadwoŋsamadi”, gives us
information that there was work to clean a place to be used for samadi (meditation). Ascetics
(hermits) usually choose certain locations. Rsis tend to do it in grottos especially for meditating or other places that are considered suitable for their purpose and worship the god Śiwa
in their minds, meditate, and do other religious activities at holy bathing places or terraced
structures on mountain slopes with altars but no statue. It can be assumed that the number
of holy bathing places (patirthan) was quite plenty, and they were usually scattered along
mountain slopes that still retained dense forests or on other high places (Santiko, 1993, p. 16;
Munandar, 2003, p. 122). The area where Pasru Jambe inscriptions were found and which is
the hamlet of Munggir is located around a water spring with very clear water named Sumber
Rawa. A small river that flows near the water spring is also called Kali Rawa (Rawa River).
It seems as though in the past Sumber Rawa, besides being used for daily activities, was
also considered as the source of water of life (air amr
․ta). It is located at the foot of Mount
Semeru, which was believed to be a holy mountain and part of Mount Mahameru in India
that was moved to the island of Java (Atmodjo, 1986, p. 40), thus supporting the assumption
that the area where Pasru Jambe inscriptions were found was a place to carry out religious
activities by a group of people who had left their worldly life.
3
CONCLUSION
Studies of Indonesian ancient history require data from various sources, both written sources
and artefacts left by people in the past. Among the written sources for Indonesian ancient
history are inscriptions. The inscriptions found in Indonesia are mostly about designating an
area as sīma, as a king’s bequest to a group of people or community or functionary that was
praiseworthy to the king or a king’s charity for religious purposes. However, the discovery
of the short inscriptions from East Java has provided a new outlook regarding the content
of an inscription. The inscriptions have different characteristics from the other inscriptions
found thus far.
Until now there have been about 24 inscriptions with special characteristics found in
Pasru Jambe. Based on the dates, it can be assumed that those inscriptions were from the late
Majapahit era.
The conclusion based on the analyses of the contents of the inscriptions as well as the artifactual finds in Pasru Jambe area shows us a picture that during the Majapahit Era there was
a religious community in that area, who lived together and had a significant role within the
society, as seen by the presence of a set of ceremonial implements, which led to the assumption that the religious community also performed sacred ceremonies for the public. The entire
inscriptions of Pasru Jambe provide information that the establishment of religious places
was carried out in the same year, which is 1371 Śaka.
The religious concept adopted by the community at Pasru Jambe was possibly Pāśupata
because there is an inscription that mentions Sang Kurusya and Sang Kosika. They were the
disciples of Lakulīśa, the founder of Pāśupata sect. Pasru Jambe inscriptions also mention the
names of gods and goddesses, which are Māheśwara, Wisnu, Mahadewa, and BatariPratiwi.
Other figures mentioned in the inscriptions are Hyaṅ Akasa, Dhudhukun, Bagawan Citragotra, and Bagawan Caci.
From the mentioning of the names of figures in the contents of Pasru Jambe inscriptions,
it can be concluded that there was a hierarchy of holy figures within the religious environment. Batharas had the highest position as the worshipped gods. In the second position were
goddesses or bataris as the companions (sakti) of the gods. In the third position were sang
Kosika and sang Kurusya, who were two of Lakulīśa’s disciples. In the fourth position was
dhudhukuna (dukun) or shamans/witchdoctors, who were believed to be able to communicate
with the gods and to summon spirits of the ancestors to come to certain ceremonies. In the
fifth position were Bagawans, who were holy people in a high level, usually kings who left
their worldly life to dedicate themselves to religious life and became wikus.
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At PasruJambe site was also found artefacts like cepuk (a box with a cover/lid), bokor
(a bronze bowl), genta (a bell), plates, pots, and trays. Those artefacts are thought to be
ceremonial implements. A manuscript titled Rajapatigun
․․dala explains that during ceremonies the religious community distributed holy water to the commoners’ in a flask. Another
manuscript Atharvaveda-pariśis
․․ta, mentions that one of the worshipping practices of the
Pasupata followers is, smearing their bodies with holy ashes (bhasma), which was intended
to ward off evil.
REFERENCES
Atmodjo, M.S. (1986) Mengungkap Masalah Pembacaan Prasasti (Revealing Inscriptions Deciphering
Problems). Berkala Arkeologi, VII, pp. 39–55.
Boechari (2012) Melacak Sejarah Kuno Indonesia Lewat Prasasti (Tracking the Ancient History of Indonesia through Inscriptions). In: N. Susanti, H. Djafar, E. Wurjantoro, & A. Griffiths, Eds. Jakarta,
Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia.
De Casparis, J.G. (1975) Indonesian Paleography: A History of Writing in Indonesia from The Beginning
to c. A. D. 1500. Leiden/KOLN, EJ. BRILL.
Media Hindu. Pancamahabhuta. July 2016. (http://www.mediahindu.com/ajaran/panca-mahabhutasebagai-anasir-dasar-penyusun-alam-semesta.html).
Munandar, A.A. (2003) Candi dan Kaum Agamawan: Tinjauan Terhadap Jenis Candi Masa Majapahit
(Abad ke-14–15) (Temples and Clergy: A Review of Temples in Majapahit era in the 14th and 15th
Centuries). In: A. A. Munandar, Aksamala. Bogor: AKADEMIA. pp. 111–141.
Santiko, H. (1993) Penelitian Awal Agama Hindu-Siwa pada Masa Majapahit, (Early Study of HinduShiva Religion during Majapahit era) paper presented in: Simposium Peringatan 700 tahun Majapahit,
tanggal 3-5 Juli 1993. Trawas Mojokerto, Jawa Timur.
Sharer, R. & Ashmore, W. (1979) Fundamentals of Archaeology. California, Benjamin/Cummings
Publishing Company, Inc.
Smith-Hefner, N.J. (1992) Pembaron: An East Javanese Rite of Priestly Rebirth. In Journal of SEA
Studies Vol. 23 No. 2. Department of History National University of Singapore. pp. 237–275.
Suhadi, M., et al. (1994/1995) Laporan Penelitian Epigrafi di Wilayah Provinsi Jawa Timur (Epigraphic
Research Report in East Java province). In Berita Penelitian Arkeologi No. 37. Proyek Penelitian
Arkeologi Jakarta. pp. 1–38.
Susanti, N. (1996) Prasasti sebagai Data Sejarah Kuna (Inscriptions as Historical Data), Laporan Penelitian Proyek DIP-OPF Fakultas Sastra Universitas Indonesia. Jakarta, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas
Indonesia.
Yogamag. Bhasma. May 2016. http://www.yogamag.net/archives/2006/lnov06/bhasma.shtml)tp://www.
ibiblio.org/gautam/hind0003.html.
Zoetmulder, P.J. (2006) Kamus Jawa Kuna Indonesia (Indonesian Old Javanese Dictionary). (Daru
Suprapta & Sumarti Suprayitna, trans.) (5th ed.) Jakarta, Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Particles pwa and ta in the Old Javanese language
D. Puspitorini
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: In this paper, we aim to explain the function of particles ta and pwa of the
Old Javanese language on a syntactic level. Although the function of the particle ta as sentence (syntactic) constituent markers has been explained by experts, the difference between ta
and pwa as the clause marker necessary in a discourse (a topical clause) has not been studied
in detail. The data source used here is the Old Javanese narrative prose titled Adiparwa, which
is estimated to be written in the 10th century. The explanation of the function of particles
ta and pwa facilitates in-depth understanding of the aspects of the Old Javanese language,
particularly for translating Old Javanese language texts to other languages.
1
PARTICLES IN THE OLD JAVANESE LANGUAGE
Old Javanese (OJ) has particles that occupy the second position in the order of sentence constituent, namely pwa and ta. This is illustrated in the following examples:
1 a. Lunghā ta sang Uttangka
‘Uttangka went’
b. Lunghā pwa sang Garuda
‘Garuda went’
[Ad 15:1]
[Ad 39:6]
2 a. Kita ta prasiddha mijil saking hatingku
‘You were really out of my heart
[Ad 84:1]
b. Kita pwa magawe tapa mangke [Ad 117:26]
‘You are performing the asceticism now’
The above examples show that both the particles ta and pwa that occupy the second position separate and modify two functionally different sentence constituents. Therefore, particle
ta only appears in one sentence and not in either the beginning or the end of the sentence.
In example (1), the particles ta and pwa follow the element of the sentence that is considered important, namely the predicate (1) and subject (2). The element of the sentence that is
considered important appears at the beginning of the sentence. Uhlenbeck used the formula
A-ta-B to indicate the position of ta in a sentence and its structure. Particle ta separates the
predicate that lies in position A of the subject, which is in position B (3):
3. Mĕnga / ta / sang hyang prĕtiwi [Ad 15:9]
A
B
‘Sang Hyang Pertiwi (the earth) opened’
This formula also applies for particle pwa. Particle pwa separates the predicate that lies in
position A of the subject that lies in position B (4):
4 Atuha / pwa / ya.
A
B
‘They grew up’
[Ad 126: 1]
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In general, the researchers of BJK agree that ta and pwa are similar particles that are
emphatic (see Zoetmulder, 1954; Teselkin, 1972; Uhlenbeck, 1970; Hunter, 1988; Harimurti
and Mardiwarsito, 1984). The explanation of the two particles as emphatic particles is based
on their communicative function. The constituent that is emphasised in a sentence occupies
the first position and is followed by particle ta or pwa.
Explanation concerning the function of the use of particle ta has been provided by
Uhlenbeck (1970, 1987), Hunter (1988), and Hoff (1998). The occurrence of the use of
pwa is approximately one-eighth of that of the particle ta (On the basis of the author’s
calculation, the particle ta appears as often as 2,299 times, whereas the particle pwa
appears only 266 times.) Because they are considered similar, previous researchers have
not studied particle pwa on its own or separately from ta. Consequently, there is less
understanding on its function and use. A reasonably clear distinction between particles
ta and pwa is illustrated with the probability of the presence of the two particles in one
sentence structure:
4. Katon pwa mahurip sang Kaca de nikang daitya, prihati ta ya amet upāya.
‘When it is seen by that daitya (that) Kaca is still alive, they are worried (and therefore) finds
(other) means.’
Zoetmulder also stated that ta and pwa are the same particles. However, Zoetmulder (1954)
recognised the relationship between pwa sentence and ta sentence that appear in sequence as
illustrated in example (4). The sentence containing pwa comes first, whereas the one containing ta comes second. The two sentences are closely related. Zoetmulder’s statement facilitated
a study on interclause relationship meaning in pwa sentences.
In this paper, the analysis of particle pwa is conducted with (i) a sentence structure that
contains pwa; (ii) the interclause semantic relation within the sentence that contains particle
pwa and (iii) a comparison between particle pwa and particle ta. The sentence containing pwa
(hereinafter referred to as a pwa sentence) will be observed through clauses because, in principle, a clause is the biggest grammatical unit that is covered by particle pwa.
A clause containing particle pwa may appear as either an independent clause or a dependent clause. The A-pwa-B formula is used to explain the pwa sentence structure. The following
sentences have a simple structure:
5. Wruh pwa bhagawān Wasistha.
[Ad 94:28]
6. Sinambutnira pwa ya kalih.
[Ad 40:22]
‘Bhagawan Wasistha knew.’
‘They were both greeted by him/her.’
7. Datěng pwa ya.
‘He came’
[B 26:2]
In the above three sentences, A is filled with a single word in the form of an actor-focus
verb and a goal-focus verb, whereas B is filled with a noun or a pronoun. A filler is a constituent that functions as a predicate, whereas B functions as the subject. This is in line with
the explanation provided by several experts who state that the Old Javanese language has a
main sentence structure in the P + S pattern that is usually followed by an emphatic particle,
among others particle pwa (see Harimurti, 1984; Teselkin, 1972). However, some of the data
that the author has observed also show a number of A-pwa-B sentence structures, where A is
the subject (8), complement (9), or conjunction (10). For example:
8. Kita pwa magawe tapa mangke. [Ad 117:26]
‘You are performing the asceticism now’
9. Mangke pwa kita turung mânak. [Ad 117:2]
‘Now you don’t yet have a son’
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10. Yāwat pwa kita kěna śāpa de mami, tāwat kita tan pangguha ngkawijayān. [B 68:2]
‘As long as you are under my curse, you will never win.’
1.1
The topic of the second discussion concerns the interclause relation in pwa sentences
Pwa sentences are often in the order of two clauses that have a meaningful relation. Structurally, a pwa clause is in the first order, followed by a clause that contains ta or a clause that
does not have a particle. Example (11) illustrates a cause–effect relationship that is stated in
the second order of a clause in the pwa sentence:
11. Ahirěng pwa warnany awaknya, inaranan ta sira dewī Krsnā. [Ad 153:6]
‘Her body was black in colour; hence, she was named the goddess of Krsna’
Research regarding particle pwa is complemented by highlighting pwa in relation to particles of a similar type, namely ta and ya and the comparison between particles pwa and ta and
their combined forms ta pwa, pwa ya, and pwa ya ta. In addition to being particles, ta and ya
serve as pronouns (12) and parts of compound particles (13):
12. Katon pwa ya de bhagawān Sthûlakeça. [Ad 21:2]
‘He was seen by bhagawan Sthulakeça.’
13. Kita pwa ya huwus krtayaça.
‘You are already famous.’
[Ad 203:14]
In sentence (13), ya is not a third-person pronoun because there is already a second-person
pronoun kita to act as the subject. If ya together with kita is considered as a subject filler,
then pwa must be considered as a coordinative conjunction. So far, there has been no proof
to show that pwa has ever been used as a coordinative conjunction. In addition, the context
of the story illustrates only kita who has a subject filler constituent. Therefore, pwa and ya
are subject filler constituents. Therefore, pwa ya in example (13) must be considered as a
compound form.
2
SENTENCE STRUCTURE
A clause is the largest grammatical unit that can be covered by particle pwa. In the A-pwa-B
pattern, both A and B are constituents that are functionally different:
14. Wruh pwa bhagawān Wasistha [Ad 94:26]
‘Bhagawān Wasistha knew’
15. Maturu pwa sira muwah
‘He slept again’
[Ad 100:11]
In a clause that begins with a predicate, the position of A is filled with predicate (P), and B
is filled with subject (S). The presence of pwa relates to the subject filler, which is a topical pronoun. Hunter (1988) stated that ta as well as pwa are topic marker particles. The topic meant
by Hunter (1988) is a pronoun that is grammatically compatible with the verbal predicate. BJK
verbal predicates have certain characters that determine the semantic relationship between
the verb and the argument. Such characters are associated with verbal affixes. Affixes such as
mang- and -um- mark subjects having a role as agents, whereas the -in- affix marks the subject
that has the role of the patient. Subject filler arguments in a form of a pronoun always appear
as a topical pronoun, regardless of the role. Topical pronouns appear as an independent word,
for example, sira (16), whereas non-topical pronouns appear enclitic, for example -ira (17):
16. Dinudut pwa sira
A
B
‘He was pulled’
[Ad 32:12]
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17. Inungangnira pwa ikang sumur [Ad 78:18]
‘The well was seen by him’
In example (16), B is filled with a subject that plays the role of a patient in a form of the
third pronoun sira. The pronoun is a topical pronoun as it is compatible with affix -in-, which
focuses on the patient. In example (17), the actor argument exists as a non-topical pronoun
(enclitic -ira) that is attached to verbs with affix -in- because it is not a subject.
Particle pwa must be present when the subject is filled with an anaphoric topical pronoun
and lies in position B (16). If it is filled with another category, then the presence of a particle
is not necessary. We compare the following two sentences:
18. Sumahur Bhagawan Bhisma.
‘Bhagawan Bhisma answered.’
19. Sumahur pwa sira.
‘He answered.’
In example (18), the S filler is a noun; therefore, pwa is not necessary to be present. On
the contrary, the S filler in sentence (65) is a topical pronoun; therefore, particle pwa must be
present. The necessary presence of particle pwa in a sentence with a topical pronoun filling
position B is further clarified with the following examples:
20. Sundul ring ākaça pwa ya.
A
C
B
‘It (that tree) is soaring to the sky.
[B 21: 14]
21. Tuměmpuh pwa ya i bhagawān Bhīsma. [B 78: 3]
A
B
C
‘It (that spear) lunged towards the direction of bhagawan Bhisma.’
In sentence (20), the predicate sundul ‘soar’ needs a complement in the form of a prepositional phrase ring ākaça ‘to the sky’. Similarly, tuměmpuh also needs a complement in the
form of a prepositional phrase i bhagawān Bhīsma (21). In the two sentences, the complements occupy different positions. In sentence (20), the complement (ring ākāca) immediately
follows the constituent that occupies position A, so the pattern is A-C-pwa-B. In sentence
(21), the complement (i bhagawān Bhîsma) occupies the position following B, so the pattern
is A-pwa-B-C. The similarity between the two sentences is that the topical pronoun lies in the
immediate position that follows pwa, namely in position B.
3
INTERCLAUSE SEMANTIC RELATIONSHIP
A pwa sentence often consists of two consecutive clauses without a conjunction (see also
Zoetmulder, 1954:86). The order of the two clauses creates a relationship of meanings. In
such case, the clause containing particle pwa always lies in the first position (hereinafter
referred to as a pwa clause), followed by another clause. The order is fixed:
22. Katon pwa dewī Kuntī matanghi de sang Hid.imbī, masö ta ya manĕmbah, mājarakĕn
hyunya ri sang Bhīma
[Ad 144:5]
‘It is seen by Hidimbi (that) goddess Kunthi woke up. She (Hidimbi) entered (then) bowed
(and) expressed her desire for Bhima.’
The combination of a pwa clause with other clauses shows a sequential time relationship
and the same time relationship. In the sequential relationship, two consecutive events occur
in a very short time difference or almost simultaneously (23).
23. I sĕd.ĕng ning yajña ginawe, hana ta Sārameya, śwāna milu manonton yajña nira.. Katon
pwa ya de sang Śrutasena, pinalu nira ta ya ikaug asu si Sārameya.
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‘When the sacrifice ceremony was taking place, a dog (namely) Sarameya took part in
watching the sacrifice ceremony. When it was seen by Sang Srutasena, the dog was hit by
him.’
The order of the pwa clause and its pair are iconic because those illustrate the sequence
of events as happening beyond language. In this case, the pwa clause that occupies the first
position refers to the first event, followed by the other clause, especially the ta clause, which
states the following event. In relation to the sequential time, the event that is marked by a
pwa clause is an action that occurs in a short time, and then the second event occurs almost
simultaneously, as stated by the following clause.
The second-time relationship is simultaneous time relationship (24). The pwa clause becomes
the time background and the occurrence of an event that is stated in the next clause. Therefore, in the simultaneous time relationship, the matter or event that is expressed by the second
clause is not a separate part of the event that is stated by the pwa clause:
24. Sĕdĕng śānta pwa sang Prabu, mākanak i sira inaranan ta sang Śantanu. [Ad 92:31]
‘When the King was in a state of calm, he got a son, therefore he named (his son) Śantanu
The explanation concerning the time relationship stated by the order of pwa clause and ta
clause is in accordance with the result of Uhlenbeck’s research on particle ta.
A combination of a -pwa clause with other clauses also states a cause–effect relationship.
The pwa clause that states the cause is in the first order, followed by the other clause that
states the effect. This order is fixed. Therefore, the relationship is iconic:
25. Ring dwīpa pwa sirān wijil, ya ta sang Dwaipāyana ngaran ira. [Ad 63:16]
‘He was born in the island; therefore, his name is the Dwaipāyana.’
26. Katon pwa sira ahayu, mahyun tikang raksasa si Duloma. [Ad 18:22]
‘She (the Puloma) looks beautiful, (therefore) Duloma, the giant desires her.’
4
COMPARISON OF PARTICLES PWA AND TA
There are three similarities between particles pwa and ta. First, both particles exist in a construction in the form of a clause. Therefore, the scope of the two particles is one clause. In
a clause, pwa and ta play the role of modifying two constituents that are functionally different. Thus, the A-pwa-B pattern applies similarly to particle ta. Both can be paradigmatically
related (see again examples 1(a) and 1(b).)
Second, both particles must be present when position B is a subject in the form of a topical
pronoun, namely sira or ya:
27. Katon pwa ya de bhagawan Sthulakeśa. [Ad 21:2]
‘He was seen by bhagawan Sthulakeśa.’
28. Katon ta ya manglayang ring ākāça
‘He is seen (currently) flying to the sky.’
[Ad 57:14]
In sentences that start with the verb hana, both pwa and ta are markers to introduce a new
figure:
29. Sira ta sumilih ratu ri Hāstinapura, ri lunghā sang Pāndawa nusup ing alas muwah, lawasnira siniwi nĕmang puluh tahun, ndan kadi mahārāja Pāndu, sira śakta ring gunāburu.
Asing wukir alas paranirāmet mrga. Hana pwa kidang tinutnira, anghel ta sira denya,
ahyun anginuma wwe sira. [Ad 49:9]
‘He (Parikesit) replaced the king in Hastina, when Pandawa went back into the jungle; he
had been a king for sixty years, like Pandu, he likes hunting. There was a deer he followed, he
(became) tired; therefore, he wanted to drink water.’
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30. Hana sira brāhman.a, bhagawān Dhomya ngaranira, patapanira ry Âyodhyāwis.aya. Hana ta
śis.yanira tigang siki, ngaranira sang Utamanyu, sang Ârunika, sang Weda. [Ad 8:20–22]
‘There was a brahmana called bhagawan Domya, whose hermitage is in the country of
Ayodhya. There are three of his students, namely sang Utamanyu, sang Arunika, sang Weda.
The similarity between particles pwa and ta lies in the presence of the two particles in a
simple sentence. First, the difference between the particles pwa and ta lies in their distribution
in a compound sentence that consists of two clauses. The particle pwa is present together
with particle ta. Both have an interclause relationship. In such case, the pwa clause that is
semantically related to the ta clause always occupies the first place in the order. Therefore,
the pattern is A-pwa-B, A-ta-B. In such sentence construction, particles pwa and ta are not
paradigmatically related. The order cannot be reversed to become A-ta-B, A-pwa-B. The
order of pwa and ta clauses mainly states the relationship of the meaning of time. This is in
accordance with the rule defined by Uhlenbeck (1970, 1987), that is, a construction with ta is
often preceded by a time clause. The particle ta is never present in such first clause.
Second, the particle pwa is not present in a prohibition sentence that begins with the word
haywa, and an interrogative sentence is preceded by an indeterminate pira, whereas ta may be
present in the two sentence types. For example:
31. Haywa ta kita sangsaya
‘Don’t you worry!’
[Ad 28:29]
32. Pira ta kwehning nāga mati?
[Ad 23:19]
‘How many dragons that died?’
In contrast, particle ta did not exist in an equative sentence (32) and in sentences beginning
with a matangnyan conjunction (33). However, although this is only supported by one datum,
pwa may exist in the two sentences, like in the following quotes:
33. Tanti pwa ngaraning pasamuka nikang lĕmbu
‘The name of the herd of cattle is Tanti.’
[B 41:19]
34. Matangnyan pwa mahāraja Krĕsna, tan ahyun nghulun i kawijayan tan kapengin ing rājyawibhawa. [B 41:19]
‘For the reason of king Kresna, I do not want victory, do not want the country and power.’
Uhlenbeck (1970, 1978) explained that the absence of particle ta in an equative sentence is
because of the pattern A-ta-B, where the constituent is A ≠ B.
Third, in the expanse of the A-ta-B pattern, particle ta is never present when C occupies
the position following A. For example:
35. Katon / de sang wiku ring Śataśrĕngga / sira kabeh
A
C
B
‘They were all seen by the priest in Śataśrĕngga.’
[Ad 121:19]
Example (34) is a passive clause. In a passive clause, the position of C is normally taken by
an actor that is preceded by particle de. Particle ta is never present if constituents A and B are
interrupted by C. Particle pwa may be present in such pattern (35). However, the constituent
that fills B, which is usually filled by a subject that plays a role of a purpose, is not present
in the sentence:
36. Pinahayu / pwa / de sang Basuki
‘was greeted by Basuki’
[Ad 28:28]
37. Katon / pwa / de sang Garuda, pinahalitnira tekāwaknira, sakawĕnanga masuk i sĕla ning
cakra.
[Ad 53:24]
‘When seen by the Garuda, his body was shrunk to be able to enter the wheel gap.’
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5
CONCLUSION
The observation of particle pwa has provided new insights concerning the particle. Most of
the previous researchers believed that pwa and ta are similar particles. However, we show
that the similarity between the two particles lies only in their function as a modifier of two
functionally different constituents. Hence, the scope is in one clause.
However, in the extra-sentence relationship, particle pwa has a function that is not similar
to that of particle ta, namely to mark the meaning of time relationship and cause–effect relationship. Grammatically, particle pwa has an interclause scope in one compound sentence.
The order of the pwa clause and the other clause that is related to meaning is fixed. The order
is iconic because it illustrates the sequence of events as occurring beyond language.
REFERENCES
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Bahasa Parwa II: Tatabahasa Jawa Kuna (Old Javanese Grammar). (1993) Yogyakarta, Gadjah Mada
University Press.
Becker, A.L, & Oka, I.G.N. (1974) Person in Kawi: An exploration of an elementary semantic dimension. Oceanic Linguistics, 13, 229–255.
Becker, A.L. (1982) Binding Wild Words: Cohesion in Old Javanese Prose. In Kridalaksana, H. &
Moeliono, A. M (Eds.), Pelangi Bahasa. Jakarta, Penerbit Bhratara Karya Aksara.
Creese, H. (2001) Old Javanese Studies. A Review of the Field. In van der Mollen and Helen Creese (ed.)
Old Javanese Texts and Culture. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land—en Volkenkunde, KITLV. Journal of
the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia & Oceania, 157, 1.
Dixon, R.M.W. (2010a) Basic Linguistic Theory: Grammatical Topics (Vol. 1). Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Dixon, R.M.W. (2010b) Basic Linguistic Theory: Grammatical Topics (Vol. 2). Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Givón, T. (1983) Topic Continuity and word-order pragmatics in Ute. In T. Givon (ed.), Topic Continuity in Discourse: a Quantitative Cross-Language study, Typological Studies in Language 3, 141–214.
Amsterdam & Philadelphia, John Benjamins.
Givón, T. (2001a) Syntax Volume I. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Givón, T. (2001b) Syntax Volume II. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Gonda J. (1936) Het Oud-Javaansche Bhīsmaparwa. BJ 7, Bandoeng.
Gonda, J. (1959) On Old-Javanese Sentence Structure. Oriens Extremus 6, 57–68.
Hellwig, C.M.S., & Robson, S.O. (1986) Clitic, suffix, and particle: some indispensable distinctions
in Old Javanese grammar. In Hellwig, C.M.S and S.O.Robson (eds.) A Man of Indonesian Letters,
Essays in Honour of Professor A. Teeuw. [Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-,
Land—en Volkenkunde 121] Dordrecht, Holland/Cinnaminton, USA, Foris Publications, 334–341.
Hoff, B.J. (1998) Communicative Salience in Old Javanese. In Janse, Mark, Verlinden, Ann (eds.), Productivity and Creativity: Studies in General and Descriptive Linguistics in Honor of E.M. Uhlenbeck, Trends
in Linguistics; Studies and Monographs, 116. (pp. 337–47). Berlin & New York, Mouton de Gruyter.
Hunter, M.T. Jr. (1988) Participant Marking in Old Javanese. In Balinese Language: Historical Background and Contemporary State. [Dissertation], 57–117. The University of Michigan.
Irrealis in Old Javanese/Irrealis dalam bahasa Jawa Kuno. (2005a) [Seminar] Seminar Internasional Jawa
Kuno. Universitas Indonesia.
Jacobson, R., & Kawamoto, S. (eds). (1970) Position and syntactic function of the particle ta in Old
Javanese. In R. Jacobson and S. Kawamoto (eds.) Studies in General and Oriental Linguistics presented to Shiro Hattori, 648–658. Tokyo, TEK Corporation for Language and Educational Research.
Juynboll, H.H. (1906) Ãdiparwa. Oud-Javaansch Prozageschrift. ‘s-Gravenhage, Martinus Nijhoff.
Juynboll, H.H. (1912) Wirāt.aparwa. Oud-Javaansch Prozageschrift. ‘s-Gravenhage, Martinus Nijhoff.
Kalangwan Sastra Jawa Kuno Selayang Pandang (A Brief Study on Old Javanese Literature). (1985)
Jakarta, Djambatan.
Kajian Morfologi Bahasa Jawa (Morphology of Javanese Language). Seri ILDEP 4. (1982) Jakarta,
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Kamus Jawa Kuna Indonesia (Jawa Kuna-Indonesian Dictionary). (2006) Jakarta, KITLV/Gramedia.
Lokesh, C (ed). (2000) The Old Javanese Word de. In Chandra, Lokesh (ed.), Society and Culture of
Southeast Asia. Continuities and Changes, (pp. 179–190). New Delhi.
Mardiwarsito L & Kridalaksana, H. (1984) Struktur Bahasa Jawa Kuno (Old Javanese Language Structure). Ende, Flores, Nusa Indah.
Muslim, M.U. (2003) Morphology, Transitivity, and Voice in Indonesian. Dissertation La Trobe
University.
Ogloblin, A.K. (1991) Old Javanese verb structure. In: Chandra, Lokesh (ed.), The Art and Culture of
South—East Asia, (pp. 245–257). New Delhi.
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ojed>).
Shibatani, Masayoshi (ed). (1988) Voice in Indonesian: A Discourse Study. In Masayoshi Shibatani (ed.)
Passives and Voice. Typological Studies in Language, TSL Volume 16. Amsterdam, John Benjamins.
Sutrisno, et al (eds). (1985) The concept of proportionality: Old Javanese morphology and the structure
of the old Javanese word kakawin. In Sutrisno, Sulastin, Darusuprapta., Sudaryanto (eds.). Bahasa,
Sastra, Budaya: Ratna Manikam Untaian Persembahan Kepada Prof. P.J. Zoetmulder, (pp 66–82).
Yogyakarta, Gadjah Mada University Press.
Sentence Pattern in the Old Javanese of the Parwa Literature. (1987) In Laycock, Donald C. Winter,
Werner (De.). A World of Language: Papers Presented to Professor S.A Wurm on Hie 65th Birthday
(pp. 695–708). Pacific Linguistics, C-100.
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Bahasa Indonesia. Masyarakat Linguistik Indonesia, Year 4 No.8.
Purwo, B.K. (ed.). (1989) Serpih-serpih Telaah Pasif Bahasa Indonesia (A Brief Study on Indonesian
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Teselkin, A.S. (1972) Old Javanese (Kawi). Itacha, New York: Modern Indonesia Project Southeast
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of Linguistics and Anthropology, Bibliographical Series 7.
Van Valin Jr., R.D., & LaPolla, R.J. (1999) Syntax: Structure, meaning and function. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Van Valin Jr., R.D. (2005) Exploring the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Cambridge, Cambridge University
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Verhaar, J.W.M. (1980a) Asas-Asas Linguistik Umum (General Linguistic Principles). Yogyakarta, Gadjah Mada University Press.
Verhaar, J.W.M. (1980b) Teori Linguistik dan Bahasa Indonesia (Linguistic Theories and Indonesian
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Zoetmulder, P.J. (1950/1983) De taal van het Adiparwa: een grammaticale studie van het Oudjavaans.
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Zoetmulder, P.J. & I.R. Poedjawijatna. (1992) Bahasa Parwa I: Tatabahasa Jawa Kuna (Parwa Language
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The role of Man
․․dalas in the old Javanese religious community
in Tantu Panggělaran
T.I. Setyani & T. Pudjiastuti
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This paper studies man
․d
․alas in the Tantu Panggělaran (TP). The general
objective of this paper is to contribute to the study of Ancient Javanese literature in the
old Javanese civilization context in the late 15th century. Moreover, the specific objective
is to understand the role of man
․d
․alas in the old Javanese religious community in TP. The
research is qualitative one, which uses the interpretation text theory. The research mainly
aims to illustrate how important the role of man
․d
․alas was to the old Javanese religious
communities in TP. The specific highlight is that man
․d
․alas are a cultural heritage left by the
Indonesian ancestors. We paid close attention to TP since it contains important information
in relation to man
․d
․alas, which can be used as a data source for further research. Temporarily,
the conclusion is that a man
․d
․ala in TP had very important roles in the old Javanese religious
communities as a learning centre and also as a representation of its learners’ achievement.
1
INTRODUCTION
As a religious institution, a mandala once held a very important position in Indonesia,
particularly during the Old Javanese era. Different studies have produced different
conceptions of mandala. Archaeologists proposed that a mandala was a place of education
for any individual who wanted to improve his religious knowledge, and each mandala was
led by a dewaguru or “head hermit” (Sedyawati, 1985, 2001, & 2009; Santiko, 1986; and
Munandar, 1990 & 2008), Jung (1987). Munandar (presented on 7th February 2014) argued
that mandalas can also be considered as an ekagrata—a tool that can facilitate meditation.
Another scientific study by Jung (1987) found that mandalas also represent the most exceptional magical circle of the human self. In his study of Hindu and Buddhist traditions and
cultures, Soeroso (1998/1999) pointed out that mandalas stand as a symbol of the universe,
while their cosmological configurations represent the plotting or hierarchical positions of the
deities. Similar description was also offered by Zoetmulder (1983:442) and Kartika (2007:30)
who proposed an idea that the cosmos itself is fashioned in the form of a cosmic circle or
mandala.
Another opinion from Ras (2014:214) maintains that an unprotected retreat can be called
a mandala. In a similar vein, Supomo (1977:66–67) and Hariani Santiko (1986: 112–114)
argued that a patapan ‘retreat’ and mandala are not essentially different because both terms
refer to a meditation retreat. The only difference is that a patapan was a temporary retreat,
which a retreatant could use for a certain period of time until his purpose was fulfilled, while
a mandala was a permanent retreat complex in which the hermits resided.
As gathered from various available studies, research results, and expert opinions, such conceptions of mandala serve as the basis for constructing our own definition of a mandala.
This paper uses the conception of mandala as depicted in the ancient literary text of Tantu
Panggělaran (hereinafter abbreviated as TP).
Ras (2014: 214) even argued that TP could be used to investigate the pattern of life in a
mandala, as well as into the minds of its supporting community. Ras’ opinion was based on
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TP’s content, which includes a brief cosmogony and therefore bears some resemblance to
the purāna. According to Ras (2014:189), cosmogony is related to the creation of the world
from a primaeval substance, whereas purāna is a collection of books consisting of eighteen
scriptures concerning “matters related to ancient times.” Based on Ras’ explanation, it can
be said that the concept of mandala, according to TP, has certain connections with the creation of the world out of some primaeval substances and with the religious landscape of the
Old Javanese. In short, mandalas are indirectly related to the religious communities at that
time.
This paper uses the 1924 redaction of TP by Theodoor Gautier Thomas Pigeaud, which
appeared in his dissertation titled De Tantu Panggělaran Een Oud-Javaanch Proza-Geschrift,
Uitgegeven, Vertaald en Toegelicht (Tantu Panggělaran, an Old Javanese Prose, Redaction,
Translation, and Annotation) as the primary data source for investigating mandalas. The full
TP text, written in the Old Javanese language, can be found from pages 57–128 of the dissertation. For the purposes of this paper, any reference to annotations or quotations pertaining
to TP is made directly to Pigeaud’s redaction (1924:57–128). Any TP quotation in this paper
is made by mentioning the abbreviation of the book’s title, the surname of the author, the
year of publication, and the page(s) from which the quotation is taken. For instance: (TP
Pigeaud, 1924:57–128). The full TP consists of seven narrative chapters that recount major
events as follows.
− Firstly, the island of Java was in the state of imbalance because there were no humans or
pillars (lingga) that could support it. Bhatārā Jagatpramanā sent Sang Hyang Brahma
and Wisnu to create humans after going through a meditation (yoga) with Bhatārī Parameçwari in the island of Yawadipa (Java). Men and women were created and married so
as to produce offspring. Then, these first human beings were introduced to the katatwapratista lesson (“the principles of the reality of life”), the ways to earn a livelihood, and
various tools for survival.
− Secondly, Sang Hyang Mahameru (Mount Mahameru the Great) was relocated to bring
balance to the island of Java.
− Thirdly, the cosmic balance between human beings and the island of Java was preserved by
installing mountains and sacred retreats.
− Fourthly, the foundational balance of the island of Java was perfected by establishing
mandalas, appointing a dewaguru or “head hermit” for each mandala, filling the sacred
retreats, and defining levels of religious accomplishment, attributes of holiness, and lessons in meditation.
− Fifthly, Sang Hyang Mahameru was firmly installed, and the island of Java can finally be
in the state of perpetual balance.
− Sixthly, the foundational balance of human beings in the island of Java was continuously
improved.
− Seventhly, the completion of the mandala constructions was carried out.
Not only after the narrative reaches chapter four is the word mandala mentioned in TP, the
word regularly reappears only in chapter five and chapter seven. In spite of this, the fact that
no fewer than forty mandala names are mentioned in TP demonstrates that mandalas were
really considered as an important concept. In general, this study is intended to examine,
understand, and explain the importance of mandalas in TP. This study of mandalas, particularly the ones that flourished towards the end of the fifteenth century, is performed as part of
our contribution to Old Javanese literature study.
In this paper, the concept of mandalas is analysed by applying the interpretative theory
and the objective approach. The interpretative theory was applied to understand the text. The
text interpretation focuses on the concept of mandala as depicted in TP. In this approach,
understanding is considered to be based on interpretation, and this is achieved by expressing
one’s perception of, opinion of, or perspective on any entity associated with the interpretation of mandala. Interpretation is an attempt to uncover the original intention of a text based
on what is written therein. In the objective approach, TP is seen as an autonomous literary
work that can be used to examine the importance of mandala.
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2
DISCUSSION
We have explained that the word mandala is first mentioned in chapter four of TP and
continues to appear in chapter five and chapter seven, while there are forty mandala names
mentioned throughout TP. Those forty names are Sarwwasiddā, Sukawela, Sukayajñā,
Mayana, Guruh, Hahāh, Gěrěsik, Çūnyasagiri, Kukub, Tigaryyan-parwwata, Tigapatra,
ing ing-Manuñjang, Labdawara,
Jala-parwwata, Nangka-parwwata, Panasagiri,
Man
․d
․ala in the island of Kambangan, Andawar, Talun, Wasana, Warag, Sanggara, Sagara,
Trisamaya, Purwa-dharma-kasturi, Kasturi-purwa-dharma Bapa, Sang Hyang Man
․d
․ala
Kasturi Selagraharong, Kasturi Gěnting/Ghra-rong, Dupaka, Wariguh, Bhulalak, Kasturi
Sri-manggala, Arggha-tilas, Jawa, Rebhalas, Kasturi Harěng, Jiwana, Sukayajñā-paksajiwana, Panatmaku, and Layu-watang or Panatan.
According to the year recorded in TP’s colophon, those forty mandalas were established
in 1557 Çaka (1635 A.D.). This year signifies that the mass establishment of mandalas took
place during the late Majapahit era. At that time, the Old Javanese civilization was still dominated by Çiwa-Hinduism and Buddhism.
Information about the generality of Çiwa-Hinduism and Buddhism in Java can be found
in TP page 109 as follows.
Kahucapa tāmpu Mahāpalyat, mantuk ta sira maring nūsa Jawa. Pinalihnirā ta
çariranira matmahan ta çaiwa sogata, mangaran sirāmpu Barang, sirāmpu Waluhbang. Sirāmpu Bārang çewapaksa, sirāmpu Waluh-bang sogatapaksa (TP Pigeaud,
1924: 109).
“It is said that Mpu Mahapalyat returned to the island of Java. He divided himself
into a follower of Çiwa religion and a follower of Buddhism, under the names
of Mpu Barang and Mpu Waluh-bang. Mpu Barang was a follower of the Çiwa
religion, Mpu Waluh-bang was a follower of Buddhism.”
This demonstrates that information about the establishment of mandalas found in TP
can serve as a representation of Old Javanese life during the late Majapahit era, a transition
period marking the end of Çiwa-Hinduism and Buddhism era and the beginning of Islamic
era.
All explanations in TP regarding the importance of mandalas are based on the role that
this institution played in the Old Javanese communities. The role of mandalas is strongly
related to the function and purpose of their formation or establishment. Chapter four mentions that mandalas were established to achieve two purposes: general and specific purposes.
Its general purpose is indicated in this following passage.
... bhatāra Parameçwara tumulusakna magawe tantu praçista ri Yawadipa. Makāryya
ta sira man
․․dala, makulambi magundala sira, tumitihi surangga patarana. Tinhěr
manganaknadewaguru sira, umisyani sira patapan kabeh... (TP Pigeaud, 1924: 81).
“Bhatāra Parameçwara perfected the foundational balance of the island of Java.
He established mandalas using makulambi and magundala [The word magundala is
mostly written as either makundala or kundala (Pigeaud, 1924)] and sat on a red
cloth. He then appointed dewaguru (‘head hermit’) and filled all the sacred retreats.”
From the quotation above, it can be deduced that mandalas were established by Bhatāra Parameçwara for the purpose of perfecting the foundational balance of Java Island. Moreover,
the establishment of mandalas was accompanied by the establishment of sacred retreats
within their vicinity. This might consist of various facilities, such as retreats for men, women,
and hermits, as well as housing complexes for abět (a special religious community) and village
religious officers (Pigeaud, 1924:81).
When building a mandala, Bhatāra Parameçwara displayed certain attributes of holiness:
makulambi ‘(special) attire’, magundala ‘(special) ring or earrings’, and a red cloth on which
he sat. The display of such attributes of holiness suggests that a certain ritual had to be
performed when building a mandala. This is very likely since attributes of holiness were
only donned when performing certain activities or actions, especially religious ceremonies or
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rituals, as well as the ordainment or inauguration of a dewaguru or “head hermit.” The newly
inaugurated dewaguru would receive a payung, kundala, and kulambi as his own attributes
of holiness.
The specific purpose of a mandala’s establishment is implied in this following passage.
Mojar ta Bhatāra Guru:
Kapan ta kang manusa limpada sakeng pañcagati sangsara? Dwaning makāryya mandala panglpasana pitarapāpa. Antukaning manusa mangaskara hayun wikuha; matapa
sumambaha dewata, dewata suměngkaha watěk hyang, watěk hyang suměngkāha
siddrāsi, siddārsi suměngkha watěk bhatāra. Lena sakerikā hana pwa wiku sasar tapabratanya; tmahanya tumitis ing rāt, mandadi ratu cakrawarthi wiçesa ring bhuwana,
wurungnya mandadi dewata... (TP Pigeaud, 1924:83)
Bhatāra Guru said:
“When will humans be able to release themselves from the pañcagati sangsara (‘five
levels of incarnation in the cycle of rebirth’)? The purpose is to make mandalas
(as) places of salvation for the ancestors. A human being can achieve this by being
purified first and becoming a wiku; by performing meditation until he becomes a
dewa; after attaining the status of dewa, he will then be raised to the rank of hyang;
the hyang will then be raised to the rank of siddrāsi; the siddrāsi will then enter the
group of bhatāra. However, a different fate awaits those wikus who perform their
meditation in a wrong way; their reincarnation will take place in this world, becoming mortal kings as the highest rulers on earth, who have failed to or do not become
dewas ...”
This passage indicates that a mandala was established to serve as a place for the ancestors to attain salvation, so that they would be able to release themselves from the pañcagati
sangsara. The way to achieve this salvation was to become a wiku (hermit). To become a
wiku, one had first to undergo a purification and to perform deep meditation to reach the
level of a dewa (deity) and then all the way up until one reached the level of a bhatāra.
In other words, a mandala served as a place where people purified themselves to become
wikus and perform meditation to reach the highest level of freedom from the pañcagati
sangsara.
Nevertheless, a mandala did not only function as a place where people purified themselves
and performed meditation. In TP, the word mandala is frequently used to refer to a much
larger sacred complex, which did not only contain retreats. A mandala also contained dewaguru’s residences, ashrams or boarding schools and/or training places, an education complex consisting of retreats for men and for women, a housing complex for abět (a special
religious community), and a housing complex for village religious officers. This arrangement
is indicated in this following passage.
Makāryya ta sira mandala, .... Tinhěr manganaknadewaguru sira, umisyani sira patapan kabeh, kadyana: katyagan, pangajaran, pangubwanan, pamanguywan, pangabtan,
gurudeça.... (TP Pigeaud, 1924: 81).
“He (Bhatāra Parameçwara) created a given mandala, ... Then he would appoint
the head hermit, fill all the retreats with, among others, katyagan (common retreats),
pangajaran (ashrams or training places), pangubwanan (retreats for women), pamanguywan (retreats for hermits), pangabtan (a housing complex for abět) and gurudeça
(village religious officers), ...”
This passage suggests that a patapan ‘retreat’ was located in a mandala, which implies that
patapan is a smaller part of a mandala. Furthermore, almost all patapans are mentioned
with their respective owners’ name attached to them, so it can be concluded that a patapan
is a private retreat allocated for specific individuals. For instance, there are Bhatāra Guru’s
patapan, Bhatāri Uma’s patapan, Bhatāra Içwara’s patapan, Sang Gana’s patapan, and Sang
Kumara’s patapan. In many cases, the owner’s name became even more popular than the
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patapan’s proper name. For instance, some of Bhatāra Guru’s patapans actually had their
own proper names: Ranubhawa (see TP Pigeaud, 124: 70), Gěgěr-katyagan (see TP Pigeaud,
1924: 71–72), Tanděs (see TP Pigeaud, 1924: 72), and Kayutaji.
TP mentions the names of the founders of the forty mandalas who also acted as their
respective dewagurus or “head hermits”, but these names are not indicated as their owners. Some mandalas experienced a succession of dewagurus, who were given the responsibility for passing on the teachings of their predecessors. For instance, during the timeframe
of TP, Sukayajñā mandala experienced five successions of leaders: Bhatāra Guru, the first
leader, ordained Bhatāra Wisnu to replace him, Bhatāra Wisnu was replaced by Bhatāra
Içwara, Bhatāra Içwara was replaced by Bhagawan Karmandeya, Bhagawan Karmandeya
was replaced by Bhagawan Agās․․t i, and Bhagawan Agās․․t i was then replaced by Bhagawan
Tr
․n
․awin
․d
․u, the last Sukayajñā dewaguru mentioned in TP.
This order of succession of dewagurus was in line with their respective duties. Bhatāra
Guru created Sukayajñā mandala and purified the people who wished to be wikus and
become his disciples there.
Akweh manūsa harěp wikuwa, yata sinangāskaran de bhatāra Guru. Tambehaning
mangaskarani bhagawan Wrhaspati, kaping kalih bhagawan Soma, kaping tiga bhagawan Budda, kaping pat bhagawān Çūkra, kaping lima bhagawan Raditya, kaping ěněm
bhagawan Saneçcara, kaping pitu bhagawan Hanggara. Samangkana kwehning çiksa
bhatra Guru duk ing Sukyajñā (TP Pigeaud, 1924:82).
“Many people wished to become wikus, so they were purified by Bhatāra Guru.
Firstly, he ordained Bhagawan Wrehaspati; secondly, Bhagawan Soma; thirdly,
Bhagawan Budda; fourthly, Bhagawan Sukra; fifthly, Bhagawan Raditya; sixthly,
Bhagawan Saneçcara, and seventhly, Bhagawan Hanggara. Such was the number of
Bhatāra Guru’s disciples when he was in Sukayajña.”
Next, Bhatāra Guru ordained Bhatāra Wisnu to replace him as the dewaguru in Sukayajña, while Bhatāra Guru proceeded to establish the Mayana mandala. Bhatāra Wisnu took
over Bhatāra Guru’s duty to purify people who wished to become wikus. He then ordained
Bhatāra Içwara to replace him as the next dewaguru.
Bhatāra Içwara took over Bhatāra Wisnu’s duty to purify people who wished to become
wikus. In addition to this responsibility, Bhatāra Içwara also bestowed the attributes of a
Çiwa priest and gave ordination names to mortal men who had been purified and appointed
as Çiwa priests. At the end of his tenure, Bhatāra Içwara ordained his successor, Bhagawan
Karmandeya, as the next dewaguru.
Bhagawan Karmandeya then ordained his successor, Bhagawan Agās․․t i, who immediately
performed his responsibility as a teacher of yoga and samadhi (meditation). In addition to
that, Bhagawan Agās․․t i was also responsible for protecting the summit of Mount Kelaça. He
blessed, purified, and gave names to Bhagawan Trenawindu and Bhagawan Anggira, a pair
of twins who had been abandoned by their mother Galuh Sri Wiratanu, a daughter of the
king of Daha. He was also entitled to teach sang hyang kawikun or ‘a lesson on becoming
a wiku’, which was a kind of secret knowledge. Bhagawan Agās․․t i then ordained Bhagawan
Trnawindu as the next dewaguru and returned to the heavens.
The duties of each dewaguru in Sukayajñā mandala can serve as the basis for identifying
the main function of a mandala as a place where people became wikus, acquired the knowledge of sang hyang kawikun, learned yoga and samadhi, and even became Çiwa priests to
teach other people to attain the level of a bhatāra.
The nature of sang hyang kawikun lesson was expounded in the ing ing-Manuñjang
mandala. It was a secret lesson on understanding the meaning of becoming a wiku without having to learn from a teacher or donning a hermit’s garb. Upon mastering sang hyang
kawikun, an individual was entitled to purify his own wife and children, to be exempted
from offering sacrifice, to be exempted from the obligation to worship and meditate, to be
exempted from religious lessons, not to be known by any other people, and to be addressed
as a bhatāra. In other words, in order to achieve the level of bhatāra, a wiku had to master
sang hyang kawikun.
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In Çūnyasagiri mandala, Bhatāra Guru introduced sang hyang Hastitijati, which was a
lesson on identifying one’s true guide or teacher. This lesson was taught to enable people
to purify themselves, to emulate the behaviours of the deities, to eradicate the stains of the
world, to offer sacrifices, and to create a harmonious, peaceful, and prosperous society.
Kukub mandala was a place where all men and women from all classes and backgrounds
could have the blessed opportunity to become hermits, as well as to improve and perfect their
meditation in order to attain an eternal life in heaven. One way to achieve this divine life was
by exterminating the evil within one’s own self. The attainment of perfect meditation was
exemplified by Resi Sidawangsitadewa who succeeded in mastering sang hyang kawikun and
acquired the ability to pass through sang hyang sima brata by means of meditation. Such
perfection is described in this following passage.
... sirā mangunkna tapa, malāghna monaçri, tan kalangkahan dening rahina wngi, tan
panuwukning pangan turu. Kalinganya: tan hana hinistinira, tan bhuwana, tan swargga,
tan bhatāra, tan kamoksan, tan kalěpasěn, tan suka, tan duhka; tan hana hinalěmnira,
tan hana keliknira; yata sinangguh tapa ngaranya... (TP Pigeaud, 1924: 92).
“... he performed meditation, struggled quietly, never faltered both day and night,
had neither rest nor sleep. Meaning: he wanted nothing, not the world, nor the
heavens, nor bhatāra, nor kamoksan (perfection), nor freedom, nor happiness, nor
sadness; he praised nothing, was bored with nothing; that is what is called the ultimate meditation skills...”
3
CONCLUSION
Our discussion above reveals that mandalas were established for the general purpose of perfecting the foundational balance in Java Island. However, they also served a more specific
function as places where our ancestors could attain salvation, so that they could free themselves from the pañcagati sangsara (five levels of incarnation in the cycle of rebirth).
In general, all activities in a mandala can be considered as religious in nature. Each mandala was built to represent its important function and role within its religious community and
especially in the development of the Old Javanese religions as mentioned in TP.
According to TP, the principal role of mandalas in Old Javanese religious communities was
to serve as places where our ancestors could achieve salvation by freeing themselves from the
pañcagati sangsara. Such an achievement could be made by completing all levels of education at a mandala under the tutelage of a dewaguru. This education was acquired in several
levels, which started when an individual became a wiku, performed a profound meditation,
mastered the sang hyang kawikun lesson, and eventually reached the level of a bhatāra. When
all people were able to make such an achievement, the foundational balance of Java Island
was assumed to take place.
According to TP’s descriptions, a mandala evidently played important roles in the Old
Javanese religious communities as both a centre for religious education and a representation
of its disciples’ religious achievements. Therefore, it can be concluded that the mandalas
served as the centres of balance in the life of the Old Javanese communities.
REFERENCES
(2008) Ibukota Majapahit, Masa Jaya dan Pencapaian (The Capital of Majapahit, Its Golden Age and
Achievement). Depok, Komunitas Bambu.
(2009) Śaiwa dan Buddha di Masa Jawa Kuna. (Śaiwa and Buddha in Ancient Java). Denpasar, Penerbit
Widya Dharma.
Jung, C.G. (1987) Menjadi Diri Sendiri, Pendekatan Psikologi Analitis. (To be Oneself, an Analytical
Psychology Approach) A. Cremers (trans.). Jakarta, Gramedia.
Kalangwan, (1983) Sastra Jawa Kuno Selayang Pandang. (A Brief Look at the Ancient Javanese
Literature). Jakarta, Penerbit Djambatan.
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Kamus Jawa Kuna Indonesia. (Dictionary of Ancient Javanese) (2006) Jakarta, PT Gramedia Pustaka
Utama.
Kartika, D.S. (2007) Budaya Nusantara: Kajian Konsep Mandala dan Konsep Triloka/Buana terhadap
Pohon Hayat pada Batik Klasik. (The Culture of Nusantara: A Study on the Concept of Mandala
and the Concept of Triloka/Buana on the Tree Life in Classical Batik). Bandung, Rekayasa Sains.
Munandar, A.A. (1990) Kegiatan Keagamaan di Pawitra: Gunung Suci di Jawa Timur Abad 14−15.
[Thesis]. (Religious Activities in Pawitra: Holy Mountain in East Java 14–15th Century). Depok,
Fakultas Pascasarjana. (Post Graduate Faculty)
Munandar. Consultant. (Personal communication, 7th February 2014).
Pigeaud, T.G.T. (1924) De Tantu Panggělaran Een Oud-Javaanch Proza-Geschrift, Uitgegeven, Vertaald
en Toegelicht. [Dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden]. ‘s—Gravenhage, Nederlandsche Boek en
Steendrukkerif voorheen H L Smits.
Ras, J.J. (2014) Masyarakat dan Kesusastraan di Jawa. (Community and Literature in Java). Ikram A.
(trans). Jakarta, Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia.
Santiko, H. (1986) Mandala (Kedewaguruan) pada jaman Majapahit. {Mandala (Kedewaguruan) in
Majapahit Times}. [Meeting] Pertemuan Ilmiah Arkeologi ke IV (The 4th Archeological Science Meeting). 3th–9th March 1986, in IIb part; Aspek Sosial Budaya (Socio-Cultural Aspect), 149–168.
Sedyawati, E. (1985) Pengarcaan Gan
․eśa Masa Kadiri dan Singhasāri: Sebuah Tinjauan Sejarah Kesenian.
(The Statue of Gan
․eśa in Kadiri and Singhasāri Times: A Review on Art History). [Dissertation].
Jakarta, Universitas Indonesia.
Soeroso. (1998/1999) Jantra dan Mandala dalam arsitektur candi. (Jantra and Mandala in temple
architecture) Berkala Arkeologi Sangkhakala No. III/1998–1999. (Sangkhakala Archeology Periodical
No. III/ 1998–1999). Medan, Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional—Balai Arkeologi Medan, 41–57.
Supomo, S. (1977) Arjunawijaya. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff and KITLV.
Tantu Panggělaran dan Manikmaya: Bandingan Kosmogoni. (Tantu Panggělaran and Manikmaya:
A Cosmogony Comparison) (2001) [Seminar] Seminar Jawa Kuno (Seminar on Ancient Java), Faculty
of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia.
Zoetmulder, P.J. & Robson, S.O. (1982) Old Javanese-English Dictionary. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Signatures in Hikayat Sultan Taburat’s manuscripts: The existence
of scribes in the 19th century
R.A. Suharjo & T. Pudjiastuti
Department of Library and Information Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok,
Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Most of the colophones of Malay manuscripts do not reveal the identities
of scribes. However, in the late 19th century, most of the literature works transcribed in
Pecenongan reveal their identities. Furthermore, some of them even have their signatures.
One of the manuscripts copied in Pecenongan is Hikayat Sultan Taburat (HST). In total,
there are nine HST manuscripts, seven of which have the signatures of the scribes. The
objective of this study is to explain the significance of the signatures in HST manuscripts
in relation to their placement and shape. In addition, we examine HST texts, scriptorium in
Pecenongan, and the relationship between Muhammad Bakir and Tjit. According to previous studies, the signatures found in HST manuscripts serve as a sign of not only ownership
but also the text reading and an aesthetic aspect to the writing.
1
INTRODUCTION
In the writing tradition of Malay manuscripts, display of the self-existence of scribes was
initially prohibited. Therefore, detailed data on the identity of the scribes could not be found
in most colophones of Malay manuscripts. Nevertheless, some scribes intentionally revealed
their identities clearly in a few texts by not only including their full names but also engraving
their signatures.
The Malay manuscripts containing the signatures of the scribes are those coded Ml.181, Ml.
179, Ml. 384, and Ml. 363. In the manuscript coded Ml. 181, entitled Hikayat Jaran Kinanti
Asmaradana, the signature reads “Saidan”; in Ml. 24, Hikayat Bunga Rampai, the signature
reads “R. Redjodiepoero”; in Ml. 384, Hikayat Si Miskin, the signature reads “Jusuf ”; and
in the manuscript coded Ml.363, entitled Hikayat Pendita Raghib, there are two signatures,
whose meanings have yet to been found. Similarly, the signature present in the manuscript
coded Ml.179, entitled Hikayat Jaran Sari Jaran Purnama, has yet to be deciphered.
Signatures can also be found in some of the Hikayat Sultan Taburat (hereinafter referred
to as HST) manuscripts, in which, a number of signatures belonging to Tjit (Syafirin bin
Usman bin Fadhli) and Muhammad Bakir bin Syafian bin Usman bin Fadhli have been
discovered. On the basis of the content of the texts, these two persons were the scribes of
the HST manuscripts. Furthermore, the commonly found signature is of Muhammad Bakir,
whereas Tjit’s signature was only found in one manuscript.
In addition to the signatures found in the HST manuscripts, Chambert-Loir and Kramadibrata (2013) asserted that the signatures of Muhammad Bakir can be found in other
manuscripts present in a scriptorium owned by the Fadhli family in Pecenongan in the late
19th century. These manuscripts include Hikayat Merpati Mas and Merpati Perak (1887),
Hikayat Nakhoda Asyik (1890), Hikayat Raja Syah Mandewa (1893), Hikayat Syahrul Indra
(1893), Syair Siti Zawiyah (1893), Hikayat Indra Bangsawan (1894), Hikayat Begerma Cendra (1888), Seribu Dongeng, Hikayat Asal Mulanya Wayang (1890), Hikayat Gelaran Pandu
Turunan Pandawa (1890), Hikayat Maharaja Garbak Jagat (1892), Lakon Jaka Sukara (1894),
Hikayat Sri Rama (1314 H), Hikayat Wayang Arjuna (1897), and Hikayat Purasara.
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The objective of this study is to discuss the significance of the signatures of Muhammad
Bakir and Syafirin (Guru Tjit) found in the HST manuscripts.
This study is a codicological approach toward the physical manuscripts, which was conducted by describing and analyzing the placement and shape of the signatures as well as
exploring the relationship between Muhammad Bakir and Tjit.
2
SIGNATURES IN THE HST MANUSCRIPTS
In this section, we will explain the various aspects of the signatures found in the HST manuscripts. The layout, form, and function of the signatures will be examined in relation to the
HST texts and the scriptorium owned by the Fadhli family. In addition, the relationship
between Tjit and Muhammad Bakir will be revealed. The purpose of this section is to trace
the origin of a variant of Muhammad Bakir’s signatures that include two names, “Tjit” and
“Muhammad Bakir”, written as one.
2.1
The scriptorium owned by the Fadhli family in Pecenongan
One of the manuscript scribal and rental places in Batavia is Langgar Tinggi, Pecenongan,
which is owned by the Fadhli family, in which supposedly Fadhli came to Batavia and established Langgar Tinggi in Pecenongan (Saidi, 2000, p.133).
Although Fadhli sounds like an Arabic name, Chambert-Loir (2009, p. 9) stated that
al-Fadhli is actually not a name of an Arab family. By 2011, in Arrahman Mosque
(formerly known as Langgar Tinggi Mosque), there were two heirs of the family who
became the head and the guardian of the mosque, namely Mr. Arnadi Mukti (deceased)
and Anton Haris. Furthermore, Arnadi Mukti, who was the heir from Syafirin’s family, served as the head of Takmir of Arrahman Mosque. Meanwhile, Anton Haris came
from Muhammad Bakir’s family. At that time, they had a letter containing the family
tree of the Fadhli family with information written on a piece of paper. On the basis of
the family tree obtained from his heirs, Fadhli had another name, that is, Tegal Arum.
He originated from Mataram, Yogyakarta. However, the content of the letter needs to
be explored.
There were four of descendants of Fadhli who worked as scribes, namely Syafirin bin
Usman bin Fadhli, Ahmed Mujarrab bin Syafirin bin Usman bin Fadhli, Muhammad Bakir
bin Syafian bin Usman bin Fadhli, and Ahmad Beramka bin Syafirin bin Usman bin Fadhli.
Syafirin (Master Tjit) and Muhammad Bakir, in addition to being scribes, were Quran tutors,
and both of them once served as the Takmir chairman of Langgar Tinggi Mosque, in which
the staff has been taught by the family for generations.
In addition to serving as a place for worship and learning the Qur’an, according to
the information obtained from the heirs, Langgar Tinggi Mosque used to serve as a
center for manuscript rental service. However, the mosque no longer serves that purpose.
The classic Malay manuscripts that were once stored in the mosque no longer exist. At
present, the majority of the manuscripts are stored in the National Library in Jakarta.
Some other texts, which mainly contain religious teachings, are kept by the families of
the heirs.
Of the four aforementioned scribes, Muhammad Bakir was the most productive scribe
between 1858 and 1908 (Mulyadi, 1994, p. 58). Meanwhile, Muhadjir (2002, p. 8) stated that
Muhammad Bakir actively worked as a scribe from 1884 to 1906.
Chambert-Loir (2009, p. 246) stated that the manuscripts from the scriptorium owned by
the Fadhli family in Pecenongan were written during the transitional period of two cultural
realms. Furthermore, Chambert-Loir (2009, p. 246) stated that the family, as providing manuscript rental service, and their customers were considered part of the generation that still
enjoys the fantastic adventures of the characters as well as questions and doubts the values
expressed through that particular literature.
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2.2
HST texts and manuscripts
From the investigation of several Malay manuscripts and local text catalogs, the HST texts can
be found in nine manuscripts written using Jawi characters and Malay language. These manuscripts are currently stored in the Indonesian National Library, and they are coded Ml.183 A,
Ml. 183 B, Ml. 183 C, Ml. 183 D, Ml. 183 E, Ml. 257 A, Ml. 257 B, Ml. 258, and Ml.259.
None of the HST manuscripts contain the complete text from the beginning to the end
of the story of the Hikayat. Of the nine HST manuscripts, eight contain concatenated texts
that form a complete story. They are ordered as follows: Ml. 257 A, Ml. 259, Ml. 183 D, Ml.
258, Ml. 257 B, Ml. 183 B, Ml. 183 C, and Ml.183 E. The HST manuscript coded Ml. 183 A
contains texts similar to the manuscripts coded Ml. 257 A and Ml. 259.
The oldest HST manuscript is Ml.183 D. On the basis of the colophon, the scribing process
of this manuscript was completed in January 1885. The second oldest HST manuscript is Ml.
183 B, whose scribing process was completed in November 1885. Meanwhile, the third older
manuscript is Ml. 183 C, whose scribing process was completed in December 1885. Manuscript coded Ml. 183 E was completely copied in January 1886, whereas the manuscript coded
Ml. 183 A did not have clear information on the time of the copy process, and only writings
read “1887”. There is no much information on the date in this manuscript. However, on the
basis of the writings, it can be predicted that this manuscript was copied around that date. The
sixth manuscript of HST is coded Ml. 258, whose scribing process was completed in April
1893. The next manuscript is coded Ml. 257 B, whose scribing was completed in October 1893.
The eighth manuscript is coded Ml. 257 A, which was completely copied in January 1894. The
last manuscript is coded Ml. 259, which was completely copied in May 1894.
2.3
Placement, shape, and function of the signatures in the HST manuscripts
A signature is a characteristic of the manuscripts of Muhammad Bakir and Syafirin. In the
HST texts, there are several signatures of both scribes. Most of the signatures in the HST texts
are engraved with the words “Muhammad Bakir”, “Bakir Tjit”, and “Tjit Muhammad Bakir”.
The oldest signature can be found in the manuscript coded Ml. 183 D. On the basis of the
information in the colophon, the scribing of this manuscript was completed on 14 January
1884. The results of the examination of the use of paper and characters in the manuscript show
that it was probably written by two scribes, namely Muhammad Bakir and Syafirin. However,
in the text, there is only one signature that belongs to Syafirin. In the manuscript, Tjit (Syafirin)
engraved his name resembling an ornament. Some of them look more similar to a signature.
Most of the HST manuscripts have signature of either Syafirin or Muhammad Bakir.
The signature of Muhammad Bakir is engraved in the HST manuscripts coded Ml.183 B,
Ml. 183 C, Ml. 183 E, Ml. 258, Ml. 257 A, and Ml. 259. Meanwhile, the signature of Syafirin is engraved only in the HST manuscript coded Ml. 183 D. In essence, the signatures are
engraved on both the body and outside of the body of the text (the colophon and poetry).
Furthermore, there are signatures found in the middle of the binding, which is between two
pages of the manuscripts, and there are also signatures located on the right- and left-hand
sides of the lines of the text (flanking the lines of the text). The beginning of the text also
bears signatures. Besides, there are signatures that lie between two parts of the text and
located at the end of the text.
Almost all of the HST manuscripts contain signatures. There are only two manuscripts without any signature, namely manuscripts coded Ml. 257 B and Ml. 183 A. The manuscript coded
Ml. 257 A has 25 signatures, most of which are engraved with “Muhammad Bakir”. The manuscript coded Ml. 259 has 23 signatures, most of which are engraved with “Bakir Tjit”.
In the manuscript coded Ml. 183 D, there are 22 signatures, most of which are engraved with
“Tjit”. Meanwhile, none of the signatures in that text bear the name of Muhammad Bakir.
Moreover, the manuscript coded ML. 183 B has 12 signatures, most of which are engraved
with “Muhammad Bakir”. Furthermore, each of the manuscripts coded Ml. 183 C and Ml.
183 E contain six signatures, most of which are engraved with “Tjit Muhammad Bakir”.
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The signatures in the HST manuscripts are interpreted in many ways, namely as a sign of
ownership, as a marker for the identity of the manuscript owner, as an ornament, as a punctuation mark, and as a cover for parts in the manuscript that seem hiatus.
The signatures used as ornaments, for example, are present in the manuscript coded
Ml.183 D on page 320. At the beginning of the text, the signatures of Muhammad Bakir are
engraved to form the word “Syahdan”. Some of the signatures in the HST manuscripts that
function as a full stop (a punctuation mark) can be found in the manuscripts coded Ml. 259
and Ml. 257 A. The signatures in the middle of the text (on the binding) can serve as a catchword. Those signatures can be found in the HST manuscripts coded Ml.258 and Ml.259. The
signatures in the HST manuscripts can also serve as a cover for text passages that are hiatus.
Some parts of the body of the text with hiatus are covered with the signatures so as to make
the right- and left-hand sides of the page look even. These signatures are contained in the
HST manuscript coded Ml. 183 D.
The HST manuscript with the oldest signature is the one coded Ml. 183 D. This manuscript
was written on the 15th Mulud 1301, containing 22 signatures only belonging to Syafirin.
On the basis of the analysis performed, it can be concluded that Syafirin is the first scribe who
started the tradition of engraving a signature in the HST manuscripts. The subsequent manuscripts scribed by Muhammad Bakir were engraved with signatures that read “Muhammad
Bakir”, “Tjit Muhammad Bakir”, or “Bakir Tjit”.
Some of the signatures belonging to Muhammad Bakir that appeared in the HST manuscripts have inconsistent forms. However, the signatures that are commonly used by Muhammad
Bakir, including the etcher on his tombstone, are engraved with “Bakir Tjit”.
2.4
“Tjit” and “Bakir”
There are several signatures engraved in the HST manuscripts using a combination of two
names, namely “Tjit” and “Muhammad Bakir”. Several forms of Muhammad Bakir’s signatures include the word “Tjit”. Tjit (Master Tjit) is Syafirin, who is the uncle of Muhammad
Bakir. These signatures imply the close relationship between Muhammad Bakir and Syafirin.
Syafirin bin Usman bin Fadhli had another name, Guru Tjit (Master Tjit). The title “Guru”
is related to his profession as “a teacher in Islamic studies” and the takmir chairman of Langgar Tinggi Mosque, Pecenongan. Langgar Tinggi Mosque was established by the Fadhli family.
The family managed the mosque for generations and held positions from the Takmir chairman to the caretaker of the mosque (marbot). The edict issued by the mosque stated that the first
Takmir chairman was Syafian bin Usman bin Fadhli, who was the father of Muhammad Bakir,
and the second Takmir chairman was Syafirin bin Usman bin Fadhli, the younger brother of
Syafian. Syafirin was the uncle of Muhammad Bakir, who became the third Takmir chairman.
The Takmir chairman of Langgar Tinggi Mosque would only be replaced if the official
in question was deceased or unavailable. It can be assumed that Syafian bin Usman bin
Fadhli had passed away before the death of Syafirin bin Usman bin Fadhli. During this time,
Muhammad Bakir is believed to be still young and therefore he was then raised by Syafirin.
This can be inferred from the conclusion of the text in the manuscript coded Ml.259 scribed
by Muhammad Bakir as follows:
“...dibilang yang saya tiada ada bekerja. Dari kecil menumpang makan dan pakai
dari saya punya mamak. Maka itu saya minta kasihannya yang sewa ini buat sehari
semalam
sepuluh senadanya”
The manuscript coded Ml.183 A contains a concluding poem as follows:
“Hal apa yang baca sudi terima. Sebab saya baru belajar. Lagi tintanya banyak malar.
Ada yang halus ada yang kasar. Lagi yang menulis ada kurang sabar. Lagi umur saya
belum berapa. Sementar ingat sementar lupa. Dengan tulisan ayah anda tiada serupa.
Tulisannya hina terlalu papa.”
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There are two possibilities that can be inferred with regard to the poem. First, Muhammad Bakir learned the process of scribing from his father Syafian. Second, Muhammad
Bakir learned the process from his uncle Syafirin. The word “father” in the poem may refer
to Syafirin because Muhammad Bakir considered Syafirin as his father.
3
CONCLUSION
The signature of Tjit is only found in the HST manuscript coded Ml. 183 D. Except in the
two manuscripts coded Ml. 183 A and Ml. 257 B, the signature of Muhammad Bakir can be
found in the HST manuscripts copied from November 1885 to October 1893. The number
of signatures found belonging to Muhammad Bakir increased in 1894, which is much higher
than that of the previous years. In the HST manuscripts, signatures serve not only as a sign
of ownership, but also as a sign of text reading and an aesthetic support to the writing.
Presumably, the manuscript copier in Pecenongan had been damaged and hence it was
thought that self-existence was an important issue. This is why Muhammad Bakir and Tjit
placed their signatures in the copied manuscripts in addition to having their names.
This work contributes to the study of codicology of Malay manuscripts, particularly the
meanings and functions of signatures of the scribes in the Malay Pecenongan manuscripts
in the late 19th century.
REFERENCES
Bakir, M. (1885) Hikayat Sultan Taburat (The Tale of Sultan Taburat), Ml. 183 B. Manuscript collection
in the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia (PNRI).
Bakir, M. (1885) Hikayat Sultan Taburat (The Tale of Sultan Taburat), Ml.183 C. Manuscript collection
in the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia (PNRI).
Bakir, M. (1886) Hikayat Sultan Taburat (The Tale of Sultan Taburat), Ml. 183 E. Manuscript collection
in the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia (PNRI).
Bakir, M. (1893) Hikayat Sultan Taburat (The Tale of Sultan Taburat), Ml. 257 B. Manuscript collection
in the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia (PNRI).
Bakir, M. (1894) Hikayat Sultan Taburat (The Tale of Sultan Taburat), Ml. 257 A. Manuscript collection
in the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia (PNRI).
Bakir, M. (1894) Hikayat Sultan Taburat (The Tale of Sultan Taburat), Ml. 259. Manuscript collection
in the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia (PNRI).
Chambert-Loir, H. & Kramadibrata, D. (2013) Katalog Naskah Pecenongan Koleksi Perpustakaan
Nasional (Pecenongan Manuscript Collection in the National Library). Jakarta, Perpustakaan
Nasional Republik Indonesia.
Chambert-Loir, H. (2009) Sapirin bin Usman, Hikayat Nakhoda Asik [dan] Muhammad Bakir, Hikayat
Merpati Mas dan Merpati Perak (Sapirin bin Usman, Hikayat Nakhoda Asik [and] Muhammad
Bakir, The Tale of Merpati Mas and Merpati Perak). Jakarta, Masup Jakarta.
Dain, A. (1975) Les Manuscrits. Paris, I’association Guillaume Bude.
Hikayat Bunga Rampai, Ml.24. Manuscript collection in the National Library of the Republic of
Indonesia (PNRI).
Hikayat Jaran Kinanti Asmaradana, Ml. 181. Manuscript collection in the National Library of the
Republic of Indonesia (PNRI).
Hikayat Jaran Sari Jaran Purnama, Ml.179. Manuscript collection in the National Library of the
Republic of Indonesia (PNRI).
Hikayat Pendita Raghib, Ml.363. Manuscript collection in the National Library of the Republic of
Indonesia (PNRI).
Hikayat Si Miskin, Ml.384. Manuscript collection in the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia
(PNRI).
Hikayat Sultan Taburat, Ml. 258. Manuscript collection in the National Library of the Republic of
Indonesia (PNRI).
Hikayat Sultan Taburat, Ml.183 A. Manuscript collection in the National Library of the Republic of
Indonesia (PNRI).
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Muhadjir. (2002) Bunga Rampai Sastra Betawi (Betawi Potpourri Literature). Jakarta: Dinas Kebudayaan dan Permuseuman Propinsi DKI Jakarta.
Mulyadi, S.W.R. (1994) Kodikologi Melayu di Indonesia (Malay Codicology in Indonesia). Jakarta,
Lembaran Sastra Universitas Indonesia Fakultas Sastra.
Saidi, R. (2000) Warisan Budaya Betawi (Betawi Cultural Heritage). Jakarta, Lembaga Studi Informasi
Pembangunan.
Syafirin. (1885) Hikayat Sultan Taburat (The Tale of Sultan Taburat), Ml. 183 D. Manuscript collection
in the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia (PNRI).
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Management of cultural heritage sites: A case study
of Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung
F. Amril
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung is a representation of the township and
the matrilineal culture of Minangkabau society. Located in Sijunjung, which lies between
two rivers, the Batang Sukam and the Batang Kulampi, in an area covered by forests, the
village was designated as a Cultural Heritage Site by a decree of the Sijunjung Head District
number 188.45/243/KPTS-BPT-2014. Therefore, anything related to the management of the
settlement should conform to the cultural heritage preservation principles. In general, the
principles can be effectively applied to a protected site, even though it was uninhabited or
already in ruin when discovered. However, Nagari Sijunjung is an inhabited locale where
people have been living there for generations. The issue focuses on how to manage a living
cultural heritage site while at the same time allowing rooms for the community to grow and
expand. This paper endeavours to provide a management model for a cultural heritage site
that functions as a living monument.
1
1.1
INTRODUCTION
Background
Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung is one of the indigenous settlements in West Sumatra.
Located between two rivers, the Batang Sukam and the Batang Kulampi, this village has
fertile soil good for farming. The forest surrounding the village also adds to the beauty of the
Nagari Sijunjung landscape. In 2014 this village was designated as a Cultural Heritage Site by
a decree of the Sijunjung Head District number 188.45/243/KPTS-BPT-2014. The designation of Nagari Sijunjung as a Cultural Heritage Site means that this site is now bound by the
cultural heritage preservation principles.
According to Law of the Republic of Indonesia No. 11 of 2010 regarding Cultural Heritage, a cultural heritage site is defined as “a unit of geographic space that has two or more
cultural heritage sites, which are adjacent and/or exhibit distinctive spatial characteristics”.
If we take the wording of the law above, then the Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung can
be categorized as a Cultural Heritage Site for its distinctive spatial characteristics. Nagari
Sijunjung does not share the typical spatial characteristics, which are common with other
villages in Minangkabau. In this village, the traditional Minangkabau large houses or rumah
gadang are built to line up following the contour of the road as opposed to other villages that
generally allow a more loose composition with regard to the layout of their houses.
Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung, however, still retains common characteristics
of traditional villages in Minangkabau, by having the following, basosok bajurami (village
borders), balabuah batapian (a main road and a common bathing place), barumah batanggo
(living quarters), basawah baladang (rice fields), babalai bamusajik (a meeting point and a
place of worship), and bapandam bapakuburan (local cemetery). Besides those seven elements
which are the manifestation of the culture’s tangible characteristics, it also has two jorongs
(a smaller unit of a nagari), namely Jorong Koto Padang Ranah and Jorong Tanah Bato,
whose inhabitants are still practicing a series of traditions, such as batoboh, bakaul, and
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membantai adaik, among others. In addition, there are rules that people of Koto Padang
Ranah and Tanah Bato should follow, including the one that prohibit them from building a
new house parallel to the rumah gadang (Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy of West
Sumatra, 2015, p. 24).
Unlike plants or animals, cultural resources, whether it is tangible or not, is not something
renewable that can reproduce itself. This has become the main reason to issue the principles
of the management of cultural heritage (Darvill, 1987, p. 4). Perkampungan Adat Nagari
Sijunjung is an example of a cultural resource that possesses both tangible and intangible
properties. It has the potential to develop, but there are threats coming from natural processes
and destructive human activities, such as vandalism (Grant, 2008, pp. 341–344). Even though
it has been declared as a Cultural Heritage by the Sijunjung government, the possible threats
still exist since there is yet a system to manage the Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung.
Byrne (2008, p. 155) argues that the preservation of cultural heritage that belongs to a
minority group would require more efforts. Nevertheless, this does not presuppose that the
preservation of a cultural heritage of the majority group will not face any problems. In this
case, the Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung has issues related to its management system.
Darvill (1987, p. 25) mentions that the management of a cultural heritage region in a rural
area should include three main objectives, namely maintaining the diversity of archaeological
resources in the original landscape where it is located, to make the archaeological resources
meet the community’s needs in terms of its management, and to resolve the conflict and
competition for the use of land which contains the archaeological resources. Based on these
objectives, it is pivotal to conduct a study to determine a management model for the Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung that will meet those three categories.
Cultural heritages can be classified into two categories. The first one is the dead monument,
a cultural heritage that was already in ruin when it was discovered. The other type is known
as the living monument and it refers to items or properties that continue to be of use to date
(Explanation of the Law Number 11 of 2010, Point I General Provisions, Paragraphs 5–6).
Obviously, there are distinct differences in terms of preservation as the dead monument has
ceased to function, while the living one still serves a purpose. Dealing with a dead monument
is relatively easy, especially in terms of its ownership. In contrast, the living monument still
belongs to a group of people. Unfortunately, there are no explicit or clear guidelines regarding the management of living monuments in Indonesian laws and regulations. Hence, there is
a need to carry out a study about the cultural heritages that fall under the category of living
monuments, since it is still inhabited by the community, which still practices their tradition.
This research uses a descriptive qualitative approach. This approach allows an analysis of
the qualitative data, which are obtained through observations in the field as well as through
a review of available literatures on Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung. This study examines the cultural resources found in Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung through the Cultural Resource Management study, i.e. a study by Pearson and Sullivan (1995, as cited in
Saptaningrum, 2007, p.17), which is an integrated cross-sectoral work designed to accommodate a variety of interests.
1.2 Issues
Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung is one of the traditional villages whose landscape
and culture are still intact and well preserved. The village maintains the traditional Minangkabau village structures and its complements, such as the rumah gadang, rice fields, places of
worship, and buildings for ceremonial activities. From the cultural perspective, the villagers
still practice certain traditions, such as batagak gala, nikah kawin, basiriah tando, membantai
adat, batobo kongsi, and many others. These traditions are some of the characteristics of
Nagari Sijunjung, which runs on a matrilineal system adopted by most Minangkabau clans.
This is an important aspect of the community that is still intact, although the site has long
been designated as a cultural heritage area.
Unfortunately, there is still no proper management system specifically set up to manage the site. Granted, that there are several parties responsible for the preservation of this
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village, such as the local government (local government in Sijunjung and the West Sumatra
governments), the Central government represented by the Institute for Preservation of West
Sumatra Cultural Heritage, and most importantly, the local supporters from the region,
including the ninik mamak (the village elders) and their followers. Considering the diversity
of the stakeholders involved, it is crucial that they share the same point of view with regard
to the site management.
Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung is a living cultural heritage due to the fact that
the community is still residing on site and actively practicing their tradition. However, since
the issue on cultural heritage site management has not been addressed properly, this site is
urgently in need of its own management model. Based on the statement above, the researcher
has prepared the following questions.
1. What is the significance of Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung?
2. What kind of management does a living cultural heritage need to preserve the site properly and to provide economic benefits to the local community?
2
2.1
DISCUSSION
Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung
Minangkabau culture is known for its traditional large-sized house called the rumah gadang,
or sometimes rumah bagonjong. The name is derived from its spired, multi-tiered roof structure called gonjong in the local Minang language. There are some opinions regarding the
origin of this shape. One mentions that the roof is purposely crafted to resemble a buffalo’s
horn; it is based on a mythical race between big buffalos from Majapahit and small buffalos
of Minangkabau. Some even compare the roof with a stack of betel leaves. Betel leaves (daun
sirih) are the common ingredients for chewing pan served at traditional ceremonies, and they
are believed to prevent various diseases because of its antiseptic properties. Others claim that
it resembles a boat shape, associating it with the tradition of merantau (a common practice
among Minangkabau men to go to other region in search of a better life) in Minangkabau
(Hasan, 2004, pp. 6–7).
In total, Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung has 76 rumah gadang arranged along the
road in Jorong Koto Padang Ranah and Jorong Tanah Bato. Perkampungan Adat Nagari
Sijunjung is the only village that is still survived from the historical Pagaruyung Kingdom
from the 14th century. At that time, this village was inhabited by six tribes, namely Caniago,
Malay, Panai, Tobo, Piliang, and Malay Tak Timbago. Nowadays, many rumah gadang still
standing in the area, even though most of them are in a state of disrepair.
The existence of a rumah gadang is one of the requirements before setting up a family in
Minangkabau (barumah batanggo). Another tradition is known as balabuah batapian, which
manifests as the main road separating the village from the river that primarily serves as both
washing and bathing facility. There is another term known as basawah baladang that refers to
the paddy fields as the village agricultural areas. Fields in this village are well preserved and
located at the back of rumah gadang. As a village with their own government, Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung has their own meeting place and a place of worship to perform
traditional ceremonies. These are essentially parts of a Minangkabau’s village layout called
babalai bamusajik, consisting of specific buildings, such as a village hall and several mosques.
It also has bapandam bapakuburan or the local cemetery. All the elements mentioned above
are still existed in this village.
Rumah gadang, rice fields, roads and rivers, mosques and village halls, as well as the burial
place, are the physical characteristics that are still visible in Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung. Both the tangible and intangible attributes are the proofs that the village’s culture remains
intact. Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung in Koto Padang Ranah and Tanah Bato is said
to be the centre of the village in which all activities related to the culture and customs take place,
namely batagak gala, basiriah tando, penyelenggaraan mayat, bakaua adat, mambantai adat,
musyawarah tobo or batobo, turun mandi, and manapati mamak (mangaku mamak).
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Figure 1. Nagari conception in Tambo Alam Minangkabau (Source: Joni Wongso).
Figure 2.
Batoboh, one of the traditions still practised today (Source: Disparenkraf Sumbar).
Batagak gala is an act of awarding a title to someone who is appointed as the sako holder;
unlike other forms of legacy, sako is usually a title ascribed to a person chosen to be the next
tribe leader. Meanwhile, basiriah tando is a local proceeding to put someone on trial. There
is also an event called penyelenggaraan mayat, or a communal discussion (musyawarah) to
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appoint a replacement for a sako holder when the current one has passed away. Bakaua adat
is an event served to express gratitude for a good harvest. The event preceded by slaughtering a buffalo and offering a prayer for the abundance of the future harvest. Still related to
an agricultural activity, a number of Tobo Konsi (groups of farmers) have been living in this
village for a long period of time. Tobo’s activities do not only include farming, but also perform tasks, such as building houses, fences, and other related tasks. Meanwhile, the ritual of
manapati mamak or mangaku mamak is held to welcome newcomers to the village.
All the remains in Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung, either in the form of objects
(tangible) or in the form of non-objects (intangible), are heavily imbued with the matrilineal
views of the Minangkabau people. West Sumatra is said to host the largest matrilineal Muslim society in the world (Hadler, 2010, p. 3). In matrilineal societies, men have no rights to
own land or to inherit a property; a married Minangkabau man will stay at his wife’s home
at night, and he is still part of his mother’s house during the day (Kato, 2005 in Nurti, 2013,
p. 74). In Minangkabau, there is a term saparuik (literal meaning: one womb) that means
siblings from the same mother. Basically, they make up a family occupying a rumah gadang
in the region (Mansoer, 1970, p. 6). Therefore, in addition to observing the importance of
preserving the cultural heritage in Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung the emphasis is also
on preserving the matrilineal system in Minangkabau as this way of life has been increasingly
eroded over time.
2.2
A proposed management model for Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung
from the perspective of the stakeholders
Stakeholders, according to Freeman (1984, p. 25), are any group or individual who can affect
or be affected by the achievement of corporate goals. Freeman, who talks about stakeholders
from the perspective of management strategy in a company, describes that a typical company
usually has many stakeholders, including the owners, competitors, customers, employees,
governments, local communities, and others. This certainly is not much different from the
stakeholders involved in the effort to preserve a living cultural heritage site.
As mentioned before, Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung is a traditional village consisting of a series of rumah gadang, along with other essential elements that complement the
traditional practice of running an indigenous village. The tradition is usually guided by the
ninik mamak from one of the tribes living in the village. There are several tribes and each
of them is led by the eldest member who is appointed as leader of the group. Each tribe will
basically voicing their own interest. Nevertheless, these are always related to the area preservation. A mutual agreement on a plan to preserve the area was signed on 28 September 2013.
All parties, including the chief and ninik mamak, have agreed to comply with the following
rules and regulations: 1) to preserve Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung as a world heritage, 2) to cease adding permanent buildings and changing the form and function of the
rumah gadang in the village, 3) to preserve the culture and the traditional customs as part
of the matrilineal Minangkabau tradition, 4) to participate in maintaining, managing, and
developing the area as a leading and genuine site for tourism, 5) to wear a traditional costume
inside the village borders.
The agreement shows that the local community, as one of the stakeholders, is already aware
of the importance of preservation. They have even gone as far as commencing an agreement
to support the area to become one of the world cultural heritages. In this case, public awareness is not an issue at all. As mentioned by Al Najjar (1997, p. 41), raising public concern is
beneficial to preserve cultural heritage. However, to coax public concern will not generate any
greater impact without any support from both the Central and Local governments.
Governments have a role in terms of establishing the rules as well as imposing sanctions for
violations, setting the policy and standard operating procedures for the preservation’s implementation and utilization. Every level of the governments must work together to preserve
and manage the heritage area. The government’s point of view is certainly different from the
community’s in addressing this particular issue. The government, in this regard, consists of
the Central government as represented by the Ministry of Education and Culture. For West
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Sumatra, the responsibility is in the hands by the Institute for Preservation of Cultural Heritage (BPCB) for West Sumatra. As the technical implementation unit in the area, their main
task is to preserve the cultural heritage that includes protection, development, and utilization. Protection includes the act of rescuing, securing, zoning, maintaining, and restoring
the cultural heritage; development relates to research, revitalization, and adaptation. Lastly,
utilization is the efforts to utilize the cultural heritage so that it will contribute to the welfare
of the community (the Law of the Republic of Indonesia No. 11 of 2010).
For the provincial government, the role is assumed by the Department of Tourism and
Creative Economy. It seems that the provincial government aims is to focus on the perspective of tourism and creative economy rather than culture so that this task is performed by the
Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy rather than the Ministry of Education and Culture. As for the local government, this responsibility is given to the Department of Tourism,
Arts, Culture, Youth, and Sports. There is still no consensus in the nomenclature of the structure of regional governments at provincial and district levels. Hence, this causes a different
focus in each of these fields, which later will affect the budget allocations in supporting the
conservation action. Therefore, it is crucial for every stakeholder to share a similar view. To
establish this condition, regular meetings between stakeholders are expected to foster a common vision and avoid possible conflicts that might occur between them. It can also enhance
public participation in the decision-making process so that the community, as the rightful
owner of culture, will not feel left behind (Al Najjar, 1997, p. 42).
Meetings between the stakeholders are also important to devise the most suitable management model for Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung. As mandated by the Law No. 11 of
2010, the management of the heritage area should be carried out by the responsible parties
that consist of all stakeholders. In this case, they are the Central and Local governments, the
indigenous community, and the business partners. The management models should also be
tailored in accordance to the condition of the village. Quade (1982) argues in Situmorang
(2002, p. 12) that a proper model is formulated from all relevant factors or elements resulting
in a certain situation. Each element will have relation to one another so that the model will
depend on the situation at hand and on the purpose of its creation.
In its management, a cultural heritage should be able to fulfil and appeal to the academic,
ideological, and economic interests. Academically, a cultural heritage will allow researchers
to gain more knowledge, whether in archaeology or any other subjects. In terms of ideology,
it is expected that the local inhabitants will have a sense of pride and passion for their cultural identity or the nation in general. Lastly, a cultural heritage should benefit the community’s economy; it should be able to encourage local artisans to develop their artworks and to
attract tourists to help the community reap some economic benefits. (Rahardjo, 2013, p. 8–9).
In relation with the academic interest, a study conducted by the researchers from various disciplines should be submitted to the management of cultural heritage so that all policies issued
are in accordance with the interests of all stakeholders (Ramelan, 2012, p. 197).
The management model with the Agency of Area Management (Badan Pengelola Kawasan)
is meant to become a forum for stakeholders from various groups. Hence, all stakeholders
will have a similar position and interest, namely preserving the area’s traditional custom.
However, this does not mean that every stakeholder can do as they wish without acknowledging the principles of preservation (Sulistyanto, 2008, p. 302). Therefore, this agency must be
able to accommodate all means needed to preserve the Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung. The preservation does not only protect the tangible properties, such as rumah gadang,
mosques, or the village hall, but it should also include non-physical culture such as traditions
and the local performing arts, which are still alive and run by the local inhabitants.
Thus, this agency will consist of several divisions that will manage the physical aspects of the
region, including the maintenance of rumah gadang, places of worship, and the community centre. Furthermore, they also manage the rules concerning the management of rice fields and rivers
as they are integral parts to this area. Meanwhile, there will be other departments dealing with
the traditions and other intangible heritages in the area, such as batobo rituals, batagak gala,
turun mandi, and others. In the end, the agency would cover the needs of preservation consisting
of protection, development, and utilization of the Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung.
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3
CONCLUSION
The key to successfully implement the preservation of Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung
largely depends on the shared perception of each stakeholder. With the existence of a management board consisting of all stakeholders, it will result in effective conservation programs
for the village. The joint parties will be able to devise a series of plans suitable to the needs
of society and avoid the possibility of any violations to the cultural heritage preservation
principles. Unnecessary clash between parties will be avoided because plans are the results of
a joint agreement based on a mutual understanding. Monitoring and evaluating programmes
are also expected to run smoothly to create better plans in the future.
Therefore, establishing a good management system and involving the locals are expected
to improve the overall economic condition of the people. Furthermore, developing the village
as a tourist attraction is an effective way to conserve not only the physical, but also the nonphysical attributes that have constantly been threatened by outside influences. The involvement of the local inhabitants and various stakeholders in managing the Perkampungan Adat
Nagari Sijunjung will also reduce a certain party from dominating the effort, in particular,
the government. Thus, the management is directed to fulfil the need of all parties and benefit
the villagers as well.
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Gadjah Mada University Press.
Anonym. Undang-undang Republik Indonesia Nomor 11 Tahun 2010 tentang Cagar Budaya. (Law No
11 of the Republic of Indonesia – 2010 on Cultural Heritage) Jakarta, Kementerian Pendidikan dan
Kebudayaan (The Ministry of Education and Culture).
Byrne, D. (2008) Heritage as Social Action. In: Fairclough, G., Harrison, R., Jameson Jnr., J.H., &
Schofield, J. (Eds.), The Heritage Reader (pp. 149–172). London & New York, Routledge.
Darvill, T. (1987) Ancient Monuments in the Countryside an Archaeological Management Review.
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Dinas Pariwisata dan Ekonomi Kreatif Provinsi Sumatera Barat. (2015) Naskah Rekomendasi Penetapan
Satuan Ruang Geografis Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung Kabupaten Sijunjung Provinsi Sumatera Barat Sebagai Kawasan Cagar Budaya Peringkat Nasional. (Recommendation on the Designation of the Geographical Entity of Perkampungan Adat Negeri Sijunjung, Regency of Sijunjung, West
Sumatra Province as a National Heritage Site) Padang, West Sumatra.
Dinas Parsenibudpora Kabupaten Sijunjung. (2016) Laporan Kegiatan Delineasi dan Zonasi
Perkampungan Adat Nagari Sijunjung (Report on Delineation and Zonation of Perkampungan Adat
Negeri Sijunjung) Sijunjung, West Sumatra.
Freeman, R.E. (1984) Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Boston, Pitman Publishing.
Grant, J., Gorin, S. & Fleming, N. (2008) The Archaeology Course Book an Introduction to Themes, Sites,
Methods, and Skills (3th ed.). London and New York, Routledge.
Hadler, J. (2010) Sengketa Tiada Putus, Matriarkat, Reformisme Agama, dan Kolonialisme di
Minangkabau (Unresolved Dispute, Matriarchal, Religious Reformation and Colonialism in Minangkabau) Jakarta, Freedom Institute.
Hasan, H. (2004) Ragam Rumah Adat Minangkabau: Falsafah, Pembangunan, dan Kegunaan (The Variety of Minangkabau Traditional Houses: Philosophical Meanings, Construction and Uses) Jakarta,
Yayasan Citra Pendidikan Indonesia.
Nurti, Y. (2013) Perubahan Budaya Makan Pada Orang Minangkabau: Suatu Kajian Kasus Pada Acara
Baralek Gadang di Kota Padang. (The Changing Eating Culture of the People of Minangkabau: Case
Study during the Baralek Gadang Event in Padang) [Dissertation]. Depok, FISIP, Universitas Indonesia.
Mansoer, M.D, Imran, A., et al. (1970) Sedjarah Minangkabau. (The History of Minangkabau)
Djakarta, Bhratara.
Rahardjo, S. (2013) Penelitian Arkeologi dan Pemanfaatannya bagi Kepentingan Publik. (Archaeological
Research and Its Uses for Public Interest) In: Saringendyanti, E., & Syarief, Y.I. (Eds.). Prosiding
Seminar Nasional dalam Rangka 100 Tahun Purbakala. (pp. 6-16). (Proceeding for the National Seminar on the Centenary of Antiquity) Bandung, Balai Arkeologi Bandung.
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Ramelan, W.D. (2012) Permasalahan Pengelolaan Cagar Budaya dan Kajian Manajemen Sumberdaya
Arkeologi. (Challenges in Management of Cultural Heritage and Studies on Archaeological Resources
Management) In: Rahardjo, S. (Ed.). Arkeologi untuk Publik (Archaeology for Public) (pp. 186–199).
Jakarta, IAAI.
Saptaningrum, I. (2007) Pengelolaan Kawasan Arkeologi di Kota Magelang. (The Management of
Archaeological Site in Magelang) [Thesis]. Yogyakarta, Pascasarjana UGM.
Situmorang, S. (2002) Model Pembagian Urusan Pemerintahan antara Pemerintah, Provinsi, dan
Kabupaten-Kota. (The Model on Division of Tasks between Central, Province and RegencyMunicipality Governments) [Dissertation]. Depok, Universitas Indonesia.
Sulistyanto, B. (2008) Resolusi Konflik dalam Manajemen Warisan Budaya Situs Sangiran. (Conflict Resolution in Sangiran Cultural Site Management) [Dissertation]. Depok, FIB, Universitas Indonesia.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Nusantara philosophy: The study of meanings based on
Indonesia’s local wisdom in East Java and East Nusa Tenggara
L. Tjahjandari, T.I. Setyani & L.H. Kurnia
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This study specifically examines the role of philosophy, which can still be
found in ethnic communities living in Indonesia. Each region has its own cosmological
and philosophical treasury that becomes the guidance for the community to act, speak and
behave. As a way of life, the Nusantara philosophy materialises in human understanding on
the complexity of their natural surroundings. This study was carried out in East Java and
East Nusa Tenggara by observing the communities’ way of life, which revolves around solving a problem together and mutual assistance. This study also focuses on the communities’
traditional systems, which preserve certain patterns of mutual cooperation, and provide new
solutions to actual problems. This research is based on the cultural complexity, the philosophical view of life, and particular ethnic and philosophical advice, which are widely used
today and for generations to come. Thus, the conception of the philosophy of living in a
society and mutual cooperation can be explained.
1
INTRODUCTION
Indonesia’s diversity is built upon its cultural richness. Each ethnic group in Indonesia has
its own cosmological and philosophical treasury, which serves as the guideline for living and
solving problems. Social ties are strengthened by the foundation of collective consciousness,
helping collective problems to be solved with collective consciousness and action. A form of
collective sense of sharing is known in Indonesia as “gotong royong”, which means solving
various problems together.
The diversity of perspectives and the complexity of problems faced by each ethnic community have shaped unique patterns regarding collective actions. Local wisdom is a conceptual
idea that lives inside a community, continuously grows and develops inside the community’s
consciousness, and regulates the community life. Local wisdom is a conception related to the
life strategy of each community, which is manifested in certain patterns of activity and is
highly influenced by the community’s worldview. It is also a complexity of knowledge in form
of norms, values, beliefs that underlies the society’s behaviour and sometimes is expressed in
the myths and traditions (Keesing, 1981).
Haba (2007) mentions six functions of local wisdom. The first is an identity marker of
a community. The second is a unifying element (cohesive aspect) of people from different
religions and beliefs. The third is that local wisdom is not coercive or top down because its
cohesive power is more effective and lasting. The fourth is that local wisdom adds a sense of
togetherness to the community. Fifth, local wisdom changes the mindset and mutual relation
of individuals and groups by putting it on a common ground. Sixth, local wisdom can act as
a collective mechanism to avoid various possibilities that may reduce or even damage communal solidarity believed to originate from and grow in the collective consciousness of an
integrated community.
Gotong royong as a form of social solidarity is formed because of others’ help, either for
the sake of personal or communal interests, which makes it carry loyal attitude from every
community member as a whole. Regarding this, Parsons (1951: 97–98) expresses that,
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Loyalty is, as it were, the non-institutionalized precursor of solidarity, it is the “spilling
over” of motivation to conform to the interests or expectations of alteration beyond
the boundaries of any institutionalized or agreed obligation. Collective orientation on
the other hand converts this “propensity” into an institutionalized obligation of the
role expectation. Then whether or not the actor “feel like it”, he is obligated to act in
certain ways and risk the application of negative sanctions if he does not.
The life of an integrated community can be seen from the solidarity among its members
through helping others without the others having to reciprocate, such as during a disaster
or when helping someone in need. Gotong royong can be said as a feature of Indonesia,
especially of those who live in rural areas where it has been practiced for generations, hence
creating real social behaviours that shape the value system of social life. The existence of such
value helps gotong royong to thrive in the community life as a cultural heritage worthy to
preserve. Relating to gotong royong as a cultural value, Bintarto (1980: 24) explains that such
value in the cultural system of Indonesians contains four concepts:
1. Humans do not live alone in this world, but they are surrounded by their community, society, and the universe. In this macrocosmic system, they feel themselves as merely a small
element carried by the movement process of the universe.
2. Thus, humans are essentially dependent in all aspects of life on others.
3. Therefore, they have to keep trying as much as possible to maintain good relations with
others, driven by the spirit of equality, and
4. Keep trying as much as possible to conform, doing the same thing as what their community do, driven by the spirit of equality.
The existence of such value system makes gotong royong always maintained and needed in
various aspects of life. Thus, gotong royong will always exist in many forms, adapted to the
cultural condition of each community.
In relation to such matters, this study discusses the conception of social life, which correlates with actual problems faced by each ethnic community, and how the conception of
“gotong royong” is understood and implemented by referring to the local wisdom. Specifically, this study will discuss the conception of “gotong royong” in the Komunitas Belajar
Tanoker (the Tanoker Learning Community) in Jember, East Java, and the Arisan Pendidikan
(the Educational Gathering) in Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara. The study focuses on how
the worldviews and collective problems in both regions are contextually understood according to the current condition and how “gotong royong” is practiced in everyday life.
1.1
Nusantara philosophy and meaning of Gotong Royong
1.1.1 Tanoker learning community, Ledokombo in Jember, East Java
Jember is generally known as one of the largest suppliers of migrant workers in East Java
Province. In the District of Ledokombo alone, it is estimated 70% of women leave their villages to work as migrant workers, not only abroad but also in regions outside Jember. There
is a trend of dropouts among children and unemployment among the working age population. Social problems coming from outside, such as drug addiction and HIV/AIDS cases,
only worsen the social condition there.
In Jember Regency, the District of Ledokombo is synonymous with poverty, given that the
area is categorised as lacking, both in natural resources and human resources. The majority of the population is ethnically the Madurese, who often become the victims of negative
stereotypes, such as being unruly, selfish, stubborn, difficult to cooperate, and envious with
others’ success. As a result, the perception that emerges is that it is impossible for the district
to improve its prosperity and catch up with others.
Out of this concern, on 10th December 2009, a learning community named Komunitas Belajar Tanoker (Tanoker Study Community or Komunitas Tanoker in short) was established by a
married couple, Supohardjo and Farha Ciciek. Supohardjo (Supo in short) is an alumnus of the
doctoral program in sociology at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Universitas Indonesia, while Farha Ciciek is a female activist who has worked much with the issues of gender
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equality. Supo is a native of Ledokombo. The name “Tanoker” was chosen by the children of
the community. It is a word in Madurese, which means cocoon. They created a motto: “Friendly,
happy, learning, creating”. The persistence of Supo and Ciciek, who believe that all the negative stereotypes about this place are wrong and that the people of Ledokombo actually want
progress, eventually gained positive feedback. Komunitas Tanoker, which was initially rejected
by the local people and the teachers, now is increasingly visited by the children of Ledokombo.
The members of this playgroup are generally the children of migrant workers, agricultural
labourers, small merchants, teachers, public servants, and domestic workers who live in the
area. The central activity of this community revolves around the revitalisation of the traditional game of stilts. For Supo and Ciciek, stilts have a lot of meanings and strategic cohesive
functions. The name Tanoker and stilts together become the icon of social transformation
aspired by their community. Tanoker or cocoon, normally understood as isolation from the
outside world, is given a more positive meaning, which is the embryo of a butterfly that shall
fly high and far through a process of transformation. Meanwhile, the stilts, as stated in their
website, are a symbol of great leaps forward and self-growth. These two simple yet meaningful philosophies become the spirit of empowerment for the children and their facilitators.
In our interview with an ex-migrant worker who had worked in Saudi Arabia and Taiwan,
we found that initially, not all people of Ledokombo supported the effort made by Supo and
Ciciek. The community, whose main orientation is playing, was opposed by some teachers
who were worried that their students would prefer playing in Tanoker to taking extra classes
in the afternoon. However, in the process, this community gained the acceptance of the local
people, as evidenced by the increased participation of the locals in the activities of Tanoker.
Parents who were initially suspicious of the motivation and purpose of Supo and Ciciek
slowly became curious and enrolled their children in Tanoker to learn reading and mathematics. This opportunity was seized by Ciciek to mobilise the mothers in empowering activities,
such as cooking and making handicrafts from simple local materials.
Teachers and principals were also embraced since the couple were fully aware that the support of the teachers had to be won in order to realise the vision of children empowerment.
Komunitas Tanoker occasionally invited English and mathematics trainers to provide enrichment and improve the ability of the local teachers. Today, some activities aimed at developing
teachers’ capacity are held in cooperation with parents, teachers, religious leaders, and local
figures, including programs, such as Inspiring Teachers and Creative Parents Training, Jaritmatika (counting fast using fingers), GASING (easy, fun, not confusing) method of mathematics, and English for Community, with the help of Jaritmatika Foundation in Salatiga,
Surya Institute in Jakarta, and Yasmin Learning Centre in Jakarta.
An important aspect observed by the research team while visiting Komunitas Tanoker is
that around one hundred children of the community did not show any sense of inferiority
or backwardness in terms of general knowledge. They generally showed high enthusiasm,
strong confidence, updated knowledge of the world, friendliness, and the ability to cooperate well among themselves. The attitude of these children totally is opposite to the negative stereotypes imposed all this time on the people of Ledokombo. Instead of meeting the
stereotypical children from disadvantaged villages, during the observation the team gained
a strong impression that they are children with progressive thinking and mentality, who are
comparable with children from the cities.
Regarding the history of the stilts game in Tanoker, Supo and Ciciek have a firm belief that
stilts can be an agent of social change in Ledokombo. It is written on the website of Tanoker that:
Stilts can trigger social change. And that is what happens in Ledokombo District,
Jember Regency. Stilts are a traditional game for children, in the form of extended
feet made of bamboo that can make the player look taller. In urban areas, such a
game is almost unseen. But in rural areas such as Ledokombo, stilts are part of the
tradition and social life. During the previous flooding in Ledokombo, people used
stilts as a means of transportation.
The decision to choose stilts as the centre of life in Komunitas Tanoker is not only determined by the fact that it is a local traditional game, but more than that; there is a history
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showing that stilts are closely related to the lives and survival of Ledokombo people, especially during a life-threatening crisis.
The stilting activity by the children of Tanoker is done not only in their place. They also
participated in shows such as Indonesia’s Got Talent and also Jakarta Percussion Festival
in March 2013. All of this has helped building the confidence of the children who Ciciek
describes as “socially orphaned.” The existence of the Komunitas Tanoker is indeed aimed
at avoiding a “lost generation” tragedy among the children of Ledokombo, which may be
caused by the absence of proper care and education by their parents who are too occupied
with their poverty or miss their children’s most important growth period because they have
to work abroad as migrant workers.
1.2
Arisan Pendidikan in Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara
Manggarai is a region located on the western side of Flores Island. Flores, especially
Manggarai, is known by most of the people in East Nusa Tenggara as a region that cares
the most about education. This is reflected in their various traditional processions, philosophy, and thinking that are deeply ingrained in the Manggarai society. The Manggarai
language has an old expression passed down through generations, “Uwa haeng wulang,
langkas haeng tala”, which means “Grow and soar high until you reach the moon and
stars in the sky”.
This expression is a hope for the children to be successful persons in the future. The success is supported by several factors, one of which is education. Therefore, the dropout rate in
Manggarai is almost non-existent, though most of the people there are poor. A form of support for educational success is shown through the traditional ceremony of wuat wuai, where
people gather and contribute a sum of money for education. The practice is also known as
Arisan Pendidikan. According to Thomas Harming (31), a local of Pagal, Manggarai, Wuat
Wa’i also means supplies, especially supplies for a child who is about to pursue higher education. This value about the importance of education is implanted in every family in Manggarai through the philosophy passed down from generation to generation in accordance with
the expression “Uwa haeng wulang, langkas haeng tala”. This expression has encouraged the
people of Manggarai to pursue higher education. However, in fact, not all people in Manggarai can afford it. Financial problems and living costs have often barred them from achieving
their dream. In this situation, Wuat Wa’i appears as the solution.
It is unique compared to other traditional concepts of gotong royong commonly found
in other regions in Indonesia, which arise from ceremonial events of harvesting, planting,
hunting, building traditional house, birth, wedding, and death ceremony. Arisan Pendidikan
or Wuat Wa’i is a form of gotong royong in Manggarai, which supports modern education
but is wrapped up in a traditional ceremony, becoming a tradition for generations. Wuat Wa’i
in the Dictionary of Manggarai, as quoted by Adi M Nggoro (2006), is a cultural rite to bid
farewell to someone who is leaving their hometown, either to pursue higher education or a
better life (migrating).
Wuat Wa’i is usually held in modestly inside a house, or by setting up a small tent outside
a house. The participants are usually close relatives within the clan, colleagues, and other
relatives in the same village. The invitation of Wuat Wa’i is spread orally and face to face by
parents who hold Wuat Wa’i for their children. They will say something like, “Sir, my child
is going to Jakarta to pursue higher education. Let’s gather in my home, we will support the
departure of my child.”
The people of Manggarai have a collective understanding regarding the implied message
in this invitation. Without having to be asked explicitly, they already understand that the
inviter expects a form of financial support or money. The amount also has a minimum standard which has been discussed and decided together before. At the location, the guests will
be greeted in the local language one by one by the host and is offered traditional alcoholic
beverage or beer, “Thank you for coming, this is the symbol of greeting from my family.”
The ritual is called Tuak Kapu. A basin or another container is placed near the host who is
offering the beer, where the guests can put their contribution. They usually know the price of
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the beer offered, for example IDR 36,000. They will then pay the drink at least at twice the
price, or usually IDR 100,000.
After the guests gather and receive the drink, the ceremony is continued with Tura Manuk
Bakok which is a ritual of prayer chanting in the indigenous religion of Manggarai. The
prayer is a plea to the Supreme Being (Mori Kraeng) to protect the journey of their child who
will pursue higher education. Bakok in the phrase means white chicken, symbolising sincerity
and safety. Besides Tura Manuk Bakok, there is also a ritual called Teing Hang, which means
feeding the ancestors. The ritual is intended to invoke the blessing and feed the ancestors,
held in form of the slaughtering of a white chicken and the offering of alcoholic beverage.
After the prayer, the ritual of Wuat Wa’I is completed, and after that, they will eat together.
The food offered is very modest, since the main purpose of this ceremony is not to be extravagant. After the meal, the host will offer cigarettes and coffee for male guests. Just like the alcoholic beverage at the beginning, the cigarette and coffee also come with a basin for money.
The guests will pay at least at twice the price of coffee and cigarette they enjoy. Before the
guests leave, they are also expected to give contribution money for the lunch they had (usually around IDR 50,000). Thus, in one Wuat Wa’i, there are three contributions given by the
guests to the host. The first is for the appetizer of alcoholic beverage. The second is for the
dessert of coffee and cigarette. The third is for the main course that is given before leaving
the location. The total amount of contribution from each guest (or family) ranges from IDR
250,000 to IDR 350,000.
There is a special sentence in the culture of Manggarai that is repeatedly told by parents
to their children as advice:
“Lalong bakok du lakom, lalong rombeng koe du kolem.”
And the translation is as follows:
Lalong means cock, Bakok means white chicken, du lakom means when you leave
hometown, rombeng means colourful (such as adult cock which has red, black, and
orange colours), and du kolem means when coming back.
The whole sentence means:
“When you leave your hometown, you are like a white chicken. When you return,
you will be colourful.”
The meaning of this advice is a child who is leaving to pursue higher education is like a white
chicken which symbolises innocence and lack of experience. When the child returns, he/she
is expected to have transformed into an adult cock with colourful feathers, rich in new experience and skills. A child who pursues higher education outside Manggarai is expected to
return as a successful person.
No social sanction, such as seclusion or excommunication, is imposed by the people of Manggarai on those who do not attend the event. The willingness to participate arises out of the
attitude of caring for others, and also because everyone will take their turn to hold it. If someone rarely comes to such an event, the only consequence they bear is probably not many will
come when they hold the same event. There is also no obligation for the child to return. However, there is a sense that everyone who comes from Manggarai has a big obligation to dedicate
their experience to their hometown. During early 1980s–1990s, Arisan Pendidikan was mostly
held for boys. The impression that education was only for young men was still very strong. Even
in the expression, the word Lalong refers to cock, implying a gender claim that it was only for
young men. Nevertheless, today there has been a shift in thinking. Many young women now
also pursue higher education, and their family also hold Wuat Wa’i ceremony for them.
1.3
The meaning of Gotong Royong to the Tanoker learning group and Arisan
Pendidikan Manggarai
Based on the field observation and secondary data on the forms of gotong royong, both
activities have unique characteristics shaped by the understanding and knowledge on local
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wisdom that is absorbed by the society. Thus, the pattern and implementation of gotong
royong in each region has its own uniqueness.
As seen from the intention to share, and referring to the cognitive theory on the intention
to cooperate with others, even with those who they do not know at all, these activities are
based more on solidarity bounded with local identity. The tradition held in Ledokombo to
promote their regional uniqueness, founded and initiated by local leaders with high motivation to develop their regions, is able to move other elements in the society to support their
thinking. Together they strengthen this collective movement, which has become the basis
for their local identity development. A form of gotong royong in this village has succeeded
in showing a new colour, full of innovation yet still rooted from the local values. A form of
gotong royong, which is rooted in local tradition for generations and still held widely in the
society, can be found in Manggarai with their ceremony of Wuat Wa’i, which has been practiced for hundreds of years. The tradition is also closely related to their spiritual and religious
values.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that gotong royong concepts found in both places
also have developed dynamically over the years. Local communities now face challenges and
problems arising from global pressure. New solutions to solve social problems are developed,
such as the one found in Wuat Wa’i tradition, which now includes young women in Manggarai, and local leaders emerge to provide solutions, such as the one found in Ledokombo. New
forms of gotong royong are created as a result of construction of ideas, which also involves
elements of local tradition and wisdom.
What keep these gotong royong activities run well are the high solidarity and the sense
of importance among the community members regarding education and children development for a better future. Such a perception then binds the people to participate in Komunitas
Tanoker and Arisan Pendidikan. This bond has become a communal sense in the community,
with no force or formal rule to coerce them. Individual interest becomes communal interest.
The value of sacrifice can also be observed in the activity of Arisan Pendidikan. The guests
usually come from the lower class population, such as farmers, yet they are willing to contribute up to IDR 300,000 for the host. In Komunitas Tanoker, it can be seen in the initial sacrifice of Supo and Ciciek who were willing to return to their hometown to contribute to the
development of their hometown. The attitude of caring for others and sacrificing personal
interest signifies individual consciousness towards their group (group consciousness). Collective understanding and sense that exist without having to be explicitly said or standardised
are a form of local wisdom that needs to be protected and preserved.
REFERENCES
Ayatrohaedi. (1986) Kepribadian budaya bangsa (local genius) (The nation’s personality and culture
(local genius)). Jakarta, Pustaka Jaya.
Bintarto, R. (1980) Gotong royong: Suatu karakteristik bangsa Indonesia (Gotong Royong: A characteristic of Indonesian people). Surabaya, Bina Ilmu.
Haba, J. (2007) Revitalisasi kearifan lokal: Studi resolusi konflik di Kalimantan Barat, Maluku dan Poso
(Revitalising local wisdom: A study of conflict resolution in West Kalimantan, Maluku and Poso).
Jakarta, ICIP and the European Commission.
Keesing, R.M. (1981) Cultural anthropology: A contemporary perspective. Boston, Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston.
Nggoro, A.M. (2006) Budaya Manggarai selayang pandang (The Manggarai culture: an overview).
Ende, Nusa Indah.
Parsons, T. (1951) The Social System. New York, Free Press.
Tanoker-Ledokombo. Profil. January, 2014.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Silpin’s artistic freedom in the creation of Tathagata statues
on the Rupadhatu level at Borobudur
G. Mentari & A.A. Munandar
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: In this study, we investigate the art form created by Buddhist monks (Silpin),
known as the Tathagata sculpture. The term Tathagata refers to a person who reaches the transcendental truth in life. Tathagata manifests itself in the form of the Buddha sculpture with some
unique characteristics. Here, we examine 20 Tathagata sculptures located on the Rupadhatu level
at Borobudur Temple. In this analysis, we use the E. B. Vogler (1948) concept on “bounded art”
(Gebonden kunst), which is related to the creation of Hindu–Buddhist arts. The Tathagata art
and its creative process are used as a parameter to achieve the goal. In this study, we find that
the binding rules related to the creation of sculptural arts in general were not always observed in
the creation of Buddhist sculptural arts. Moreover, the result of this study also reveals that Silpin
had a widespread influence and innovations in the creation of the beautiful Buddhist arts, which
is evident in Tathagata sculptures on the Rupadhatu level at Borobudur Temple.
Keywords:
1
Silpin, Buddhist arts, Tathagata, Buddhist sculpture, Borobudur
INTRODUCTION
The existence of statues and idols indicates that the medieval Hindu–Buddhist community
is more concerned about creating artworks made of stone, bronze, wood, or other metallic materials (Magetsari, 1997, p. 1). By definition, statues also include objects created by
humans for a specific purpose. A statue is sometimes created to fulfill a specific need or is
tailored for serving a certain purpose (Sedyawati, 1980, p. 213).
To date, several studies, both descriptive and philosophical, have been conducted on the
statues of Buddha. However, they have often excluded detailed descriptions of the artistic
style of Tathagata statues found at Borobudur. Therefore, in this study, we focus on the artistic style of Tathagata statues at Borobudur, which possess unique features similar to other
statues in temples worldwide.
Statues are seen as a commemoration marking the success of silpins (artists) in transforming ideas into archaeological artifacts. To assess the intelligence of our local medieval artists,
we need to conduct an in-depth analysis of their works. That being said, this study relies on
the data collected specifically to gain a deep understanding of Tathagata Buddha statues at
Borobudur. Furthermore, we use the hypothesis proposed by E.B. Vogler (1948) to assess the
level of creativity of the artists. Thus, the objective of this study is to discuss the creativity of
the artists by examining the Tathagata statues on the Rupadhatu level at Borobudur.
2
RESEARCH METHODS
The research on the relationship between the creativity of the artists and the artistic style of
Tathagata statues began by collecting the relevant data. The data collection process involves
literature reviews and field observations to obtain data related to the statues of Tathagata.
Field observation is considered the most appropriate method for data collection as it allows
direct access to the research object.
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In conducting field observation, the specific parts of Tathagata statues on the Rupadhatu
level at Borobudur were also measured. The measuring process was carried out by the maintenance technicians of Borobudur. The purpose of this step is to get the detailed dimensions
of Tathagata statues. The dimensions of the statues’ head and body, which were the objects
of observation in this study, were taken. Later, the collected data were analyzed. In the data
analysis step, data collected from both literature reviews and field observation were processed. A further analysis was conducted by synthesizing the artifactual data. Furthermore,
the analysis was also carried out using Vogler’s hypothesis about the nature of bound art.
Ultimately, the results of this study are expected to improve our understanding on the nature
of Tathagata statues on the Rupadhatu level at Borobudur.
2.1
Tathagata statues on the Rupadhatu level at Borobudur
At Borobudur, the Buddha statues, which are found on top of the temple’s balustrades, are
called Tathagata. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the term Tathagata is derived from
Sanskrit, which refers to Siddhartha Gautama as Buddha. In general, Tathagata in Buddhism means someone (tatha) who departs or arrives. It refers to the history of Buddha,
about his past and future life, and how one can achieve enlightenment. Tathagatagarbhasutra, a Mahayana Buddhist scripture, contains a brief explanation of Tathagata, describing
it as the very important from Buddha’s perspective of life. In the development of Mahayana
Buddhism, the term and concept of Tathagata becomes an embodiment of Buddha, which is
hidden inside every person (Zimmerman, 2002: 39).
Tathagata, which serves as a solid manifestation of Buddha, exhibits detailed information
on the experiences and achievements of Buddha. These experiences and achievements demonstrate a series of rituals practiced by Buddha in order to gain enlightenment and to share
his insights to the human race. In the process, the concept of Tathagata is later manifested
in the form of statues (Zimmerman, 2002: 40). This concept is confirmed by the presence of
Tathagata statues on the upper level at Borobudur. Tathagata is designed to show the experiences of a yogin as dictated by Buddha (Coomaraswamy, 1998: 58). All of these experiences
are embodied in five Tathagata statues.
The Tathagata statues are spread and cover almost the entire area of Borobudur. The first
level of the temple is an empty court without any statues. Statues began to appear on the first
terrace located on the first balustrade of the temple. Furthermore, the Tathagata statues are
also found on the balustrades from the second to fifth level of Borobudur.
In total, 504 Tathagata statues are found in Borobudur, 432 of which are located on the
Rupadhatu level, and the rest are found on the Arupadhatu. As the scope of this study is
limited to examining statues located on the Rupadhatu level, we restrict observation up to the
first to fifth terraces of Borobudur.
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The first and second balustrades have 104 statues, while the third balustrade has 88 statues.
The numbers of statues on the fourth and fifth levels are 72 and 64, respectively.
It is indeed acceptable to refer to the statues in all four directions of Borobudur, namely
North, East, South, and West. On the basis of this fact, it is possible to assume that every
side has the same number of statues. There are 26 statutes on each side of the first and second
terraces. The next two terraces have 22 and 18 statues, respectively, on each side. Finally, the
fifth terrace has 16 statues.
However, during our observation, we found many of the Tathagata statues to be damaged
slightly or missing even their entire body parts (head, shoulders, and limbs). Therefore, it was
decided to categorize these statues on the basis of their condition: intact, damaged (headless), and lost.
Referring to Table 1, in this study, we focus only on statues that were fully intact, as they
are free from any damage that can complicate the analysis process. Here, we expect to provide some restoration ideas for the damaged Tathagata statues. The state of “wholeness” of
a statue can also be measured by referring to the basic teachings of Panca Tathagata (Five
Tathagatas) in Buddhist teachings. Panca Tathagata is also known as the concept of the five
manifestations of Buddha’s radiance, which also serves as the basis of this study. Therefore,
the object of this study is limited to the statues that are categorized as “whole” on the basis
of the Panca Tathagata and their locations.
In this study, we use an approach based on the journey of Buddha as depicted in the relief
panels at Borobudur. According to records, this approach does not use the usual cardinal
directions as a reference. On the basis of the journey of Buddha, Borobudur is divided into
Table 1.
List of the damaged and undamaged (intact) statues on the Rupadhatu level.
Number of statues based on their condition
Estimated number of statues on every balustrade
Statue condition(s)
I
II
III
IV
V
Total
Intact
Damaged (headless)
Lost
Total
37
59
8
104
37
59
8
104
47
35
5
87
46
23
3
72
42
18
4
64
209
194
29
432
Figure 1. Four-sector arrangement of Borobudur.
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four sectors, namely the Buddhajati (the southeastern part of Borobudur), the Sambodhi (the
southwestern part of Borobudur), the Dharmmacakrapravartana (the northwestern part of
Borobudur), and the Parinirvana (the northeastern part of Borobudur). The journey of Buddha can be observed from the relief panels engraved on the walls of Borobudur (Munandar,
2012: 68).
Agus Aris Munandar (2012: 68), in his book Proxemic Relief Candi-candi Abad ke-8–10
(The Relief Proxemics of Eighth Century Temples), explained that the life of Siddhartha
Gautama is illustrated by the four sectors of Borobudur. In the Buddhajati sector, there is
a Buddhajati symbol that represents the living phase. This sector is located at the southeast
side, between the east and west stairways of Borobudur. Meanwhile, the period in which
Gautama received his enlightenment can be seen in the Sambodhi sector, located at the southwest side, the area between the south and west stairways of the temple. Dharmmacakrapravartana represents the first teaching experience of Gautama. This sector is located in the
northwest area, between the west and north stairways. The last sector, Parinirvana, depicts
Buddha as he reaches Nirvana. The Parinirvana is located in the northeast area, between the
north and east stairways.
The sector division itself is vital in the way the reliefs are arranged at Borobudur. It is possible to observe other parts of Borobudur by observing the phases of the journey of Buddha.
By examining the arrangement of these sectors, it is interesting to observe the Tathagata statues, from which we may deduce that the artistic style of Tathagata statues is closely related
to the journey of Buddha, as depicted in all the four sectors at Borobudur. According to
Munandar (2012), all the sectors narrating Buddha’s pilgrimage are related to the story told
in the Lalitawistara relief panels, which is very much possible. Therefore, investigating the
aforementioned four sectors of Borobudur is crucial in supporting the analysis of Tathagata
statues in order to determine how the journey of Buddha is depicted and embodied in the
Tathagata statues at Borobudur.
2.2
Form of artistic freedom in sculpting the Tathagata statues on the Rupadhatu level
at Borobudur
In general, the depiction of Tathagata statues on the Rupadhatu level is almost identical to
that of Tathagata statues found in other temples. The position of a Tathagata statue, especially its hand position or mudra, at every sector exemplifies Buddha’s pilgrimage in accordance with the Buddhist teachings and the life story of Buddha. This shows that the creation
of a statue follows a specific religious teaching, Mahayana Buddhism in this case.
Nonetheless, as it is realized, the sculpting of Tathagata statues at Borobudur disproves
the theory of unbound nature (gebonden) of an artwork as suggested by E.B. Vogler. This
argument is supported by the following data.
2.3
The difference in the iconometric measurement of the statues’ heads
The embodiment of Tathagata statues on the Rupadhatu level has a different iconometric
measurement on the head element from that of the other four sectors of the temple. This
different iconometric measurement has an impact on the radiant sense or the bhawa that
serves as a reference in the creation of a sculpture. Furthermore, each statue, with a different
iconometric element, will generate a different bhawa, thus giving a different impression to
observers and connoisseurs of statues.
A holy book was used as guidance for the sculpting of the statues, namely Sipasastra,
as mentioned in the previous chapter. It is a collection of several holy books of different
sizes, namely Cilparatna, Amsubhedagama, Karanagama, Vaikhasagama, Brhat Samhita,
and Pratilaksanam (Rao 1920: 44). In addition to the holy book of Manasara-Silpasastra,
other holy books are believed to contain the description of the Borobudur temple, namely
Sang Hyang Kamahayanan. This holy book contains information about the religious background of Borobudur. To date, it has been a practically difficult task to determine the
major source of reference regarding the iconography and iconometry in the sculpting of
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Tathagata statues at Borobudur. Therefore, many experts are still conducting research on
this particular topic.
Two elements with different iconometry measurements are always involved in the sculpting
of Tathagata statues on the Rupadhatu level of Borobudur. The difference in the measurement is evident in the head of the statue. This difference inevitably results in the different
impression and aura projected by the statue. This is related to one of the sad-darsana conditions, which is in turn related to the bhawa or the radiant sense. This iconometric difference
can be seen in the element of ushnisa and the length of the lips of the statue. It is interesting
to note that this iconometric difference is shown in all statues at every sector (Borobudur
Conservation Hall (2013). Kearsitekturan Candi Borobudur (Architecture of Borobudur Temple). Yogyakarta: Balai Konservasi Borobudur).
One of the sectors shows an exact iconometric size for each statue; however, it is different from the statues at the other sectors. In the Buddhajati sector, the Tathagata statues are
assembled in the terraces from the first to fourth levels with the highest ushnisa to other
statues in Buddhajati. The height of ushnisa decreases at the Samboddhi and Dharmmacakrapravartana sectors; however, it increases at the Parinirvana sector. Increased ushnisa height
in the Parinirvana statue emphasizes the beauty of the statue, which in this sector displays
the position of abhaya-mudra. The measurement of the ushnisa elements in the sculpting of
the statues at the aforementioned four sectors, from the first to fourth terraces, is believed to
be closely related to the tale of the journey of Buddha. The height of the ushnisa will impart
a certain impression on the observers, so that they will come to know the lessons taught by
the journey of Buddha.
The iconography of the statues on the fifth terrace is different from that of the statues from
the first to fourth terraces in the four sectors. There is a significant decrease in the ushnisa size
compared to that of the statues from the first to fourth terraces. This decreased may be due
to a technical problem related to the structure of Borobudur, which becomes narrower with
the passage of time to reduce the load on the temple.
Another unique element on each of the statues at each sector at Borobudur is the length
of the lips. The longest lips can be found in the statues at Parinirvana sector. The shift in size
of statues is similar to that in the ushnisa statues. The relatively long lips can be found at the
Buddhajati and Parinirvana sectors; meanwhile, the length of the lips begins to decrease at the
Samboddi and Dharmmacakrapravartana sectors. Relatively longer lips can impart a sense of
enjoyment to the observers. This is related to the journey of Buddha at the Buddhajati and
Parinirvana sectors. The length of the lips of the statues at the Sambodhi and Dharmmacakrapravartana sectors gives the impression of stiffness and deep concentration the statues are
involved in.
Table 2.
Measurement of statue heads at Borobudur Temple.
Tathagata statues
Head element
1. Ushnisa
height
2. Ushnisa
circumference
3. Distance
between
the eyes
4. Width of
the eyelids
5. Length
of lips
Akhsobyat
the Buddhajati
Sector
7.5 cm
37 cm
4 cm
5 cm
7 cm
Akhsobyat
the Buddhajati
Sector
1. Ushnisa
height
2. Ushnisa
circumference
3. Distance
between
the eyes
4. Width of the
eyelids
5. Length of
the lips
7.5 cm
37 cm
4 cm
5 cm
7 cm
Akhsobyat
the Buddhajati
Sector
1. Ushnisa
height
2. Ushnisa
circumference
3. Distance
between
the eyes
4. Width of
the eyelids
5. Length of
the lips
7.5 cm
37 cm
4 cm
5 cm
7 cm
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It is very interesting to note that even the slightest difference in iconometry can give a very
different impression. The provision of the iconometry difference with regard to the element
of the statues is found in the set of rules governing the creation of Tathagata statues. Therefore, the pattern of the iconometric difference in the Tathagata statues at Borobudur shows
the freedom in deciding the expression of statues, which will impart the desired impression
of the journey of Buddha to the observers.
2.4
The six conditions in the creation of a statue that does not have to be realized according
to the holy book
The embodiment of Tathagata statues on the Rupadhatu level at Borobudur does not
always follow the guidelines with regard to the artworks of the sculpture. In fact, this study
reveals that a condition known as the warnikabhangga was not implemented in the creation
of Tathagata statues at Borobudur. Other conditions, such as rupabedha, sadrsya pranana,
bhawa, and lawanya, were implemented in the Tathagata statues on the Rupadhatu level at
Borobudur.
Sad-darsana is a criterion that needs to be fulfilled in the making of statues. This is because
sad-darsana is an esthetic principle from India that is used in the making of Hindu and Buddhist artworks. Rupabedha requirement is clearly shown in the mudra of Tathagata statues
on the Rupadhatu level at Borobudur, which helps observers in differentiating statues in every
sector. It is the same as the sadrsya principle, which frames the rules regarding similarity and
vision. It is evident that the statue is depicting a man sitting with crossed legs and doing the
three hand poses. The rules of pramana, or the conformity of measurement, are also shown
in the statues. The proportion of many elements is so clear that every observer can observe
the proportion of the statues. Another condition is the bhawa, the radiant sense, or the aura,
which is evident in the Tathagata statues on the Rupadhatu level at Borobudur. All statues
project a profound impression to the viewers. On the contrary, an additional requirement
in creating a statue is called the lawanya condition, which is related to the beauty aspect in
statues. Profound impression from the bhawa is complemented by the lawanya. The presence
of lawanya gives an appeal, which will allow the observers to enjoy the beauty of Tathagata.
Several aforementioned conditions are seen on Tathagata statues on the Rupadhatu level
of the temple. Nevertheless, the warnikabhangga condition is not shown on the statues. The
statues did not undergo the coloring process, in contrast to statues in India. This proves that,
in the sculpting of statues, the condition with regard to the creation, that is, sad-darsana,
does not have to be followed, and the case in point was the coloring of Tathagata statues
at Borobudur. Coloring in this case is applying common colors (primary and secondary
colors such as red, yellow, green, and blue). This condition was not implemented maybe
due to a technical or some other reason. Therefore, it can be concluded that the condition
with regard to statue making, despite being mentioned in the holy book, does not have to
be followed.
However, the warnikabhangga condition may have to be explored further. The condition
Warnikabhangga governs the coloring of statues that is not implemented in the Tathagata
statues at Borobudur. Nevertheless, colors are assumed to be used on the statues from the
play of lighting and the sunlight passing through Borobudur. The play of colors on Tathagata statues can be observed from sunrise to sunset. In any case, this study does not cover
the warnikabhangga condition as used in the Tathagata statues at Borobudur any further.
Therefore, a specific research on the subject may be required in this aspect.
2.5
Statues that possibly went through changes
Vogler (1949) stated that the changes occurring in artistic styles in the development of art in
Java–Hindu are due to style mixing (stijlvermenging). Each component undergoes a unique
development stage, and it does not specifically occur in one artwork. Each identifiable artistic
style is an amalgam of its basic components with added variations. This statement needs to
be verified with regard to a unique Tathagata statue at Borobudur.
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The reason behind the creation of this unique statue is still unclear and being studied,
which may be related to a religious background or the result of forcing an artist. The reason
behind the difference in parts of the statue cannot be found in the holy book. Therefore, the
mere existence of the unique statue proves that the character of an artwork is not bound as
previously stated by E.B. Vogler.
Throughout its development in many areas, uniqueness or individualistic style can be
clearly observed in example statues in other areas. The shapes of the statues, in which their
iconography cannot be identified clearly, may be because the teachings of Hindu and Buddhism in Indonesia had absorbed the traditional belief of the people. Well-known Hindu
Gods were given features and characters that are not mentioned in conventional religious
scriptures. These additional gods are referred to as Gramadewata, whose statues show that
although the original feature of the statue was taken from the holy book, it was evolving in
the later development; it was adjusted to meet the demands of the ancient Javanese society,
especially the need of the silpin or the artist who created the statue artworks.
3
CONCLUSION
This study shows that the free and unbound characteristic of an artwork is shown through
the difference of the iconometry in the elements of the heads of the statues, that is, the
iconometric dimensions of the ushnisa and the length of the statues’ lips. This iconometric
difference influences the bhawa, which, being created from every statue, possesses a different
iconometric element that gives a different impression to those who enjoy the artwork of the
statues. The difference between these two iconometries is shown in all statues in every sector. This difference reveals a certain pattern that needs to be interpreted. The skill of statue
making and the patterning clearly highlighted the creativity of the silpin that created the
Tathagata statues at Borobudur.
REFERENCES
Balai Konservasi Borobudur (Borobudur Consertvation Hall). (2013) Kearsitekturan Candi Borobudur
(Architecture of Borobudur Temple). Yogyakarta: Balai Konservasi Borobudur.
Battacharyya, B. (1958) The Indian Buddhist iconography. Calcutta: Firma K.L. Munkhopadhyay.
Bernet Kempers, A.J. (1959) Ancient Indonesian art. The Netherlands: C.P.J. Van Der Peet.
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Coomaraswamy, A.K. (1998) Elements of Buddhist iconography. New Delhi: Munshiram Manorhalal.
Coomaraswamy, A.K. (1999) Hinduism and Buddhism. New Delhi: Munshiram Manorhalal.
Dark, K.R. (1995) Theoretical archaeology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Glubok, S. (1969) The Art of India. London: Collier.
Holt, C. (1967) Art in Indonesia. New York: Cornell University.
Huntington, J.C. (1994) The iconography of Borobudur revisited. In Klokke, M.J. & Pauline L.S. (Eds.)
The concept of Slesa and Sarva (Buddha) Kaya in ancient Indonesian sculpture. The Netherlands:
KITLV.
Kar, C. (1956) Classical Indian sculpture: 300 B.C. to A.D 500. London: Alec Tiranti LTD.
Krom, N.J. (1927) Barabudur: archaeological description, Volume 2. India: The Hague Martinus
Nijhoff.
Magetsari, N. (1982) Pemujaan Tathagata di Jawa Tengah pada abad ke-9 (The Tathagata worshipping
in Central Java in the 19th Century). Depok: FSUI.
Maulana, R. (1987) Hiasan badan pada masa Hindu Buddha di Jawa pada estetika dalam arkeologi Indonesia (Body decoration in the Hindu Buddha era on the aesthetics in the archeology of Indonesia),
Archeological Scientific Discussion II. Jakarta: Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Indonesia (Indonesia’s
Center for Research in Archaeology).
Maulana, R. (1996) Perkembangan gaya seni arca di Indonesia dalam laporan penelitian FIB UI (The
statue art style development in Indonesia in the FIB UI research report). Depok: FIB UI.
Munandar, A.A. (2003) Aksamala. Bogor: Jaskarindo Pandukarya.
Munandar, A.A. (2003) Laporan penelitian: Arca Prajnaparamita sebagai perwujudan tokoh (Research
report: Prajnaparamita Statue as the realization of a figure). [Thesis] Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan
Budaya: Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia.
Munandar, A.A. (2012) Proxemic relief candi-candi abad ke-8–10 (The temple relief proxemics of the
8–10 Centuries). Jakarta: Wedatama Widyasastra.
Rao, T.A.G. (1920) Talamana or iconometry. Calcutta: Superintendent Government.
Sahai, B. (1975) Iconography of minor Hindu and Buddhist deities. New Delhi: Abhinav.
Sedyawati, E. (1980) Pemerincian unsur dalam analisa seni arca dalam penelitian ilmiah arkeologi (The
elaboration of elements in the statue art analysis in archeological scientific research). Jakarta: Pusat
Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional.
Sedyawati, E. (1981) Pertumbuhan seni pertunjukan (The growth of performing arts). Jakarta: Sinar
Harapan.
Sedyawati, E. (1985) Pengarcaan Ganesha masa Kadiri dan Singhasari: Sebuah tinjauan sejarah kesenian
(Ganesha statuing during the Kendiri and Singhasari eras: A review of art history). Depok: FSUI.
Vogler, E.B. (1949) De monstercop uit het omlijstingsornament van tempeldoorgangen en-nissen: in de
Hindoe-Javaanse bouwkunst. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Zimmerman, M. (2002) A Buddha within: The Tathagatagarbhasutra, the earliest exposition of the
Buddha-nature teaching in India. Tokyo: Soka University.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Spatial narrative in a traditional Sundanese village
T. Christomy
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: One of the most important strategies employed by indigenous people
when dealing with change is assigning cultural markers to the concept of space. This
process creates a symbolic demarcation between what can be accessed by ‘outsiders’ and
what remains to be the privilege of insiders. Such cultural mechanism is highly effective for
some indigenous people (masyarakat adat). In addition to helping the community fulfill the
obligation to continue the legacy of their ancestors, the mechanism also serves as a means
for managing tensions brought about by change that may weaken the customary foundation
of the indigenous community. In reality, this process that the community undertakes may be
challenged by various interests, including those coming from the in-group, especially from
the young generation that has been initiated to these changes. To understand this issue, I will
discuss the narrative of space as one of the most important strategies related to the identity
awareness and the spatial construction of Sundanese indigenous communities.
1
INTRODUCTION
Although modernization has affected various aspects of Sundanese people, there remain
some communities that still preserve ancient traditions in various ways, such as those found
in Baduy, Kampung Naga, Cigugur, and Pamijahan. This paper concentrates on the cultural
narrative of space and place of Cigugur and Pamijahan communities. These two kampongs
share a similar mythical landscape because of their strong historical connection with the
ancient West Javanese kingdoms of Sunda, Galuh, Galunggung, and Pajajaran. Despite
their effort to preserve their traditional ways of life, these communities have been frequently
challenged by various influences, forcing them to continuously reconstruct their position
as part of Pasundan (Tatar Sunda). Cigugur, a peaceful and beautiful area on the slopes
of Mount Ciremai, is well-known as the birthplace of Sunda Wiwitan. This community
experienced various encounters with political forces during the colonial era, the 1960s, and
the New Order era; the latter took the form of various prohibitions imposed on them by the
government as part of the re-signification process of their local faiths. Meanwhile, Pamijahan,
which originally served as the centre of Tarekat Shattariyah (the Shattariyah congregation)
and its teachings (Christomy, 2008), has now become a destination for pilgrims from all
over Indonesia who constantly flock the area. Development over the years has compelled
the Pamijahan community to deal with changes coming both from outside and around their
kampong. One of the most important strategies which the community frequently adopts when
faced with inevitable changes is strengthening or reestablishing cultural markers attached to
the concept of space. This measure is taken to establish a kind of symbolic demarcation
between what can be accessed by outsiders and what remains the privilege of the insiders. In
some indigenous communities (kampung adat), such cultural mechanism is highly effective
and meaningful. In addition to helping the community to fulfill the obligation to continue
the legacy of their ancestors, such mechanism also serves as a tool for managing tensions
brought about by change which may weaken the customary foundation of the community in
the long run.
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Indigenous communities and their own conception of cultural space are often challenged
by the existence of different conceptions of space. For instance, they have to face the presence
of other small political units which, as part of the official government administration system,
are superimposed on the existing cultural landscape. In such a case, coexistence is created
between the indigenous societies (with all of its accompanying traditions and systems) and
local government units, such as villages (desa), community associations (rukun warga or RW),
or neighborhood associations (rukun tetangga or RT), which are compulsorily added to their
cultural landscape. Ambiguities and disputes might arise when members of the community
are compelled to adhere to a different conception of space in a different context.
A community’s signification of space often has to face challenges, not only in the form of
external influences, but also in the form of internal mechanisms. This mechanism involves the
young generation that have somewhat lost access to their forebears’ cultural competence and
knowledge because of various factors, such as migration, the ineffectual process of cultural
inheriting, and various challenges posed by information technology which provides the young
generation with new perspectives on the future. In fact, there are several indigenous communities in West Java that seem to remain unable to establish their own version of tourism
industry (a modern concept initially introduced by the regional government) and to devise
their own ways to deal with this development. Such decisions are related to whether they
will fully welcome this concept of tourism or establish a clear demarcation between “external” and “internal” realms, which must not be allowed to overlap at all costs. Such critical
measure with regard to the “internal” realm was taken in 2006 by the Kampung Naga community, which refused to welcome large groups of tourists because they thought that such
visits would disturb the community members in general and would only benefit the regional
government in the form of parking fees, among other factors. There is a growing consternation as to whether they can really open their community to the general public as part of the
larger industry, an idea that has never been part of their traditional signifying order. Moreover, there also develops an atmosphere of contestation and competition amongst neighboring
indigenous communities over access to symbolic assets available within their territory as a
consequence of these changes.
Such situation leads to the question regarding the role of space narrative in relation to the
cultural landscape of indigenous communities. The answer to this question will provide us
with a deeper understanding of how space is translated into a mnemonic device that, in Fox’s
terms (1997), can be preserved, transformed, and memorized. To answer this question, I shall
examine how a cultural landscape is constructed within the awareness of the Sundanese people in two indigenous communities: Pamijahan and Cigugur.
Several cultural landscapes in West Javanese traditional kampongs are strongly related
to a certain mythical space which has long become a source of legitimacy for a number of
regional leaders. Space serves as an extension of the existence of ancestral figures recorded
in traditional narratives and reflected in the form of various spatial metaphors. Due to their
sacred nature, the elaborations of these metaphors demand certain competence on the part
of local elders. Moreover, several anthropological studies in the eastern Indonesia show that
space is never a fixed entity but is always dependent on the context where it operates and from
which perspective it is signified (Fox, 1997; Parmentier, 1987).
The study of space is categorized into two general divisions. The first one sees space from
the Cartesian paradigm, and the second is sees space as an inseparable part of the signification process. In the latter perspective, space is considered as an entity which is socially constructed and personally experienced at the same time (Fox, 1997, p. 1). This paper adopts the
second approach supported by the application of relevant theses and theories from anthropology, especially those related to the key concepts of “landscape”, “space”, and “place”
as proposed by Fox (1997, p. 1). He argues that cultural categories of space can be used to
explain how human knowledge is “preserved”, “transformed”, and “memorized.” He states,
“Their impact is to stress the multiplicity of ways in which places are socially constructed
and personally experienced” (Fox, 1997, p. 3). Fox starts his argument by explaining the relationship between the “genealogy” and “itinerary of natural entity within the conception of
space as prevailing in Roti Island (1997).” Of his many important findings, the most relevant
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to this paper is the concept of “precedence,” which can explain why a community’s privilege
and access to a particular space may be resented by other neighboring communities because
those communities adhere to a different metaphor or “trajectory of the path,” in spite of the
fact that they share the same cultural root. Moreover, each of the kampongs may even have
more than one space-based cultural reference, which in practice can be used randomly and
potentially be manipulated by external influences. Invented by Fox, foxtopogeny has become
an instrument to record a community’s genealogy in the form of space. This is based on the
assumption that genealogy relies on personal names and topogeny on place names. In both,
“points of origin and termination are critical” (Fox 1997, 101). In other words, the historical
narrative, which has been reflected in the “genealogy” can be synchronically perpetuated in
the form of “topogeny”.
What was discovered by Fox in Roti Island (1997) is in line with what had been previously discovered by Parmentier (1987) in Belauan Island through his concept of “semiotic
of trajectory.” Parmentier explains that progression of place can form a network, which will
eventually form a space (Parmentier, 1987).
Another conception of space which is relevant to this study is that proposed by Pannel
(1997). He continues Fox’s argument (1997) and incorporates it into de Certau’s conception
of space within the perspective of cultural geography. In his opinion, space is considered as
an individual’s or a group of individual’s arena of social practice, while place is considered as
an “ordered representation,” with both “place” and “space” occupying the same landscape
(Pannel 1997, 63). In my previous study, I defined space as an area of experience which is
constructed from each individual’s journey of life, which can be analogized to a pathway:
“A criss-crossing of the path and texts creates a space which is also open to interpretation”
(Christomy, 2008, pp. 65–66).
2
THE SACRED LANDSCAPE
The spatial arrangement of pre-Islamic Sundanese indigenous communities is generally
influenced by their cosmology, observing the world as consisting of three layers, which are
the upper world, the middle world, and the netherworld. Human beings occupy the middle
world, which is an imaginary space where humans interact with each other and perform
activities. This space is sometimes considered as a “neutral” space, albeit full of traps and
challenges.
In spite of this general cosmology, not all indigenous communities strictly adhere to such
spatial arrangement. In several places, there are communities whose development forms an
integral part of the development of Islam or is at least strongly related to Islam, such as
Pamijahan. Moreover, there are also indigenous communities whose cultural landscape is
influenced by both Islamic and Sundanese cultures. Cigugur can be considered as belonging
to this category because the community’s ancestors were once part of the syncretistic Islamic
Javanese/Sundanese culture, even though its Sundanese features have become more prominent over time.
3
METAPHOR OF CLOSENESS
In Sundanese communities, cultural landscape is constructed symbolically from various narratives. One of the most important narratives for constructing a strong cultural landscape
is the one which is related to genealogy. Cigugur Kampong was established by Madrais, an
ancient figure who is believed to be a descendant of a Sultan of Cirebon but had to travel
from place to place in his youth in search of knowledge. Based on the testimony given by
Prince Djatikusuma (Madrais’ grandson) during my field work, Madrais was obliged to learn
and acquire the “paramount knowledge,” as it was the custom amongst the Sultan’s descendants. This “paramount knowledge” could be obtained by firstly learning Islam at various
pesantren (Islamic boarding schools). Upon completion of their religious study, these royal
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descendants, by their own free will and effort, had to search for more knowledge in the real
world by visiting places associated with Sundanese culture and values. These places were
considered haunted and frightening places by many people at that time. Madrais, however, is
said to have succeeded in seeking knowledge, completing his journey safely, and settling in a
region which was to become Cigugur Kampong.
For Madrais’ followers, his narrative of the journey is believed to be a pre-established
fact and constitutes part of the community’s collective conciousness. In his study of Amaya
and Wulur communities, Pannel identifies a strong relationship between “landscape” and
“pathway” whose intersection gives rise to what he calls “topostories,” which are “the unique
journeys of each of the beings and places where they stopped, served to define a number
of discrete topographic estates, which today are linked to the different ‘houses’ in Amaya”
(1997, 164).
In this context, Pannel wants to demonstrate that a “place” is not simply “established,” but
its establishment must be somewhat connected to a certain power which does not come from
the figure performing the journey itself, but from “above”, which, in Islamic terms, refers to
the power of destiny. Such “divine” power is considered to operate in Madrais’ journey narrative. Pannel’s findings also apply to our Cigugur case in many respects, with a little variation
in detail. For instance, the figure in Pannel’s case is a supernatural being, not a real human
as in our Cigugur case. Moreover, according to the local narrative, the young Madrais left
the Islamic boarding school and embarked on his journey for knowledge of his own volition,
solely because he was encouraged to do so by the “divine inspiration,” a power greater than
his. The Cigugur narrative places a great emphasis on the figure of Madrais as the main actor
who tried his best to interpret the divine inspiration he received. Such travel tropes are common in congregational communities (tarekat or tariqa) that associate a search for knowledge
with a journey. However, when I asked Prince Djatikusuma about this analogy, he diplomatically replied, “I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about it (tariqa). I only know ‘Sundanese
ways’.” In spite of this answer, it is clear for me that the journey has served as the foundation
of Cigugur community on the slopes of Mount Ciremai. It is also clear that, as shown by the
Cigugur case, when a particular place is strongly related to a narrative, it may serve as a cultural reference. This is in line with Pannel (1997, 165), “…stories and the landscape constitute
map; they encode or embed that which is perceived as customary and cultural.”
In this way, Cigugur is present as a cultural reference for the supporting community of the
Sunda Wiwitan faith. Even though many members of the Cigugur community have migrated
to various places in Java Island, the existence of Cigugur is still an important part of Sunda
Wiwitan, a collective knowledge which is reinforced annually and passed on through an
annual ceremony which can only be appropriately performed in Cigugur.
Cigugur’s landscape has changed, and the changes affect the community’s signifying order.
One such change is the overlap between the mythical and historical narratives of the society.
Prince Djatikusuma said that his ancestor did not come from Cigugur, but from Gebang, and
as it has been described above, this ancestor had to travel far to seek knowledge and ended
his journey in Cigugur. From the Prince’s statement, it can be assumed that Madrais belongs
to three prominent cultural backgrounds, which are Islamic, Javanese, and Sundanese. This
point will prove important in understanding the Cigugur community.
Islam was introduced to Pasundan by figures who had strong affinity with the Javanese
culture, and they went to West Java through Cirebon all the way down to southern Sunda or
through Banten to the hinterlands. Sundanese kingdoms and their kings soon had to accept
the fact that other kings in Javanese coastal areas who had converted to Islam became more
superior than them in terms of military and political powers. The Sundanese addressed this
situation by augmenting their pride and emphasizing the premise that Sunda could never
be defeated by Islamic forces. Because of this, in the Sundanese oral tradition, the King of
Pajajaran is never described as being killed in a battle, but experiencing nghyang (turning
into a supernatural being). To this day, his fervent followers still believe that his spirit can
still be seen in certain places in southern West Java. In my opinion, the Sundanese people
must have found it difficult to accept Islam and admit the defeat of their Sundanese ancestors at the same time. Their position concerning this unpalatable truth remains inconclusive.
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In such situation, the compromise is to mix various cultural features which may not necessarily be compatible with each other but still operate within the context of Cigugur landscape. In the Cigugur case, such ambiguity is addressed by adopting a more flexible position
with regard to external influences and by opening access to other belief systems, such as
Catholicism, which has also penetrated into Cigugur cultural landscape (Christomy, 2013).
Forced by an escalating political tension in 1960s and the imposition of being categorized
into one of the five state-recognized religions, Cigugur customary leaders decided to convert
into Catholicism, along with a number of their followers. However, this situation has been
reversed by their descendants. The new generations of Cigugur customary leaders encourage
those who have converted into Catholicism to return to their original faith. In a short-term
fieldwork in 2013, I was warmly welcomed by Prince Djatikusuma, an important figurehead
of Sunda Wiwitan. According to him, patrilineal lineage is very important in the Sunda
Karawitan faith. Because of this, in his opinion, daughters may be permitted to convert into
Islam, Catholicism, or any other religions, but sons have to preserve their ancestral faith.
Visitors when visiting Cigugur will find a palace-like building that has is a reception hall
called Paseban. This is Cigugur’s main attraction and the centre from which Madrais’ teachings are developed and learned. Paseban has been designated as a central coordinate or point
of direction to which the community members may return and from which they reproduce a
new signification system. Paseban serves as a collective knowledge or signifying order which
has to be preserved. Paseban is also intended as a landmark to which community members
who have taken the road to churches or mosques can return.
The second traditional community is Pamijahan, which is located approximately 60 km
south of Tasikmalaya. Pamijahan is now growing into a popular destination for pilgrims who
regularly visit sacred places associated with the Nine Apostles (Wali Sanga), other influential
figureheads of ancient Islamic congregations throughout Java. No fewer than ten large buses
enter Pamijahan every day, carrying devout pilgrims who come not only from Java, but also
from Sumatera.
Pamijahan Kampong was once called Safar Wadi Kampong (Christomy, 2008). The name
“Safarwadi” was also mentioned in a report by de Haan who described the kampong as
part of Karang area which was quite notorious amongst the Dutch colonizers at that time
as a rebel territory (Haan, 1910). Shaykh Abd al Muhyi, one of the kampong’s ancestors, is
estimated to live between 1660 and 1715 (Krauss, 1995, p. 112), in the same era as Shaykh
Yusuf (Rinkes, 1910).
Manuscripts found during my fieldwork and in other places testify to the position of
Shaykh Abd al Muhyi as an important figure behind the development of the Shattariyah
congregation, not only in Pasundan, but also on Java Island in general (Christomy, 2008).
Even though no original writing of Shaykh Abd al Muhyi has been found, there are many
manuscripts written by his disciples which refer directly to Shaykh Abd al Muhyi as their
teacher. There is some doubt about the existence of Shaykh Abd al Muhyi (Krauss, 1995),
but, in my previous investigation, I was able to uncover many old manuscripts which can
provide evidence for his existence (Christomy, 2008).
Following the death of Shaykh Abd Muhyi, the area where he established his congregation
grew into a place of pilgrimage. Right now, the place is more commonly known as Pamijahan
than as Safarwadi, its original name. A large number of pilgrims come to this site to pray
at Shaykh Abd al Muhyi’s tomb and to visit several places believed to be the birthplace of
the Shattariyah congregation. Pilgrims usually come to Shaykh Abd al Muhyi’s tomb before
continuing their journey to Pamijahan Cave, which is known as a place of education for the
congregation members at that time. A number of serious pilgrims will also visit other places
around Pamijahan, such as Panyalahan Kampong, which is still genealogically related to
Pamijahan. The kampong’s rapid growth caught the interest of the regional government,
which then decided to build tourism infrastructure such as roads to provide easy access to
Pamijahan Kampong, a parking area to accommodate large interprovincial buses, and the
parking fee collection.
The increasing number of pilgrims brought its own problems. Conflicts arose, both within
the village and in other neighboring villages. There were questions regarding who was entitled
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to manage Shaykh Abd al Muhyi’s grave, Gua Keramat (Sacred Cave), and other important
artifacts. It culminated with an official legal investigation that was never completed. In the
midst of such contestation, appropriate strategies and responses to cultural narratives can
play an important role.
In both Pamijahan and Cigugur, blood ties have become an important metaphor that
becomes the point of reference where the coordinates of the places are formed. In the
Cigugur case, the reference point is Madrais; as an essential part of a collective memory,
his existence is symbolized by specific landmarks in the form of the Paseban and the palace. As tangible evidence that becomes central in the life of the community, the Paseban
and the palace must, in turn, be supported by the presence of male descendants who are
expected to fully understand all of the teachings of their predecessors. Therefore, Cigugur’s cultural landscape is not only marked by an abstract “map,” but also by a physical
“space” in Cigugur. This physical space is considered as a point of destination which
can lead the “lost” community members back to their true and original faith of Sunda
Wiwitan. The establishment of such a spatial reference point is very important. As a
cultural landscape, Cigugur has to cope with various external influences. In addition to
their traditional rivalry with Islamic groups, they now also have to deal with Catholicism.
Although Christianity in general has existed in Pasundan ever since the colonial era, it
had not been considered as a material problem in the Cigugur community until the mass
conversion of a large part of its members into Catholicism. In Cigugur, there is even a
growing tradition of Catholic pilgrimage to Gua Fatimah Sawer Rahmat, a local shrine
dedicated to the Virgin Mary, with a pilgrimage track built after the fashion of Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem (Christomy, 2013).
It is important to emphasize that Prince Djatikusuma has succeeded in reconverting
many members of the community into the Sunda Wiwitan faith. In a short conversation, he
expressed his belief that religion is only a “way,” while the essence of all religions is all the
same. What is even more important to reflect on is the Sundanese proverb “someah ka semah”
which literally means “be friendly to guests.” For Prince Djatikusuma, this proverb means
that his community is open to other beliefs as proven by its cultural landscape that shows the
existence of those beliefs in the society. For instance, Islam, which is aptly demonstrated by
the peaceful existence of many mosques for centuries, and Catholicism and Hinduism, which
are marked by the establishment of several temples and meditation centres around Prince
Djatikusuma’s palace. What the Prince intends to do is to construct a narrative which enables
elements of various belief systems to enter their community and, by doing so, strengthen
the position of the Sundanese faith in its centre as an overarching power which can embrace
those other major religions. In relation to this, Pannel, who elaborates de Certau’s concepts
of “space” and “place”, argues that “Space is thus the actualization, by the operation of
historical subjects, of what has already been created—place” (Pannel, 1997, p. 167). In the
eyes of his followers, Djatikusuma and his Paseban are considered as the supreme power
which has been able to “tame” other major religions and ideologies operating within the
community.
This observation confirms that the Cigugur community feel a great need to address the
influx of major religions by establishing a cultural narrative in the form of a place (the “paseban” hall) and a space (the “hade ka semah” proverb) which are intended to place Sunda as
the centre of everything. However, the same strategy is not found in Pamijahan. Pamijahan
is more concerned with the contestation over the landscape of pilgrimage sites and with the
question of the legitimacy to be the centre of all aspects of the pilgrimage—not only matters
pertaining to religious rituals, but also their impacts on the economy of the village. In both
Cigugur and Pamijahan cases, “trajectory of ancestors” is found to provide a clear demarcation as what can be designated as the imaginary “map”, “coordinate”, or “place” in de
Certau’s terms. However, the difference lies in the fact that the pattern of “space” narrative
in both villages is more directed inward, which might be due to several factors, such as the
limitation of the area of the villages, an increasing number of population, the community’s
relationship with neighboring villages, and the regional government.
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4
CONCLUSION
Historical narratives tend to be represented by markers that can serve both synchronic and
symbolic functions. These markers enable a community living in a particular era (synchronic)
to feel that they are able to give a signification to diachronic entities from their own perspective. Such symbolic situation can bring about transformation to the previously established
signification through the narrative of “sediment trace of activity.” Contestation at the level
of “space” is balanced by the construction of a “place” narrative, which can function as a
“map” directing the community members back to their point of origin. It is interesting to see
how the Cigugur community adopts a more flexible conception of “space” in order to place
their trajectory narrative at the centre of everything, precisely when external factors begin to
affect their overall cultural life. Furthermore, the narrative of origin plays an important role
in both communities because it greatly determines an individual’s position within a particular
space. Pamijahan has successfully amalgamated the Sundanese culture into the narrative of
the Nine Apostles, while Cigugur attempts to return to its original Sundanese conception of
space as part of the community’s effort to cope with changes.
REFERENCES
Christomy, T. (2008) Signs of Wali: Narratives at the Sacred Sites in Pamijahan Tasikmalaya. Canberra,
Research School Pacific and Asian Studies, the Australian National University.
Christomy, T. (2013) Narrating the Paths: The Case of Fatimah Sawer Rahmat, Cigugur Kuningan. Paper
presented at the 5th International Conference on Indonesian Studies, 13th–14th June 2013, Yogyakarta.
de Certau, M. (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California
Press.
de Certau, M. (1997a) Place and Landscape in Comparative Austronesian Perspective.” In: Fox, J.J.
The Poetic Power of Place: Comparative Perspectives on Austronesian Ideas of Locality. Canberra,
Research School Pacific and Asian Studies, the Australian National University. pp. 191–195.
De Haan, F. (1910) de Preanger-Regenschappen onder het Nederlandsch bestuur tot 1811. Batavia, Bataviaasch Genotschap vn Kunsten enWeenschapen.
Fox, J.J. (1997b) The poetic power of place: Comparative perspectives on austronesian ideas of locality.
Canberra, Research School Pacific and Asian Studies, the Australian National University.
Krauss, W. (1995) An Enigmatic Saint: Sheykh Abdulmuhyi of Pamijahan (1640–1750). Indonesian
Circle 23, 65.
Pannel, S. (1997) From the Poetic of Place to the Politics of Space: Redefining Cultural Landscapes
on Damer, Southeast Maluku.” In: Fox, J.J. The Poetic Power of Place: Comparative Perspectives on
Austronesian Ideas of Locality. Canberra, Research School Pacific and Asian Studies, the Australian
National University. pp. 163–171.
Parmentier, R.J. (1987) The Sacred Remain: Myth, History, and Polity in Belau. Chicago, University of
Chicago Press.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Symbolic meaning of the Śrāddha ritual in the Merapi-Merbabu
Putru Kalĕpasan text
I.M. Suparta & T. Pudjiastuti
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: In this study, we examine the Putru Kalĕpasan text, which is one of the
religious texts in the Sastra-Ajar scriptorium in the Merapi-Merbabu manuscript. This text
is compiled with four palm-leaf manuscripts, namely L 42, L 222, L 271, and L 322, in the
manuscript collection of the National Library, Jakarta. The text contains detailed information
on the procedures of the ritual Śrāddha, known at the Old Javanese era. Here, we apply the
method of textual criticism to reveal the Putru Kalĕpasan texts. In addition, we apply religious
and content analysis techniques to understand the expression of thoughts and images of the
ancestor worship ritual called Hambukur ceremonies. The following conclusions are drawn
from this study: (1) the expression of offerings in Putru Kalĕpasan is an ongoing Old Javanese
religious thought passed on by the Sastra-Ajar tradition in the 16th century; (2) the slaughter
of animals used for offerings symbolizes purification of the soul of daśamala stains. Thus,
essentially, ruwatan in the Hambukur ritual is intended for the ordination of pitara to become
Dewa Pitara (Sanskrit: Pitr.ideva), a sacred ancestral spirit who “becomes a god” and is considered to reach kalĕpasan, so that the sacred spirit of the ancestor can return to heaven.
1
INTRODUCTION
Putru Kalĕpasan (hereinafter referred to as PK), the text examined in this study, is classified as
one of the genres in tutur – one of the four palm-leaf manuscripts (L 42, L 222, L 271, and L 322)
that contains the PK text with colophon and candrasangkala (which reads “Kuda gu(muliŋ-gu)
liŋ siti”, and is equivalent to number 7551) that is estimated to be written in the Śaka year 1557
(1635 AD). The four PK texts are included in the collection of the National Library, Jakarta.
This article is categorized as a religious literature work that is considered sacred and used as a
practical guide for a sanctification and ancestor worship ceremony known as the Śrāddha ritual in
the Old Javanese era. The word putru is not recorded in OJED (Zoetmulder, 1982), but is referred
to as putrĕhu (Sanskrit) in KBNW, a spelling that is found in Old Javanese (v.d. Tuuk, 1912). In
Monier-Williams (1994: 627), this word form is recorded as pitĕi-hū, “invoking the Pitr.is”, or pitr.
ihūya, which is in line with the form devahū or devahūya. Mamutru or amutru tradition is the reading manner of “rhythmic pronunciation” of the putru text in the purification of ancestral spirit
that is called Mamukur ( = Śrāddha), which is meant for guiding the journey to paradise.
Kalĕpasan (<lĕpas) is an Old Javanese terminology (“authentic” from the Archipelago) used
to describe a condition of inhibition, or freedom. The meaning of the term lĕpas is equivalent
to that of the word moks.a (Sanskrit); one of the meanings of the word moks.a directly refers to
“kalĕpasan” (Zoetmulder, 2011). The terms lĕpas, kalĕpasan, moks.a, and kamoks.an are more
intertwined with Yoga tradition, particularly related to as..taŋgayoga and laku tapa-brata.
2
AIMS AND BENEFITS
The purpose of this study is to specifically discuss the first part of the “content” of the PK
text that is compiled in the L 222 manuscript. Thus, it aims to examine the description of the
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rites of offerings in the tradition of the Śrāddha ritual, which also refers to Hatiwa-tiwa and
Hambukur rituals.
In addition, this study aims at revealing the symbolical meaning of the offerings of feeding
the ancestors as well as describing it in the PK text in the Merapi-Merbabu manuscript. Thus,
this study contributes to accomplish the historical data of the Śrāddha ritual known in the
Majapahit era on the basis of the religious manuscripts from Merapi-Merbabu tradition. In
fact, the contribution of this study is also important to understand a similar tradition of the
Śrāddha as far as it has been continued in Bali.
3
METHODS
Textual criticism is the main method used in this study to reveal the texts of Putru Kalĕpasan
(Robson, 1988). Besides, this study uses religious and content analyses to understand the
expression of thoughts, symbolical meaning, and images of ancestor worship ritual called
Hambukur ceremonies (Purwita, 1992). In that sense, the exposition of the aforementioned
rituals involves the discussion of Śrāddha that is practiced in the Old Javanese era (9th–15th
centuries AD) as revealed in several inscriptions and literary works produced in that period.
Merapi-Merbabu Putru Kalĕpasan text is a textual heritage that records and explains the rites
of Śrāddha (purification of ancestral spirits), which are related to the Indic society who lived
outside the Palace in the Old Javanese era as recorded and salvaged by the tradition.
Because Putru Kalĕpasan texts are written in Merbabu scripts or the so-called aksara Buda,
the first step taken was to transliterate it to Latin scripts for easy access. To understand
the meaning of the “content”, this analysis is completed by a translation into English. The
“content” of the text used as the source of thoughts and knowledge on religious issues is
classified into four parts, namely (1) the description of the type of animals to be sacrificed
for Hambukur or Śrāddha rituals (pp.1v-3v); (2) the description of gunung pitu that is believed
to be undergone by the préta and pitara of “duruŋ lĕpas” (pp. 3v-7r); (3) the depiction of the
journey of Saŋ Lĕpas or the Pitara God to paradise and the depiction of the 29 levels of
kahyaŋan (pp. 7v-15r); and (4) the closing of the text containing the teachings of Saŋhyaŋ
Dharma meant for the descendants to start practicing Karya Hayu (pp. 15r-15v).
4
DEPICTION OF THE ŚRĀDDHA RITUAL IN THE OLD JAVANESE ERA
The information on the ancestor worship ritual or Śrāddha in the Old Javanese can be
found, among others, in the Karang Tĕngah inscription from the Śaka year 746 (824 AD).
The historical information in the inscription explains the sculpting procedure in the ritual
that was prepared 12 years after the death and the cremation of King Indra or Ghananātha
(King Awan). According to Soekmono (1977), King Indra mentioned in Kelurak inscription (782 AD) died in 812 AD. Thus, the 12-year gap after his death would be in 824 AD, as
mentioned in the inscription. The myth of number 12 (12 days, 12 months, or 12 years) that
is seen as the perfect moment to conduct the Śrāddha ritual (both in the Old Javanese era and
in Bali) is symbolically related to the 12 tattwa Śiwa, which is explained in Bhuwana Kośa
scripture III.7–11 (Mirsha, 1994).
The next written information related to Śrāddha is revealed in the Śiwagr.ha inscription from
the Śaka year 778 (856 AD), in which it is mentioned that the dharma built by King Rakai
Pikatan- a placed that is called parhyaŋan – specifically called Śiwalaya or Śiwagr.ha, according
to Soekmono (1977), is an object meant for deceased kings who have reached the status of the
gods (“tĕwĕk bhat.āra ginawe sinaŋaskāra weh. .... ya ikana sīma puput mare bhat.āra”).
In the next development, the Śrāddha ritual procession is revealed in the Jiu I and III
inscriptions from the Śaka year 1408 (1486 AD). The notes in these inscriptions explain
that Dyah Ranawijaya held the Śrāddha ritual to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the
death of Śri Paduka Bhattara riŋ Dahanapura Saŋ Mokta riŋ Indrabhawana; he was Bhre
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Pandan Salas or Śri Adi Suraprabhawa, whose maiden name was Dyah Suraprabhawa Singhawikramawardhana (Soemadio, 1984; Djafar, 1986).
In addition to the data obtained from the inscriptions, the description of the Śrāddha ritual is
revealed in an interesting manner in the kakawin Nagarakr.tāgama, from pupuh LXIII to pupuh
LXIX (Pigeaud, 1960). The literary work explains how King Hayam Wuruk held the Śrāddha
ritual in the year Ś 1284 ( = 1362 AD) as a tribute to his grandmother named Rajapatni. The
ritual was held 12 years (dwidaśawars.a) after the death of Rajapatni (Pigeaud, 1962, IV).
Śrāddha ritual from the Majapahit era is in fact continued to be practiced regularly in the
Pitrayajña ritual by the Balinese as well as the Hindu-Tĕnggĕr societies (Pigeaud, 1962, IV).
Besides, the ritual is also deeply recorded within the collective memory of the Javanese society
as is evident in the life and belief of Kejawen. The term Kejawen or Agami Jawi itself is defined
as a set of Hindu–Buddhist beliefs and concepts with mystical tendency that is syncretized and
acknowledged as part of Islamic tradition in Indonesia (Koentjaraningrat, 1984).
The basic value of the Śrāddha ritual commonly known by the term Nyadran or Nyĕkar
(from: Sĕkar or Sĕkah) continues to be passed down and practiced regularly even at present.
Nyadran (N- + Śraddha + -ĕn) tradition for the followers of Kejawen is normally conducted
annually in the month of Ruwah (from the word Arwah or spirit). Nyadran and Nyĕkar (possibly derived from the word Sĕkah changed into Sĕkar or Nyĕkar) are a form of continuation from the Śrāddha tradition in the Old Javanese era. Sĕkah is a symbolic manifestation
of ancestral spirit that takes the form of flowers or sĕkar, termed as puspa-sarira in the
Mamukur ceremony.
5
ŚRĀDDHA RITUAL IN PUTRU KALĔPASAN
Religious knowledge related to traditional processions and offerings in the Śrāddha ritual
recorded in the PK text depicts several important aspects, including (1) hatiwa-tiwa ritual
and (2) hambukur ritual or Karya Hayu. The exposition on these two ritual aspects will be
explained below.
5.1
Hatiwa-tiwa ritual
The use of the term atiwa-tiwa that can be found in the PK text is not a new discovery. That
term is often found in both Old Javanese and Balinese manuscripts. In kakawin Rāmāyana
(Poerbatjaraka, 2010), it is explained that after the death of King Daśaratha, the Sang Bharata ordered the people to perform a cremation ceremony. Information about Atiwa-tiwa in
kakawin Rāmāyana can be read in the following quote:
“Huwus nira wĕruh ri hetu nira saŋ narendrār pĕjah[...]/Kinonira ta saŋ balādhika
tumunwa saŋ bhūpati/Maśoca ta maweh tilĕm sira rikaŋ tilĕmniŋ wulan/[...]”
(III.27a, 32a-c)
(Translation: “After knowing the cause of the death of the king [...]. It is instructed
to the mighty people to burn the (deceased) body of the king (Daśaratha). To purify
(the body), to hold the ceremony (tilĕm) at the night of the dark moon (tilĕm))”
The cremation ceremony of King Daśaratha revealed in kakakwin Rāmāyana is termed as
Tilĕm, which is conducted at Tilĕm night (dark moon). The use of this term is also revealed
in the Ādiparwa scripture 102.20–22 (Juynboll, 1906), which states:
“[...] Māti ta sira sĕdĕŋ yowana. Atyanta duh.ka Saŋ Gandhawatī, malara sirānaŋis.
Tan ucapakna lara Saŋ Ambalika [...] (tan pahiŋan). Ginawe ta ŋ pretatarpan.a, saha
widhi widhana, wineh śocāŋkĕn tilĕm, katĕka ri kaparikramaniŋ śuddha śrāddha.”
(Translation: “He (the Citrawirya) passed away when he was young. The Gandhawatī
was heartbroken, crying, and in perpetual suffering. The sadness of the Ambalika
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too was beyond words [...] endless. He held a ceremonial offering to the ancestral
spirit (pretatarpan.a) with a holy ritual every Tilĕm (dead moon), until the time of
the Śrāddha ritual for purification arrived).
A better description about this Atiwa-tiwa ritual in the Old Javanese can be found in the
Wirataparwa scripture that came from the same period as Ādiparwa that was written in
the era of King Dharmawangśa Tĕguh in the Śaka years 913–929 (991–1007 AD). In the
Wirataparwa scripture, it is written: “[...] inikĕtakĕnya ri śawa saŋ Kīcaka, irikaŋ kāla pituŋ
tabĕh tumūta yātriyatiwa-tiwa, umuśi deśa nikaŋ śmaśāna [...]” (Juynboll, 1912). Additional
information related to atiwa-tiwa is also available in several texts compiled under the four
manuscripts of PK, namely pilĕpasi setra (18r-18v), ŋĕntas-ĕntasan (18v-19r), tĕbus petrasasaje nira (20r-24v), puja pitara (24v-25v), hĕntas-ĕntasan-kalĕpasa nira Aji Dhaŋd.aŋ Gĕnd.is
(28r-28v), palilimbaŋan (54r-55v), and puja setra (55v-56r).
5.2
Hambukur ritual or “Karya Hayu” (Śrāddha)
The term Hambukur, also known as “Karya Hayu”, is recorded in the PK text in the expression “ri sampun kita mukti hambukur bhūmi śayana” (PK 76–89). In fact, its definition is not
explicitly mentioned. The term Hambukur has been used in Nagarakr.tāgama 63.4 and 66.1
written as buku-bukuran in the Śrāddha ritual for the spirit of Tribhuwana Tunggadewi. It is
assumed that the term puspaśarira (= Sĕkah or Sĕkar) in the Mamukur ritual in Bali is also
derived from Nagarakr.tāgama 67.2, particularly from: saŋhyaŋ puspaśarīra (Pigeaud, 1960).
However, several centuries before kakawin Nagarakr.tāgama (1365 AD) was written by
Mpu Prapanca, the word bukur had been used in kakawin Sumanasāntaka written by Mpu
Monagun.a from the era of King Kadiri, which mentioned the name Wars.ajaya ( = Jayawars.a)
that indicates a relative of the king (Worsley, et al., 2014). Kakawin Sumanasāntaka (Worsley
et al., 2014) stated “aluŋguh irikaŋ bukur paŋaraŋanya nĕhĕr asidĕhāŋuregĕluŋ” (2.4c), “ri
tiŋhalira riŋ bukur saŋ araras winulatanira maŋliga-ligā” (4.1c), and “Bukur pamid.aran ndatan
milu gĕsĕŋ kadi rinĕŋwan iŋ kilat” (9.2c).
The definition of Bukur in Sumanasāntaka that is translated as “Bukur hall” contains at
least three layers of meaning, namely (1) Bukur hall is the place where Bhagawān Tr.n.awindu
practiced yoga and wrote literary works; (2) in the same Bukur hall, widyādhari Harin.ī
(assigned with the duty of seducing a hermit), descending from Indra paradise, sat with her
hair loose and was seen topless by the bhagawān; and (3) in that Bukur hall, the body of Dyah
Harin.ī was laid and burned by the fire of a thunder cloud, the manifestation of the dreadful
curse from Bhagawān Tr.n.awindu.
On the basis of the short depiction and information from kakawin Sumanasāntaka (2.4c,
4.1c, and 9.2c) and kakawin Nagarakr.tāgama (63.4 and 66.1), it can be concluded that Bukur
in its relation with Hambukur (PK 76–89) refers to a particularly sacred hall connected to a
sanctified figure and specifically used as the sthana for ancestral spirits. In OJED, bukur is
defined as “a small building (probably with meru-shaped roof)” (I) (Zoetmulder, 2011).
The meaning of Bukur in the Hambukur or Mamukur ritual is still recorded and maintained well in the Śrāddha tradition in Bali. Bukur or Madhya is a tower with meru-shaped
roof that functions as the site to place Sĕkah (puspaśarira), which will be carried to the sea.
Hambukur ritual is also known as “Karya Hayu” (considered as sacred as Dewayajña ritual),
which is a ritual dedicated to sanctify (ordain) the spirit from pirata to pitara or the Pitara
God (Sanskrit: Pitr.ideva).
In the ancestor worship tradition in Bali, an argument based on a source from lontar
explains how Mamukur, Tilĕman, and Maligya in essence refer to the same meaning, which is
the purification of ādhyātmika element, because human beings are formed from the wāhyaādhyātmika element (body-soul). Therefore, the manifestations of Tri Aŋga are (1) Maligya,
which is uttama, (2) Tilĕman/Panilĕman, which is madhya, and (3) Hambukur or Mamukur/
Ngaroras, which is nis.t.ha.
Hambukur ritual in the Balinese tradition is usually followed by the Maligya ritual (this
term is not recorded in OJED), a ritual for the third-level purification of ancestral spirit that
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is meant to “unify” the holy ancestral spirit in Pura Padharman, and it would then become
Dewa Pitara, which is the “deified” ancestral spirit. The procedures of the Maligya ritual are
elaborated in the Yajña Baligya Panilĕman manuscript (Kal 79 Bali Cultural Documentation
Center), as well as painted in the Kiduŋ Karya Ligya or gĕguritan Padĕm Warak (K 6313/Ivd),
and Kramaniŋ Karya Baligya/Mamukur (K 6528 Ic).
In the aforementioned manuscript, the information about Mamukur-Maligya is considered
as one unity. If such is the case, it can be concluded that the same perspective is applicable
to analyze Hambukur ritual in the Merapi-Merbabu PK-text. In regard to this assumption,
the PK text claims:
“[...] Ri sampun kita mukti hambukur bhūmi śayana, pusad.i minakādinya, wehana
ta kita susur, kase, kuramas, ndan ana kipat, suri, lĕŋa, burat. Ri tlas i macāmana,
Ucapĕn ta kita muwuh skul, san.d.aŋan den ana san.d.iŋana wwe cāmani, sampiranta
mareŋ swargga, [...] (PK 76–89).
“After you enjoy Bukur as a resting place, particularly in the podium, (next), first
you will be offered a toothpick, perfumed ointment, shampoo, and also “kohl” (eye
shadow), hairbrush, perfume and perfumed powder. After purifying yourself by
washing your mouth (gargling), we will tell you (that) you can add supplements with
rice, a set of clothes, and water to wash your mouth, (and then) put on your shawl
to leave for heavens.”
The above quote elaborates on the elements of offerings that are given to the purified
ancestral spirits, including toothpick, perfumed ointment, shampoo, “kohl” (eye shadow),
hairbrush, perfume, perfumed powder rice, a set of clothes, water for washing the mouth, and
shawl. This offering, known as “karya hayu”, is also denoted by the term pitr.tarpana, which
refers to water and other types of offerings to the ancestors. It is clearly explained in Sarasamuccaya sloka 280 that “...pitr.tarpana, ya śrāddha ŋaranya...” (Pudja, 1981). Within the Indic
tradition, as described by Monier-Williams (1994), pitr.itarpan.a is “the refreshing of the pitr.i’s
(with water thrown from the right hand), offering water etc. to the deceased ancestor”.
On the basis of that conceptualization, it can be understood that the forms and types of
offerings as pitr.tarpan.a in the Merbabu tradition are very particular as they are the results of
interpretation of and deep contemplation on religious thoughts from the Old Javanese. This
perspective can be clearly outlined in the following quote (apparently, the PK text = PK-Bali
text, LOr 5132):
“[...] Saŋ mahurip kuminkina, haweha bubur sasuru, ŋūni kotamani dadhi, nasi putih
hawak dharmma, nasi baŋ subhaga ni rāt, kuniŋ ika nasi wr.ddhi putra phalanya, nasi
hirĕŋ wr.ddhi ikaŋ mas. Puŋpuŋ rare hulunanta! Sarwwa wija sarwwa haywa, yateka
cihnaknanta glisakĕn aywa suwe denta baŋun Karyya Hayu [...] (PK 9–21).
It is evident from the above quote that there is an intertwinement in the concept and
thought from the author of the PK text with the offerings in Śrāddha ritual. However, the
element of water is not explicitly stated. This might be because water has regularly been used
in the said ritual.
6
SYMBOLIC MEANING OF ANIMAL OFFERING IN THE ŚRĀDDHA RITUAL
It is explained that the offerings and details about the types of animals used for the offerings
include (1) mackerel and snapper; (2) grouse, green pigeon, dried fish, kaliliŋan, wild chicken,
wuru-wuru, turtle dove, and putĕr; (3) hunted animals like deer, antelope, and mouse deer;
(4) buffalo meat, ducks, and chicken; (5) hedgehog, rasé, monitor lizard, iguana, and
wr.talan; (6) goose and freshwater fish; (7) tortoise, turtle, and shrimp; (8) wild boar; (9) buffalo;
(10) milk and honey; (11) honey oil; and (12) rhino: meat, skin, and bones.
It is very challenging to comprehensively depict the types of animals that are offered as elements of
upakāra-upacāra in the rites of sanctification (from the daśamala elements). It is implied in Wratiśasana
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that, according to the religious norms used as the theological foundation, the slaughtering of animals
does not violate the ahimsa-dharma doctrine (“killing or hurting living beings is forbidden”). In this
regard, the siddhanta brata is allowed to conduct himsa karma (“animal slaughter”) if it is meant for
the purposes of (1) dewa pūja, (2) athiti pūja, (3) pitra pūja, (4) walyākrāma pūja, and (5) dharmā
wigāta, which is atmaraks.a, and that covers dharma yuddha (“killing animals on the battlefield”) and
killing because of an attack from poisonous animals (Rani, 1961). The slaughtering of animals as
sacrificial offerings that is in lieu with the above purpose is also based on the doctrine that is conveyed
through mythology in the Purwa Bhumi Kamulan and Bhūmi Tuwa manuscripts, which explain how
pañca-dewa (Iśwara, Brahma, Mahādewa, Wis.n.u, and Śiwa) offered different types of animals such as
eka-pada, dwi-pada, catur-pada, bahu-pada, and rahi-pada (Hooykaas, 1974).
Among the animals offered, apparently, warak (Rhinoceros sondaicus/Rh. Indicus/Rh. unicornis) has the most symbolic meaning. It is outlined that meat, skin, or bones from warak
that are rubbed on whetstone and mixed in the offerings can bring happiness to the pitara
and therefore this will keep the pitara in the paradise forever (agĕŋ pawehku nikaŋ sukha,
salawasta haneŋ swargga).
The name warak is indeed mentioned in several Old Javanese literary works, including
Ramāyāna II.26 (Poerbatjaraka, 2010) “...aŋhiŋ warak juga warĕg rumuhun rikaŋ rwi”, XVII.14
“...hana moŋ warak wwara ta siŋha pañjaran...,” as well as Brahmān.d.apurān.a 49.11 (Gonda, 1932),
Korāśrama 32.13 (Swellengrebel, 1936), and Nawaruci 79.13 (Prijohoetomo, 1936) “...warak upamanira Aŋkuspran.a....”. However, the name warak mentioned in these literary works is not associated with the holding of a ceremony. A mythological saying can be found in the Agastyaparwa
manuscript about the origins of warak. This can also be linked with the use of warak in Śrāddha.
The mythological saying about rhinos in the Agastyaparwa scripture is elaborated as follows: “[...]
Kunaŋ anak bhagawān Pulaha i saŋ Mr.ganya ŋ kidaŋ, śaśa, kañcil, waraŋkakan; nahan tānaknira
saŋ Mr.gā. Kunaŋ anaknira i saŋ Mr.gamandā nyaŋ kuwuk, luhak, tiŋgaluŋ, sapi, kubwa, śarabha,
us..tra, warak; nahan tānaknira i saŋ Mr.gamandā [...]” (Gonda, 1936).
The use of warak meat for offerings in the sanctification of ancestral spirit apparently is
not only known to be found in Merbabu and Bali PK texts. The information on the superiority of warak in offerings for the Śrāddha ritual has been doctrinally written in Manawa
Dharmaśastra III.272. The following is a quote from the Manawadharmaśastra scripture III.
272 (Pudja, 1996):
“Kalaśākammahāśalkāh., khaŋga lohāmisammadhu,
Ānantyāyaivakalpante, munyannānicasarwaśah..”
(Translation: “The vegetables that go by the name Kalaśaka, fish by the name
Mahasalka, rhino meat and red-goat meat, and all kinds of foods eaten by the hermits in the woods will satisfy them for eternity (in paradise).
In fact, the above quote is indicated as an intertextual relation of rhino in offerings for the
Śrāddha between Indian ritual (as well as mentioned in the Manawadharmaśastra III. 272)
and Old Javanese tradition at the end of the 16th century.
7
CONCLUSION
Several conclusions can be drawn from the above discussion, such as: (1) the text of Putru
Kalĕpasan from Merapi-Merbabu is a text within the scope of classic Javanese literature that
records and explains in great detail the procedures for Śrāddha ritual, a prominent ritual in
the Old Javanese era (9th–15th centuries); (2) the exposition of the rites of ancestral worship known as Hatiwa-tiwa and the Hambukur ritual in the PK text is a form of continuity
derived from the Old Javanese religious thought that is still passed on and sustained in the
Literature-teaching or Sastra-Ajar tradition around the Merapi-Merbabu mountains from
the 16th century to the early 17th century; (3) animal slaughtering that is used as a sacrificial
offering in the Śrāddha ritual is meant to symbolically purify the ancestral spirits from any
impurity caused by the daśamala elements. Thus, essentially, the purification in Hambukur
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ritual is meant to ordain pitara to become Pitara God, (Sanskrit: Pitr.ideva), a worshipped
ancestral spirit that is considered to have reached kalĕpasan so that the spirits may return
home to the kahyaŋan of the gods or to unite with their avatar.
REFERENCES
Darmosoetopo, R. (1985) Pandangan Orang Jawa terhadap Leluhur (Tinjauan berdasarkan Data Tertulis), [Pertemuan] Pertemuan Ilmiah Arkeologi III (PIA III), Ciloto 23rd —28th May, pp. 519–529.
Translation: Javanese View towards Ancestors (A Study on the Basis of Written Data), [Meeting]
Archaelogy Meeting III (PIA III), Ciloto 23rd —28th May, pp. 519–529.
Djafar, H. (1986) Beberapa Catatan mengenai Keagamaan pada Masa Majapahit Akhir Several Notes
on Religosity in the End of Majapahit Era, [Meeting] Pertemuan Ilmiah Arkeologi IV, Cipanas 3rd
to 9th March, pp. 252–266. Translation: Several Notes on Religosity in the End of Majapahit Era,
[Meeting] Archaelogy Meeting IV, Cipanas 3rd to 9th March, pp. 252–266.
Endraswara, S. (2015) Agama Jawa, Ajaran, Amalan, dan Asal Usul Kejawen. Yogyakarya, Narasi.
Translation: Religion, Teaching, Practice of Java and Origin of Kejawen. Yogyakarya, Narasi.
Flood, G. (2003) The Śaiva traditions. In: Flood, G (Ed.) The Blackwell companion to Hinduism. USA,
Blackwell Publishing.
Gonda, J. (1932) Het Oud-Javaansche Brahmān.d.a-Purān.a, Proza-tekst en Kakawin. Bibliotheca Javanica,
No. 5. Koninklijk Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen.
Gonda, J. (1935–1936) Agastyaparwa, Uitgegeven, Gecommenteerd en Vertaald. BKI No. 90, 329–419;
No.92, 389–458; No. 94, 223–285.
Hooykaas, C. (1974) Cosmogony and Creation in Balinese Tradition. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.
Istari, T.M.R. (1997) Upacara Sraddha di Jawa dan Bali, Jurnal Arkeologi Siddhayatra, No. 1/II/28th—
35th May. Translation: Sraddha Ceremony in Java and Bali, Siddhayatra Journal of Archaeology,
No. 1/II/28th—35th May.
Juynboll, H.H. (1906) Adiparwa. Oud Javaansch Prozageschript Uitgegeven. S-Gravenhage, Martinus
Nijhoff.
Juynboll, H.H. (1912) Wirātaparwwa. Oud Javaansch Prozageschript Uitgegeven. S-Gravenhage, Martinus Nijhoff.
Kaler, I.G.K. (1993) Ngaben, Mengapa Mayat Dibakar? Denpasar, Yayasan Dharma Narada. Translation: Ngaben, Why Bodies are Cremated? Denpasar, Yayasan Dharma Narada.
Kamus Jawa Kuna-Indonesia. (2011) Jakarta, PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama. Translation: Ancient JavaIndonesia Dictionary. (2011). Jakarta, PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Koentjaraningrat. (1984) Kebudayaan Jawa. Seri Etnografi Indonesia No.2. Jakarta, Balai Pustaka.
Translation: Javanese Culture. Indonesia Ethnography Series No.2. Jakarta, Balai Pustaka.
Linus, I.K. (1986) Pemujaan Roh Leluhur di Bali: Suatu Pendekatan Tradisi Hindu, [Meeting] Pertemuan Ilmiah Arkeologi IV (vol. IIb), Cipanas 3–9 March, 258–268. Translation: Worship of Ancestral Spirits in Bali: An Approcah to Hindu Tradition), [Meeting] Archaelogy Meeting IV (vol. IIb),
Cipanas 3rd —9th March, 258–268.
Mirsha, I.G.N.R. (1994) Buana Kosa, Alih Aksara dan Alih Bahasa. Denpasar, Upada Sastra. Translation: Lexicons, Transfers of Scripts and Languages. Denpasar, Upada Sastra.
Monier-Williams, M. (1994) Sanskrit-English Dictionary. Munshiram Manoharlal, Publisers Pvt Ltd.
Pigeaud, T.G.T. (1960, 1962, 1963) Java in the 14th Century, A Study in Cultural History (vol. I—IV).
Koninklijk Institut voor Taal-, Land—en Volkenkunde; Translation Series 4, 1–4. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.
Pigeaud, T.G.T. (1967, 1968, 1980) Literature of Java (vol. I—IV). The Hague, Martinus Nyhoff.
Poerbatjaraka, R. Ng. (2010) Rāmāyan.a Djawa Kuna. Jakarta, Perpustakaan Nasional Repulbik Indonesia Translation: Rāmāyan.a of Ancient Java. Jakarta, National Library of the Republic of Indonesia.
Prasad, R.C. (1997) The Śrāddha: The Hindu Book of the Dead, a Treatise on the Śrāddha Ceremonies.
Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited.
Prijohoetomo. (1934) Nawaruci. Inleiding, Middel-Javaansche Prozatekst, Vertaling. Groningen: Bij J.B.
Wolters.
Pudja, G. & Sudharta, T.R. (1996) Manawa Dharmaśastra. Jakarta, Hanuman Sakti.
Purwita, IB Pt. (1992) Upacara Mamukur (Mamukur Ceremony). Denpasar. Upada Sastra. Translation: Mamukur Ceremony. Denpasar. Upada Sastra.
Rani, Mrs. Sharada. (1961) Wratiśāsana, A Sanskrit Text on Ascetic Discipline with Kawi Exegesis.
New Delhi, the Arya Bharati Mudranalaya.
Robson, S.O. (1988) Principles of Indonesian Philology. Dordrecht-Holland, Foris Publications.
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Santiko, H. (1986) Man.d.ala (Kadewaguruan) pada Masyarakat Majapahit, [Meeting] Pertemuan Ilmiah
Arkeologi IV (vol. IIb), Cipanas 3rd—9th March, 149–169. Translation: Man.d.ala (Kadewaguruan) in
Majapahit Society, [Meeting] Archaelogy Meeting IV (vol. IIb), Cipanas 3rd—9th March, 149–169.
Sayers, M.R. (2008) Feeding the Ancestors: Ancestor Worship in Ancient Hinduism and Buddhism. Dissertation on Doctor of Philosopgy. USA, the University of Texas at Austin.
Setyawati, K., et al. (2002) Katalog Naskah Merapi-Merbabu Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia.
Yogyakarta, Universitas Sanata Dharma-Univ. Leiden. Translation: Catalogue of Merapi-Merbabu
Manuscripts National Library of the Republic of Indonesia. Yogyakarta, Univesitas Sanata DharmaUniv. Leiden.
Soekmono. (1977) Candi: Fungsi dan Pengertiannya. Jakarta, Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. Translation: Temples: Functions and Understanding. Jakarta, Department of Education
and Culture.
Soemadio, B. (ed.). (1993) Sejarah Nasional Indonesia II. (ed. ke-3). Jakarta, Balai Pustaka. Translation:
National History of Indonesia II. (3rd Edition). Jakarta, Balai Pustaka.
Swellengrebel, J.L. (1936) Korawāśrama een Oud-Javaansch Proza-Geschrift, Uitgegeven, Vertaald en
Toegelicht. Proefschrift. Leiden, Rijkuniversiteit te Leiden.
van der Tuuk, H.N. (1912) Kawi-Balineesch-Nederlandsch Woorden Boek (vol. IV). Batavia, Lands
Drukkerij.
Worsley, P. et al. (2014) Kakawin Sumanasāntaka. Mati karena Bunga Sumanasa Karya Mpu Monaguna. Kajian sebuah Puisi Epik Jawa Kuno. Jakarta, Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia. Translation:
Kakawin Sumanasāntaka. Death Due to Sumanasa Flower by Mpu Monaguna. A Study on an Epic
Poem of Ancient Java. Jakarta, Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia.
Zoetmulder, P.J. (1982) Old Javanese-English Dictionary. ‘S-Gravenhage, Martinus Nijhoff.
APPENDIX 1
Photo: L 222 P10, the Merapi-Merbabu collection of National Library Jakarta.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Ancient religious artworks in Central Java (8th–10th century AD)
A.A. Munandar
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: In Central Java, Hindu-saiva and Buddha Mahayana thrived between the 8th
and 10th centuries AD. The main hypothesis of this study is that Central Java was governed by
two different dynasties in that period, namely the “Sailendravamsa” dynasty, which adopted
Buddhism, and the “Sanjayavamsa” dynasty, which adhered to Hinduism. In this study, we
discuss the ancient religious artworks related to Hinduism and Buddhism developed between
the 8th and 10th centuries AD. Iconography and the architecture of sacred structures and the
technique of making the fine arts are the tools used to explore the religious art style. We also
discuss the theory proposed by Dutch archeologist E.B. Vogler, namely the theory of “the tied
art” from the ancient Javanese society. Several conclusions are drawn from the interpretation
achieved in this study, which is aimed to gain a deeper understanding of the ancient religious
artworks in Central Java. The author believes that this study could provide further academic
explanation on the origin of the supporters of these old artworks in Central Java.
1
INTRODUCTION
The form of art discussed in this study is limited to the fine artworks supported by available
data, which could be retrieved anytime. The artworks selected in this study are those that are
devoted to religious and ritual needs for worship or complementing the ancient sacred structures. Therefore, the forms of art chosen for this study include the following three aspects,
namely the works of religious architecture, sculpture art, and reliefs. In the central part of
Java, based on the dated inscription, there is evidence of existence of a civilization that had
thrived under the principles of Hinduism and Buddhism. The Hinduism discussed in this
study is the Hindu-saiva, in which Siva is the god. Meanwhile, the Buddhism discussed in this
study is from Mahayana-ism, which recognizes pantheon in its system of belief.
Interestingly, according to the existing data, Hinduism and Buddhism had developed well
in the central part of Java region only from the 8th to 10th centuries, and no archeological
evidence was found in that region after the 10th century. In the study of Indonesian archeology, the period of development between the 8th and 10th centuries is often called the Old
Classic period. In the late 10th century, apparently, the central powers of the royal government shifted from the central part to the eastern part of Java; thus, the cultural activities of
the ancient Javanese society also shifted to the eastern part of Java region. The ancient Mataram Kingdom initially had developed in the central part of the Java region, and according
to the Canggal inscription dated 732 AD, the kingdom was ruled by King Sanjaya, who was
the first king to adhere to Hindu-saiva (Poerbatjaraka, 1952, pp. 49–58). From the perspectives of political history and archeology, it is crucial to identify the causes of the frequent
relocation of the capital town of Mataram. According to the inscriptions, the capital of
Mataram was named Medang or Mdang; however, in some places, it was known as Mdang
i Bhumi Mataram, Mdang i Poh Pitu, and Mdang i Mamratipura. Yet the exact location of
Kedaton Mdang is unknown to date. The inscriptions also show that the kings ruling Mataram were the family members of King Śailendra or Śailendravamsa. This dynasty is often
related to Buddha Mahayana, because the term Śailendravamsa was used for the first time
in the Kalasan inscription (700 Saka/778 AD), and King Śailendra apparently adopted the
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principles of the Buddha Mahayana. The inscription also describes King Tejapurnnapanna
Panangkarana,1 named Sailendravamsatilaka (“the pearl of Śailendra dynasty”), who was
ordered to build some type of sacred structure to worship Goddess Tara, named Tarabhawanam. Tara is a common name for any goddess that is considered sakti (enchanting) in many
Buddha levels in the Buddha Mahayana religion.
Another inscription named Kelurak inscription (in 782 AD) mentioning Śailendravamsa
was found in the west of the Sewu Temple complex. It states that a sacred structure used for
worshipping under the Manjusri belief was built and hence it was called Manjusrigrha in
the inscription, which is the current Sewu Temple. Śailendravamsa is also mentioned in the
Abhayagirivihara inscription (792 AD), which is found in the archeological area of Ratu Baka
(Boechari, 2012, p. 198). Here, we agree with the opinions of experts from previous studies
that rebutted the theory of the two dynasties, “Sanjayavamsa” and “Śailendravamsa” existing
in the central part of Java from the 8th to 10th century. Nevertheless, only the Śailendravamsa
dynasty existed in this period, and some members practiced Hindu-saiva, whereas others
practiced Buddha Mahayana. This study was conducted to gain in-depth knowledge about
the forms of religious fine arts during the old Mataram period in Central Java and to understand its characteristics, nature, and art style developed by the artists.
As stated above, the artworks developed during this period were used for religious purposes. Thus, it is assumed that the artists were highly associated with religious activities under
the Hindu-saiva or Buddha Mahayana belief and not with any other purposes. It was certain
that the adherents of both religions needed a sacred place to hold religious ceremonies, place
the statues of gods as a symbol of worship, and display the reliefs depicting the teachings and
systems of religious belief. Meanwhile, many other artworks, such as those of the performing
arts, could not be studied because of the difficulty in obtaining the relevant data.
1.1
Sacred ancient structures
The sacred structures of Hinduism and Buddhism do not have a specific term, such as grha,
bhavanam, candi, vihara, kuti, and katyagan; however, a common term that has always been
used to refer to these structures is “temple”. In addition, the term patirthan denotes a sacred
compound in the form of a sacred water source; in Buddhism, there are terms like stupa
and caitya. The sacred structures of Hindu-saiva in the central region of Java are Gedong
Songo (in Ambarawa), Gunung Wukir, Sambisari, Kedulan, Morangan, Merak, Pendem,
Lumbung, and Asu Temples, and the largest complex is Prambanan Temple, whose original
name is Sivagrha. Meanwhile, Buddhist temples include Kalasan Temple (Tarabhavanam),
Sari, Lumbung Temples, Sewu Temples (Manjusrigrha), Bubrah Temple, Plaosan Lor, Plaosan Kidul, Sajiwan, Banyunibo, Ngawen, Mendut, and Pawon, and the grandest Buddhist
stupa is in Borobudur Temple.
Furthermore, it can be concluded that the differences between Hindu-saiva and Buddhist
temples are attributed to their differences in belief systems and ritual tools. However, an
interesting finding is that the temples belonging to those two religions have several similarities. The data on the similarities and differences between the architectural components of
these two religions are presented in Table 1.
On the basis of the data presented in Table 1, similarities between the Hindu or Buddhist
temples are described as follows:
1. Two types of materials, namely stone blocks (outer structures) and bricks (central structure) are used in the structures of the temples.
2. The temples have a three-level roof shape with a kemuncak (the top of the roof), which
has the shape of either a ratna (in Hindu temples) or a dagob (a small stupa in Buddhist
temples).
3. The edge of stairway is known as the ikal-lemah (weak-bend form) with the Makara end,
and its base is adorned with the head of Kala.
4. The frames are flat (patta) with variations, namely semicircles (kumuda) and bell shape
(padma).
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Table 1.
No.
1.
2.
3.
4
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Similarities and differences in the architectural components of Hindu and Buddhist temples.
Components compared
Similarity
Difference
The temples use two materials, namely stone block and bricks
(as well as other materials that quickly weather)
Their architecture shows religious symbols
Hindu temples are equipped with 3 ancillary temples (perwara
temples) in front of the main temple, whereas the perwara of
Buddhist temples are built surrounding their main temple
The temples have a three-graded roof shape with one kemuncak
The temples have the edge of stairs called “ikal-lemah” with a
Makara end, and their base is adorned with the head of Kala
The yard of Hindu temples is not paved with stone blocks,
whereas the surface of a Buddhist temple yard is covered with
stone blocks
The frames used are flat (patta) with variations, namely
semicircles (kumuda) and bell sides (padma)
The outer walls of Hindu temples have niches, whereas
Buddhist temples do not have niches placed on their outer walls
The entrance to the chambers of the temples and niches
(parsvadevata) is adorned with the head of Kala above
The temples are known to have a fence structure (vedika)
on the edge of pradaksinapatha floor around the body of
Hindu-saiva or Buddhist temples
√
–
–
–
√
√
√
√
–
–
–
√
√
–
–
√
√
–
√
–
5. The entrance to the chambers of the temples and niches (parsvadevata) is adorned with
the head of Kala positioned above the entrance.
6. The temples are known to have a fence structure (vedika) on the edge of the pradaksinapatha floor in the body of Hindu-saiva or Buddhist temples.
Furthermore, the significant differences between the Hindu-saiva and Buddhist temples
are as follows:
1. Their architecture shows religious symbols, with the roof component in the shape of a
ratna for the Hindu temples and a dagob (a small stupa) for the Buddhist temples.
2. Hindu temples are complemented with three ancillary temples (pervara temples) in front
of their main temple, whereas the pervara of the Buddhist temples is built surrounding
their main temple.
3. Hindu temples have a niche on their outer wall, whereas Buddhist temples have no niches
in their outer wall.
4. The surface of the courtyard of Buddhist temples is covered with stone blocks,2 which are
absent in the Hindu temple compounds.
The similarities in the structures of the Hindu and Buddhist temples show that the architectural art form is developed and supported together by the silpin (artisan) from both religions. Considering the similarities in the architecture of the temples, it can be assumed that
the characteristics of the Hindu and Buddhist sacred buildings originated in the Old Classic
period in Central Java. With the development of the ancient Mataram Kingdom in that
period, it can be concluded that the Hindu temples have the same architectural characteristics as the Buddhist sacred buildings during the Mataram period under the reign of the royal
family of Sailendravamsa.
1.2
Statues of gods
Apparently, there is a significant iconographic difference between the statues of the Hindusaiva and Buddha pantheon, which is not necessarily discussed further. This difference
attributes to the differences found among Brahma, Visnu, Siva, Parvati, and other Hindu
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statues and Panca Tathagata, Bhoddhisattva, and other statues of the Buddha pantheon. It
is interesting to note that the same components are found in the statues of Hindu-saiva and
Buddha pantheon. This similarity can be due to the characteristic features of the statue art
developed in the central region of Java from the 8th to 10th century AD.
On the basis of the observation of several statues of the Hindu and Buddhist gods in the
central region of Java, many similarities can be concluded as follows:
1. The pedestals of the statues are always in the form of a blooming lotus (padmasana) in
both standing and sitting positions.
2. The shape of the backrest for the statues’ body is called the Prabhamandala, and there is a
circle named Sirascakra behind the head of the statues, which is considered as the symbol
of god’s divine light.
3. The ornaments in the Hindu and Buddhist statues have the same pattern, which is a series
of jewels (ratna). A large jewel is in the center, which is surrounded by small jewels.
4. The statues are depicted as wearing clothes and accessories without many jewels. The
accessories not only complement the appearance of the statutes but also contribute to
their elegance.
5. The accessories include crown, ear accessories (earrings), upavita (a string of caste), bracelet, necklace, arm ring, belt, and ankle bracelet.
Through an in-depth study, many other similarities can also be examined, such as the size
(height) of statues, which seems to be almost similar in both religions, or the working process
of the surface, which depends on the materials used for making statues (e.g., stone or metal).
The similarities in the appearance of those statues can thus be assumed to be due to the
similarities in their working process, which are the characteristics of the Hindu and Buddhist
statue arts found in Central Java during the Old Classical era (8th to 10th century AD).
1.3
Characteristics of narrative relief art in the Old Classical era
The characteristics of narrative reliefs developed in the Old Classical era (8th to 10th century
AD) in Central Java are as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
The figures are described realistically or with a naturalist shape.
The faces of human and animal figures are always oriented toward the observers.
On the panel, there is an empty space, but there are no accessories at all.
Almost half of the media’s depth (e.g., stone) is used for the relief sculpture.
A haut relief is carved into the stone surface (Bernet, Kempers 1959, pp. 45–46, Munandar
2003, p. 28).
After careful observation, it can be concluded that there are several characteristics closely
related to the description of story reliefs in the Old Classical temples. First, each human figure is depicted in a dynamic position, not in a static position, describing a movement. Statues
in standing person always bear a smile, depicted as talking or meditating. It means that the
impression of such a story relief is alive, teaching a lesson to the observers. Furthermore, the
scene depicted is always the front ground, and not background; a far second ground or third
background is found in the relief depiction in the temples during the Majapahit era (14th to
15th century) found in Central Java.
Every work of art is always produced using a creative process of its artists. They process
the idea and use it in different art media and expressions, such as stone, metal, wood, body
movement, and voice. An artwork would have no value if it is not appreciated by society.
Therefore, the society becomes an important element in the artistic process. The elements of
art are shown in Chart 1.
In the ancient Javanese society, the artworks of Hinduism and Buddhism have five elements, as shown in the chart. However, their idea and concept always come from the lessons
of the two religions. A silpin that carves the statue of Avalokistesvara from a stone borrows
the concept of Bhoddisattva from the lesson of Buddhadharma Mahayana. Then, after completing the sacred idea expression and the working process that are equivalent to medita664
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Chart 1. Elements of artwork that are interrelated (Source: Munandar et al. 2009).
tion, the statue is presented to the people for worshipping. The statue is then placed by the
adherents of the Buddha Mahayana in a chamber of the temple accompanying the statue of
Siddharta Buddha or others. For example, the statue of Avalokitesvara is appreciated by the
people when it is used as one of the ritual tools in the worship of Buddhadharma. This process of religious artwork creation, according to E. B. Vogler (1948), is called “bound and used
art”, which developed in Central Java from the 8th to 10th century. “Bound” means that the
art is subject to the rules and concepts of Hinduism and Buddhism, and “used” means that
it is accepted by the society as a ritual facility, because the work of art produced has to be
in accordance with the religious concepts used as the reference of its creation. According to
Vogler, “bonded and used” art is difficult to change. Such art can experience some changes if
there are several strong influences, such as any forces from outside of the artists. In fact, the
artists are actually a group of clergy that is bound to the religious belief they adhere to. To
examine the changes of “bound art”, a different study needs to be conducted.
Claire Holt (2000), an expert in Indonesian cultural history, found that the art of Hinduism
and Buddhism developed in Central Java from the 8th to 10th century had unique features.
The statue art in Buddhism and the description of the stories in the relief of Borobudur Temple show the intricate smoothness and composure exhibited by the artists on their artworks.
The artworks do not show any tension or dynamic quality on the reliefs in the Rupadhatu
part of the temple, and all the images are kept in harmony. Nevertheless, the relief scenes on
the covered base part (Kamadhatu) show a more dynamic movement (Holt 2000, pp. 49–50).
Thus, Borobudur Temple shows two different impressions of beauty, and the artists showed
their religious idea through their artworks. At Prambanan Temple, the reliefs carved are in
fact more dynamic in their composition and more dramatic from the perspective of expressed
feelings. It can be concluded that a real stylization symptom at Prambanan is more apparent,
which is evident from its relief panel rooms that are more dominant than those of Borobudur
Temple.
According to Holt, those who have brought a greater impression will then lead the way
to glory (2000, p. 63), which is especially true based on the existing archeological data. The
impression resulted from seeing the form of fine art at Borobudur Temple is “a gentle flow
of calmness”. The calmness itself can be seen from the building of its temple, which is in
fact a giant stupa decorating the peak of a hill in the midst of natural scenery and surrounded by mountains. All statues of Tathagata that decorate the niche also show a flow of
smoothness leading to sunyata. This impression can also be observed in the description of the
story reliefs. Although the panel rooms are filled with many figures described, their presence
does not appear to be crammed or crowded. In fact, those figures complement each other
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in a silent narration. Meanwhile, all of the forms of fine art in Sivagrha temples have the
same objective, that is, to show glory and victory. The three main temples (Temples of Siva,
Brahma, and Visnu) are complemented with the temples for worshipping other gods, and 224
pervara (ancillary) temples are added surrounding them. The statues are depicted in dynamic
and “live” impressions, in the position of either meditation or welcoming the worshippers
entering their sacred chambers. The relief portrays several meanings. The Ramayana is an
epic story presenting the victory of Rama as the good side that beats the evil, which is symbolized by the figure of Rahwana. The story is full of heroism of the god-incarnated knights.
It can be concluded that the main characteristics of the ancient Mataram art created by
the silpins (artisans) from the Sailendra dynasty are “devotion and victory”. Artworks are
a full devotion to god by humans (people and other kingdoms). Both concepts could be
maintained until the beginning of the 10th century; however, in the second half of the 10th
century, they abandoned Central Java and migrated to the eastern part of Java region thereby
bringing a different concept of art.
NOTES
1. The name of King Tejapurnnapanna Panangkarana, according to the Mantyasih inscription (829 Saka/907 AD) issued by King Balitung, was possibly Rakai Panangkaran, who
ruled Mataram after King Sanjaya.
2. Because the courtyard of the temples is covered with stone blocks, from an archeological viewpoint, it can be concluded that several activities were held in that yard in the era
of the Buddhism. Possibly, these Buddhists followed a kind of ritual of circling the main
temple in a pradaksina motion. Therefore, in order not to damage the yard by the numerous pilgrims (especially during the rainy season), it had to be paved with the reinforcement
structure of stone blocks. In the Hindu-saiva temple complexes, the yard of the temples
was not covered with stone blocks. It can be concluded that the religious activities of the
Hindu society in that era were not as active as those of the Buddhist society in their temples (Munandar 2016, pp. 23–24). Examples of Buddhist temples paved with stone block
structure include Sewu Temple, which has a stone block structure in its first yard that is
the closest to the main temple, and the Banyunibo, Plaosan Lor, and Lumbung Temples.
REFERENCES
Boechari. (2012) Melacak sejarah kuno Indonesia lewat prasasti (Tracing the ancient history of Indonesia through inscriptions). Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia.
Holt, C. (2000) Melacak jejak perkembangan seni di Indonesia (Tracing the art development footsteps in
Indonesia). (R.M. Soedarsono, Trans.). Bandung: Masyarakat Seni Pertunjukan Indonesia (Society
of Performing Arts in Indonesia) & arti. line.
Kempers, A.J.B. (1959) Ancient Indonesian art. Amsterdam: C.P.J.van der Peet.
Munandar, A.A, et al. (2009) Lukisan Basoeki Abdullah tema dongeng, legenda, mitos dan tokoh (Basoeki
Abdullah’s paintings with the themes fairytales, legends, myths, and famous figures). Jakarta:
Museum Basoeki Abdullah.
Munandar, A.A. (2003) Aksamala: Bunga rampai karya penelitian (Aksamala: Research work anthology). Seri Kajian Arkeologi (Archeological Studies Series). Bogor: Akademia.
Munandar, A.A. (2016) Candi-candi Buddha di Jawa: Bukti perkembangan agama Buddha Mahayana
dalam masyarakat Jawa kuno (Buddhism Temples in Java: Evidence of Buddha Mahayana religion
development in ancient Javanese society). [Symposium] Muara Jambi and Sriwijaya Saturday, 14 May
2016 for Festival Waisak for Indonesia 28th April—29th Mei 2016, NAS Building, Fl. 2, Pasar Seni,
Taman Impian Jaya Ancol, North Jakarta.
Poerbatjaraka, R.M.Ng. (1952) Riwayat Indonesia I (History of Indonesia I). Djakarta: Jajasan
Pembangunan.
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Global economy, urbanization and social change
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Foreword by Abidin Kusno
The essays in this section are put together under the theme of “global economy, urbanization and social change.” Readers however will notice that they deal with a variety of subject
matters characterized by the disciplines within which they are embedded. They are nevertheless linked together, discursively, by their shared interest in humanistic approaches, and
perhaps more importantly, in their profound interest in issues facing Indonesia today. All of
their concerns are related to Indonesia even though some of the cases look foreign or transnational (such as code-switching in French language or epistemology in economics). They are
also characteristically urban as represented explicitly in some case studies, but in most cases
the urban is an implicit framework of thought. We don’t see much a discussion on agricultural or rural Indonesia, but we see a strong interest in social dynamics especially those that
are related to the social and technological change associated with the city life.
All the essays indicate that Indonesia is worlding for much of its existence. Finally, it is
more appropriate than before to say that the percentage of the population living in cities is
greater than ever. The country is encountering an urban generation that recognizes the full
potential of the city as the crucible of social change, the locus of whatever is dynamic, and
the playground of the global economy as well as the site for state disciplinary practices. The
essays collected here could be said as representing such an urban generation. They are written by scholars interested in modernity and cosmopolitanism of Indonesia which they seek
to preserve and develop in their scholarship.
The (Under)Currents
There is thus a number of essays that focus on the maritime cultures of Indonesia, and they
all seek to capture the oceanic feeling of the archipelago, when the surrounding seas integrate
rather than isolate islands. From a historical and archeological perspective, they offer a maritime history of Nusantara before European hegemony. For students of urbanism, such maritime history could be seen as an attempt to revise Eurocentric scholarship which claims that
European colonialism laid the foundation of contemporary cities. The linguistic toponymic
approaches tease out evidences that shows the power of indigenous sea trade which contributed to the formation and transformation of early port cities. The focus on Eastern maritime
of Indonesia is also interesting considering the domination of Java and its land-based polity.
Writing from the perspective of the waterway in the outer islands where currents move back
and forth beyond Java, the profile of Nusantara appears to be larger than Indonesia.
In most of the essays, the agency of sea people is emphasized to show how local social
institutions nurtured trade in their engagement with the world-economy; how statecraft
intertwined with resource management. The essay on Bugis Makassar’s boat tradition, for
instance, shows how the outside world had long been part of the islands and how the fishermen community took advantage of technology and economic management in order to
gain prosperity. The driving force behind the will to modernize was the fishermen’s interest
in material wealth, as represented in their investment in gold. Such a specific narrative of
progress and modernity could be said as an attempt to write an autonomous history of the
region even though, as all the essays indicate, Indonesian maritime cultures are part of a
network of broader global economic enterprises.
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Colonial and Postcolonial Cities
The voyage cultures of Indonesia also offer a ground to understand Indonesian cosmopolitanism and the colonial reactions to it, which take the form of spatial ordering of colonial
“plural societies” and inter-imperial maritime treaties. One of the most dynamic approaches
to the study of colonial and postcolonial cities has been the concept of governmentality.
The interface between the norm and the form of the city produces a kind of government
that seeks to organize populations and territories that seem unconnected to formal political
institutions. How the materialities of space have consequences for political processes are recognized by authors in the essays dealing with colonial and postcolonial cities.
To govern a city is to create a map for the city, one that is not only to connect places, but
also to control the flows of transports and people. The modernization of the commuter train
for instance is ultimately about the disciplining of the urban population but it also involves
in the “creative destruction” of communities and settlements that stand in the way of the
network. The technology of ticketing is also part of urban pedagogy in which the state makes
its appearance. The emphasis on governmentality however does not neglect questions of
resistances. A number of articles pays attention to the impact of the change in the physical
environment on the social and political consciousness of both commoners and elites. Others
show that governmental control can never be total as shown in the case of a more decentralized popular transports such as ojek and uber which often use cognitive mapping to go
around the city (and the kampung). The case of uber also shows the city as a space of social
conflict which at once complicates class formation. Taxi drivers are workers who do not own
car, but riding a taxi is expensive and affordable only for the upper-middle class.
The authors on colonial cities emphasize the agency of the colonized people by recognizing
them as citizens and activists. The colonized were denied membership in the municipal council
but they managed to engage in city politics at the community levels. Finally, it is important to
point out that postcolonial cities are not always more liberating. An essay in this volume shows
just how a community (in the domain of civil society) could be formed not only by class but
also by explicit religious affiliation. As indicated in the essay on Islamic housing, the Qoryatussalam Sani, one of the several Islamic housing real estates in Depok at the outskirt of Jakarta,
has become the site for the reproduction of a religious ideology on which the exclusivity of the
community is based. Here, residents are expected to conform to the norms spatialized in the
housing complex. The authors show how such practices are resisted by some inhabitants but
they raise concerns over the course of religious branding that is not simply motivated by property marketing but by place-making that is at once religious and political.
Language and Representations
One of the characteristics of the urban generation is their interest in the doubling of a language and the modern medium by which it is conveyed. Doubling here means the material
qualities that seem to be more important than the functioning of the language as a speech
act. Much like the urban that is not only a container of activities, but as a stage for performing status update, social media allows code switching that liberates linguistic code from
the propriety of language. Several essays in this collection explore precisely the interface of
language and status upgrade via social media. They look at how Facebook plays out the
doubling of language that allows a particular language to move in and out its appropriate
domain. The Indonesia-English code-switching, for instance, rearranges the hierarchy of the
social world. The result is a performance of one’s identity by way of identification with other
languages all in and through the technology of Facebook.
The move between the technology and the social is central to the essays on virtual communications. The technology of Instagram for instance brings not only people, but also objects
and feelings together. The essay on culinary branding shows precisely how the marketing
of cuisine forms identity that is at once modern and traditional. Central to the study is the
way traditional cultural practices that link food to kinship and family come to represent the
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possibility of being modern. Such possibility is linked to Instagram which integrates space
and time and by doing so enable culture to be imagined as something that is both traditional
and modern. This theme of cosmopolitanism is further explored in a series of essays on Facebook as the aesthetic of linguistic practices that moves a particular language beyond its provincial domain. French language (the elegance of which is in fact based on its parochialism),
for instance, undergoes an alteration and expansion in order to be part of the world language.
Some of the essays consider the cultural aspects of linguistic turn, such as how a foreign language is localized to appear Indonesian. And such cultural refashioning has also
shaped approaches to data and social science approaches: “Indonesians like the data talk for
themselves in order to avoid a potential conflict and hence to maintain harmony between
the writer and readers.” An essay on the unit of analysis in social sciences goes as far as to
reveal the social and moral assumptions of scientific approaches. It raises the possibility of
a humanities approach to overcome the scientific pretension of the discipline of economics.
Another dimension to speech and textual expressions offers a way to think about the mental
appreciation and bodily reaction to lived reality.
Some of the essays investigate the domain of somatic experience (beyond language) as in the
case of children with autism and the use of cohesive devices in deaf children as a way to understand their comprehension of the world. Their findings offer insights into the role of the visual,
and by implication the visuality of the city in helping deaf children to self-construct their world.
Collecting Cultures
The storage of knowledge is not a cabinet of curiosity. Much like the invention of tradition,
knowledge is curated, catalogued and organized in a manner that it became possible to see
and understand the world. Library serves such function of knowledge construction. Its cataloguing of materials visualizes certain knowledge while exclude or marginalize others. In the
context of the world after Google, however, it is no longer clear if the library still retains the
aura of the embodiment of knowledge. The last set of essays raises such a question. There
is something particularly Indonesian in the choice of the topics, for Indonesians today read
more than before partly because they like to read social media. The world of social media has
changed the culture of reading and it thus poses a question of whether library has a future.
Yet, as some essays indicate, the inter-university competition is ironically taking the form of
library building as the icon of the university. One could just consider the investment in the
architecture of the library of the Universitas Indonesia.
Library while has becoming less authoritative continues to stand for what it means to
be a university. Furthermore, as an essay in this collection indicates, university politics are
increasingly organized around the roles and performances of library. The inter-library competition between universities is after all a manifestation of neoliberal idea that has penetrated
the university system. Some of the essays here point to the influence of neoliberalism in
Indonesian education as stemming from the late Suharto era which continues to the present.
The tension between nationalism and neoliberalism, we could add, is part of urbanization
which demands the education sector to take certain position in the market field. President
Jokowi’s emphasis on nationalism in education is part of an attempt to restore selfhood and
community, one that would not be subsumed by the demand of the neoliberal urban.
Jokowi’s nationalism is in some way a restoration of self and community, one that he
envisions in terms of cosmopolitanism: the capacity to transcend “ethnicity” to achieve “cultural” identity. A set of essays in this collection deals with just such question of identity and
difference, of ethnicity and culture. The revival of rituals in the multi-ethnic Bagan Siapi-api
and the display of regional ornaments in restaurants, much like the images of cultures in the
Instagram are all part of the attempts to apprehend what it is to be modern, mutable and
progressive that is, how to become Indonesians, and how to re-worlding Indonesia.
Abidin Kusno
York University, Canada
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 672
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
A toponymy based study on waterway trade in the ancient
Mataram era (9th–11th century AD)
G.A. Khakam & N.S. Tedjowasono
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The ancient Mataram Kingdom in Central Java is one of the Hindhu–
Buddhist kingdoms that had several written inscriptions. Most inscriptions about the management of water transportation were issued by King Balitung (9th century), King Sindhok
(10th century) and King Airlangga (11th century). These inscriptions contained information
about the development of patterns of trade conducted through river ways, mainly Solo and
Berantas Rivers, as the main trade lanes. Archaeological and geographical evidences found
in the areas surrounding the aforementioned two major rivers indicate attempts made to
improve the economy by trading via waterways that had been explored at that time. Evidences
found around the two rivers indicate existence of small port areas in the ancient Mataram
era. In addition, on the basis of the toponymy of the areas around the harbours, this study
reveals the functions of the ports. The findings of this study reveal the methods of using
tracks and patterns of waterway transportation in trading at that time.
1
INTRODUCTION
Trading has always been contributed to the existence of kingdoms in the Indonesian Archipelago (Nusantara), especially in the ancient Mataram era that set its centre in Central Java
and East Java (Soejono & Leirissa, 2010). Evidences of the long-lasting trade in the forms of
written inscriptions and artefacts indicate that large rivers served as vital trading routes. In
order to manage the trading routes, it was necessary to extend the power to regions that could
develop prosperous trade on both regional and international scales, not to mention that Java as
a transitional area was located in the region where commodities from the East and the West met
(Meilink-Roelofsz, 2016). Evidence of the extension of power of the kingdom can be found
in the inscriptions describing a conquest of an area developed by the king or a high-ranking
official in charge of the area. For example, there was a position mentioned in the Kubu-Kubu
inscription, stipulated by King Balitung and dated 827 Śaka or 905 AD, to specifically administer the areas under the king’s colony, commonly referred to as Juru ni Majajahan.1 As the king
invaded to expand his colony, it was necessary to hold high-ranking officials responsible for the
colonies, so that the kingdom’s political and trading activities remain unaffected.
It is common for a kingdom to invade other areas outside its territory. In this case, trading
was the main reason for the invasion by the kingdom, especially when the ancient Mataram
era was still prevalent in Central Java, and the kingdom left a heritage of evidences in the form
of inscriptions found in East Java (Soejono & Leirissa, 2010). On the basis of the data from
the inscriptions, efforts to expand the colony, including the economic expansion, started during the period of Sri Maharaja Rakai Watukura Dyah Balitung Sri Dharmmodaya Mahasambhu, who had left written evidence in the form of inscriptions found in East Java, to be exact,
behind the statue of Ganesha in Ketanen village (dated 826 Śaka) and in Kinewu village
1. The word juru means an intellectual person in charge of a task (Zoetmulder, 2006), while majajahan
means a territory that has become the colony of a state or kingdom (Zoetmulder, 2006).
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(dated 829 Śaka). He was later followed by King Daksa, Dyah Tulodong, Dyah Wawa and
finally Pu Sindhok, who ruled the ancient Mataram in East Java (Boechari, 2012).
Many scholars opined on the displacement of the ancient Mataram from Central Java to
East Java. According to de Casparis (1958), the displacement was due to the invasion of the
Sriwijaya Kingdom. However, according to Schrieke, the displacement was due to the following two reasons: (1) the fact that the people were forced to build religious buildings in a relatively short time and (2) the strategic potential of the Berantas River area as an international
trading area (Rahardjo, 2002; Boechari, 2012). Boechari (2012) suggested that the displacement of the centre of the kingdom was due to a volcanic eruption or probably an earthquake
that had destroyed it. Another reason might have been an economic factor. Natural disaster
often occurred in the territory of the kingdom, as described in the Rukam inscription dated
to 829 Śaka, which also included information about the awarding of sima status to the king’s
grandmother in Rukam village due to the natural disasters that often occurred there (Nastiti,
et al., 1982; Darmosoetopo, 2003; Soejono & Leirissa, 2010). Agus Aris Munandar suggested
that the displacement of the centre of the kingdom to East Java was due to its adjacency to a
sacred site near Mount Penanggungan, which was regarded as pawitra (Susanti, 2008).
Although scholars differ in their opinions, there is also a common factor, namely the economic or trading factor. The strategic location of Berantas River as part of an international
trade zone as suggested by Schrieke, the invasion of the Sriwijaya Kingdom that aspired to
manage the trade route as suggested by de Casparis and the economic factor as suggested
by Boechari confirmed that the control over the trade route was the major reason behind the
displacement of the centre of the ancient Mataram Kingdom from Central Java to East Java.
2
ISSUES AND OBJECTIVES
Several opinions have been provided regarding the displacement of the centre of the ancient
Mataram Kingdom from Central Java to East Java; however, the economic factor mentioned
above has been the most significant. The expansion towards the eastern part of Java had
started since the period from the era of King Balitung to the displacement brought about
under the leadership of King Pu Sindhok. Control over trade route in the Berantas River
zone was a must, and several written inscriptions had suggested such considerations along
the way to the area, and it was mentioned in the names of the villages where inscriptions were
found. Names of villages and trade-related facilities can also reveal the attempts made to
control the trade route as early as the reigning era of King Balitung. In this case, toponymic
study can help identify the names of places written in the inscriptions as evidence of attempts
to rule the area in East Java in order to gain control over the trade route at the time.
The objective of this study is to determine the reasons for the displacement of the centre
of the ancient Mataram Kingdom from Central Java to East Java during the ruling period of
King Balitung, through toponymic approach.
3
RESEARCH METHOD
Similarly to other archaeological studies, according to Deetz (1967), in this case, there are
three supporting stages, namely data collection, data processing and data interpretation. The
objective of the data collection stage is to collect all data, including those gathered from the
field and taken from relevant literature works. The objective of the data processing stage is to
find elements that suit the theme of the research. The data interpretation stage aims at discussing the results obtained from the previous two stages, data collection and data processing, and providing a context according to the research theme in the form of a conclusion.
3.1
Data collection
Data collection is intended to find all aspects related to the theme. The two main targets of this
stage are field data and literature. Collecting data related to the inscriptions originated from
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the ancient Mataram Kingdom from the 9th to 11th century, especially during the period of
King Balitung, which remained in Central Java until the ruling period of King Pu Sindhok,
who displaced the centre of the kingdom to East Java was the objective of data collection stage.
The data collection and literature study involve collection of written sources from scholars or
reviews related to the theme of research. Review of literature includes reviewing data collected
from the ancient Mataram Kingdom regarding the displacement of the centre of the kingdom,
trading, transportation and the names of the villages under the ancient Mataram Kingdom.
3.2
Data processing
In general, data processing involves searching elements related to the theme of the study. In
this study, the elements used as data are the names of villages mentioned in the inscription,
means of transportations in the trading activities of the kingdom and notes regarding the
place where the inscriptions were found.
After the target elements are found, the next steps were to analyse the names of the villages
and to study the current names of the villages that are assumed to be the trading centres in
the ancient Mataram era, using the toponymic approach.
3.3
Data interpretation
After data collection and data processing takes place data interpretation. The objective of
data interpretation was to provide a description or discuss about the data obtained from the
previous stages and use them as additional data regarding the cultural history of the ancient
Mataram era, particularly regarding the displacement of the centre of the kingdom to gain
access to the strategic location for trading.
4
DISCUSSION
Inscription is a form of information written on stone or metal (Boechari, 2012). On the basis
of the context, several types of inscriptions were available. For example, Jayapattra is an
inscription that records matters regarding court rulings.2 Normally, these inscriptions contained information about the protest of people against tax collectors as found in the Luitan
inscription (dated 823 Śaka) and in the Palêpangan inscription (dated 828 Śaka) or about the
disputes among people living in a village as found in the Guntur inscription (dated 829 Śaka)
(Soejono & Leirissa, 2010). Another type of inscriptions is in the form of a long manuscript
or those containing the year and the śima status. The śima type of inscription describes the
awarding of the perdikan (special) status to a land or a village as a gift from the king for
providing assistance or benefitting the kingdom through supporting sacred construction.3
The awarding of śima status to a village can provide a description about the village and
the villages surrounding it and about the main materials of the commodities produced by the
traders subjected to taxes. This was written in the śima type of inscription. The description
of villages and their surrounding areas was included in the awarding of pasek-pasek within
the śima awarding ritual, and the recipients of śima award invited officials of the surrounding
villages to the event (Wurjantoro, 1981). In the inscription, some villages are indicating by
their original names, whereas some others with the altered names.
4.1
Waterway trade during the ancient Mataram era
As mentioned above, trading in the ancient Mataram era was divided into two types, namely overland trade, which involved the role of markets, and trading activities through waterway access,
which took place near ports. Trade by waterways, as stated by Nastiti, used streams of two major
2. Boechari, op.cit. p. 4.
3. Boechari, op.cit. p. 6.
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rivers, namely Bengawan Solo and Berantas.4 As such, water transportation means were required
for trading via waterways in the ancient Mataram era. Several inscriptions issued in that era mentioned the use of boats for trade. These data are provided below:
4.2
Sangguran inscription
This inscription was issued by Rakai Sumba Dyah Wawa in year 850 Śaka. It mentions the
use of a boat in trading, as specified below:
… parahu 1 ma(s)u(ŋ)hara (3) tanpatun.d.āna…. (Wurjantoro, 2011: 256)
Translation:
one boat [parahu 1] having three masts [ma(s)u(ŋ)hara (3)], having no deck
[tanpatun.d.āna]. (Wurjantoro, 2011: 263)
4.3 Gulung-Gulung inscription
This inscription was found in the village of Singosari, Malang. Information about the type of
boat used for trading is provided in this inscription, as mentioned below:
… hajinya samangkana ikanang barahu pawalijān 1 ma suŋhara 2 tanpa tun.d.āna….
(Wurjantoro, 2011: 256; Trigangga, 2003: 11)
Translation:
.
… the King, so was this traders’ boat [saman kana °ikanaŋ barahu5 pawalija 1] of 2
6
masts [ma su haara 2] without any deck [tanpa tun.d.ana]… (Trigangga, 2003: 42)
4.4
Sarangan inscription
This stone inscription was found in Mojokerto, East Java. Information about the type of
boat used for trading is provided in this inscription, as mentioned below:
… lan °un.d.ahagi satuhan parahu masuhara 3 tanpatun.dān.a…. (Prihatmoko, 2011: 41)
Translation:
… and the woodcraft artisans (the limit) 1 leader/chief, a river boat with mast (the
limit) 3 without any deck…. (Prihatmoko, 2011: 41).
4.5
Linggasuntan inscription
This inscription was found in the village of Lawajati, Malang, East Java. It mentions the use
of a boat in trading, as specified below:
… parahu 1 masuŋhara 3 tan patun.d.āna …. (Wurjantoro, 2011: 270)
Translation:
… 1 river boat with mast (the limit) 3 without any deck…. (Trigangga, 2003: 52)
4.6 Turyyan inscription
This inscription was found in the village of Tanggung, Blitar, East Java. It mentions the use
of a boat in trading, as specified below:
… parahu 1 magalaha 3 tanpa tun.d.ana …. (Casparis, 1987: 45)
4. Nastiti, op.cit. p. 48.
5. The word barahu should be parahu.
.
6. The word ma su haara is written in the inscription as masunhara.
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Translation:
… one boat with 3 masts that have no deck [parahu magalaha 3 tanpa tun.d.ana….
(Prihatmoko, 2011: 43)
4.7 Jeru-jeru inscription
This inscription was found in the village of Singosari, Malang, East Java. It mentions the use
of a boat in trading, as specified below:
.
… parahu pawalijan 1. masunhar 2 tanpat un.d.ana…. (Wurjantoro, 2011: 286–287)
Translation:
… river boat with mast (the limit) 2 without any deck…. (Prihatmoko, 2011: 44)
4.8 Wimalasrama inscription
This inscription was found in the delta of Berantas River, Sidoarjo, East Java. It mentions
various traders who used boats as their means of transportation:
... maramwan tlung ramwan, parahu 6, masunghara 6 kunang, ikang hiliran 6, akirim agong, akirim tambatamba 6, amayang 6, amuket kakap 6 amuket krp 6, atadah
6 anglamboan 6 amaring 6, anglam, 6 amuntamunta 6, 6 puket dago, 6 kirm dwal
baryyan 6, kirim panjang 6, anglahan 6, añjala 6, anjalawirawir 6, anjala besar 6,
amuwumuwu 6, amintur 6, anjaring balanak 6, jaringkwang-kwang 6, karing kakab 6
amibit 6, waring sugu 6, waring tundung 6, waring tadah 6, anghilihili 6, i kata kabaih
tan kaknana ya soddhara haji, kunang ikang kangkapan, wlah galah 6, kalima tundan,
parahu panawa kalima tundan, parahu pakbowan sawiji kapat tundan, parahu jurag 5,
parahu panggagaran 5, parahu pawalijan 5, parahu pangngayan 5, mwangapadaganga,
kunang wwitaning padagang bhataran pamli bha…. (OJO CXII: 245).
Translation:
… traders using raft/rowing boat (the limit) 3, merchants, boats (the limit) 6, riverboat (with a mast?) (the limit) 6, trader in river downstream (the limit) 6, boat
transporting large size goods (the limit) 6, boat transporting medicine (the limit) 6,
fishermen with seine (the limit) 6, fishermen catching snappers (the limit) 6, fishermen catching grouper (the limit) 6, atadah (the limit) 6, fishermen with lambo boat
(the limit) 6, amaring (the limit) 6, anglam (the limit) 6, amuntamunta (the limit) 6,
puket dago (the limit) 6, boat transporting crockeries/chinaware (the limit) 6, anglaha
(the limit) 6, fish catcher using fish net (the limit) 6, fish catcher using jalawirawir
(the limit) 6, fish catcher using large fish net (the limit) 6, fish catcher using wuwu (the
limit) 6, crab catchers (the limit) 6, kwangkwang catchers with fish net (the limit) 6,
sugu catcher using waring (the limit) 6, tundung catcher using waring (the limit) 6,
tadah catcher (the limit) 6, anghilihili (the limit) 6, everyone are not subjected to tax
by the hajj, for all groups of traders using boats with oar or pole (the limit) 6 group,
(the limit) 5 with a deck, large boat (the limit) 5 with a deck, cattle (buffalo) transporting boat 1 (group) (the limit) 4 with a deck, boat led by the owner (the limit) 5
panggagaran boat (the limit), trader’s boat (the limit) 5, pangngayan boat (the limit)
5 and trader who initially traded for the king…. (Prihatmoko, 2011: 47).
Table 1 presents data regarding all of the seven inscriptions described above.
The above-described seven types of inscriptions that served as sources of data regarding
boat as a means of transportation for trade show that trading activities during the ancient
Mataram era were centred in East Java through the use of waterways. As indicated in Table 1,
inscriptions were found in areas through which Berantas River flowed, covering the regencies
of Nganjuk, Tulungagung, Malang, Blitar, Sidoarjo, Mojokerto, Jombang, Probolinggo and
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Table 1. Names of inscriptions mentioning the means of water transportations in the ancient Mataram era.
No.
Name of the inscription
Type
Year
Place of discovery
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Palebuhan
Sangguran
Gulung-Gulung
Sarangan
Linggasuntan
Turryan
Jeru-Jeru
Wimalasrama
Copper
Stone
Stone
Stone
Stone
Stone
Stone
Copper
849/927
850/928
851/929
851/929
851/929
851/929
851/929
–
Goreng Gareng, Madiun
Ngendat, Malang
Malang
Mojokerto
Malang
Blitar
Malang
Sidoarjo
Source: Early Tenth Century Java from the Inscriptions (Jones, 1984).
Table 2.
Names of villages mentioned in the inscriptions of the ancient Mataram found in East Java.
No.
Name of the village
Inscription
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
Sangguran
Sepet
Tugaran
Kajatan
Kdikdi
Wungkaltihang
Wungawunga
Papanahan
Tampur
Palebuhan
Garung
Gulung-Gulung
Kusala
Himad
Batwan
Curu
Air Gilang
Gapuk
Kanuruhan
Sarangan
Bangbang
Kancing
Linggasuntan
Sumari
Wurakutan
Mling-Mling
Talijungan
Pangawan
Kanuruhan
Turyyan
Kanuruhan
Gurung-gurung
Kanuruhan
Tampuran
Pangawan
Tugaran
Waharu
Jeru-Jeru
Sangguran
Sangguran
Sangguran
Sangguran
Sangguran
Sangguran
Sangguran
Sangguran
Sangguran
Palebuhan
Palebuhan
Gulung-Gulung
Gulung-Gulung
Gulung-Gulung
Gulung-Gulung
Gulung-Gulung
Gulung-Gulung
Gulung-Gulung
Gulung-Gulung
Sarangan
Sarangan
Sarangan
Linggasuntan
linggasuntan
Linggasuntan
Linggasuntan
Linggasuntan
Linggasuntan
Linggasuntan
Turyyan
Turyyan
Turyyan
Jeru-Jeru
Jeru-Jeru
Jeru-Jeru
Jeru-Jeru
Jeru-Jeru
Jeru-Jeru
Present toponymy
Tempursari
Garung
Batuan
Curung Rejo
Gilang
Kanjuruhan, Kejuron, Malang
Sarangan
Bambang
Kanjuruhan, Kejuron, Malang
Turen
Kanjuruhan, Kejuron, Malang
Kanjuruhan, Kejuron, Malang
Jeru, Turen, Malang
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Lumajang and the cities of Surabaya, Sidoarjo, Malang, Blitar, Kediri and Pasuruan (Taqyuddin, 2016). On the basis of this fact, it can be concluded that the displacement of the
ancient Mataram capital from Central Java to East Java would most probably be based on
the control of waterways for trading.
4.9
Port cities in the ancient Mataram era
As discussed above, trading during the ancient Mataram era had focused on the waterways,
with boats as means of transportation. The above-described seven inscriptions mentioning
boats as means of transportation would possibly be near rivers, which facilitated trading
activities. The following are names of places mentioned in the inscriptions, that is, villages
that participated in the awarding of śima status.
The toponymic study that focuses on the names of places (Rais, 2008) plays an important
role in positioning a village or a location in the map. As presented in Table 2, 38 names of
villages were found in the inscriptions that mention the use of boats for trading. Of the 38
names of villages, only 8 names could be identified according to the current toponymy. This
was possibly due to the alteration of names or the merging of hamlets or villages. However,
these 38 villages would likely be visited by traders who used boats for transportation.
As specified in the inscriptions used as sources of data for this study, several types of boats
were used for transportation, including (1) boats without mast and deck, (2) river boats and
(3) large boats. This information shows that trading activities in the ancient Mataram Kingdom was concentrated in East Java, through waterways or rivers in surrounding areas.
5
CONCLUSION
Previous studies have indicated that the control over the West Java area began in the ruling
era of Rakai Dyah Balitung, which left six inscriptions in the East Java area. This was followed by other kings up to the displacement of the capital of the ancient Mataram to East
Java by King Pu Sindhok. The transfer aimed at controlling the trade routes in the area surrounding Berantas River, which was highly strategic for international trade. The evidence of
significantly rapid trading activities reveals the mentioning of various types of boats used to
transport different sizes of commodities, as mentioned in the Wimalasrama inscription during the ruling period of King Pu Sindhok.
REFERENCES
Boechari & Wibowo, A.S. (1986) Prasasti Koleksi Museum Nasional Jilid I. Jakarta: the National
Museum. Translation: Collection of Inscriptions of the National Museum Volume I. Jakarta: the
National Museum.
Boechari. (2012) Melacak Sejarah Kuno Indonesia Lewat Prasasti. Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia. Translation: Tracing Indonesia’s Ancient History through Inscriptions Jakarta: Kepustakaan
Populer Gramedia.
Casparis, J.G. de. (1958) Airlangga. Presented in the inauguration as a Professor of the Old Indonesian
History and the Sanskrit at the Pedagogic Institute of Universitas Airlangga, Malang, 26th April
1958.
Darmosoetopo. (2003) Śima dan Bangunan Keagamaan di Jawa Abad IX–X TU. Jogjakarta: Penerbit
Prana Pena. Translation: Śima and Religious Buildings in Java in IX-X Centuries TU. Jogjakarta:
Penerbit Prana Pena.
Deetz. (1967) Invitation to Archaeology. New York: The Natural History Press.
Jones, A.M.B. (1984) Early Tenth Century Java from the Inscriptions. USA: Foris Publications.
Meilink-Roelofsz, M.A.P. (2016) Persaingan Eropa & Asia di Nusantara. Depok: Penerbit Komunitas
Bambu. Translation: Competitions of Europe & Asia in Nusantara. Depok: Penerbit Komunitas Bambu.
Nastiti, T.S., et al. (1982) Tiga Prasasti Dari Masa Balitung. Jakarta: Proyek Penelitian Purbakala.
Kementerian Pendidikan dan Budaya. Translation: Three Inscriptions from Balitung Era. Jakarta:
Proyek Penelitian Purbakala. Ministry of Education and Culture.
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Nastiti. (2003) Pasar Di Jawa Masa Mataram Kuna Abad VIII–XI Masehi. Jakarta: PT Dunia Pustaka
Jaya. Translation: Markets in Java in the Era of Ancient Mataram VIII–XI AD. Jakarta: PT Dunia
Pustaka Jaya.
Rahardjo, Supratikno. (2011) Peradaban Jawa Dari Mataram Kuno sampai Majapahit Akhir. Depok:
Komunitas Bambu. Translation: Civilisation of Java from Ancient Mataram to End of Majapahit.
Depok: Komunitas Bambu.
Soejono, R.P. & Leirissa, R.Z. (2010) Sejarah Nasional Indonesia II: Zaman Kuno. Jakarta: Balai
Pustaka. Translation: National History of Indonesia II: Ancient Era. Jakarta: Balai Pustaka.
Susanti, N. (1991) Raja dan Masalah Perpajakan: Suatu Analisis Simbolik Integratif Jaman Raja
Balitung (899–910 Masehi). Jakarta. [Thesis] Universitas Indonesia. Translation: King and Taxation
Problems: An Integrative Symbolic Analysis in King Balitung Era (899–910 AD). Jakarta. [Thesis]
Universitas Indonesia.
Susanti, N. (2008) Perpindahan Pusat Kerajaan Mataram Kuno dari Jawa Tengah ke Jawa Timur.
Translation: Displacement of the Centre of Ancient Mataram Kingdom from Central to East Java.
Presented in a Seminar and Book Launching commemorating the One Century of the National
Resurgence, Jakarta, 27th to 29th May 2008.
Wurjantoro. (1981) Wanua i Tpi Siring: Data Prasasti dari jaman Balitung. In: Seri Penerbitan Ilmiah
7. Depok: Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Indonesia. Translation: Wanua i Tpi Siring: Data of Inscription from Balitung Era. In: Scientific Publication Series 7. Depok: Faculty of Letters, Universitas
Indonesia.
Zoetmulder. (2006) Kamus Jawa Kuna Indonesia. Jakarta: PT Gramedia Pustaka. Translation: Dictionary of Indonesia’s Ancient Java. Jakarta: PT Gramedia Pustaka.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Development of Mandar’s maritime trade in the early
twentieth century
A.R. Hamid
Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: In this paper, we explore the rise and fall of the Mandarese maritime network
in the Makassar Strait in the early twentieth century. The objective of this study is to address
the following three questions using a historical method: (1) how did the Mandarese establish
their shipping network? (2) what commodities did the Mandarese trade and how were they
distributed? and (3) why the maritime trade declined in the early 1940s? The results show that
the establishment of the Mandarese maritime network was supported by cultural, geographical, and economic factors. The Pambauwang sailors mainly carried out shipping activities
around the Pambauwang and Majene ports. The four main commodities traded were copra,
rice, woven fabric, and dried fish, which were exchanged for other commodities from other
ports in the archipelago. The ability to manage the cultural and natural resources was crucial
in the growth of their maritime trade. In the early 1940s, Mandar’s maritime network declined
due to safety issues for ships sailing at sea, which affected their ability to buy and sell commodities. In this context, maritime safety is vital for the survival of Mandar’s maritime network.
1
INTRODUCTION
Shipping and trade are inevitable for Indonesia, as more than half of its area is covered by
sea with thousands of islands scattered along the archipelago, where many seafarers use boats
and ships to transport goods. Some of the famous seafarers from Indonesia are those from the
Mandarese community. However, they are often referred to as seafarers from Bugis, Makassar. In fact, their spirit is shown in their collective memory in the following expression: “Later
the black eye will be separated from the white, then the sea, the boats, and the Mandarese will
split (Rahman, 1988, p. 78).” The Mandarese who lived on the coasts were efficient traders
(Nooteboom, 1912, p. 528) as well as Sulawesi’s best sailors from the past (ENI, 1918, p. 664).
Unfortunately, Mandarese maritime history has been rarely studied. Some of the early studies on the subject include the studies conducted by Lopa (1982), Liebner (1996), and Alimuddin (2005; 2009). Lopa examined the legal aspect of sailing, whereas others discussed the boat
technology in sandeq sailboat, which was smaller (weighing up to 3 tonnes) than the Mandarese
trading boats in the first half of the twentieth century, which weighed approximately 30 tonnes.
This study provides information about the maritime historiography of Eastern Indonesia.
The Mandarese were the people dwelled on the eastern part of the Makassar Strait,
Sulawesi, that is, from the west coast of the Gulf of Mandar in the north and to the Gulf of
Mamuju in the south. The main source of their income was shipping and trading. They built
a maritime network, which covered areas of Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Java, Nusa Tenggara, the
Moluccas, Irian, Sumatera, and the Malacca Strait, and the main hub of their network was
in the Makassar Strait. The question of how they built the maritime network between 1900
and 1941 remains unexplored. Therefore, in this study, we attempt to address this question as
well as the following three questions:
1. How did the Mandarese establish their shipping network?
2. What commodities did the Mandarese trade and how were they distributed?
3. Why the maritime trade declined in the early 1940s?
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1.1
Establishment of the maritime network
The establishment of the Mandar maritime network was supported by cultural and geographical factors. The coastal areas of Mandar, particularly Pambauwang, produced no less
than hundred boats of various sizes annually, ranging from small boats with an outrigger and
loading capacity of 2–4 tonnes (pakur and sandeq) to large boats without an outrigger and
loading capacity of 10–30 tonnes (padewakang, palari, lete, and lambo). Most of the ships
were made by artisans from Mandar and other boat makers were from Ara and Bulukumba.
The boats were used for not only trading but also transporting cargo (Mededeelingen, 1909,
pp. 673–674; Nooteboom, 1940, p. 33).
The location of the Mandar settlement on the west coast of Sulawesi was very beneficial
for utilizing the onshore and wind for sailing. The navigation system of boats was determined
by their position, distance, and time. The boats usually sailed close to the mainland (island)
using onshore wind, which blew from evening to morning. It is also known as pelayaran pesisir
(coastal shipping). The boats sailing toward interisland passages depend on the wind from the
sea that blows during the day; it is also known as pelayaran antar pulau (interisland shipping).
In contrast to the onshore wind, which blows throughout the year, there is a steady sea wind
known as monsoon, which blows from one direction from July to September (east/southeast
wind) and from January to February (westerly wind). The knowledge of this system is well
known to the Mandarese sailors, as is recorded in the lontar pattappingang from Pambauwang.
Two important ports of Mandar, with regard to the location and wind systems, were Pambauwang during the east monsoon and Majene during the west monsoon (Vuuren, 1920, p. 208).
The boats sailed via Pambauwang port to explore the west coast of Sulawesi to the north toward
the ports of Mamuju (Lariang, Karossa, Lariang, Budong-budong, and Pasangkayu) and continued to the west to sail through the Makassar Strait to the east coast of Borneo. In addition,
some boats from Pambauwang sailed directly to south Kalimantan. Ships entered several ports
there, including Pegatan, Banjarmasin, Sea Island, and the surrounding islands, to either sell
or buy commodities or to take water and shipping supplies. Boats that entered the east coast
sailed to the south coast and further into the eastern part of the Java Sea to the port of Surabaya
(Kalimas), Gresik, Probolinggo, Banyuwangi, and others (PewartaSoerabaia, 1935). From there,
most of the boats continued sailing along the northern coast of Java to Semarang and Batavia
and to the west coast of Sumatra (Padang) and the Malacca Strait (Singapore). Sailors who
used this route were known by the names of their destination, namely Paboroneo (Kalimantan),
Pajawa (Java), Papadang (Sumatra), and Pattumasik or Passala (Singapore) (Lopa, 1982, p. 50).
Boats from the port of Majene sailed toward south to the ports of Pare-Pare and Makassar.
In this voyage, the boats dropped anchor in the coastal areas of western Sulawesi (Pinrang,
Barru, and Pangkep) and the small islands around them. After arriving in Makassar, they
continued their voyage to the east. On entering the waters of the Selayar islands, the shipping
lanes were divided into two paths. One path continued to the east into Banda Sea islands passing Iron Works (now Wakatobi) to the Moluccas Islands and to the west coast of New Guinea
(West Papua). Ambon and Ternate were the main bases for boats from Mandar. Therefore, the
sailors of this route, including Irian, were called Paabung and Pattaranate. The second route
continued to the south into the Flores Sea up to Nusa Tenggara islands and the main port in
Salaparang. The traders in the area were known as Pasalaparang (Rahman, 1988, p. 77).
In anticipation of the east or west monsoon, the Mandarese sailors had to quickly complete the preparation to return to Mandar. The boats were docked in different places when
they leave and return, as the geography, monsoons winds, and the waves affected the safety of
the ships. Boats departing from Pambauwang will return to Mandar and stopped in Majene,
and vice versa. This in turn has made the two ports centers for shipping and commerce in
Mandar (Sailing Direction, 1937, p. 466).
Mandarese sailors from Pambauwang, especially Bababulo and Luaor, were most active
in shipping and commerce (Pemberita Makassar, 1924). Rijsdijk (1935, p. 9) noted that there
were indigenous people who were good at running lucrative businesses of commercial shipping. Statistical data of the number of boats in Mandar in 1938show that there were 946
boats consisting of 437 units (46%) in Pambauwang and 323 units (34%) in Majene. The rest
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were in Mamuju and Polewali. Then, in 1939, there were 477 units (38%) in Pambauwang
and 397 units (32%) in Majene, from 1,250 boats in Mandar (Statistiek, 1939, p. 60; 1940, pp.
61–62). Each boat in Pambauwang, especially in Bababulo and Luaor, brought in a commercial capital of 30,000 to 40,000 guilders in one seasonal cruise (Rijsdijk, 1935, p. 9).
In addition to the captain and boat crew, there were others, called punggawa, who also
sailed with them in the voyage, who were under the control of the captain. Each merchant
was required to report the amount of capital to the captain (Vuuren, 1917b, p. 333). The
captain in Bababulo, Lolo Baharuddin, said that the amount of capital usually differed, but
the cargo space and fares (5% of profits) were the same for all traders. Fares did not apply to
traders who did not earn.1
1.2
Commodities and distribution
The Mandar commodities were of three types, namely (1) agricultural products, such as
copra, rice, coconut oil, resin, rattan, and cotton; (2) marine products, especially dried fish
and sea cucumbers; and (3) handicrafts, mainly woven fabric, boat ropes, screen weaving,
rattan mats, and wicker baskets.
With regard to copra trade, two resident assistants of Mandar, Rijsdijk (1935) and Leyds
(2006), noted that the whole coastal plain in Mandar consisted of coconut plantation. An
estimate suggests that there were approximately 500,000 coconut trees; hence, Mandar was
called “the coconut island of Sulawesi”. Coconut was processed into copra and coconut oil.
Copra was exported to Pare-Pare, Makassar, Java, Singapore, and Borneo, whereas coconut
oil was used for local consumption. From 1932 to 1933, the price of copra in Mandar was
between f 5 to f 5.5. In 1933, copra exports from Pambauwang reached 90,000 kg.
During the rice harvest season, boats Bababulo and Luaor to Pare-Pare and Pangkajene
bought or brought paddy to the region, which was processed into rice by the local women.
Furthermore, the rice was sold in markets in Pambauwang, Majene, Tinambung, and Balanipa (Leyds, 2006, p. 73). According to Los (2004), the Onderafdeeling head of Pangkajene,
most of the rice was transported to Mandar and Borneo and some was taken to Makassar by
the Mandarese boats (Pemberita Makassar, 1923). From Borneo, the boats returned to carry
wood to be sold to the residents in Pangkajene, Pare-Pare, and Mandar. In Mandar, the wood
was used to make boats and build houses.
In addition to rice, women produced woven fabric. The high-quality weaving adorned with
European crystal patterns on the bottom part of the cloth came from Majene, and the lowquality woven was produced in Sendana (Mededeelingen, 1909, pp. 665–682). The fabric was
brought in large quantities to the Moluccas Islands (Ternate, Sula, Bacan, Ambon, Aru, Kei,
and Tanimbar) and was exchanged for cash crops such as copra, cloves, nutmeg, resin, and
sea products, including sea cucumbers, scallops, and tortoiseshell. Commodities were sold to
the Chinese and European traders in Makassar (De Sumatra Post, 1918; 1936). In addition to
fabric, firearms and ammunition were purchased in Singapore and exported from the Dutch
East Indies to the west coast of Irian (Bataviasch Niewsblad, 1939). Some Pambauwang traders
bought fabric from the market in Balanipa, Pambusuang, Campalagian, and Mapili to sell in
Padang and Singapore.
The next commodity was dried fish, caught by the Mandarese fishermen in the Makassar
Strait and the eastern part of the Java Sea. Typically, the dried fish processed in the boat for
1 or 2 weeks was sold in nearby ports in East Java and South Kalimantan. In this endeavor,
the Mandar fishermen interacted with the fishermen from Madura in sea for the exchange
of information on the location of fish and shellfish that they needed. Before returning, the
Mandarese fishermen bought household goods at the port and then carried mostly dried fish
to sell in the market in Pambauwang and Majene. The dried fish brought from the western
coast of Sulawesi was sold in Pare-Pare and Makassar.
Commodities from Mandar were exchanged for industrial commodities such as manufactured goods, grocery items, pottery, glassware, gloves, home appliances, and fishing lines
1. Interview with Baharuddin Lolo (88 years old) in Bababulo Majene, 4/2/2016.
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brought by boats from Java, Makassar, and Singapore to Borneo, Sulawesi, the Moluccas,
and Irian under the barter system. When the boats arrived at a local port, the captain allowed
the traders, including the crew, to sell the commodities they carried and purchase new commodities to be sold in the next cruise destination. This commercial commodity management
mechanism was run by the Mandarese seafarers.
1.3
The decline of the maritime trade
The decline of the Mandarese maritime trade was due to the disruption in shipping lanes
and the difficulty of acquiring and distributing trade commodities as a result of World War
II (1942–1945). The Makassar Strait was a battleground between the Allied forces and the
Japanese forces, so it was not safe to sail. Warships were passing along the west coast of
Sulawesi. Similarly, aircrafts were flying low over settlement areas or only slightly above the
palm trees. Therefore, every house had a bunker hole as a hiding place when an aircraft or
ship was passing by their settlement.
The boat makers from Mandar were deployed to make boats for the Japanese Army in
Tonyaman Polewali. During this period, they no longer made boats for themselves or were
properly paid to make boats for the boat owners. Everything was done by force and no fee
was paid. The boats sailed across the Makassar Strait in the interisland shipping, except
along the beach (coastal shipping) of western Sulawesi, from Polewali to Mamuju and vice
versa, to avoid warships at sea.
“The last time my parents went to Singapore was in 1941. After that, they never went there
again. That was the time of distress”: that was the testimony of Baharuddin Lolo on commercial shipping in Bababulo. Before World War II, in 1942, his father, Lolo, a boat owner and
captain sailed to Singapore and Ambon to trade each year on a palari boat, named Parendeng,
with a loading capacity of 20 tonnes. Commodities brought from Singapore could not be sold
because the boat could not sail to the Moluccas. Some traders sold them around Sulawesi;
however, there were not many buyers, because crops such as copra and rice and crafts such as
woven cloth, a medium of exchange in trade at the time, were difficult to find. The Mandarese
maritime heyday, known as the “Age of Singapore and Ambon”, ended in 1941.
Before 1942, the people of Bababulo produced rice and woven fabric. According to
M. Jafar,2 who sailed with his father when the boat went to Ambon, many people (women)
brought fabric to be sold by the boat crew. All of the fabric was recorded by the captain
on Bugis Lontar as “Kain Bugis” and sold by the boat crew when the boat arrived at the
destination. When the boat returned, the captain gave the proceeds of the sales to the owners in the form of daily staple items purchased in Makassar when the boat dropped anchor
there. Meanwhile, the local women, when their husbands went sailing, planted paddy and
converted it to rice. This activity lasted from morning to afternoon and even continued until
late in the evening. These activities stopped when the Japanese troops arrived in 1942. As a
result, no commodity was available for trade boats.
Other commercial commodities that were difficult to obtain were copra and dried fish. The
coconut and fruit trees were not abandoned by the farmers; however, during this period, the
Japanese banned the residents from igniting fire, which was needed to produce copra through
smoking process. Then, when farmers processed oil into kerosene, the activity was limited,
and the Japanese seized most of the product. Similarly, although fishermen were not prohibited from fishing, their catch was seized by the Japanese.
The scarcity of the trading commodities had implications on the shipping business. The
captain, his crew, and the punggawa faced capital constraints because it was difficult to make
profit from the trade. The end of the “Singapore and Ambon” era became a turning point
of the maritime trade. The critical role of the boat captain was declining: from the leader
of shipping and commerce to the leader of shipping only. Shipping lanes were adjusted to
the interests of merchants, as users of transport services, which were previously determined
solely by the captain.
2. Interview with Muhammad Jafar (83 years old) in Bababulo Majene, 22/2/2016.
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2
CONCLUSION
The ability of the Mandar people to manage the cultural and natural resources was crucial
in establishing a maritime network in the Makassar Strait. This activity was mainly carried
out by the Pambauwang, especially Bababulo and Luaor, based in the ports of Pambauwang
and Majene. They brought local commodities to exchange for other commodities from other
areas on each shipping season. In that process, different trends emerged. The first trend was
obtaining commodities from the eastern region commonly done by barter system, and the
type of commodities was limited to natural products and very few domestic industrial products such as woven cloth. The second trend was obtaining commodities from the western
region, such as industrial products, through cash payment. The trend was managed well and
brought prosperity to the Mandarese sailors.
The maritime activities of Mandar began to decline in the early 1940s when World War II
broke out (1942–1945). The sea around the archipelago became unsafe for shipping boats. Similarly, the distribution of commodities, as part of the maritime trade, suffered a serious decline.
Thus, the maritime safety was an important aspect for the sustainability of shipping and trades
for the Mandarese in the Makassar Strait in the first half of the twentieth century (before 1942).
REFERENCES
Alimuddin, M.R. (2005) Orang Mandar orang laut. (The Mandarese, The Seafarers). Jakarta, KPG.
Alimuddin, M.R. (2009) Sandeq: perahu tercepat Nusantara. (Sandeq, The Fastest Boat in Nusantara).
Yogyakarta, Ombak.
Bataviasche Nieuwsblad (7/10/1939).
De Sumatra Post (2/2/1918; 16/4/1936).
Leyds, W.J. (2006) Memori Asisten Residen W.J. Leyds. (Memoar of the Resident Assistant W.J.Leyds).
(diterjemahkan oleh Hanoch Luhukay & B.E. Tuwanakotta, 2006). (translated by Hanoch Luhukay
and B.E, Tuwanakotta, 2006).
Liebner, H. (1996) Beberapa catatan tentang pembuatan perahu dan pelayaran di daerah Mandar, Sulawesi
Selatan (Laporan penelitian) (Some notes on the boat making and sailing in Mandar, South Sulawesi,
a Research Report). P3MP YIIS, Universitas Hasanuddin.
Lopa, B. (1982) Hukum laut, pelayaran dan perniagaan. (Law of the Sea, Shipping and Trade). Bandung,
Alumni.
Los, M.A. (2004) Memori van overgave onderafdeling Pangkajene (translated). Makassar: Badan Arsip
dan Perpustakaan Daerah Sulawesi Selatan. (Archive and Library Agency of South Sulawesi).
Mededeelingen. (1909) Mededeelingen betreffende eenige Mandarsche Landschappen. Bijdragen tot de
Taal,-Land-en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsche Indie, 62, pp. 646–746.
Nooteboom, C. (1912) Nota van Toelichting bettrefende het Landschap Balangnipa. TBG, XLI edition.
Nooteboom, C. (1940) Vaartuigen van Mandar. TBG, 80, pp. 22–33.
Pemberita Makassar (12/10/1923; 29/12/1924).
Pewarta Soerabaia (9/8/1935).
Rahman, DM. (1988) Puang dan daeng: kajian sistem nilai budaya orang Balanipa Mandar (Puang and
Daeng: Studies in the cultural values of Balanipa Mandarese) [Dissertation] Ujung Pandang, Universitas Hasanuddin.
Rijsdijk, L.C.J. (1935) Nota betreffende het landschap Pembauang. MvO Serie 1e Reel. No.33. Jakarta,
ANRI.
Sailing Direction. (1937) Sailing direction for Celebes, Southeast Borneo, Java, and islands east of Java.
Washington, Government Office, United States.
Statistiek. (1939) Statistiek van de scheepvaart in Nederlandsch-Indie over het jaar 1938. Batavia,
Drukkerij F.B. Smits.
Statistiek. (1940) Statistiek van de scheepvaart in Nederlandsch-Indie over het jaar 1939. Batavia,
Drukkerij F.B. Smits.
Vuuren, L. van. (1917a) De prauwvaart van Celebes, Koloniale Studien, pp. 107–116.
Vuuren, L. van. (1917b) De prauwvaart van Celebes, Koloniale Studien, pp. 229–339.
Vuuren, L. van. (1920) Het Gouvernement van Celebes. Deel 1. Den Haag, Encyclopaedisch Bureau.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The golden age of the East Indonesian economy during the NIT
era (1946–1950)
L. Evita & Abdurakhman
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Federation model is a governance model that aims at developing economic
sovereignty and national integration. If the decline of the Majapahit Kingdom was due
to the weak economic power in the periphery that facilitated invasion of Muslim traders,
then how can national integration be achieved in Indonesia through economic empowerment from the periphery? In this study, we will discuss the economic sovereignty in eastern
Indonesia after its independence. The State of East Indonesia (Negara Indonesia Timur/
NIT),which was established in 1946, implemented a comprehensive system of economic
openness and a two-way cooperation in all fields, thereby providing financial support to the
government of the Republic of the United States of Indonesia (Republik Indonesia Serikat/
RIS). The emergence of the regional economic power in East Indonesia was influenced by
the presence of foreign and local companies, including Mandeers, Seeman & Co, Company
Insulinde Makassar, Moreoux & Co., Coprafonds and South Pacific Trading Company,
and Manado, which flourished the economy in eastern Indonesia. Commodities available
at that time were being sought for by the world. Through the disclosure system, the State
of East Indonesia revived its glory in the kingdom of Makassar as the pivot of the world
maritime economy until 1950. Here, we apply historical methods using archival sources and
contemporary newspapers.
1
INTRODUCTION
In this study, we will describe the economy of eastern Indonesia during the NIT era. The fact
that eastern Indonesia consists of many small islands is well known. One of the most significant tribes in the region is the Bugis-Makassar, which is famous for its sailors. In addition,
they were experts in making boats connecting all islands in Indonesia. In 1947, there were
boats measuring >20m3 in NIT, 92% of which came from South Sulawesi. The boats produced by Bugis-Makassar are one of the largest contributors to the Indonesian economy.
Approximately 50% of the boats were destroyed by bombs and bullets during the independence war, thereby stagnating the trade and economy. The following are the efforts made
by the government to revive the economy that made NIT experience a golden age.
1.1 Establishment of fonds of South Sulawesi’s boats
Several attempts were made by the NIT government to revive the economy and trade activities. One of the successful attempts was the establishment of the Fonds of South Sulawesi’s
Boats agency. It was proposed by Najamuddin Daeng Malewa, the then Prime Minister of
NIT. Najamuddin was also a trader from the native Makassar region; therefore, this agency
was based in Makassar.
The purpose of the establishment of this agency was to provide loans to repair and make
new boats, regardless of whether they were automatic or manual. The following are other
purposes of the establishment:
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1. Providing loans to makers of boats or motorboats for coastal shipping.
2. Providing loans directly or by intermediaries to finance the goods loaded by boats or
motorboats.
3. Providing loans directly or through the items stacked, which would be loaded by boats or
motorboats.
4. Establishing programs to educate Indonesian students as well as providing trainings for
technicians, sailors, and employees.
5. Advising the government regarding designing the rules concerning sailing between the
islands of Indonesia.
6. Establishing the Veem company, to which shipbuilding and other companies related to
ships and sailing were affiliated by the Republic of the United Indonesian States (Negara
Baroe, Monday, 20 October 1947: 2).
This agency received financial assistance amounting to f1,200,000 from the government.
In order to revive the past glory of the economy, Najamuddin recommended improving the
shipping transportation sector. He proposed that the transportation route, related to both
shipping transport and private boats, should be supported by the government as well as the
economic development in the fisheries sector. To achieve these targets, Najamuddin further
requested the facility aids, such as motor equipment and machinery, to be given to the fishermen, through which he believed that these efforts could increase the number of cruise operations in Indonesia. He expected to increase the people’s income by enhancing the shipping
facilities.
Source: Collectie Moluks Historisch Museum.
Many measures were taken to increase the number of boats in South Sulawesi, one of
which was to establish a company intended specifically to make boats in Tampoena village,
in Boetoeng Strait. This area used to be the site of a Japanese airline company, which then
became a shipbuilding area due to its suitable land condition. In addition, access to timber
and labor was also easier, close to the regional center. Labor costs were still low, and the public facilities such as pangreh pradja and hospitals were within reach.
The following are the ship companies that participated in reviving the shipping activities in
NIT (Harsidjo, Saleh Sarif, et al. 1953: 378):
1. N.V Maskapai Kapal Sulawesi Barat, established in July 1947 in Makassar. The company
operated six ships serving the route of Makassar–Raha, Makassar–Selayar, Bone Bay,
Makassar–western coast of Sulawesi to Toli-Toli (north).
2. N.V. Nocemo in Manado, established in July 1947. The company operated eight ships. It
served the route of Manado–north coast of Sulawesi to Toli-Toli, Manado–Tomini Bay,
Manado–Sangir/Talaud, and Manado–North Moluccas.
3. N.V Lokumij in Gorontalo. It served the route to Tomini Bay. The number of vessels were
three.
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4. N.V. Pelayaran Nasional in Gorontalo, established in March 1951. It had three ships serving the route to Tomini Bay as well.
5. N.V. Perkapalan and Pelayaran Indonesia, Gorontalo, established in April 1947. It operated one boat with a route in Tomini Bay.
6. N.V. Maskapai Kapal Makmur, in Gorontalo, established in December 1951, operating
one boat.
7. Al Ichwan Firm in Gorontalo, having one boat with transporting 100 tonnes in Tomoni
Bay.
In order to avoid competition among carrier ships in Gorontalo, according to the instruction of the People’s Business Organization Department in Makassar in May 1952, Sulawesi’s
Combined Shipping was established. In addition, for the purposes of sea transport, seaports
were built along the coasts of Sulawesi. One of them was the Makassar port, which is the
economic center in the eastern region of Indonesia. In addition, there are seaports built in
Pare Pare Bay, Kendari Bay, and Kolonedale Bay, all of which are natural ports frequently
visited by large ships.
Makassar Port became the center of the economy in NIT. It is frequently visited by not
only KPM ships but also overseas ships from Japan, the Philippines, and Australia (Ibid. p.
378). Table 1 presents a list of destinations of Makassar copra exports in 1949.
Journalists who visited Makassar in 1946 reported that the city was making progress.
South Sulawesi had already experienced a new stage of development. The construction was
in progress; therefore, a good infrastructure was inevitable. In addition, import of medicines,
textiles, building materials, and others was needed. During his meeting with Van Mook in
an effort to establish political cooperation, Najamuddin Daeng Malewa requested necessary
facilities to expedite the development in South Sulawesi. He wanted to increase exports of
copra, rattan, resin, coffee, timber, and nickel from South Sulawesi that could amount to
approximately 30 million gulden, intending to cover the cost of imports. In addition, the
oil fields located in Buton and Bone could be explored to support the economy. One of the
sectors that could be used as well was the agriculture sector. South Sulawesi had a surplus of
food (rice), approximately 60,000 tonnes, which could be used to cover the shortage of food
throughout eastern Indonesia (Ide Anak Agung Gde Agung, 1985:86).
NIT is slightly different from other areas in terms of the economic pattern. In Java, for
example, most of the area was occupied with various industries. On the contrary, in Sulawesi,
people were still highly dependent on nature, such as agriculture, plantation, and marine
products.
Table 1.
Destination of Makassar copra export.
Destination of exports
Total payload (tonnes)
Dutch
Germany
USA
England
Belgium
Czech
Canada
South Africa
Poland
Swiss
Singapore
Japan
108,038
8,548
13,310
14,731
4,064
2,438
3,709
2,540
505
1,016
2,134
7,112
Total (tonnes)
168,148
Source: A. Rasyid Asba, Kopra Makassar Perebutan
Pusat dan Daerah Kajian Sejarah Ekonomi Politik
Regional di Indonesia: 208.
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Eastern Indonesian seas are rich with fish, with its fishermen inhabiting small villages
on the coasts. The production of all seawater fishery in 1946 was no less than 15 million kg
with a value of f30 million (Verslag van het Agentschap te Makasser over het jaar 1948: 44).
It was realized when marine fisheries were of utmost importance for the people of eastern
Indonesia, and the fish stocks were enough for the whole population of Indonesia. It was
also important to focus more on the possibility of mechanization in fishing and the application of scientific methods. It is necessary for the marine fisheries department of the state to
buy boats in large numbers and provide them to the fishermen.
1.2
Agriculture in NIT
During the NIT era, the availability of food resources in some places, such as Sumba, Flores,
and Lombok, was quite sufficient. Rice, corn, and milk powder were delivered to prevent
people from starvation. The price of rice in November 1949 remained the same as in previous
months. Nevertheless, paddy harvest was not really satisfactory. A prolonged drought and
invasion of pests were the reasons behind the harvest failure.
Rice fields in NIT occupied 680,000 hectares, comprising approximately 60% of South
Sulawesi. Land planted with dry-field rice was estimated to be approximately 250,000 hectares. The annual production of rice reached 1 million tonnes, usually exceeding the needs
of the population. Famous surplus regions were South Sulawesi and Bali-Lombok, which
could produce about 75,000 tonnes of rice for both internal consumption and areas outside of NIT before the war. However, there were some rice-deficit areas in NIT, such as
Manado and South and North Moluccas (Verslag van het Agentschap te Makasser over het
jaar 1948:44).
Comparison of the development of rice production in NIT in the last two years of
the golden age with the current development—after a slight setback during the Japanese
occupation—shows a great improvement. In the first years, there was an increase in the surplus of rice due to the irrigation schemes as well as the improvement in farming techniques.
Indeed, the focus of the government was shifted to promote rice production for several
years. For example, the government realized the opening of rice nursery centers, where the
types of rice and a second plant could be chosen by the farmers to be distributed by seed
growers. The Sadang project in South Sulawesi during 1947 and 1948 increased the irrigated
land by 10,000 hectares (Verslag van het Agentschap te Makasser over het jaar, 1948: 66).
After completing approximately 60,000 hectares, it could technically be irrigated. The main
focus was on better cultivation methods in paddy fields and fertilization, and the provision
of agricultural equipment and rat poison was taken into consideration as well. To stimulate
production, agricultural weeding was also practiced. The intervention of the NIT Agricultural Bureau from the Department of Eastern Indonesian Economic Affairs was successful.
No exact figures were reported with regard to corn production. The only area with a surplus of corn was South Sulawesi, which had exported 50,000 tonnes before the war. Corn
production before the war in eastern Indonesia reached 456,000 tonnes. At that time, farmers
irrigated corn crops with water from the lake. On the contrary, the war that had broken out
caused a decline in the production of crops such as nutmeg, coffee, and cloves, whose areas of
production also decreased from 24,000 (1940) to 16,500, 28,000 to 25,000, and 3,400 to 3,300
hectares, respectively. The export of nutmeg and mace in 1939 reached 3,335 and 587 tonnes
respectively, which dropped to 1,551 and 383 tonnes in 1947 and increased to 2,084 and
473 tonnes in 1948.
The volume of corn harvest in the rainy season in South Sulawesi was estimated to reach
200,000 tonnes, of which 30,000 tonnes was exported. If the “1949 harvest” during the normal dry season had prevailed, then in the following year, there would have been 50,000–
70,000 tonnes of corns available for exports compared to zero in 1948. In addition to corn,
fruit nuts such as peanuts, soybeans, and mung beans were important produce in eastern
Indonesia, as they were could generate surplus for exports, too. Surplus of nuts were usually
exported to South Africa (about 5,000 tonnes per year), whereas soybean and mung beans
(about 5,000 and 4,000 tonnes per year, respectively) were usually sold interisland.
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In 1949, corn crops in South Sulawesi alone expanded to 11,400 hectares, and the same
also happened in Minahasa. Wetland and farmland of eastern Indonesia in 1941 reached
approximately 680,000 and 250,000 hectares, respectively. The average annual harvest
amounted to approximately 1,050,000 tonnes. The surplus of annual rice exports reached
approximately 20,000 tonnes. This surplus was a result of various irrigation projects such as
the Sadang project located in the northern part of South Sulawesi and the one near Tonsea
Lama in Minahasa. Thus, the Sadang project in eastern Indonesia resulted in a surplus of
100–150,000 tonnes in 1953 (Ibid.).
In 1948, a study on the possibility of massive cultivation of beans was conducted in eastern Indonesia. A commission visited the area near Kendari, Flores, and Timor. Another
important crop for food supply in NIT was cassava, as it was considered that there may have
been opportunities to export tapioca. To summarize, the development of agro-food in the
last two years of the golden age in NIT reached the prewar production capacity. Nonetheless,
there were food shortages, for example, in Flores and Sumba. Because of the low income of
people in that area, government had to provide food for the people. Basically, the food supply
in NIT was becoming more satisfying in the last two years of the golden age.
The most important trade crop in NIT was coconut copra, with about 500,000 hectares
of land and potential production of approximately 500,000 tonnes, approximately 80% of
which were exported. Figure 1 shows the progress of the export of copra in eastern Indonesia
during 1946–1949.
Figure 1 illustrates that the volume of copra exports in the NIT increased from 1946 to
1949, as well as in Makassar, although not as significantly as the eastern Indonesia exports.
Some increase was also noted in other regions such as Manado.
In addition to copra, other annual crops in NIT were coffee, spices, kapok, and cocoa. Coffee did not grow well due to the Japanese imperialism. The Arabica coffee plants in Sulawesi
and Bali also experienced bad harvest. To recover from the crop failure, a large number of
nurseries for coffee seeds and seedlings were established. In 1940, the entire coffee plantation
area in NIT covering 28,000 hectares (19,000 hectares in Bali and 5,500 hectares in Sulawesi)
dropped to 25,000 hectares.
During these years, coffee proved to be a weak export product as its domestic value was
higher than the export value. As a result, export of coffee dropped. The plantation areas
for cloves also declined from 3,400 hectares before the war to 3,300 hectares. Cloves were
also considered as a weak product. Nutmeg plantation also suffered greatly during the war.
Many of the plantations were turned into food crop plantations. The areas of plantation
declined from 24,000 to 16,500 hectares. While exports in 1939 amounted to 3,335 tonnes of
nutmegs and 587 tonnes of mace, in 1947, only 1,551 and 383 tonnes of them were exported,
Figure 1. Volume of copra exports in the NIT from 1946 to 1949.
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respectively. Before 1948, these figures reached 2,084 and 473 tonnes, which showed a significant rise. Restoration of the plantation was still possible; however, they had to wait for 7–8
years before harvesting.
Cotton crops suffered severe losses during Japanese occupation. After the war, almost
nothing was exported from NIT, considering that people had adequate income at that time.
Therefore, they were not motivated to pick cotton. One experiment was conducted in this
sense, yet it was unsuccessful. On the contrary, cocoa proved to be a profitable commodity. Although cocoa had been grown in eastern Indonesia minimally, it apparently had the
potential to be a successful commodity, especially in South and Southeast Sulawesi. The State
Agricultural Bureau for Eastern Indonesia attempted to stimulate the planting of cocoa in
the country. Having a potentially high demand, with the world supply being low, this product
showed good prospects. The first cocoa nursery was opened in Minahasa, Ambon, South
Sulawesi, and Timor, and Flores would follow afterward.
In addition to cocoa, tobacco plants yielded good prospects, especially in South Sulawesi,
Bali, and Lombok. During this time, in South Sulawesi, experiments were conducted by
planting Virginia tobacco as a second crop in open fields. Tobacco plant production before
the war was very high in NIT.
Besides corn and nutmeg, wood production in eastern Indonesia could be taken into
account. Firewood was considered important as it was used as fuel for transport, as coal was
not yet available due to the war. Figure 2 shows the annual production of wood.
Figure 2 shows that the total production of teak wood and firewood increased from 1946
to 1948:
−
−
−
−
1938
1946
1947
1948
20,507 m3 teak wood and 19,477 m3 firewood
32,238 m3 teak wood and 22,970 m3 firewood
67,075 m3 teak wood and 56,711 m3 firewood
72,012m3 teak wood and 71,092 m3 firewood
The increased production of wood was parallel to the rise in the market demand for timber. Timber was used as a substitute for coal as fuel for transportation. Coal became scarce
due to the war and hence coal production was impaired.
1.3 Industry in NIT
Before the war, a nickel mine, mostly exporting to Germany, was opened in Kolaka. After
independence, the mine was managed by the Oost-Borneo-Mij and Smelting Co. (USA),
which continued operating the mine (Negara Baroe, Saturday, 11 October 1947: 2). An important issue was the energy resources to operate the factories. Therefore, to support industry in
NIT, power plants were opened in order to provide power to operate the machines. Electricity
was majorly generated from runoff water in the NIT region, Sadang, and Teppo near Pin-
Figure 2. Production of wood.
Source: Kedaulatan Rakyat, Tuesday 20th May 1947:1.
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rang. This hydropower would drive the motors to generate electricity power. In addition to
Sadang, there were power stations in the cities of Pinrang, Pare Pare, Rappang, Pangkajene,
Tanroe Tedong, Sengkang, and Watangsoppeng. There was also one in Minahasa built in
Tondano River, which served as a power source for industry.
Another important export product from eastern Indonesia was copra. Approximately 75%
of the population was directly involved in the production, export, and trading of copra. A
total of 315,000 from 530,000 tonnes of copra exported by the Indies in 1939 came from this
region, which was located within the boundaries of NIT. In the same year, copra covered 80%
of the total volume of exports and 60% of the total export value of Makassar.
This attracted the attention of the Western countries in the economic sector, and a number
of Directors from Lever Brothers & Unilever Limited—a large industrial company in the
United Kingdom—visited the region to set up a soap factory to meet the demands of soap
in NIT and Kalimantan. NIT, producing more than 320,000 tonnes of copra annually, was a
gateway to open a new economic sector in Indonesia. In addition, it facilitated the expansion
of other industries, such as garments, tobacco, and animal skin (Negara Baroe, Saturday, 11
October 1947:2).
2
CONCLUSION
The State of East Indonesia (1946–1950) had considerable potentials and strengths due to
their economic and finance sectors. As a state of the Republic of the United States of Indonesia, NIT was able to emerge as an economic power from the periphery. NIT was able to
fulfill the need for food and agricultural products of its people and export the excess goods
to Borneo and Java. The golden period of the NIT economy was facilitated by the government empowering all potential natural and human resources in it. Supported by dynamic
policy rules, NIT attracted foreign investments; thus, a network of international economies
was formed to enable the products from NIT to be enjoyed by the community and also be
exported. In other words, this success contributed to the golden period of the economy of
RIS at that time.
REFERENCES
Agung, I.A.A.G. (1985) Dari Negara Indonesia Timur ke Republik Indonesia Serikat (From the East
Indonesian Country to the Republic of the United States of Indonesia). Yokyakarta, Gajah Mada
University Press.
Arsip Verslag van het Agentschap te Makasser over het jaar 1948.
Harsidjo, Sarif, S., et al. (1953) Republik Indonesia Propinsi Sulawesi (Sulawesi Province of the Republic
of Indonesia). Makassar, Djawatan Penerangan RI Propinsi Sulawesi.
Surat Kabar Berita Indonesia. (Friday, 6th January 1950) Hasil-Hasil Perkebunan dan Sawah NIT (The
plantation and paddy field results of NIT).
Surat Kabar Berita Indonesia. (Wednesday, 4th November 1949) Politik Ekonomi RIS (RIS economy
politics).
Surat Kabar Kedaulatan Rakyat. (Tuesday, 20th May 1947) Kayu Bakar Mendapat Perhatian (Burning
woods getting attention).
Surat Kabar Kengpo. (28th March 1950) Perkembangan Ekonomi di NIT (Economic Development in
NIT).
Surat Kabar Negara Baroe. (17th July 1947) N.V Maskapai Kapal Celebes Selatan (Ship Company of
South Celebes).
Surat Kabar Negara Baroe. (Friday, 3rd October 1947) Kekayaan Indonesia Timur (The wealth of East
Indonesia).
Surat Kabar Negara Baroe. (Monday, 20th October 1947) Usaha Kementrian Perekonomian NIT di
Dalam Memenuhi Kebutuhan Perahu-Perahu (The effort of the NIT Ministry of Economy in fulfilling
the need of boats)
Surat Kabar Negara Baroe. (Saturday, 13th September 1947) Pemandangan tentang Perekonomian
Indonesia Timur (Perspective on the economy of East Indonesia).
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Surat Kabar Negara Baroe. (Saturday, 31st May 1947) Perguruan Tinggi Ekonomi di Makassar (The
economic higher education in Makassar).
Surat Kabar Negara Baru. (Saturday, 11th October 1947) Kemungkinan perindustrian di NIT (Industry
possibility in NIT).
Surat Kabar Suluh Rakyat. (Thursday, 5th January 1950) Pertanian NIT (NIT Agriculture).
Surat Kabar Utusan Indonesia. (Friday, 16th June 1950) Sebab dan Akibat Naik Turunnya Harga Karet
(Causes and effects of the price fluctuation of rubber).
Surat Kabar Utusan Indonesia. (Tuesday, 30th May 1950) Rakyat Makassar Sambut Hatta “Industri
Kayu dan Kopra Ditinjau” (The people of Makassar welcoming Hatta: “Wood and copra industry
reviewed”).
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Food culture and land use in ancient times
Taqyuddin & N. Susanti
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Discovery of ruins or artifacts of ancient times may lead to the discovery
of their food culture, land use traditions, and agricultural system. Analyzing from different
perspectives and using numerous theories as well as the findings from previous studies
on ancient food culture and land use tradition, we could generate new approaches that
can enrich and develop archeology and other fields of sciences and technology. From the
analysis of the spatial archeology of the location of a temple built during ancient times, we
might surmise that people who lived in that location may have had a certain agricultural
system. This assumption, however, needs further research. Through epigraphic, toponymic,
and geographical analyses; spatial archeological analysis of the locations described in the
inscriptions; and by further observing and studying the ruins of the material culture, we
could deduce the tradition and culture as well as the food habits at that time, including their
preparation and processing methods using the available technology. Although data about
the ruins of material culture and associated inscriptions are primarily used to support these
findings, study of the environment of the area where these people lived, including its climate,
geographical landscapes, and land and soil quality, is also considered as an influencing factor.
We study the methods of maintaining, storing, processing, and consuming food to investigate
our current tradition and culture, the results of which may serve as an evidence to deduce the
past tradition and culture. In this study, we investigate whether the ancient food and land use
cultures still exist today and whether they are being properly identified in the island of Java.
1
INTRODUCTION
In this archeological research, we carry out a spatial study on food culture and land use for
agricultural purposes across the island of Java; this study needs to be accompanied by other
studies on ancient political and economic systems derived from the ancient artifacts found
in Java.
Here, we focus on the ancient food culture and the culture of land use and explore how
agricultural activities produced food in the ancient Mataram era by studying its culture,
knowledge on land use, and spatial identity with regard to agricultural activities.
We also refer the findings of several studies, which generally reaffirm the fact that the
power and political stability of the ancient Mataram Kingdom depended more on its agricultural orientation than on other sources of income, such as trading. A few of the artifacts
from that era provided the evidence of land use for agriculture, and various archeological
studies suggested a strong governmental influence in the management of agricultural land
use activities.
A close examination of the numerous written evidence found through many studies gives
an indication of food culture and agriculture-related development (land use) as well as how
the onsite existing evidence reflects the food sustainability and the culture of land use in the
ancient Mataram era.
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This study is based on a thorough examination of some ancient writings found in different regions of Mataram (Sumatera, Java, Madura and Bali), which were compiled by L.CH.
Damais and published in 1952. A total of 290 partial and 81 complete transcripts and translations were methodically examined.
Spatial verification has also been carried out with regard to the territories of the Mataram Kingdom that encompassed the central part of Java to the eastern part of the island
and matched the time line or the chronology of the ruling kings at the time. The facts were
verified using inscriptions from the Airlangga Kingdom during the 11th century that encompassed the neighboring territories of Sidoarjo, Jombang, Kediri, to Malang located in the
present province of East Java.
Typonomic indications, as mentioned in the inscriptions, have been confirmed and spatially plotted by field studies, which show that the current land and agricultural use reflects
the past activities. By using this method, we could better understand the food culture and
land use culture in the ancient Mataram era.
1.1
Theoretical view
A theory constitutes a set of thoughts containing general principles that can be used to
assume, predict, explain, and complete a scientific analysis. Archeological theories can also be
used to examine the food supply, food production methods, and land use in ancient times.
In particular, epigraphic theory is used to describe the culture and livelihood in ancient
times on the basis of a valid, complete, and thorough analysis of ancient inscriptions from
the Airlangga period. Some of these ancient stone inscriptions were found intact, and others
were broken and hard to decipher. To overcome these problems, we employ the service of an
epigraphist who can infer the lost data using Sanskrit Mantras.
After obtaining a full set of scripts, we have to translate these ancient scripts to our modern language to reveal their content. In this particular text of the Airlangga Period, we found
a record of land autonomous status being awarded as a gift and a guideline about tax exemption policy in the kingdom. The document also contained a magical curse intended for those
who disobeyed the king’s edict. Time stamps containing year, month, and day were written
in full, including a list of names of the king and members of the royal court. The inscription
also provides information about the period of the king’s reign and the territory under his
rule.
In addition to studies, we rely on the theory of location, a geographic setting analysis to
indicate the location where certain economic activities were carried out. We would plot the
geographical location of the places (toponymy) indicated in the translated texts or inscriptions from the Airlangga Period on a modern-day map. By comparing the toponymy of modern names, we could indicate a particular location down to the lowest level such as a village.
We next discuss about the spatial theory. First, it helps to understand the change and
dynamics on the earth surface and then connects physical geographical condition to the
changes in human dynamics, cultural behaviors, names of places, and the dynamics of food
culture and land use throughout the region.
1.2
Bureaucracy theory
Max Weber Theory of Bureaucracy is important in any archeological study, as it helps to
understand the dynamics of duties in a society and the role of government in both ancient
and modern eras. Other scholars, including Peter M. Blau and Marshall W. Meyer, described
the following six main characteristics of bureaucracy: (1) having a formal job description,
(2) a hierarchical structure of authority, (3) execution of tasks and decision-making based
on a consistent system of regulation, (4) officials shall carry out their duties professionally,
(5) working in a bureaucratic organization constitutes a career level, and (6) administrative
staff will play major roles.
Previous studies show that ancient and traditional kingdoms in the Airlangga era applied
a type of bureaucratic system, albeit a simple one as viewed by Max Weber (1971: 18–23; cf.
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Blau 1970: 141–143), and a solid governmental structure with the best approach and policies
in the use of land and water resources.
A cultural viewpoint would lead this study into a living culture, in which people try to
fulfill their needs, ancient culture would be discarded by modern society, and old practices
would be forgotten because of the development of the culture or buried as a lost civilization
due to catastrophic disaster. In most cases, the lost culture and its associated civilization lay
the foundation of archeological studies, which would provide a better understanding of the
dynamics of our living culture.
A close examination of the manuscripts and artifacts would provide invaluable information with regard to the way of use and method of production of various resources as well
as the tools used in agricultural activities, either in its basic form or as a product of an
advanced technology. These parameters may be used to determine whether a particular culture is dependent on land-based resources or maritime resources.
2
2.1
RESEARCH METHOD
Data collection method
In this study, we used inscriptions from the Airlangga era discovered in East Java province
as the research object, translated by experts in the field. The data, including toponymy, were
analyzed to find evidence that can support the study hypothesis on food culture, land use,
and their association with the surrounding natural resources.
The toponymy of names of places in the inscription was cartographically plotted on a
modern-day map of East Java to determine their locations and positions, in which some of
the names could not be identified.
2.2
Study on food culture and land use culture in ancient Java
Identifications of words found on the inscriptions revealed a certain food culture encompassing the raw ingredients used in food, type of food, methods of processing, and utilization.
The spatial perspective also includes the attributes of the location based on the thematic
distribution map.
2.3
Study on land use in ancient Java
The study of texts in the inscriptions provides clues and identifies the words containing information about land use in ancient times, especially for agriculture use, tool use, mystic rituals
confirming the land use for agricultural purposes, the bureaucratic system, policies on taxes,
and other related activities. It also provides geographical attributes for a specific location.
Then, we will prepare a spatially developed thematic distribution map of land use.
2.4
Study on the utilization concept
Overall, data regarding the utilization of land and other important resources related to agriculture mentioned in the inscription, such as river network, basin, and topographic and geomorphologic aspects, were plotted in the thematic map, assuming that the overall condition
has not changed much from the 11th century to the present day.
2.5
Distributional and overlay analysis
Spatial distributional analysis (SDA) was used to provide in-depth details necessary to view
the structure of land use for agriculture as described by the inscriptions, including the dimensions of the location, morphometry, and other numerical measurements. Maps of various
themes were shown by SDA to transform the information from the inscriptions into a spatial
analysis.
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Overlay analysis, based on the distributional map of various spatial themes, was conducted to provide more information about specific geographical settings according to
the inscriptions. The findings from the overlay analysis were later used to find the pattern of food culture and the culture of land use during the Airlangga era (the ancient
Java).
A number of relevant information were provided, including the subjects, tools used, model
experiment and design, data collection technique, variables to be measured to support the
spatial distributional and overlay analysis.
3
RESEARCH FINDINGS
The data source for this study was inscriptions from the ancient Mataram era and particularly those from the Airlangga era that began from year 941 Saka (1019 AD) to 959 Saka
(1037 AD), and consisted of the followings:
1. The Pucangan inscription of 941 Saka (1019 AD) describing the inauguration of Airlangga as the king succeeding Dharmawangsa Teguh who died during a battle against
King Wurawari.
2. Cane inscription of 943 Saka (1921 AD) mentioning the king awarding an autonomy
and tax exemption status of the people of Cane village (Sima) as the kingdom’s western
stronghold and the title bestowed upon King Airlangga himself as the Mahapurusa,
making him equal to God Vishnu.
3. Kagurukan inscription of 944 Saka (1921 AD) containing information on the granting
of Sima status to the family of Dyah Kaki Ngadu for showing their high dedication to
the king.
4. Baru inscription of 952 Saka (1030 AD) mentioning the granting of Sima status to Baru
Village for providing boarding for the royal troops.
5. Pucangan inscription (in Sanskrit) of 954 Saka (1032 AD) containing the confirmation
of the title bestowed to Airlangga as God Shiva using another name of the god, which is
Sthanu (line 3).
6. Terep inscription of 954 Saka (1032 AD) containing information about King Airlangga
leaving his Wwatan Mas Palace to travel to Patakan.
7. Kamalagyan inscription (Kelagen) containing commemoration about the construction
of a dam at Waringin Sapta and the granting of Sima status to the village managing the
dam.
8. Turun Hyang inscription of 958 Saka (1036 AD) mentioning the bestowing of Sima
status for Han Hyang village.
9. Gandakuti inscription of 964 Saka (1042 AD) stating the status of King Airlangga as
the Cakravarttin or the umbrella of the world, which is mentioned in Pucangan, Turun
Hyang, and Kamalagyan inscriptions. This inscription (Gandakuti) describes the status
of King Airlangga as a priest, indicating that he had renounced his throne.
10. Pamotan inscription of 964 Saka (1042 AD) stating that the center of the Airlangga
Kingdom was at Dahana village. The inscription was found in the area of the present
Pamotan village, the subdistrict of Sambeng, the district of Mojokerto, East Java.
11. Pandan inscription of 964 Saka (1042 AD) containing information of the granting of
Sima status to Pandan village as a reward to the village officials.
12. Pasar Legi inscription of 965 Saka (1943 AD) mentioning the return of Airlangga as a
king after chaos had befallen the kingdom.
13. Turun Hyang B inscription of 966 Saka (1944 AD) mentioning about the battle between
King Garasakan and King Panjalu and the split of the Airlangga Kingdom into two
kingdoms.
The toponymy of locations from the Airlangga era in the lowland and near the seashore
starting from the villages of Waringin Sapta, Pamwata, and Kamalgyan is presented in
Table 1.
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Table 1.
Toponymy in Airlangga inscriptions.
No. Inscription
Year Toponymy found
(Saka) in the inscription
Toponymy
at present
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
941
943
944
952
954
954
954
958
963
964
964
964
964
965
966?
Pugawat
Cane
Pucangan
Baru/Cane
Wwatan Mas, Patakan
Terep
Pucangan inscription
Cane inscription
Kakurugan inscription
Baru inscription
Pucangan inscription (Sanskrit)
Garumukha inscription
Terep inscription
Turun Hyang inscription
Pucangan inscription (ancient Java)
Kamalagyan inscription (Kelagen)
Gandakuti inscription
Pamwatan/Pamotan inscription
Pandan inscription
Pasar Legi inscription
Turun Hyang B inscription
Kamalagyan, Waringin Sapta
Kembang Sri
Pamwatan
Pucangan
Kelagen/Klagen
Pamotan
Pandan
Pasar Legi
Garaman, Watak Air Thani, Garun
Information regarding the contents of inscriptions related to food ingredients is described in
Table 2. Food ingredients and beverages include grains, eggs, meat of medium-sized and large
animals, fowls, vegetables, tubers, sea fish, and freshwater fish. Drinks consisted of alcoholic
drinks, tamarind juice, cane juice, coconut juice, and drinks made from leaves and flowers.
Tools and utensils identified from the inscriptions are found, including stabbing tools,
pincers/pliers, needle for manual sewing, cutter, chisel, cooking utensils, eating and drinking
utensils, lighting utensils, carpenter tools, plowing tools for working the land, containers, and
nail cutter.
Information found is regarding land use for paddy fields, moors, and settlements. A more
recent suggestion has been made regarding paddy field with irrigation, water use management, and land use in coastal areas and seashore.
The following is a brief description of the bureaucracy charged with land use management; the officials are assigned to manage the rice barns, regulate water distribution, harvest,
and supervise forest conservation. On the basis of data, in early 1387 AD, many officials
(mantri) were appointed in coastal regions, indicating land utilization near the coastal area.
At that time, people earned their living by working as traders, tools makers (for catching
birds and fish), raw food sellers, sugar and beverage makers, cattle raisers, coal miners and
sellers, and betel leaf making and selling in complete set with the lime. These professions are
characterized by activities related to life on land and no profession has been found mentioning sea activities.
3.1
River basin and topography in Central to East Java, and their relationship with the
ancient agricultural setting
The great river basins in Central to East Java, namely Bengawan Solo, Brantas, and Progo,
uphold the dynamics of the agriculture area and distribution of kingdoms. As indicated in
Figure 2, the civilization dynamics associated with the three river basins is shown by the distribution of discovered inscriptions, the distribution of temples associated with ancient Java
civilizations (7th to 14th century), and the toponymy derived from the inscriptions found to
date. Everything seemed to begin from the river basin of Progo and the surrounding area
before moving toward the river basin of Brantas and passing through the river basin of
Bengawan Solo in an eastward movement. A tight grouping is seen in the river basin of Progo
and the surrounding area, which grows tighter in the river basin of Brantas compared to the
river basin of Bengawan Solo.
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Table 2.
No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Identification of food ingredients from the ancient Mataram inscriptions.
Food ingredients as mentioned
in the inscription
Atak pīhan
Wuku
Skul/sgu
Hnus
Huran⋅
Gtam
Tan⋅iri
Kura/capacapa
Dlag
Kawan
Hangsa
Hayam
Tetis
Dūh ni nyūn
Jnu, pandan (pud⋅ ak), bunga/
skar campaga, bunga/skar
karamān.
Kila/kilan⋅
20
Ciñca/kiñca
Jātirasa, madya, mastawa,
pān⋅ a, siddhu, tuak/twak
Biluŋluŋ/bijañjan, halahala,
duri, kad⋅ awas, kad⋅ iwas,
kan⋅ d⋅ ari, layarlayar, prah,
rumahan, slar, wagalan
Haryyas/hinaryyasan/āryya
21
Atah atah/d⋅ ud⋅ utan
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Kuluban/kulub
Rumwarumwah/rumbarumbah
Tahulan
Celen⋅/wök
Hadahan/kbo
Kidaŋ/knas
Wd⋅ us
Hantiga/hantrīni/hantlu
Sun⋅ d⋅ a
19
Known name at present
Category of food
and drinks
A type of nut
A type of grain
Rice
Squid
Shrimp
Crab
Spanish mackerel
Tortoise
Snake head murrel
Grouper
Goose
Chicken
Squeezed food
Coconut juice
Raw material used to
make wine other than
palm sugar/coconut
Fermented sugar cane
Tamarind juice
Drink, usually alcoholic
Nut
Grain
Grain
Sea animal
Sea animal
Sa animal
Sea animal
Marsh/river animal
Marsh/river animal
Marsh/river animal
Fowl/poultry
Fowl/poultry
Food
Natural drink made of coconut
Drink made of leaves and
flowers
Types of fish
Types of fish
Banana stem used as
vegetable
Uncooked vegetable
salad
Cooked vegetable salad
Vegetable salad
Fish bone
Boar
Buffalo
Deer
Goat
Egg
Roots/tubers
Vegetable
Drink made of cane juice
Drink made of tamarind juice
Alcoholic drink
Vegetable
Vegetable
Vegetable
Food remains
Large game as source of meat
Large cattle as source of meat
Large game as source of meat
Goat as source of meat
Egg
Tubers
On the basis of the trend of river basin of Progo, the inhabitants of ancient Mataram
apparently settled in the mountainous areas or central part of Java. It continued to the east
by people settling in the central region of the island, and they only occupied the lowland
areas and even getting closer to the seashore as they entered the river basin area. However,
the distribution pattern of the evidences is mostly linear, in line with the river networks,
except in part where the river basin of Bengawan Solo is in mountainous areas.
4
DISCUSSION
In this study, we used data sources encompassing inscriptions from the ancient Mataram
era, which described the food culture, the type of food and beverages, and food and cooking
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Table 3. Names of tools mentioned in the inscriptions (interpretation of the meanings: courtesy of
Zoetmulder, Mardiwarsito).
No.
Name of the tool
Present name
No.
Name of the tool
Present name
1
2
an⋅kup
Dāŋ
19
20
paŋhatap
papañjutan
Not available
Lantern/torch/lamp
holder
3
Dom
Pincers or pliers
Copper vessel to hold
steamer used to cook
rice, or used as a
cooking pot
Needle
21
Small axe
4
5
6
Cooking pot
Three-pronged spear
Knife
22
23
24
7
Dyun
Gulumi
gurumbhagi/
karumbhagi/
kurumbhāgi
Hampit
patuk/patuk
patuk
rimbas
saragi ˚inuman
saragi pagan⋅an
inuman
Weapon
25
saragi pagan⋅anan
8
9
Kampil
Kris
Bag
Traditional dagger
(keris)
Steamer
hoe, spade
Crowbar
Machete/cleaver/
chopping knife
Nail cutter/clipper
Lamp holder
Rice cooker
26
27
saragi pewakan
siku siku
saragi ketel meaning
copper pot or saragi
pagan⋅anan meaning
eating utensils
Pot to keep fish
Carpenter’s square
28
29
30
31
tahas
tampilan
tarah⋅
tarai
Metal tub or tray
Metal utensil
Metal tools, small axe
Copper plate/bowl
32
33
34
taratarah⋅
tatah⋅
tēwēk punukan
Present name unknown
Eating utensil
35
36
waduŋ
wakyul
Metal tools, small axe
Chisel
Sharp stabbing
Weapon
Axe
Hoe
10
11
12
13
kukusan
lan⋅ duk
lin⋅gis/liŋgis
Lukai
14
15
16
nakaccheda
padamaran
paliwta/
paŋliwetan
pamajha
pan⋅inan⋅an
17
18
Axe for chopping wood
Drinking utensil
Eating and drinking
utensils
utensils used by those people (Tables 1, 2, and 3), providing a strong indication of an agriculture-based economy.
The socio-politics and the system of governance at that time also suggested a developed
agricultural system, as can be seen by the large number of government officials (bureaucracy)
assigned to the agricultural sector to provide management and administrative services. The
established agricultural system also provides people with the infrastructure to earn their livelihood and pursue their professions (Tables 4 and 5).
Using the inscriptions from the Airlangga era, the data from the inscriptions and a geographical data overlay enable us to determine how food ingredients were distributed, land
use, and toponymy of the ancient Mataram era. The major agricultural civilization was
found along three biggest river basins of the Central and East Java, namely the Bengawan
Solo, Progo, and Brantas. These patterns were in fact closely related to water sources, having
sustained civilizations on the island of Java from ancient times to the present day.
The dynamic of the ancient Mataram civilization shifted slightly to the east of Java as
opposed to the west; however, it was still within the enclosure of the river basin of Bengawan
Solo as the main water source and the surrounding lowland that support the paddy fields. A
small kingdom was ever established in the eastern part of Java, although the river basin of
Brantas was seen as a cradle of civilization giving birth to the Airlangga Kingdom and its
advance civilization proposed by this study.
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Table 4.
No.
Land use as mentioned in the inscriptions.
Year AD
Quote
Present name
1
2
3
824
840
840
Village/paddy field
Land (Zoetmulder, 2011:583)
Village/paddy field
4
5
6
873
873
878
7
8
878
879
ika tanī C.A.3
lmah⋅ C.IIa.1
riŋ pi gir siriŋ. mwaŋ thani kani ha.
C.VIIb
manususk sīma lmah⋅ waharu
ma aran bukit C.Ia.1
lmah⋅ niŋ kbu˚an karamân ˚i mamali
C.Ia.2
lmah⋅ su(kat) C.Ia.1
ikanaŋ tgal C.Ia.2
9
879
10
11
879
879
sinusuk gawayan sawah maparah śīmā
ikanaŋ prāsāda C.Ia.3
manusuk lmah⋅ ma nīma C.Ia.1
i kwak watak wka tga(l) C.Ia.1
12
881
manusuk tgal C.Ia.1
13
881
14
15
882
882
16
17
901
901
18
19
20
21
902;903
902;904
902;905
907
22
23
907
907
24
25
907
907
26
27
28
908
908
909
29
30
31
32
909
919
929
929
33
34
35
36
929
931
939
940
37
941
dadya sawah⋅ tampah⋅ 2 śīmā niŋ
parhya an C.Ia.1
panusukna lmah⋅ C.Ia.3
(a)las dadyakna sawah⋅ sīmā nya. ikanaŋ
lmah⋅ i ramwi watak halu C.Ia.4
manusuk lmah⋅ kbuan C.Ia.2
muaŋ sīmānya sawah⋅ lamwit 1 sampuŋ
suddha C.VIIa.3
sawah⋅ kanayakān tampah⋅ 7 C.Ia.3
lmah⋅ rāmanta i pa gumulan C.IIIb.10
muaŋ sawah⋅ iŋ panilman C.III.10
wanu˚a ˚i mantyāsih⋅ winih⋅ ni sawahnya
satū. C.A.2
(a)lasnya ˚i mu uan C.A.3
pasawahannya ri wunut kwaih⋅ ni
winih⋅ nya satū hamat C.A.3
sawah⋅ kanayakān. C.A.3
mu˚aŋ ˚alasnya ˚i susu ara ˚i wukir
sumwiŋ. C.A.3
sawah⋅ haji lān C.Ib.2
lu˚a/luah/lwah
(u)misi anan lĕbak gunuŋ tumut upan
C.Xa.1
Marawairawai C.Xa.1
sumusuk ikana alas C.Ia.2
inanugrahan lmah⋅ C.A.4
sira sawah⋅ i turyyan mamuat pa guhan
C.A.5
sawah⋅ pakaruŋan C.A.9
nikaŋ lēmah⋅ i warahu C.Va.2
ika lmah waruk ryy ālasantan C.Ia.3
rin pomahan kĕbuan kĕbuan pamli
iriya kā 12 C.Ia.4
dumual ika lmah⋅ rāma ryy ālasantan
sapasuk banua C.Ia.4
Land (Zoetmulder, 2011:583)
Hill
Land in garden/small field
Prairie (Boechari, 2012:294)
Open field; unirrigated dry field
(Zoetmulder, 2011:1229)
Paddy field (Zoetmulder, 2011:1084)
Land (Zoetmulder, 2011:583)
Open field; unirrigated dry field
(Zoetmulder, 2011:1229)
Open field; unirrigated dry field
(Zoetmulder, 2011:1229)
Paddy field (Zoetmulder, 2011:1084)
Land (Zoetmulder, 2011:583)
Forest cleared for paddy field
Garden/small field land
Paddy field (Zoetmulder, 2011:1084)
Paddy field (Zoetmulder, 2011:1084)
Land (Zoetmulder, 2011:583)
Paddy field (Zoetmulder, 2011:1084)
Paddy field (Zoetmulder, 2011:1084)
Forest (Zoetmulder, 2011:23)
Paddy field (Zoetmulder, 2011:1084)
Paddy field (Zoetmulder, 2011:1084)
Forest (Zoetmulder, 2011:23)
Paddy field (Zoetmulder, 2011:1084)
River
Valley, lowland (Zoetmulder, 2011,581)
Marsh (Zoetmulder, 2011:931)
Forest (Zoetmulder, 2011:23)
Land (Zoetmulder, 2011:583)
Paddy field (Zoetmulder, 2011:1084)
Paddy field (Zoetmulder, 2011:1084)
Land (Zoetmulder, 2011:583)
Land (Zoetmulder, 2011:583)
Garden (Zoetmulder, 2011:480)
Land (Zoetmulder, 2011:583)
(Continued )
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Table 4.
(Continued).
No.
Year AD
Quote
Present name
38
39
40
944
945
1053
Land (Zoetmulder, 2011:583)
River
Village, paddy field
41
1317
ikanaŋ lmah⋅ C.A.7
irikaŋ luah⋅ (lwah) C.A.8
inugrahan sumima thāninya. mantĕn
matahila drabya haji riŋ paknakna
C.IIb.2
sesiniŋ (saisi niŋ) gaga C.XIIb.3
42
43
1318
1395
sesiniŋ sagara C.XIIb.3
halalang i gunung lejar. C.A.5
44
45
1396
1395
alas kakayu C.B.1
hatuku latĕk. Luputa C.Ia.3
46
47
48
1386
1387
1388
49
50
51
52
1389
1379
1379
1379
tirah⋅ C.Ia.1
karaŋe patih⋅ tamba C.Ia.2
paŋananewetan sadawata anutug
sāgara C.Ia.2
peŋanane kulon babatane C.Ia.3
Tāmbak C.Ia.2
sawah⋅ C.Ia.2
Tgal C.Ia.2
53
54
1379
1379
Lĕmbah C.IIa.1
ing tāmbak C.IIa.3
Table 5.
693
762
762
762
795
795
823
824
827
827
829
837
851
851
851
851
851
851
851
851
851
851
Dry field (Wurjantoro, 2006:14)
Fish pond (Zoetmulder, 2011:1190)
Paddy field (Zoetmulder, 2011:1084)
Open field; unirrigated dry field
(Zoetmulder, 2011:1229)
Valley/flat land (Zoetmulder, 2011:584)
Fish pond (Zoetmulder, 2011:1190)
Officials as found in the inscriptions.
No. Śaka AD
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Unirrigated paddy field where rice
grows in dry field (Zoetmulder,
2011:263)
Sea
Tall grass/ weed (Zoetmulder,
2011:328)
Wood forest
Swampy, muddy land (Zoetmulder,
2011:576)
Sea shore (Zoemulder, 2011:1260)
Fish pond (Zoetmulder, 2011:1190)
Flat land (Wurjantoro, 2006:14)
771
840
840
840
873
873
901
902
905
905
907
915
929
929
929
929
929
929
929
929
929
929
Name of the position
Source in the
inscriptions
Functions
D1.A.9
D2.IIIb.3
D2.IIIb.3
D2.IVa.1
D3.Ib.2
D5.IIIa.2
D7.Ib.4
D8.IIIb.12
D9.IVb.2
D9.IVb.2
D10.SiMuk.8
D11.SiMuk.11
D13.SiMuk.17
D13.SiMuk.20
D13.SiMuk.20
D14.SiMuk.17
D14.SiMuk.17
D14.SiMuk.20
D15.SiMuk.10
D15.SiMuk.10
D12.Ia.13
D12.Ia.14
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
Forest guard
Official in charge of
Official in charge of
[N/A]
Official in charge of
rice barn
paddy field irrigation
rice barn
rice affairs
rice affairs
harvest yield
harvest yield
harvest yield
paddy field irrigation
rice barn
rice barn
rice barn
paddy field irrigation
rice barn
rice affairs
paddy field irrigation
rice barn
paddy field irrigation
rice barn
rice affairs
(Continued )
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Table 5.
(Continued).
No. Śaka AD
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
852
853
861
861
975
1022
1022
1245
1245
1309
Table 6.
No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
Name of the position
930
931
939
939
1053
1100
1100
1323
1323
1387
Source in the
inscriptions
Functions
D16.SiMuk.7
D17.IVa.7
D18.Ia.10
D18.Ia.10
D19.IIIa.5
D20.IIa.11
D20.IIa.12
D21.VIb.2
D21.VIb.3
D21.A.1
Official in charge of rice barn
Official in charge of rice barn
Official in charge of paddy field irrigation
Official in charge of rice barn
Official in charge of rice barn
Official in charge of paddy field irrigation
Official in charge of rice barn
Official in charge of rice barn
Official in charge of rice affairs
Official (mantri) in coastal area (tira )
Professions as found in the inscriptions.
Name of the profession
Meaning
Food vendor
Fruit vendor
Mengkudu (noni fruit) vendor
Bird trap maker
[N/A]
Sugar maker
Animal catcher using net/net maker
Duck, buffalo, cow/ox, boar, goat vendor
ańjariŋ./mańjariŋ
[N/A]
Garlic/shallot vendor
Lime maker
Animal catcher using net
Animal/bird trap maker
Castor oil maker
Eel vendor
Fish catcher using net
Bird catcher
Trap maker (usually for birds)
Net maker
[N/A]
Lime (for betel) maker
Lime (for betel) maker
Processing of noni fruit
Vendor of food made of beef, buffalo, duck
Lime (for betel) maker
Coal vendor
Maker of a type of drink
Betel vendor
Lime (for betel) buyer
makala kalā/manuk
mamēlut/mamulanŋ wlut
The notion about an advanced Airlangga civilization was supported by the morphology
of the wide and deep Brantas River, thus enabling it to be used as waterways and major
transportation routes in the kingdom; later, it would play an important role in the interaction
between the kingdom and foreign civilizations, such as India, China, and Arab during the
Airlangga era.
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Figure 1. Ten largest river basins (DAS) in the island of Java.
Figure 2. Topography.
From a much broader perspective, the inscriptions and various analyses conducted on them
and the geographical setting indicate that a basic agricultural civilization would progress with
river transportation that will result in technology advancement and a full range of economic
benefits.
The ancient Mataram civilization in Central Java up to the Airlangga era is viewed from
the spatial perspective, particularly its natural resources that encompassed the topography,
river networks, river basins, and the geomorphology aspects. In particular, the kings of
the ancient Mataram era were adept in managing their natural resources. It would be seen
that the crucial aspect in maintaining a great kingdom relies on the ability to provide for its
people, to make them prosperous. Some efforts were made to be adaptive to a region, particularly the river basin area or the vast plains and fertile valleys that had sufficient supply
of water.
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Figure 3. Association between locations of temples and inscriptions discovered along the river basins
of Bengawan Solo, Progo, and Brantas.
5
CONCLUSION
During the Airlangga era before the golden era of the kingdom, the king proposed several
measures designed to dominate fertile areas of the river basin of Brantas by conquering
smaller kingdoms along the valleys of Brantas to provide sustenance for his people. Subsequently, King Airlangga believed that controlling these areas would guarantee the social
stability of his kingdom; he then bestowed special status to these areas, which he considered
as loyal subjects and valuable to the kingdom.
Such privileges were also bestowed to officials, their families, and the population of some
villages. The kingdom was ruled with a central bureaucracy system, and it developed its economy by using the existing natural resources, as well as by constructing dams to protect the
people from floods, especially from Brantas River, and awarding special status to villages that
guarded the dams and to those in charge of regulating the drainage system as indicated in the
announcement about the appointment of such officials.
Unsurprisingly, the kingdom’s agriculture was productive and able to fulfill the need of
the people. Judging by the size of the lowland areas and the river water management system
using dams, the agricultural productivity of the kingdom was sufficient. The kingdom also
exported its agricultural products as well as organized other activities for the people in the
period before harvest time. The center of power of the kingdom was close to the estuary of
Brantas River, which is strategic and enabling the kingdom to control trading activities on
the waterways using boats, as indicated by the ruins of ancient docking facilities in some
parts of Brantas.
The culture of land use in the river basin area of Brantas was quite lavish due to its vast
lowland plains and river valleys, in which the river basin has a leaf-vein pattern indicating
the existence of forest absorbing the rainfall on the surface and preventing it from directly
flowing in an accumulated mass to the main river, thereby preventing a drastic amplitude of
tidal wave. The case would be different in rivers with an elongated shape and having a short
distance between the lengthwise ridges and the main river accommodating the water flow,
such as Bengawan Solo (with a tendency of making a parallel pattern) and the Progo River,
which has a large gradient (the angle formed by the horizontal line and the highest vertical
line), resulting in a strong current. Farmers were benefitted with the advantage of working
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on flat ground in the lowland with a thick layer of soil and a fine texture that contained volcanic nutrient element and an abundant supply of water. The land use culture was not strong
and did not require more energy despite the modest tools available, compared with farming
in hilly areas with strong sliding water, thin layer of soil, and coarse to rocky textures, where
only certain plants could strive.
The spatial pattern found throughout this era indicates that the people in the Airlangga era
utilized the areas in a linear position parallel to the river basin of Brantas on the riversides. It
is apparent in the distribution of names in the inscriptions found in the proximity of Brantas
River.
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yang Mendukung Ketahanan Pangan Nasional (Government Policy Support in Agricultural Commodity Development in Supporting National Food Endurance). SEMILOKA Pengembangan dan
Penerapan IPTEK dalam Mendukung Ketahanan Pangan dan Energi (Science and Technology Development and Application in supporting food and energy resilience). Organized by Kedeputian Bidang
Dinamika Masyarakat, Kementerian Negara Riset dan Teknologi. 10 November 2009, Jakarta.
Pakpahan, A. (1989) Refleksi Diversifikasi dalam Teori Ekonomi. Hasil Konpernas X PERHEPI dalam
Diversifikasi Pertanian (Diversification Reflection in Economic Theory: The results of Konpernas X
PERHEPI in Agricultural Diversification), 1995. Jakarta, Pustaka Sinar Harapan.
Pigeaud, Th.G. (1967) Literature of Java, vol. I-III. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.
Rahardjo. (1999) Pengantar Sosiologi Pedesaan dan Pertanian (Introduction to Rural Area Sociology and
Agriculture). Yogyakarta, Gadjah Mada University Press.
Sandy, I.M. (1977) Penggunaan Tanah di Indonesia (The Land Use in Indonesia). Jakarta, Publikasi
No.75. Direktorat Tata Guna Tanah, Ditjen Agraria, Departemen Dalam Negeri.
Sandy, I.M. (1995) Republik Indonesia Geografi Regional (The Regional Geography of the Republic of
Indonesia). Depok, Department of Geography, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Indonesia.
Santiko, H. (1986) Mandala (Kadewaguruan) pada Masyarakat Majapahit (Mandala (Kadewaguruan) in
Majapahit Society). Paper presented at the Pertemuan Ilmiah Arkeologi IV Cipanas.
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Field. Laboratory of Agricultural Machinery. Kyoto University, Research Report.
Siswoputranto, P.S. (1987) Komoditi Ekspor Indonesia (Indonesian Export Commodity). Jakarta, PT.
Gramedia.
Srivastava, A.K., Goering, C.E. & Rohrbach, R.P. (1993) Engineering Principles of Agricultural
Machines. ASAE Textbook Number 6, American Society of Agricultural Engineers.
Sumodiningrat, G. (1989) Aspek Sosial Ekonomi Diversifikasi Sektor Pertanian Pangan. Hasil Konpernas
X PERHEPI dalam Diversifikasi Pertanian (The Diversification Economic Social Aspects of the Food
Agricultural Sector: The results of Konpernas X PERHEPI in Agricultural Diversification), 1995.
Jakarta, Pustaka Sinar Harapan.
Susanti, N. & Kriswanto, A. (2008) Damalung; Skriptoria pada Masa Hindu-Buddha sampai dengan
Masa Islam (Damalung: Scriptoria during the Hindu-Buddhism Era until the Islamic Era). Paper
presented at the Simposium Internasional Manassa, Bandung.
Susanti, N. (2003) Masa Pemerintahan Erlangga (During Erlangga Government). [Thesis]. Depok,
Department of Archeology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia.
Susanti, N. (2008) Bahasa dan Aksara di dalam Prasasti dan Naskah; Wujud Kekuasaan Simbolik pada
Masyarakat Jawa Kuno (Language and Letters in Inscriptions and Manuscripts; the symbolic power
realization in ancient Javanese society). Paper presented at the Kongres Kebudayaan, Bogor.
Taqyuddin. (2004) Pengelolaan Bangunan Air di DAS Ciliwung Masa Kolonial (Water Building Management in Ciliwung DAS during the Colonial Era). [Thesis]. Depok, Department of Geography, Faculty
of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Indonesia.
Weber. (2015) In Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society. Edited and Translated by Tony Waters and
Dagmar Waters, New York, Palgrave Macmillan.
Zimmerer, K.S. (2007) Agriculture, livelihoods, and globalization: The analysis of new trajectories (and
avoidance of just-so stories) of human-environment change and conservation. Journal of Agriculture
and Human Values, 24 (1), 9–16.
Zoetmulder, PJ. (1995) Kamus Jawa Kuna-Indonesia (Ancient Javanese-Indonesian Dictionary). Jakarta,
Penerbit Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The Treaty of 1855: Early American shipping, commerce,
and diplomacy in the Indonesian archipelago (1784–1855)
Y.B. Tangkilisan
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The Treaty of 1855 is an agreement between the United States and the
Netherlands concerning the opening of consular representatives in the Dutch overseas
possessions, including the Dutch East Indies. The interests of the American international
shipping and commerce in Asia laid the foundation to this treaty. The Americans faced
several difficulties with such a mercantilist rule in European countries, like the Netherlands,
which closed their possessions from the international affairs. The Gibson case (1852–1854)
led to the agreement. According to the Americans, the Dutch East Indies, which became the
independent nation of Indonesia on 17 August 1945, was a stopover point for their broader
interests in the global world.
1
INTRODUCTION
At present, the relationship between Indonesia and the United States shows an unequal circumstance. Indonesian economy depends on the US economy, but the reverse is not true. The
United States has played an important role in the Indonesian economy, especially after the
global crisis of 1997/1998, from which it has not yet been fully recovered. The United States
is still Indonesia’s main export destination.
Moreover, the United States is the highest investor in Indonesia. Therefore, the role and
influence of the United States in Indonesian domestic development are very significant.1
America’s exposure toward the Indonesian archipelago is deep-rooted. The United States
went through similar phases immediately after the American Declaration of Independence
that ended the British colonialism. It began with the commercial motives to build foreign
economic networks.
With regard to the economy, the recent development of Indonesian historiography has
resulted in increasing interests in the fields of economic history, together with the maritime
and area history. The concerns are growing with the increasing number of publications on
such studies. The international commerce as a subject of research lies between these disciplines. However, it seems that the subject is still neglected by most Indonesian historians.
2
PROBLEMS
The primary objective of this study is to reveal the policies and actions of the early American government to support their private shipping and commerce in other countries through
1. The involvement of the United States in the domestic affairs of Indonesia has begun since
independence struggle of Indonesia, which resulted in the Round Table Conference in 1949. It ended
the dispute between the Republic of Indonesia and the Dutch over the Indonesian archipelago.
Thereafter, the United States involved in the rebellion of PRRI/Permesta. The next interferences of
the United States were in the Papua New Guinea dispute, the Confrontation of 1963, and the political
transition of 1965/66.
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some diplomatic measures. Then, it aims to contribute to economic history and the history
of relationship between Indonesia and the United States. This study focuses on the commercial history during the Dutch colonialism in Indonesia. The colonial rule introduced modern shipping and trading networks, using steamships, regular lines, and harbor systems. The
colonial government issued some regulations for those activities in the early 19th century.
In this study, we deal with the efforts made by the United States to breach the mercantilist
policy of the Dutch East Indies that hampered its shipping and trading activities in the Indonesian islands in the 19th century. On the route to Canton, the islands became a stopover
point for American ships to restore their supplies and find commercial goods. However, in
the Dutch East Indies, their activities were restricted by certain regulations. Therefore, they
tried to solve the problems through diplomatic channels, although there were some imperialistic motives behind such efforts.
In this study, we focus on the treaty referred to by Gerlof D. Homan (1978) as the Treaty
of 1855, which, according to various American sources, was about the consuls. In the Staatblaad (State Gazette) 1855 no. 65 (ANRI Collections) of the Dutch East Indies, it is stated that
“Overeenkomsttusschen Nederland en de Vereenigde Staten van Amerika, tot regeling der Voorwaarden op de Consulaire Agenten van die Staten in de Voornaamste Havens der Nederlandsche
Overzeesche Bezittingen zullen worden Toegelaten (the Agreement between the Netherlands
and the United States of America, concerning the permits for opening the Consulate Agency
of the United States at the Main Ports of the Dutch Overseas Colonies)”. The American
version sounds as “Consuls” (Bevans 1972: 28–33). The main point is concerning the regulation for opening the American Consular Office in the islands of the Dutch East Indies. It
meant that the American shipping and commercial interests had been protected under a legal
basis. The American shipping activities and commerce in the islands began in 1784 and 1786,
respectively.
For the United States, the agreement had a close connection with its political doctrine
and philosophy, which is the Freedom of the Seas or Mare Liberum, formulated by Hugo
Grotius in 1607 and widespread in 1633. In the international commerce, the United States
has adopted the doctrine of Free Market or Free Trade, which originated from the work of
Adam Smith in 1776. In the United States, this thought was popularized by Benjamin Franklin in 1774. In the field of diplomacy, the United States was considered the most favored
nation (Eckes 1995: 5).
The treaty resulted from the bilateral talks between the Dutch and the US governments
since their first agreement in 1782 concerning the opening of diplomatic representative offices
in both countries. The United States was interested in establishing representative offices in
the Dutch overseas possessions, especially in the Dutch East Indies, because it needed such
a commercial network to support its trade with Canton, China. Furthermore, the colony’s
waters constituted part of the route to the destination, which Commodore Galbraith Matthew Perry used to reach Japan. On the contrary, according to the Dutch, the agreement was
a commitment of the US government to recognize its dominance over the area. Since the
beginning of the 19th century, the Dutch had launched colonial expansion to all islands in
the archipelago area (Nusantara).
3
METHODOLOGY
This study was conducted using historical methods that consist of heuristics, criticism, interpretation, and writing (Gottschalk 1980; Kuntowijoyo 1987). The main source is the written
documents available in the archival depositories and online sources, including qualitative and
quantitative data, such as statistics, tables, and graphs. The documents from the Dutch file
collections of Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia (ANRI), such as Verslag van den Handel, de
Scheepvaart en de Inkomende en Uitgaande Regten op Java en Madoera 1823–1869 (Batavia:
Landsdrukkerij, 1825–1869), are treated as the primary sources. We also explore the American document A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (1911/1917).
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To analyze the findings, the next step is using certain approaches from different fields of
social science, such as politics, sociology, international relations, and economics. From the
viewpoint of classical economics, commercial transaction is significantly influenced by the
market mechanism, namely demand and supply. Adam Smith (1776) stated that the mechanism works as an invisible hand. David Ricardo (1817) put it into an international economic
context by explaining the significance of the comparative advantages, which encourage the
specialization of national production.
The idea of Free Market was challenged by Alfred Chandler (1977). He referred to a modern business corporation that acts as an exchange function that has previously been conducted by the market. He described that the mechanism depends on the role of economic
actors arising from the development of business corporations. With the development of economic activities, which can be caused by several aspects such as immigration and expansion,
business owners could no longer run the companies by themselves, and they need a more
effective and better management system. The growing business needs an intensive and careful
treatment conducted by salaried executives called managers.
Moreover, Chandler suggested eight propositions to answer the question of why the visible
hands of the management replace the invisible ones. The first three propositions explain the
initial performance of modern business corporation, from when, where, how, and why it begins.
The other five propositions deal with the sustaining growth associated with where, how, and
why a company grows and maintains the growth. The eight propositions are as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
The rise of modern multiunit enterprise
The establishment of managerial ranks
The improvement of efficiency in administrative coordination and profits
The success of managerial ranks in running the function of administrative coordination
The increasingly technical and professional performance in the career of salaried managers
The increasing separation of management and ownership
The commitment of managers toward long-term stability and the growth of the enterprise
The rise of large enterprises controlling the economics and causing the economic structural change
Before the rise of modern managers, which, according to Chandler, started in 1840, the
business actors, especially in the distribution sector of trading, had been influenced by the
market mechanism. The rate of the demand played an important role in the calculation and
decisions of business actors. The commodities brought from the United States often were not
welcomed by the market, such as in Canton, China. It happened when they miscalculated
the market. Therefore, they had to find other commercial goods that were in high demand
in other places, such as the Dutch East Indies. However, following further development, the
American merchants tried to avoid such mechanism and began to affect the market, by either
political support of the government or innovation.
International economists such as Paul R. Krugman and Maurice Obstfeld (2003: 4–10)
offered seven subjects to discuss, namely (1) commercial advantages, (2) commercial patterns,
(3) protectionism, (4) terms of trade, (5) exchange value, (6) international policy coordination,
and (7) international capital market. The theory of commercial policies covers taxation on
some international transaction or tariffs, export substitutions, import restrictions, voluntary
export restraints, local content requirements, export loans, national procurements, red tape
barriers, and free trade. In the 19th century, some commercial policies, from both the American government and the Dutch East Indies, showed several indications in line with this theory,
especially regarding the transaction, tariff, protection, red tape barriers, and free trade.
International trade is closely related to international diplomacy. According to Harold
Nicholson (Roy 1991: 3), diplomacy has at least five meanings, namely foreign policy, negotiation, mechanism of the negotiation, foreign office branches, and international negotiation
skills. After observing some definitions of diplomacy, including that from Carl von Clausewitz, S. L. Roy (1991: 4–5) stated that the main aspect of diplomacy is negotiation, which is
undertaken to achieve the national interest of a state.
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Peaceful diplomatic actions are intended to maintain and encourage the national interest
as long as possible. Furthermore, diplomacy deals with the international political agenda of
a country. The modern diplomacy is closely related to statecraft and is inseparable from the
representatives of the state. Diplomacy is manifested in the form of agreements, conventions,
and treaties.
In the practice of diplomacy, a state possesses some instruments. The economic instruments
cover the international trade and aid as a means to secure peace. The important role of the
increasing international commerce is its potential impact on diplomacy. The steady increase
in industrial growth increases the strength and position of investors and merchants, who can
force the government to open new markets and gain trading contracts (Roy 1991: 120–121).
In addition to diplomacy, the frame of analysis uses the theory of imperialism proposed
by James W. Gould (1972: 306). He stated that imperialism is the attempt of a state to dominate or to impose its will on a foreign area. The following the features of imperialism: (1) the
actor represents the state or its apparatus, and is not limited to him/herself; (2) the action is
an attempt, and its outcome is not important; (3) the goal is to dominate, rule, and impose its
perspective, and permanence is not essential; and (4) the target is the foreign people or area.
Therefore, imperialism could be used here to describe an attempt of a state to dominate or to
impose its will upon any part of other areas or people.
Then, liberalism is studied versus mercantilism. The doctrine of free trade originates from
the liberalism restriction of the role of the state or the government in the economic fields. By
contrast, mercantilism stresses on the role of the state or government in commerce. Diplomatic efforts have been taken to bridge this gap.
In order to show the interaction between two ideas or policies from two countries, we need
to discuss the theory of structuralism. From the perspective of sociology, Anthony Giddens
(2004) proposed the theory of structuration. Giddens reconstructed the concept of structure
and described the role of the agents or agencies of change during a social change.
The agency and structure do not undergo dualism and hence they cannot be separated;
however, they interact over time or under a duality. From the perspective of realism, Christopher Lloyd (1993) developed a similar insight. Individuals belong to a structure, and they
have the potential and ability to initiate changes like agencies. The interaction between the
agency and the structure in social changes results in two factors, namely transformation and
reproduction. In Indonesian historiography, structuralism and structuration were introduced
and developed by R.Z. Leirissa (2002; 2003; 2006).
Structuralism does not neglect the theories of structuralists and individualists. It tries to
connect the two aspects and minimizes the bipolarity by mentioning that they are not barriers for individuals and vice versa. Lloyd mentioned historian Emanuel Le Roy La Durie from
the France’s Annales Historical School famous for Structuralism who applied this theory.
Moreover, structuralism suggests the use of some relevant theories under such a combination
to explain the dynamics of the past.
3.1
The early American voyage to Asia
The United States involved in the international trading networks immediately after independence. However, the British, its former colonizer, did not open its ports to American
shipping, neither did some other European nations, including France and the Netherlands.
Therefore, the US government used a diplomatic strategy to overcome those barriers by making treaties.
Together with foreign policies, the US government took several preparation steps, one of
which was Plan 1776. It contains a draft or blueprint that guided the making of international treaties. (www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Freedom-of-the-Seas-Origins-of-theconc...). In addition, the development of navigation and shipbuilding technology supported
the effort to enter the international voyage and commerce. Moreover, the American commercial interests were disturbed with the breach of its former colonial era trading policies.
Therefore, its main concern was to rebuild the networks. Canton in Asia, also known as Indie,
was one of the main destinations of American overseas shipping (Dennett 1922).
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More opportunities resulted when Europe was experiencing wars due to the French Revolution in 1789. In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte led the spread of the revolution to other European countries. As a result, ships from countries that did not take part in the revolution like
the United States took an advantage to serve the shipping lines between Europe and the colonies. Despite in insecurity in the lines, American shipping increased rapidly (Fichter, 2002).
The first American ship to cross the Atlantic was “the Harriet”, which reached the Cape of
Good Hope in 1784. In the same year, the ship “Empress of China” arrived at Canton, which
passed by and stopped at some points of the Indonesian islands; however, it did not make any
commercial transaction. In the following years, the islands became the stopover points in the
American shipping route as a part of the Cantonese commercial network.
During the voyages, American ships encountered some barriers and threats, ranging from
piracies, including the attacks from European countries that were under siege, to the natural
and navigational factors that hampered the shipping. However, the main barrier was the
application of the mercantilist policy, including the protective policy used by the Dutch East
Indies (Staatsblad, 1818, no. 58; Regeering Almanak, 1823; Arsip Statistiek, no. 2. ANRI).
The Dutch ships were given the first priority to load the commercial goods. Therefore,
American ships often were forced to purchase similar products at a higher price from the
Dutch East India harbors, such as Batavia and the Java northern coast ports, or there would
be no available commodities to load. The Dutch authorities also restricted trade in volume
or value. Other difficulties included health issues and diseases. The crew of American ships
suffered from dehydration under sundry and humid climate, leading to death.
3.2 American commerce in the Indonesian archipelago
The American trade in the Indonesian archipelago began with the arrival of the ship “the
Hope” in Batavia in 1786. Samuel Shaw, the American consul for Canton, was also a passenger on the ship. In his second journey, he did not find any problem in obtaining the cargoes
to be brought to Canton. Meanwhile, ship “Rajah” under the command of Captain Jonathan
Carnes sailed to the northwestern Sumatran coast in 1789. He found a pepper cargo that
increased the profit up to 700% when sold at home (Dennett 1922: 31). The Salem pepper
trade with the Sumatrans developed since then.
The trade progressed well despite competition with the French and British traders. In addition to such competition, the American ships experienced two assaults from the local people
of Kuala Batu and Muki in 1831 and 1838. The Americans retaliated by sending naval military operations considered as a form of punishment (Long, 1973; El Ibrahimy, 1993; Tangkilisan, 1997b). In the 1840s, the Salem–Sumatran pepper trade began to decline (Reid, 1973:
7; Malone, 1960: VII 338; Turnbull, 1972: 160).
In Batavia, coffee trade was carried out by the Rhode Island traders. They gained huge
profit during the Napoleon wars in Europe. However, there were shortcomings, including
unsecured shipping due to piracies, foreign attacks, natural difficulties, rivalry with British or
Dutch traders, and the mercantilism policies. Related to mercantilism, the idea of appointing consulate officers who would secure the American commerce in the Dutch East Indies
was implemented in Washington D.C., which did not receive the expected response. The idea
emerged after the Gibson Affairs in 1853. The trading activity of Rhode Island in Java ceased
in 1836 (Ahmat, 1965: 95).
3.3 American overseas trading networks
The pattern of American international networks consists of export and import activities,
re-exports, carrying trade, and trade chain (Fichter, 2002; Hacker, 1982; Verslag, 1830–1850).
Export referred to the flow of goods from the American domestic production sector to
abroad, and import referred to the reversed flow, which was carried out by shipping. Reexport trade occurred when the imported goods did not reach the domestic markets, but were
sold again to other foreign destinations. The goods originated mainly from Asia, especially
from Canton and the Sumatran West Coast. Tea, coffee, pepper, silk, and Chinese wares were
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mainly traded. However, the balance of American trading from 1790 to 1855, including the
export, import, and re-export, declined.
Trade chain referred to the trade from one port to another under a certain commercial
network centered in Canton. This was different from the well-known trade pattern of commerce in Asia, which was concerned with the flow of goods from one place to another, but
not the traders and their ships. This type of networking trade demanded the sailing traders
to move around under a rhythm of market drives. The next pattern was the carrying trade,
through which America made considerable profits, especially from the cargo rents (Hacker
1982: 236). However, the quantitative numbers of both patterns were yet to be found. The
trade between the United States and the Dutch East Indies continued despite experiencing
deficit because of these types of trade. The United States compensated the deficit from other
profitable terms.
The main problems of trade chain are related to the issues regarding commercial goods,
payment methods, and mercantilism policies. The American merchants had to monitor the
highly demanded goods in the markets. Problems in the method of payment arose because
the American currencies had not yet been accepted in international transactions. Therefore,
they had to find and carry the Spanish silver and gold currencies, used mainly as their
trading currencies in the Dutch East Indies. However, the main difficulty was the lack of
trade protection, which gave rise to diplomatic efforts, namely to recognize and place consuls
(Livermore, 1946).
3.4
American diplomacy
The US foreign affairs followed a doctrine of the most favored nation. Under such doctrine,
the US government made various amities, navigations, and trade agreements. However, the
efforts were not enough to give the American ships such freedom to sail and trade in the
international economic sphere, especially in the colonized areas. It was because the colonial
rulers did not open access to their possessions for other countries. Therefore, the American
government used a diplomatic strategy by making a consular convention that allowed them
to open a consulate office, which enabled the provision of protection for the American citizens and shipping and commercial activities in a colonial possession (A Compilation Messages and Paper of the Presidents, vol. XIX, tt).
The making of such a convention between the United States and the Netherlands was due
to several factors. First, the decline in the Salem pepper trade in Sumatera and the trade with
the Rhode Island traders in Java. Second, the British had taken a hold of Canton through
the Opium War in 1842, and as a result, the Americans turned their focus to Japan. The
interest of the United States in Japan was marked by the termination of the isolation politics
(Sakoku) by Commodore M.C. Perry in 1854 triggered by the Gibson case (Locher-Scholten,
1994/2007).
Walter Murray Gibson was an American adventurer who arrived at Palembang, South
Sumatra, in 1852. His sympathy to the local people trapped between a conflict among the
Jambi Sultanate, and the Dutch put him in the middle of the conflict. Therefore, the Dutch
suspected and then arrested him. His ship and cargo were seized. He was imprisoned in
Weltevreden, from where he escaped and reached his homeland. He asked the government to
support him in suing the Dutch government for his loss. The US Ambassador, August Belmont, responded the plea and took this opportunity to make the Dutch to open its overseas
colony. He was inspired by the actions taken by his father-in-law, Commodore M.C. Perry, in
the case of Japan (Curti1962: 34; Readers Digest Family Encyclopedia of American History,
1975: 1288; Johnson, 1964: 170).
3.5
The Treaty of 1855
Belmont failed to win the Gibson case. However, he was asked by the Dutch government to
begin a discussion of establishing a consular convention, after some pressure. The result was
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the agreement of 22 January 1855, known as the Treaty of 1855. This was brought to both
governments to be ratified. For the Dutch East Indies, it was announced in the Staatsblad
1855 no. 65.
The following are the results of the discussion held in a friendly atmosphere and under the
full authority of both sides (the Staatsblad 1855 no. 65. ANRI):
a. The American consular representatives, namely the Consul Generals, consisting of Consuls and Vice Consuls, had a formal recognition and acceptance in all Dutch colonial
harbors as the “most favored nation” (points 1 and 14).
b. The representatives had to hand the letter of confidence to the Dutch King (point 3).
c. The consular representative acted as an agent and protector for the trade activities of its
citizens, including in any incident of shipwreck, and held an immunity privilege against
the seizing according to the existing rules, but no diplomatic immunity (points 3, 4, 5, 6,
and 14).
d. The quarrels that could not be settled at the consular level would be referred to the diplomatic representative in The Hague (point 6).
e. The two countries were able to appoint vice consuls at the harbors under their jurisdiction, and it was possible to appoint foreigners as consuls (point 7).
f. The consular office issued passport or other papers needed to travel or to reside in areas
under its duties (point 8).
g. The consuls were obliged to support the authorities in any criminal case involving American citizens (points 10 and 12).
h. The duty also included to support the matters of inheritance or testimony of American
citizens who passed away in the colony (point 11).
The representatives who signed this agreement were A. Belmont, the American Ambassador to the Netherlands, A. van Hall, as well as C. Pahud of the Netherlands. The Dutch King
signed it on 8 April 1855 and the US President, Franklin Pierce (1853–1857), on 5 March
1856. On 25 May 1856, it was exchanged in Washington D.C. The Dutch published it in the
State Gazette on 5 July 1856, and for the colony, on 29 October 1856. The treaty allowed the
Americans to open consular offices in the Netherlands and India.
4
CONCLUSION
The United States is a liberal country. However, in international economics, the US government played a significant role in breaking the mercantilist restriction to its trade. The Treaty
of 1855 was a prominent example. The factors include liberal trade doctrine, stopover point,
mercantilism, and the opening of Japan. The Gibson case was the triggering factor. The
agreement, on the one hand, permitted the United States to open consular representatives
in the Dutch overseas possessions, especially the Dutch East Indies. On the contrary, the
Dutch gained an advantage to secure its expansion in Sumatra, a prosperous mining island.
In 1872, the Dutch declared a war against the Kingdom of Aceh. The plea for support from
the kingdom was rejected by the US consul in Singapore. The United States had a diplomatic
agreement with the Dutch that prevented such interference.
Moreover, the Indonesian archipelago was a stopover point for the US international commerce. In such context, the American commercial networks grew. This commercial pattern
was the reason for the non-termination of the American shipping and commerce with the
decline of American terms of trade with the Dutch East Indies, as the United States compensated the deficit from this trade.
To date, the United States has considered Indonesia as a stopover point for its global
interests. In the Cold War era, Indonesia was a frontier to contain the Communist influence
(the Containment). In terms of economy, Indonesia still depends much on the United States.
It means that the United States has a rather significant influence on and plays an important
role in the development of Indonesia.
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REFERENCES
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Ahmat, S. (1965) Some problems of the Rhode Island traders in Java 1799–1836. Journal of Southeast
Asian History, 6, (1).
Bevans, C.I. (1972) Treaties and other international agreements of the United States of America 1776–
1949, 10. Washington, Department of State Publication.
Burnett, E.C. (1911) Note on American negotiations for commercial treaties 1776–1786. The American
Historical Review, 16 (3).
Chandler, A.D. (1977) The visible hand: The managerial revolution in American business. Cambridge,
Mass, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Curti, M.E. (1962) Young America. In: The American Historical Review, 32(1), Oct.
de Hullu, J. (1988) On the rise of the indies trade of the united states of America as competitor of the
east indie company in the period 1786–1790. In: MAP Meilink Roeloefs et al. Dutch Authors on Asian
History. Dordrecht, Holland & Providence, USA, Foris Publication.
de Roo, L.W.G. (1919) Amerikaansche Contracten In: Documentenomtrent Herman Willem Daendels
Gouverneur-Generaal van Nederlandsch-Oost Indie, 2 jil.,’s Gravenhage, Martinus Nijhoff.
Dennett, T. (1963) Americans in eastern Asia: A critical study of United States’ policy in the far east in
the Nineteenth Century. New York, Barnes & Nobles, Inc.
Eckes, A.E. (1995) Opening America’s market. U.S. foreign policy since 1776. Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press.
Fichter, J.R. (2006) The United States, Britain, and the East Indies 1773–1815. [Dissertation]. The History Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., August.
Gibson, W.r M. (1855) The prison of Weltevreden: And a glance at the east Indian archipelago. New York,
J.C. Riker, 1855.
Giddens, A. (2004) The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration (Teori Strukturasi
untuk Analisis Sosial). Pasuruan, Pedati.
Gould, J.W. (1961) Americans in Sumatra. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.
Gould, J.W. (1972) American imperialism in Southeast Asia before 1898. Journal of Southeast Asian
Studies, 3, (2).
Krugman, Paul R, Obstfeld M. (2003) Ekonomi internasional: Teori dan kebijakan. (International Economy: Theories and Policies). Jakarta, Raja Grafindo Perkasa.
Leirissa R.Z. (1999) Strukturisme dalam ilmu sejarah suatu alternatif. (Structuralism in the history of
science is an alternative), Makara Jurnal Penelitian Universitas Indonesia, no. 3 Seri C.
Lloyd, C. (1993). The structures of history. Oxford, Blackwell Publisher.
Locher-Scholten, E. (1994) Sumatraans Sultanaat en Koloniale Staat. De Relatie Djambie—Batavia
(1830–1907) en het Nederlandsche Imperialisme. Leiden, KITLV Uitgeverij.
Locher-Scholten, E. (2008) Kesultanan Sumatra dan negara kolonial: Hubungan Jambi-Batavia (1830–
1907) (trans.). (The Sultanates of Sumatra and the Colonial States: The Relationship of JambiBatavia (1830–1907)). Jakarta, Banana & KITLV Jakarta.
Long, D.F. (1973) Martial Thunder: The first official American armed intervention in Asia. Pacific
Historical Review, XLII, May, no. 2.
Quincy, J. (1847) The journals of Major Samuel Shaw: The first American consul at Canton. Boston, W.
Crosby & H.P. Nichols.
Reeves, J.S. (1917) Two conceptions of the freedom of the seas. The American Historical Review, 22,
(3), April.
Regeringsalmanak 1823, 1824, 1826, 1829, 1859.
Spector, R. (1972) The American image of Southeast Asia 1790–1865, A preliminary assessment. In:
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 3, (2).
Staatbladen 1818, 1853, 1855, 1864.
Verslag van den Handel, de Scheepvaart en de Inkomende en Uitgaande Regten op Java en Madoera
1823–1869 (1825–1869) Batavia, Landsdrukkerij.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Individual unit of analysis in the debate on the methodology
of economics as a social science
H.S. Pratama
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The development of theories in social sciences and humanities are influenced
by debates on the unit of analysis. One key of the debate is about whether scientific
investigation should be based upon a micro-level analysis (individual unit) or a macro-level
analysis (sui generis). This methodological debate originated in the contraposition between
Max Weber and Emile Durkheim in the late 19th century. The debate centred on the atomistic
methodology vis-à-vis holistic methodology. In contrast to theory as a system of description
that contains truth/falsity parameter, methodology is more about an open choice in scientific
inquiry. Hence, the chosen methodology determines the possible theoretical outputs. This
paper will use an analytical approach to discuss the unit of an analysis in social science
methodology. It aims to demonstrate the theoretical implications that may result from the
debate.
1
INTRODUCTION
There is a historical debate among social scientists on the nature of a society and the best
method to understand it. On one hand, there are those who look at a society as an aggregation, a collection of individuals. On the other hand, there are those who see society as a collectivity. In this sense, the first group perceives a social phenomenon in terms of individuals
and the interactions among them. Meanwhile, the second group perceives a social phenomenon as a social whole. In the history of methodology, the first perspective is referred to as
methodological individualism, while the second as holism (Udehn, 2002).
The methodological individualism is a kind of atomism that uses an individual as its unit
of analysis. An individual is similar to an atom in a physical reality. In order to generate an
explanation of a social phenomenon, a scientist begins by explaining an individual. In this
methodology, the characteristics, nature, or disposition of an individual must be known. Furthermore, this methodology develops a model of an individual who is rational. Rationality is
considered as the essence of an individual. In turn, this methodology is related to the rational
choice theory. Methodological individualism looks at a social whole as constructed by the
individuals and the relations among them (Udehn, 2002).
Methodology and theory are different. Theory is, in an empirical term, a descriptive statement, which can be true or false. However, methodology is a metatheory, a metalanguage,
which cannot be true or false, but fruitful or not. In this sense, methodology is a choice made
by a scientist to ensure the fruitfulness of his/her research. The success of a methodology
lies in the application of a methodology in enriching the research. The use of a methodology
is initiated by Hobbes when he tries to explain how we can understand the social by understanding the psychology of an individual. The use of methodology reached its culmination
in the Austrian School of Economics with Carl Menger, Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von
Mises, and Friedrich von Hayek as its members.
The debate of methodology in that era was between holism (Emile Durkheim) and
methodological individualism (Max Weber). Following Max Weber, they place rationality as
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the main feature of an individual, and make an individual as a unit of analysis in economics.
The debate also focuses on whether this rationality is an empirical fact or only an ideal
type. Von Mises, for example, sees rationality as factual. Weber and Hayek, on the other
hand, believe that rationality is an ideal type and that scientists are able to make comparison between how the actual man behaves and how the ideal type conducted their actions.
Through the application of methodological individualism, social scientists are able to examine social issues using an individual unit of analysis. The debate between methodological individualism and holism raises a fundamental question on how scientific social science is similar
to economics. This paper will concentrate on this question and relate it with the problem of
modelling in social science, especially in economics.
The rise of social sciences in the modern era has created some philosophical questions on
how scientific social sciences are. These questions can be divided based on the systematic of
philosophy by looking at what social sciences are (Ontology), how social sciences develop
their theories and what the justifications are (Epistemology), and by looking at the values
they have (Axiology).
Since the method of induction was reinvented by Francis Bacon in the 16th century through
his book, Novum Organum (or New Method), modern science has had a new primary tool to
produce theories. Bacon’s new method was used to replace the previous deduction method
introduced almost 2,000 years before by Aristotle in his book Organon, which literally means
method.
Induction has enabled scientist to observe a phenomenon in order to build a generalization.
This generalization could then be treated as a causal explanation. In other words, induction
is a kind of method that enables scientists to predict some future unobservable facts based
on some observable facts in the past. As a result, explanation and prediction become integral
parts of scientific activities. This method has developed from Bacon to logical positivism in
the 20th century. Simply put, an induction or a generalization is in line with verification and
confirmation in the late methodological debate.
Natural sciences fit in with the inductive method and the method continued to grow
rapidly after Bacon. By using the induction method, natural scientists are able to find a
pattern, regularity, and formulate them in historical statements or theories. A statement
expected to be a theory must be historical. Historical components must be eliminated so
that the historical statement is able to explain and predict certain event. To some degree, this
historical statement is best represented with a mathematical language since this language is
‘neutral’ and it contains no historical component.
Theories that are simultaneously confirmed would be recognized as natural laws. By
finding the natural laws, a natural scientist is able to give account to another phenomenon,
making explanation and prediction as well. Carl Hempel names this process the DeductiveNomological Model (DN-Model) referring to observations treated as “law-like statements”,
which in turn would be a major premise or a nomos (rules). Based on this logic, a scientific
activity is considered as an attempt to translate the nomos into certain circumstances, condition, or data.
The development of social sciences has come a long way. In the past, there was a belief that
the only science was natural science. This is a strange phenomenon since the development
of social sciences tends to imitate that of natural science. August Comte’s Positivism Project
attempting to establish sociology as a social physics is a good example of how social sciences
have followed the footsteps of natural sciences. The nature of social science and the mechanism behind it continue to be perceived as intriguing and philosophical questions.
The same issues emerge in economics. At the beginning, economics was formulated as a
rule to manage households. Although oikos-nomos was not perceived as a science, the concept became the origin of economics. This is very interesting since the nature (or the origin)
of economics is seen as a technique, not an explanation or a prediction as what we now
know. Furthermore, the very nature of economics is not a scientific attempt (to explain), but
a moral attempt (to do something). In this modern era, this view of economics as a moral
attempt is open for debate.
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The modern economics began with the publication of Adam Smith’s book, The Wealth of
Nations, in 1776. In the book, Smith tries to solve some problems of the society by proposing
a market system as an exchange system. Moreover, a market functions as a moral system.
Smith focuses on unintended consequences of human actions, not on moral intention. Market is perceived as a reliable system that enables society to do well by proposing an individual
self-interest. Smith denies the importance of a moral intention as the basis for action. Instead
he focuses on unintended consequences. In a market, every person is encouraged to pursue
his or her self-interest. This selfish motive would lead to a harmony by ensuring that a perfect
market is established. A perfect market is based on three prerequisites: self-interest, freedom,
and competition. When these prerequisites exist in a market, equilibrium will take place. In
other words, equilibrium is the unintended consequence or a condition, which seems to be
regulated by an ‘invisible hand’.
The development of modern economics relies on the normative agenda to create order in a
society. The task of economics is redefined by Amartya Sen through his work, On Ethics and
Economics. Sen argues that there is an irreducible task of economics. The work of economics
shapes politics, moral, and engineering aspect (Sen, 1991). This means economics should be
about how to gain social achievement, how to promote moral conducts, and how to create
efficiencies. The three tasks of economics contain normativity or anything that must be done
simultaneously and not partially.
As a discipline, economics holds a vital role in formulating a public policy. Policy makers
take economics principles in ensuring social conduct, such as distributing advantages, taxing people, raising the rate of interest, building infrastructures, budgeting, and so on. This
is possible because economics is considered as an established social science similar to natural
science in the use of methods (Popper, 2005). This article will discuss how the normative
(moral) agenda of economics is replaced by a scientific function and identify the discipline’s
capitalistic economic system by its use of a modelling method.
2
METHODOLOGY
This article is a qualitative research that focuses on a conceptual examination of economics through a philosophical perspective. Several steps must be taken in order to do this. The
first step is a conceptual analysis. To explicate the philosophical problem in an economic
modelling, a researcher needs to analyse the key concepts such as reductionism and modeldependent realism. The next step is abstraction. Philosophy is different from other fields of
studies in its capacity to develop speculative abstraction beyond the empirical data. In this
sense, a philosophy researcher tries to abstract an actual model to arrive at a more abstract
understanding about the model. This is called the abstract concept of modelling. This concept is different from other disciplines such as economics that takes a model as it is. The
third step is questioning. Almost every scientific field uses a model in their research, but
there is a very tiny room for them to question the ontology of model they use. In this article,
the researcher tries to question the use of a model in economics beyond its empirical significance. A philosophical approach in looking at the issue involves philosophical systematism,
which includes ontology, epistemology, and axiology. It questions what something is, how
we know it, and how we value it. The last step is making judgment about the subject. It
involves making conclusions and explicating the implication, especially the philosophical
implication.
In developing ideas and generating philosophical problems on economic modelling, the
researcher focuses on exploration in philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is used to approach
these texts. Hermeneutics is a branch of philosophy studying texts in a critical manner to
expose the basic assumption, prejudice, and context (Baggini, 2010). The researcher examines several primary texts, which include Julian Reiss, 2013, Philosophy of Economics: a Contemporary Introduction (New York: Routledge) and Lars Udehn, 2002 [2001], Methodological
Individualism: Background, History, and Meaning (New York: Routledge).
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3
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Economics is similar to natural science or an exact science based on its ability to generate
statements that are verifiable and falsifiable with empirical data and avoiding speculations
that exceed empirical observation. In this sense, economics works like positive science. On
the other hand, philosophy is more speculative, and it looks at the ontology and the axiology
of an issue (especially, ethical issues) (Reiss, 2013). This argument leads to a rigorous distinction between the positivistic side and the normative side of economics. The normative side
belongs to philosophical discussion. In addition, economics has isolated itself from observing a phenomenon and generating a social pattern.
Through an induction method, economics attempts to find general laws in an economy by
observing a particular phenomenon. This method expects to find universal synthetic statements. It is believed that we can find a universal statement from a singularity. According to
Carl Hempel, this “general laws” should be discerned between a statement, which is “necessarily true”, and that which is “accidentally true”. Necessarily true statements are true laws,
while accidentally true statements are statements that are true only by coincident (Fetzer,
2014). If we observe multiple phenomena in a wide setting of time and place, we will be
convinced that a general law can be discovered. Unfortunately, David Hume states that epistemologically we can only see the singulars (or particulars, not universals). Everything that
we see is a singular observation, a singular statement, and this is a kind of phenomenalism.
We cannot find the universals because it means we will need to collect all phenomena, both
actual and possible, in all kinds of time and place settings (Popper, 2002). This leads to a criticism on the reliability of an induction method because no one can accumulate all possible
data and this means our best theory of anything is not certain.
Can economics find the general laws in economics and have it accepted and recognized as
a positive science? Positive science consists of organized scientific statements, which describe
and explain phenomena as it is. Positive science primarily was a philosophical movement
initiated by August Comte in the 19thcentury to establish sociology as social physics (Udehn,
2002). In this project, Comte considered science as value-free activities by making rigorous
dichotomy between fact and value. Science takes only facts. In this sense, science is characterized by the method of reduction and naturalism. Reductionism is an idea that its smallest unit or element should be analysed in every complex phenomenon. In physics, scientists
reduce reality into physical matters, particularly an atom or a particle. In biology, scientists
reduce a living being into a gene. In economics, an economic phenomenon is reduced to an
individual action. Particles, genes, and individuals are the atoms of every science. Naturalism means that we can explain reality by its natural mechanism. This is the heritage of a
Newtonian view dominant in the modern age. It assumes that reality follows some “exact
mechanisms” or general laws (Reiss, 2013).
Economics do two things simultaneously. On the one hand, it generates scientific statements, which are the result of facts finding, generalization, prediction, and model development. This leads to some observable and measurable reality. On the other hand, economics
needs to take into accounts moral goals, such as welfare, equality, and justice.
In its development, economics tries to imitate the natural science method found in reductionism. Based on atomism, reductionism is an idea that a complex reality must be divided
into its smallest unit. Every positive science adopts reductionism.
In the context of economics, reductionism can be seen from an epistemological and an
ontological perspective. From an epistemological perspective reductionism enables a scientist
to make an explanation or prediction. Nevertheless, this is not the case for an ontological perspective. Ontology of reality is still beyond a scientific explanation. In this sense, a scientific
theory is not equal to the reality. Theory is only a representation of (some) realities.
To help with their explanations, economists use models. Modelling is a scientific activity
that enables scientists to explain their hypothesis. Models must be distinguished from theories, since theories are descriptive statements about reality, whereas models are hypothetical
statements about reality. Economists, like other scientists, use models in explaining economic
reality (Morgan, 2013).
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In general, a model is a theoretical construct. There are some familiar definitions of models.
First, a model is an instrument to see reality. A model is built to help economists in observing an economic phenomenon. By using a model, reality is stabilized and regulated in certain
forms (Morgan & Morrison, 1999). Second, a model is a causal representation. A model
in this sense is a form of representation of causal relations that occur in certain economic
events. Third, a model is an idealized phenomenon. Economic phenomenon is diverse and
random. A particular phenomenon is idealized using an abstraction procedure by eliminating
accidental and attributive aspects. Through this procedure, an economist is able to build an
ideal construction of an economic phenomenon characterized by regularity and universality.
Fourth, a model is an imagination (Krugman, 2013). This means that a model is a kind of an
imagination used by an economist to develop a narrative about an economic world. In other
words, a model is a kind of a mental entity developed to narrate the world.
The aims of a model are to help economists generate explanations of the economic world
(or economic reality) (Harford, 2006). An explanation has to meet the truth-likeness criteria
(verisimilitude) derived from two components. The first is a specific phenomenon. If there is a
causal relation between two things in a specific economic phenomenon, economists see a causal
relation. The second is a general phenomenon. This component relies on a great quantity of a
specific phenomenon; economists see a causal relation among those phenomena and come to
understand the causal mechanism that shapes every single economic event (Reiss, 2013).
By developing and using models, economists should be able to understand the economic
reality. However, the process is not as simple especially when we take into account what happened in the world in the past decades. Financial crisis occurred several times, particularly in
1997 and 2008. These crises raised philosophical questions about the nature and the activity
of economics. Financial crisis is an independent reason for why the philosophy of economics appears to have a significant role once again both academically and in practice (Reiss,
2013). There are some challenging questions, especially one related to the scientific status of
a theory of economics. Does economics fail as a science?
Some believe that the economic crisis was caused by banks that did not follow the government regulations. However, methodologically, a crisis is a fact caused by the failure of a
mainstream economic model used to oversee and overcome the economic reality. As Joseph
Stiglitz states, mainstream economics uses a model based on unrealistic assumptions of
information, perfect competitions, and perfect markets, which lead to negation of regulations (Stiglitz, 2007). A similar thesis is written by Paul Krugman who states that economic
mainstream focuses too much on bad theories, which make unrealistic assumptions about the
market. These closed-minded theories fail to recognize and overcome the catastrophic crisis.
Those bad theories focus only on mathematical truth, but they fail to give some valuable public policy recommendations (Zreiss, 2013). Economists should rethink the basic assumptions
behind their theories and models.
Since economics mostly focuses on generating models and a mathematical analysis of a
certain phenomenon, the discipline becomes a formal study. Formal economics seems to
dominate almost all economists practice nowadays. These formal characteristics are distinguished from the substantive characteristics. A study by Karl Polanyi states that economics
has transformed itself from a substantive study to a formal study. At the beginning of its conception, economics was about the day-to-day household economies. Economics had a normativity to manage a household, distributing welfare, and understand how people run their
economies. This was long before modern economics postulates market as the only economic
system. After adopting the scientific tools, economics is more similar to other (exact and natural) sciences that focus on explaining and predicting some events. This is a formal character
of economics, since it deals with, at some level, historical statements (theories). Economists
today use mathematical modelling to explain economic events. In addition, this modelling is
not a neutral and value-free entity because it relies on some philosophical commitment.
The practice of economics as a discipline carries within itself philosophical issues concerning epistemology, ontology, and axiology. By ontology, we can find debates on elementary
concepts, such as what object is, what property is, what an individual as an economic agent
is, what natural law and social law are, and whether there is causality in economic reality or
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not. By epistemology, we can raise questions about what kind of methodology is used by an
economist and why, how about measurements, and how to properly conduct observations.
Meanwhile, by axiology, we can see axiological consequence of economics theory and activities, such as welfare, wellbeing, virtue, and theory of justice. Thereby, economics as science
must realize that economics has two sides, both positive and normative. In this context, economics must develop and rethink its own methodology, models, and assumptions.
The main framework of mainstream economics is a rational choice. The assumption of a
rational choice is widely known in economic methodology development. Mainstream economics is all about making a rational choice. This rational character of an economic agent is
debatable. Some economic schools use the concept of rationality as an “ideal type”, a kind
of heuristic tools to explain the real economic behaviour. This concept is influenced by Max
Weber and the Austrian School (Udehn, 2002). To put it simply, rationality is not about the
reality of an economic activity. In the real world, people can behave rationally or irrationally.
However, economists will interpret those real activities by an ideal type of rationality. This
means, if we find an irrational action in the real world, we can say that it is a deviation from
the ideal type of rationality. By this methodological procedure, economics makes a simple
move to understand economics reality. Nevertheless, this advantage also contains disadvantages. By using this very simple model of rationality, economics cannot observe the real complex phenomena of economy. In a series of experiments, for an example, psychologist Dan
Ariely concludes that human being is predictably irrational (Ariely, 2009).
Finally, in developing a model, there are some requirements that need to be fulfilled. First,
a model has to be logically permissible. Every model must have a perfect coherence. Second,
a model has to have an empirical domain that can be verified or falsified. Third, every model
should be precise in describing reality to fulfil its reliability (Frigg & Hartmann, 2012). By
contrasting a model with the reality, we might understand if this model is reliable or not,
since a model can fail completely (Frigg & Hartmann, 2012).
When we build, develop, and adopt a model to see the reality, paradoxically at the same time
the ontology of the world fits to the model. This is called a problem of a model-dependent realism. A model-dependent realism is an idea that reality is determined by a model that is used to
apprehend it (Hawking, 2011). Similar to Kantian constructivism, reality is dependent on mental categories. Whenever economics is modelling an individual as a rational agent, economic
reality is quickly corrected and fitted to the model. In fact, financial crisis and inequality are not
compatible with the model because the real economic activities are much more complex and
cannot be reduced to a rational interpretation. Modelling becomes an integral part of scientific
activities because this enables scientists to explain a phenomenon in simple way.
The fact is economics uses models to explain reality and it is the same way to say that
economics is constructing the economy reality. We have been talking about the nature of
economic science as a normative science (aside from the positive quality), which follows the
normative conclusion that we should take this model to construct (and explain) an economic
phenomenon. It is an epistemic reason to propose the use of a normative model to promote
justice and equality as the normative agenda of economics. The same reason has been motivating the report of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and
Figure 1.
Relation between model and reality.
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Social Progress in 2009. The commission questions the use of gross domestic products as a
welfare indicator, which has been used by the world for decades (Sen, Stiglitz, & Fitoussi,
2009). They find that GDP is not a reliable indicator to measure a country’s welfare.
To some degree, the world economy today has challenged economists to reflect on their
activities. This article has shown how this discipline has transformed from its origin, which
focuses more on normativity, to the current style, which imitates exact and natural sciences
that focus on how to explain and predict a future economic event. In a broader sense, economics today does what Polanyi explains as ‘economistic fallacy’ or identifies economy with
a market system (Polanyi, 2001). In reality, people do a different kind of economy, from the
past to the present. Market system is only one type of economy. Therefore, focusing on how
to explain and predict people’s behaviour in a market system with some modelling assumptions about rationality is a hasty practice.
4
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, economics since its modern inception, as found in Adam Smith’s title of his
masterpiece, The Wealth of Nations, has had a normative agenda. We can paraphrase it as
justice, equality, welfare, or wealth. This is a fact that economics has two sides: positive and
normative. Isolating economics only in terms of positivistic is a foolish idea since economics
have a moral agenda. Moreover, as a science, economics should rethink and develop its methodology and models to be better so that it can help explain the world, overcome the obstacles,
and comply with the moral (normative) agenda.
The first step to do this is to reflect on the origin of economics as an attempt to manage
households and their economy. The practice of economy varies as found in multiple historical and anthropological studies. In this sense, identifying economy with a market system is an
economic fallacy that must be avoided by every economist. The scientific function of economics in explaining and predicting economic events must not be limited to the market system
and rationality modelling. Economists should be open to think out of the box and realize that
their activities rely on some untested assumption about what economics means. By adopting
the normative modelling, economics as a discipline would be more humanistic and realistic.
The use of methodological individualism in placing an individual unit of an analysis at the
centre of social sciences (like economics) activities is the simplest way to understand social
reality. However, the methodology reduces humans and the society to an individual level.
This reduction is seen in the model developed in the social science. It may sound simple,
but it is not that simple. The philosophical problem in the use of the methodology has an
implication on the type of theories built and the models made. Furthermore, the use of this
methodology produces a commitment to the market system.
REFERENCES
Ariely, D. (2009) Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. New York,
HarperCollins.
Baggini, J. (2010) Philosopher’s Toolkit: a Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods 2nd Edition. New York, Wiley-Blackwell.
Fetzer, J. (2014) Carl Hempel. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2014). <http://plato.stanford.edu/
entries/hempel/#AnaDis> [Accessed 30th January 2015].
Frigg, R. & Hartmann, S. (2012) Models in Science. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2012). http://
plato.stanford.edu/entries/models-science/. [Accessed 30th January 2015].
Granovetter, M. (1985) Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness, American
Journal of Sociology 91.
Hawking, S. (2011) The Grand Design. New York, Bantams Book.
Krugman, P. (2013) End This Depression Now! New York, WW Norton & Company.
Morgan, M.S. (2013) The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think. New York, Cambridge
University Press.
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Morgan, M.S. & Morrison, M. (editor). (1999) Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social
Science. New York, Cambridge University Press.
Polanyi, K. (2001) The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Times. Boston,
Beacon Press.
Popper, K. (2002 [1959]) The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York, Routledge.
Popper, K. (2005) Unended Quest. London. Taylor and Francis e-Library.
Reiss, J. (2013) Philosophy of Economics: A Contemporary Introduction. New York, Routledge.
Ross, D. (2014) Philosophy of Economics. New York, Palgrave Macmillan.
Sen, A. (1991) On Ethics and Economics. New York, Wiley-Blackwell.
Sen, A., Stiglitz, J. & Fitoussi, J-P. (2009) Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic
Performance and Social Progress.
Stiglitz, J.E. (2007 [2006]) Making Globalization Work. New York, WW Norton & Company.
Stiglitz, J.E. (2013) The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future.
New York, WW Norton & Company.
Turner, S.P. & Roth, P.A. (editors). (2003) Companion to Philosophy of Social Science. Oxford, Blackwell
Publishing.
Udehn, L. (2002 [2001]) Methodological Individualism: Background, History, and Meaning. New York,
Routledge.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Colonialism and segregation: An analysis of colonial policies
in the Strait of Malacca 1795–1825
T.R. Fadeli
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This paper examines the Dutch and the British colonial policies related to
trade and societies in the Strait of Malacca focusing on Malacca and Penang. Covering
the period from 1795 to 1825 – the period of transition and transfer of power—this paper
attempts to observe colonial policies that resulted in social segregation. It begins with the
description of the Strait of Malacca, i.e. its historical background, followed by the trade and
societies in the region. It then assesses the British and the Dutch methods of ruling and their
policies that result in social segregation in the Strait of Malacca’s societies. Using both primary and secondary materials collected from the British Library and the SOAS Library, this
paper concludes that some policies set up by the colonizers grant privileges to a particular
ethnic group.
1
INTRODUCTION
For more than a thousand years, the Strait of Malacca has been an important gate to the
international trade route for traders from Europe, Asia, and also Africa. The Strait of
Malacca, also known by its cities, Malacca, Penang, and Singapore, had its origins in the
early fifteenth century when the region witnessed the overlapping influences of the Thai
kingdom of Ayutthaya and the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit (Sandhu & Wheatley, 1983,
p. 3). Borschberg (2008) claims that the Strait of Malacca then rose as an area with diverse
ethnic groups and at the same time became a region considered as one of the most strategic
areas for trading in the Southeast Asia.
In recent times, there has been a growing interest in the studies of the area of the Southeast
Asia, particularly the Strait of Malacca. Most of the studies are to learn about its societies
and their activities, yet they encourage a more comprehensive history of the Strait of Malacca.
Historical studies of economic and trading activities in the Strait of Malacca have also gained
extensive attention in recent years. Some of the recent work includes the research of Donald
B. Freeman, Nicholas Tarling, Leonard and Barbara Andaya, and Nordin Hussin, who have
written on this topic extensively (Andaya, 1962). Basu (1985) points out that the debate on
this topic has been discussed amongst historians, but rather than only considering the history
of commerce in the Strait of Malacca, many scholars believe that studies should be expanded
to an interdisciplinary analysis including the roles of traders, influential institutions, organizational factors, and political and economic problems that have been influenced by commerce.
The importance of understanding various issues from a historical perspective is increasingly recognized nowadays, not only by academics but also by other non-academic groups in
the society. As a result, problematizing races and ethnicity becomes one of the most important themes in the study of the history of the Southeast Asia (Andaya, 2008, p. 1). With the
presence of colonizers in the Strait of Malacca, the political, economic, and social life of the
Strait of Malacca was transformed.
This paper analyses the social segregation demonstrated by colonial policies set up by
the British and the Dutch colonial governments in the Strait of Malacca during the late
eighteenth until early nineteenth centuries, focusing on Malacca and Penang as port cities.
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This paper also compares the British and Dutch colonial legacies by focusing on their ruling
methods. Covering the period from 1795 to 1825 – the transitional period between the British
and Dutch administration in the region (De Witt, 2008, p. xiii) – the paper argues that there
were several colonial policies and trading systems set up by the colonial governments to grant
privileges to certain groups in the Strait of Malacca. The fact that there was an extraordinary
role of the Chinese in the Strait of Malacca raised a question about whether the British and
Dutch colonial governments had established policies that gave privileges to some particular
ethnic groups, in this case, the Chinese. This research is important because it aims to provide
an explanation of the policies set up by the colonial governments, which significantly affected
the nation-building process in the region.
This research uses both primary and secondary materials as sources. The primary materials from the pre-colonial and post-colonial period are often scarce and often discovered not
in a good condition. Using archived documents from the Strait Settlements Records, Archives
and Special Collection from the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, and
the Melaka Records from the India Office Records at the British Library, this paper examines
the economic and social conditions and analyses the economic policies and trading systems
adopted by the British and Dutch in the Strait of Malacca during the chosen period. The
limitations of the sources are that they are mostly written in English and Dutch languages;
as a result, examining texts written only in these languages means neglecting the primary
sources written in Malay and other vernaculars. However, the high degree of discipline possessed by the colonial governments of the British and Dutch then, completeness of the information can be obtained.
In the first part of this paper, the background of the Strait of Malacca, including a brief
overview of the geography of the region, and the methodology of research will be discussed.
In this part, the importance of the Strait of Malacca as an international trade route will be
explained. The discussion is not only limited to the geographical context, but will also include
a brief historical background of the politics, economy, as well as society and ethnicities in
the Strait of Malacca.
The second part will focus on the economy, trade, and society in the Strait of Malacca.
This part will concentrate on the trading commodities and also the trading patterns in
the Strait of Malacca. From the discussion, it can be seen that natural conditions, such as
weather, seasons, and geographical locations are very influential in the trade and social lives
in the Straits of Malacca.
The third part will attempt to analyse colonial policies set up by the British and the Dutch
colonial administrations. In this section, problems of social segregation become relevant to
the discussion. There were policies set up by the colonial governments that created social
isolation and ethnic-based work classification in the Strait of Malacca. This part will be followed by the conclusion.
1.1
Trade and society in the Strait of Malacca
Located on the east coast of Sumatra and the west coast of Thailand, the Malaysian Peninsular, and Singapore, the Straits of Malacca is in a very strategic location. Currently, the
four countries bordering the Straits of Malacca are Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and
Thailand. The Indonesian archipelago is located in the south-eastern part of the Strait of
Malacca; there are over ten thousand islands in the Indonesian archipelago and most of these
have been destinations for international trade over the past centuries.
Reid (2015, p. 70) argues that the strait is located on one of the busiest trading routes in
the Southeast Asia. There are hundreds of islands in the Malacca Strait, which are part of
the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago. The Archipelago covers most of the areas in the Malay
Peninsula and various other islands. Sau Heng (1990, p. 23) discovered that many settlements
had emerged as ports or trading areas around coastal regions and in the riverside area. Some
small ports that still exist have grown to be paramount for trade. According to Hussin (2007,
p. 1), “Although not all of these settlements and ports became important trading centres,
some of them emerged as important regional exchange ports or entrepots.” The strategic
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location had helped many ports in the Strait of Malacca to grow and become places for global commercial trading activities.
Numerous ports in the Strait of Malacca emerged dramatically over a period. These ports
were filled by various traders from the third century when they sought particular commodities, such as herbs for medical use, spices, and gold, which were distributed to this area from
other areas of Indonesia and the Malaysian archipelago (Kathirithamby-Wells, 1990, p. 1).
Some of the traders were from India, Arabia, Persia, and also China. Hussin (2008, pp. 2–3)
states, “Chinese traders from South China had also been trading with the ports in the Straits
and beyond, although since the sixteenth century they rarely ventured west of the Straits.”
The traders from China and India used the Strait of Malacca as a hub linking the trade
between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Due to the Strait of Malacca’s strategic location, several port cities emerged and became significant in Southeast Asia. According to Masselman (1963, p. 223), some important port cities
are Malacca, Riau, Siak, Palembang, Kedah, and Aceh. These port towns played a major role
in the trade in the archipelago. Many immigrants settled in these cities both for short and long
periods of time. They played a vital role in the growth of the port cities in the Strait of Malacca.
Port cities in the Strait of Malacca have a multicultural and multi-ethnic population. Settlers who lived in the Strait of Malacca were not only traders who came from Asia, but also
from Europe and Africa. Various groups with different languages, religions, and races came
for trading. Hussin (2008) and Kaur (2004, p. 5) make clear that traders from all around the
world, who came to many port cities in the Strait of Malacca, could be separated into two
groups: traders from Europe, Indian subcontinent or China, and traders who came from the
region of the archipelago. He adds that the two groups could be classified into four categories. Firstly, the European traders and merchants from large trading companies, such as VOC
(Vereniigde Oostindische Compagnie), EIC (East India Company), and many traders from
the regions of Europe such as French, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, and English traders,
who belonged to some of the many companies that traded in the past. The second group is
Indian traders who came from the Indian subcontinent to buy and sell goods in the Strait.
This group consists of Gujarati, Moors, Hindus, and Chulia Muslims. The third group was
the Chinese traders from Mainland China. Finally, the merchants and traders who traded in
the Strait of Malacca coming from the Archipelago comprised the fourth group.
Trading activities that exist between the Eastern and the Western worlds had also been
established long ago in the Strait of Malacca. Many Westerners who came to the region to
buy and sell goods carried out trading activities with Easterners. In the middle of the seventeenth century, there were merchants who came from European countries, such as Portugal
and the Netherlands (represented by Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie officials), followed
by Britain (represented by East India Company officials), France, and Denmark (Chauduri,
1985, p. 21, see also Souza, 1986, p. 228, and Eang, 1996, p. 28).
There were several types of goods that were traded in the Strait of Malacca. The commodities came from the Indian subcontinent, and then continued to be transported to Southeast
Asia and the South China Sea. The merchants in the Strait of Malacca traded five main
categories of commodities: manufactured goods, mineral ores, forest products, human slaves,
and products for food (Hussin, 2008, p. 12, see also Reid, 1983). The basic needs of life, such
as sugar, salt, and clothing, were the types of commodities most frequently traded by merchants from the Indian subcontinent through Southeast Asia to the South China Sea. The
manufactured products traded in the region were cotton textiles, porcelain and glass, silk,
precious stones, and jewellery (Chauduri, 1985, pp. 19–20). Raw materials for industries were
also traded in the region. Some of the raw materials were produced locally, but demand was
then also high for imported materials.
Merchants from other parts of the world were looking for other commodities in the Strait
of Malacca. Gum resins and aromatic woods were some of the many commodities traded
there. According to Villiers and de Matos (as cited in Hussin, 2008, p. 13), “spices such as
cloves, nutmegs, and mace were in great demand among the Arabs, Persians, and Indians, but
not by the Chinese, who preferred pepper.” At certain periods only, there was an increase in
demand from European traders who sought Chinese tea. Predominantly, the commodities
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traded in the Strait of Malacca were mainly raw materials and food items. Meanwhile, the
traders imported manufactured items from India and China.
The trends and patterns of trading commodities did not change from the seventeenth to
late nineteenth centuries. As Cortesão (1944, p. 265) perceptively states (as cited in Andaya,
2008), “Melaka’s economic success could be measured by the fact that it had not one but four
syahbandar, the officials appointed to handle all matters dealing with foreign commerce at the
port.” This indicates that there was relatively large-scale trading for various commodities in
the Strait of Malacca. It must, therefore, be recognized that the Strait of Malacca had been
crucial to the trading world of Southeast Asia. Its strategic location benefited the region economically. Thus, the cities in the region had a lot of opportunities to grow and develop rapidly.
1.2
Social segregation in the Strait of Malacca
From the first half of the seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century, the territories of
the Strait of Malacca that were claimed by the Dutch spread widely. The Dutch government
claimed jurisdiction over a region spanning about two thousand and three hundred square
kilometres (Harrison, 1986, p. 8). By 1795, more than 14,000 people (Extract from Vol. 705
Home Miscellaneous Series, 441, p. 34) representing many ethnicities including Malays,
Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Eurasians, some Javanese, and hundreds of soldiers, civilians, and
employees of the Dutch administration filled the area.
The Chinese had settled in the region since the sixteenth century. Most of the Chinese were
contractors, merchants, artisans, small traders, and shopkeepers. They married local women
from various places in Indonesia and settled in the Strait of Malacca. According to Harrison
(1986, p. 9), the Chinese were described as hard workers, enterprising, and acquisitive. Some
of the Chinese were relatively wealthy and had a culture of respect towards elders and, as
Harrison (1986, p. 9) adds, “the older families retained great pride in their own cultural
tradition.”
Apart from the Chinese, there were also Indians who settled permanently in Malacca. The
Indians in Malacca who consisted of several sub-ethnic groups took ordinary jobs in the
region. The proprietors held their lands on a sort of feudal contract with the Dutch government, having the right to exact a rent amounting to one-tenth of the land from the farmer,
in return for an agreement to open the land up to maximum cultivation and also to maintain
infrastructure. In fact, most of these proprietors were absent and lived in the town pleasantly,
using land agents as collectors.
The Dutch administrated the region and controlled the population through their direct
process of ruling. A small group of the VOC (United East India Company) officials directly
ran the administrative control in the Strait of Malacca. One of the administrative systems
introduced by the Dutch was indirect taxation. As Harrison (1986, p. 9) explains, this system
“…was a method of indirect taxation by which revenue was raised through ‘farming out’
certain monopoly rights or privileges to individual entrepreneurs or ‘farmers’.”
The Dutch not only implemented the aristocratic system, but also segregated ethnic groups.
The Dutch classified ethnicities in order to ensure the welfare of each group as well as the
government’s administration. On the other hand, to manage society in Malacca, the British
implemented an administrative system that was not much different from the Dutch’s. Despite
the similar administrative systems, the British administration implemented an associative
rather than assimilative approach.
In spite of all methods of ruling by the colonial governments, the British and the Dutch
colonial governments tried to segregate ethnic groups to maximize economic activities in the
region. The colonial governments assumed that each ethnic group had different capabilities so that distribution of work had to be done prudently. Each ethnic group had activities
related to the location of their residence. For example, the Europeans settled in the west or
the north side of Penang. Such areas were mainly occupied for administrative matters. In the
same way, the Chinese and Indians resided in the central business area in the town. This was
merely because the daily activities of the Chinese, Indians, and some Malays required them
to stay in the area where they worked.
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Since economic motive was one of the main purposes of colonialism, the colonial
administrations built organized institutions to extract natural resources from their colonies
(Hrituleac, 2011, p. 28). To achieve this goal, the colonisers usually had different strategies
and approaches to administer their colonies. According to Calvin (2011), “The British had
another motivation in segregating the division of labour: keeping wages low by suppressing
collective action. By ensuring the distribution of labor along racial lines, the colonial authorities were able to keep wages low, and therefore, maximize profits for the Empire.”
Other issues on policy that needed to be considered were the privileges given to some particular ethnic groups in the region. Several commercial privileges, which were the exclusive
privileges of preparing opium for smoking and for retailing prepared opium; retailing Asiatic liquor and American rum; distributing liquor; retailing paddy within the settlement of
Malacca; retailing sirih (betel) leaves within the town and port of Malacca and its suburbs;
keeping stalls in government market; and keeping pawnbrokers’ shops in the town and suburbs of Malacca (Public Notice Regarding the Farming by Auction of Various Commercial
Privileges at Malacca, 15th April 1830) were granted to the Chinese traders in Malacca by the
Dutch. Most of the traders in Malacca were Chinese and Indians; apparently, this illustrates
the inequality that existed and hampered the economic development of Malacca.
The above privileges were granted to the Chinese people because they had certain
characteristics. The nature of the Chinese described by William Skinner (as cited in Mearns,
1983, p. 140) is “displaying extreme industriousness, willingness to labour long and hard,
steadiness of purpose, ambition, desire for wealth and economic advancement, innovativeness,
venturesomeness, and independence.” The transition period of 1795–1825 saw growing Chinese
involvement in trade and economic activities in Southeast Asia. The colonial government that
administrated the port town expected the arrival of Chinese traders. Moreover, Chinese settlements in the port town were greatly encouraged. The colonizers believed that the Chinese
people were important in the process of economic development of a port town.
Other trade-related privileges were also provided to the Chinese by the British colonial
government during their administration in Malacca. The rules for the Office of Registrar of
Imports and Exports explained that every merchant vessel had to report to the office as soon
as possible after arrival, and the Office would levy a duty of six Spanish dollars per pound
of opium. Article 11states that the rules may apply to Europeans and Natives (Rules for the
Office of Registrar of Imports and Exports, Malacca, 20 April 1825). Therefore, the Chinese
were exempt from paying taxes to the Office. Evidently, the British administration granted
privileges to the Chinese to keep them settled and help the economy of Malacca. Undoubtedly, the Chinese gained privileges from the British and the Dutch colonial governments in
the Strait of Malacca.
2
CONCLUSION
It has been explained that the British and the Dutch were the two greatest colonial powers
in the Strait of Malacca. During the Dutch administration, they used an indirect system of
rule. The system was also utilized by the British to set up colonies in Malacca and Penang.
Also, the Dutch used the assimilative approach in governing Malacca, while the British
government preferred the associative one.
The segregation in the colonial cities was common in the form of patterns of settlement.
In Malacca, the Dutch residential segregation policies applied to ethnic groups based on the
work performed. The British implemented the same policy when administering Penang. In
an attempt to segregate the society, the British colonial government granted privileges to the
Chinese. This attempt is evidenced by the formation of government bodies to protect the
Chinese people. Chinese people had a greater chance to develop their economy because they
were seen as a hard-working group and were the key to economic development, not only in
the Strait of Malacca but also in the Southeast Asia.
It can be said that the Strait of Malacca was a perfect example of the location where the
competition between two European colonial powers took place. The fact that the Dutch and
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the British granted privileges to the Chinese led to the segregation in the Strait of Malacca,
and it was undoubtedly a significant influence in the nation building process in the region.
The granting of privileges could have also been one of the many factors in the emergence of
inter-ethnic conflicts that would occur in the Southeast Asia in the future.
The assimilative administration system implemented by the Dutch colonial government
created a gap between societies and economic inequality, which was inherited over time.
Without economic equality, inter-ethnic tensions will emerge, social jealousy will develop,
and conflicts are inevitable. For this reason, this research is important because today’s conflict originated from the colonial policies in the past.
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Hussin, H. (2008) Southeast Asian Religion, Culture and Art of the Sea. Kuala Lumpur: Institute of
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The impact of economic modernization on the lifestyle
of the Palembang society in 1900–1930
N.J. Utama & L. Sunarti
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This article attempts to explain the social changes that occurred in Palembang
at the beginning of the 20th century, when economic modernization also brought changes in
social life. The main issue discussed in this article is how the impact of economic modernization
has influenced the changes in the society of Palembang, especially the changes in lifestyle and
its orientation in the period of 1900–1930. At the beginning of the 20th century, the people of
Palembang were indulged by economic progress, especially in trade and plantations. There was
a kind of consumerist pattern after economic development, such as the widespread and ownership of imported goods. In addition, the economic modernization also brought an impact to
the orientation of people’s life, from river to land. This was caused by the increase of the large
number of cars and bicycles. Yet, the river transport was an obstacle. Although there are a lot
of studies about social changes, only few discuss the change about Palembang. One example is
a study by Masyhuri who conducted an investigation about the social changes in Palembang,
but the study discusses the main factor that was caused by the political development in the 19th
century. This paper, on the other hand, talks about the impact of economic modernization on
the social conditions in the 20th century. It is fascinating to discuss the pattern of changes and
its impact on the society in Palembang itself using a historical method. This research is also
supported by relevant sources such as archives, newspapers, journals, and secondary sources.
1
INTRODUCTION
Palembang is a city that has a great reputation as a port and trade city. The primary basis
for this opinion is because this region is very strategic. The consequence of the status of this
city is that Palembang is open to all cultural influences brought by foreign traders. Since the
period of the Kingdom of Sriwijaya, Palembang has been famous as a multicultural city
(Wolters, 2011). In addition, as a trade city, Palembang can easily experience changes in
social, economic, and cultural issues. Recorded until the 20th century, this region was controlled by three different powers and political cultures, namely the Kingdom of Sriwijaya, the
Palembang Sultanate, and the Dutch colonial government (Reid, 2011, pp. 2–3, pp. 8–11).
The 20th century was the golden era for the economy of Palembang. Around the first
quarter of the 20th century Palembang was at its most prosperous period compared to previous periods. Financially, most of its inhabitants experienced an economic increase in the
early 20th century. Moreover, economic developments such as this brought about not only
changes in the physical construction (especially the construction of the city), but also social
changes in Palembang. In reality, the type of changes that occurred in Palembang was due to
the external influence of a structural nature coming from outside of Palembang (Soekanto,
1983, pp 26–27), and one of the most dominant was the world’s rubber commodity prices.1
1. During the first two decades of the 20th century, there was massive planting of rubber in Palembang.
This was due to the increasing demand for rubber for industrial raw materials, especially for tires, so that
rubber prices soared (Purwanto, 2002: 205–206).
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There are, as yet, few studies on social changes in Palembang. One study that has sparked
a discussion on the study of social change is the research conducted by Masyhuri (1993).
The study portrays the era when a political transition between the Palembang Sultanate and
the Dutch colonial government occurred. This political transition caused changes especially
in the structures of the economy in Palembang. Unfortunately, the study does not clearly
depict the social changes in the society such as changes in lifestyle.
The main issue discussed in this paper is how economic modernization has influenced the
changes in the society of Palembang, especially the changes in lifestyle and its orientation between
1900 and 1930. The argument to answer that question in this paper is that there were changes
(especially changes in lifestyle) in Palembang from 1900 to 1930, driven by economic development. This research uses a historical method (Sjamsudin, 2007), which first stage includes the
collection of data. The second stage is the source’s critique of the collected materials. The third
stage is the interpretation of the gathered data. The last stage is the writing of history or historiography, which is the writing of the interpreted data into an article. Meanwhile, to support
this paper the writers also use several concepts and theories, especially in explaining the issue of
social changes. This article uses the concepts of social change, specifically from Piotr Sztompka
that argues that social changes as a result of economic development threatens the existence of
old traditions. Several forms of the old tradition are influenced, reshaped, or even swept away by
the government and even by the communities themselves (Sztompka, 2011, p. 43).
1.1
Palembang’s condition in the early 20th century
Geographically, Palembang was in a strategic position in relation to two major ports at the
end of the 19th century, Batavia and Singapore. In addition, nine large watersheds from the
Musi River, which was the longest river, also fed this area (Faille, 1971, p. 16). Because of its
location which is slightly protruding into the inland areas of Sumatra (+/− 100 km), the river
had an important role in the distribution of individual and economic activities in Palembang.
Therefore, transport on Musi river was also dependent on the water flow and the condition
of the river. For example, during the dry season, the river’s water level would be low, making
mobilization to the inland difficult and time consuming. The best time for traveling through
the river in Palembang would be the rainy season (Sevenhoven, 1971, p. 11).
The area was also divided into two sub-cultures (i.e., upstream and downstream areas)
with differences that distinguished not only the geographic conditions of both areas, but also
their social, cultural, and economic conditions. The two sub-cultures were often referred to
as Iliran and Uluan (Irwanto, et al., 2010). Iliran refers to those who lived in the downstream
area of the river or near the city of Palembang. Geographically, this was the lowland area
that was dominated by swamps. Iliran itself was often interpreted as a region of city people,
and then associated as a modern society that was close to civilization. The majority of citizens in this area were traders who used to transport agricultural and plantation commodities
from the rural areas to the city of Palembang.
Uluan refers to the inland areas in Palembang: the upstream areas around the Bukit Barisan
Mountains, Ranau, and Ogan Komering. The natural condition of this region was mainly
fertile plateau. Therefore, this region was the production centre of plantation products in
demand by domestic and international markets, such as rubber, coffee, tea, hard wood, resin,
and others (Abdullah et al., 1985, pp. 14–17). In terms of socio-economic conditions of the
population, the majority of the region’s inhabitants were plantation growers. Uluan people
were also often regarded as less-developed people (in terms of education and religion). However, this condition seemed to change when Palembang entered the 20th century: extensive
land holdings and estates owned by the majority of the Uluan population apparently transformed them to become a modern society.
As a major trading city, Palembang experienced a quite significant population growth, especially after the discovery of several new economic resources such as rubber and the discovery of
mining sources which absorbed a lot of the local workforce as well as laborers and porters coming
in from Java. The population of Palembang in 1900 totaled about 600 thousand, and it increased
to reach 1 million in 1930 (Zed, 2003, p. 66; Stibbe, 1919, p. 264). The composition also included
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foreign ethnic communities in Palembang, which were dominated by the Chinese and the Arabs
who had inhabited the area since the period of the Palembang Sultanate (Utama, 2015, pp. 6–13).
The diverse population and the rapid mobility were the driving factors toward social change in
Palembang in the early 20th century. Yet, the most important factor which had a significant effect
was the process of commercialization of agriculture and plantation, leading to a rapid advancement of economy. Furthermore, since the area of uncultivated land was so vast, the colonial
government was unable to manage the entire land in Palembang, and the local people opened new
plantations, especially for high-priced commodities such as rubber (Zed 2003, pp. 85–88).
1.2
Economic modernization
In the early 20th century, Palembang was known as one of the biggest exporters of natural
resources for the Netherlands Dutch Indies, with commodities from the agricultural sector (rubber) and mining sector. In fact, the early 20th century was not only the era when
Palembang was known as the biggest supplier for commodities for the market, but it was
also known as a port city for transit. Palembang was not only considered as strategic in
terms of geography, but it also produced natural resources as early as from the Sriwijaya
Kingdom era to the Palembang Sultanate era. The commodities included gold, ivory,
woods, cattle, tin, pepper, etc. (Vlekke, 2008, pp. 44–45). However, in the early 20th century, the most dominant plantation commodities in Palembang were rubber and coffee.
Although the rubber plantations were dominated by small-scale holders, the management
was not traditional. The method of recording and cultivation of the plantation applied by
these small-scale holders were the same as that used by the Europeans (Furnivall, 2009,
pp. 338–339). Rubber is actually not a native plant of Palembang and it was said to be
originally from the Malay Peninsula.2 Interestingly, in Palembang, there was a type of sap
plant known as “rambung”, but this plant could not be cultivated extensively in Palembang. Then at that time, the rubber tree (Hevea Brasiliensis), which had more economic
value, was introduced. Apparently, the climate of Palembang was also suitable for planting rubber trees, making this plant quickly become the target plant of many farmers in
Palembang (Purwanto, 2002, p. 203).
As for coffee, although the plantation area and the profits were not as extensive as that
of rubber, coffee was, however, widely grown in the inland and upland areas of Palembang. Nevertheless, the production of coffee and rubber by the local people should not
have been underestimated, since the production of both commodities cultivated by the
local people had even exceeded the production of the companies belonging to the colonial
government and the private sector (local coffee production reached a total of 90% of the
total coffee production in the Palembang Uluan region) (Zed, 2002, p. 300, Peeters, 1997,
p. 123).
Interestingly, there was a difference in the management style of the plantations in Palembang
compared to that of Java and east Sumatra, which was mostly controlled by the government
and private companies. In Palembang, there were no agrarian conflicts, especially related to
land disputes between the people and the government. The vast area of vacant lands in Palembang enabled small-scale plantation holders and the government to live peacefully. Besides
that, the government seemed too focused on the mining sector, as in the early 20th century,
mining commodities were discovered in Palembang in significant quantities. Therefore, there
was no overlap between commercial plantation lands and farmlands, and there was no friction stemming from the interests of their management (Zed, 2003, pp. 88–90). This was unlike
the condition in some regions in Java where the paddy fields were an integral part of the
sugar cane plantations. A different picture could also be observed from the welfare of farmers;
2. Rubber tree (Hevea Brasieliensis) was first developed in the region of the Malay Peninsula circa 1876–1877.
It is estimated that a lot of rubber seedlings planted in Palembang originated from this area. The spreading
of the rubber tree was introduced by the Hajj pilgrims who transited in the region. One of the first rubber
plantations in Palembang was established in Sugihwaras in 1910–1912. (Drabble, (unknown year): 570).
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during the “rubber boom”, farmers in Palembang became prosperous, but farmers in Java
were less successful in the era of agriculture commercialization.3
In addition, having a good network of traders and commodity brokers, the farmers
were able to establish a strong collaboration between the plantation sector and the trade
sector. The inland communities (Uluan) were the actors in the plantation sector, while
the urban communities (Iliran) established the trade relations and product marketing of
the estates. The network brokers in Palembang in the early 20th century were controlled
by the Chinese traders. One important factor that made the Chinese traders dominate
the trade, ranging from small to large scale, in Palembang was their mastery of the river
transport business in Palembang and because most “wheel ship hulls” that operated in
Palembang until 1920 were controlled by Chinese families (Zed, 2003, pp. 94–96. Kemoedi
3rd July 1926).
The economic progress that occurred in Palembang in the early 20th century had a significant
impact on the economy of the people. Until the 1920s, the collaboration between the local people and the estate-owned mines had impacts on the colonial government and made Palembang
one of the important export regions in the Dutch East Indies (Linblad, 2000, pp. 344–347).
1.3
Social and orientation change in Palembang society
The development and economic growth that occurred during the two decades in the early
20th century brought significant changes in the lifestyle of the people of Palembang. In the
13 years of the planting and rubber tapping period, the total income of the rubber farmers
in Palembang reached 95 million Gulden, not to mention the profit calculated by the brokers
and traders who marketed these commodities (Purwanto, 2002, p. 218). Interestingly, besides
becoming one of the largest exporting regions in the Dutch East Indies, Palembang also
became one of the main destinations for importers of luxury goods. Significant transformation during the period of economic development in Palembang could be recognized by the
changes that include the physical development of the city, the large number of people going
for the Haj pilgrimage, progress in education, the purchase of imported goods (particularly
cars and bicycles), and the adoption of new habits that were considered modern.
The physical development of the city was regarded as a symbol of prosperity in Palembang. Between the years 1900 to 1930, Palembang was transformed into a city with a European style and culture in many corners. Construction of facilities was done in this city such
as filling the rivers to build roads, and building courtyards/parks, post offices and telephone
lines, pawn shops, churches, schools, theaters, hotels, meeting halls, and the construction of
the most famous building of those days, the water tower (Irwanto, 2011, pp. 50–52). Yet,
unfortunately, most of the facilities and buildings established by the colonial government
were used for the advantage of the colonial government and the faction itself, such as the real
estate development (Talang Semut) which was to become the future elite housing for Europeans (Ali and Sujiwati, 2015, p. 8).
The significant development not only occurred in Palembang city, but also in the suburb
region in Plaju. In this region, a large oil refinery was built, and in addition to the oil refineries, the company also built various facilities supporting its employees ranging from housing, sports facilities (courtyards and swimming pools), clubs, hospitals, and shopping stores.
Such transformations in Plaju are in contrast with the condition of Plaju before the 20th
century, which was one of the marginal, backward region and separated from the city center.
However, in the midst of late modernity and development in 1920–1930 Plaju could easily
compete with Palembang (Tanjung, 2015, pp. 303–302).
Next, the economic development in Palembang also had an impact on the society in
terms of performing the Hajj Pilgrimage.4 After the rise in rubber prices, the number of
3. As illustrated by Clifford Geertz on sugar cane farmers in Java at the same time also became laborers
and factory workers (Geertz, 1971: 327).
4. Hajj is one of the obligatory rituals for Muslims who are physically and financially able to perform it.
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people performing the Hajj from Palembang also increased significantly, especially in the
years when the price of rubber was expensive. Prior to 1920, the average number of the
Hajj pilgrims from Palembang was about 1,400 people, but not including the data from the
years of 1915 and 1916. The significant increase began after 1920, especially in 1927, which
represented the culmination of the rubber trade in Palembang. The records show that there
were 7,000 pilgrims from Palembang at that time. Interestingly, when the price of rubber fell,
the demand for the Hajj pilgrimage also dropped. For example, in the post-Malaise period,
Hajj enthusiasts in Palembang declined to the number of 500 people (Peeters, 1997, p. 151).
Changes also occurred in the consumption and lifestyle of the urban community. There
were striking differences between the periods before and after the economic modernization
that occurred in Palembang. As previously mentioned, the large influx of rubber farmers in
the early by 20th century was reflected by the fact that luxury goods were no longer difficult
to buy. The consumption pattern also changed with the number of entry-imported goods,
including food. Surprisingly, before the rise of rubber planters, rice production in Palembang
was sufficient to meet the needs of the region, but after the expansion of rubber plantations,
rice had to be imported from outside of Palembang. In addition to rice, other goods were
also imported on a large scale such as fabric, sewing machines, Western cigarettes, and others
(Purwanto, 2002, pp. 218–219).
Imports of foreign cultures also occurred during this period. Many urban people in Palembang started to adopt modern cultures. The government facilitated these habits, and the
public valued them. Cinemas, which were built in Palembang, not only served the foreign
(white) audience but also the local people. Several groups of young people were also interested in forming a kind of assemblage of art and sports that was considered modern. This
association was named “Wy Ontwaken” that a few days later was renamed to “Madjoe Adil
Setia”, embracing the activities of young people, namely in music, toneel (theater), and football (Kemoedi 3rd July 1926, 10th July 1926).
However, the most important import items that changed the orientation of Palembang
were land vehicles such as cars and bicycles. Having an increased income the people could
afford to buy bicycles and cars that were then considered super luxury goods and were complementary goods for the rich in Palembang. There were about 300 cars in Palembang in
1922; this figure then increased to about 1,400 cars in 1924. Meanwhile, for bicycles in Palembang, the number reached 19,000 and they were imported between the years 1910–1929
(Purwanto, 2002, pp. 219–220). Even a year later in 1925, the number of cars in Palembang
increased sharply to more than 3,000 cars (Peeters, 1997, pp. 135–136).
Between 1900 and 1920 these land vehicles had no effect on the existing river transportation. Indeed, the cars at that time were only the size of a cart, but the superiority of these
vehicles lays in their speed. Nevertheless, before 1920, river transportation was still in demand
because the operational costs were much cheaper than that of cars which needed infrastructure such as roads and bridges (Zed, 2003, pp. 110–112).
However, the rampant spread of cars after the 1920s then brought a negative impact on
the river transportation in Palembang. The traders and farmers in Palembang apparently had
enjoyed the economic progress of Palembang and were quite content in those years. Therefore,
these farmers and traders did not consider developing their business by investing more to expand
water transportation. In contrast, many people in Palembang spent more on cars rather than
buying or repairing ships. As a matter of fact, the commodity trading business was very strategic to be further developed with its important function to support the distribution of goods,
although they mostly relied on foreign groups. Meanwhile, cars were more widely used as a symbol of prestige for leisure or just driving around town (Pertja Selatan 15th July 1926).
In the end, the economic growth in Palembang during this period (1900–1930) ended with
the onset of the Great Depression (Malaise). The crisis in 1929 hit the industrial sector and
greatly weakened the rubber business that was “booming” in Palembang. Great losses as a
result of the decline in rubber prices struck the region in 1928. The economic boom and the
large money in-flow were not put to good use, so that when the Great Depression struck, the
people of Palembang had no money. Most of the money was spent to meet the consumptive desire to buy cars for leisure, and was even used for the pilgrimage journey as a social
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prestige rather than for religious purposes (Moesi 11th May 1928). As explained above, most
of the people in Palembang did not have any intention to develop their commodity business.
In subsequent years, the price of rubber continued to rise and the consumptive pattern
between 1900 and 1930 continued to repeat itself, even to this day.
2
CONCLUSION
Major economic development in Palembang in the beginning of the 20th century brought
changes not only in the economic sector, but also in the social aspect of the society in
Palembang. The rise of rubber prices in the world market led to significant improvement in
the standards of living in Palembang during the period of 1900–1930. Modernization was
apparent in the city’s significant development. The city’s progress was mainly around Talang
Semut area as indicated by the European-style buildings such as public service buildings,
theatres, housing complex, roads, and bridges. In addition, the economic development also
brought significant social changes in the community, such as the rise in the number of people
going to the Hajj pilgrimages in line with the growth of the economy. Furthermore, western
culture was also adopted, such as watching films in cinemas and establishing art clubs and
sports clubs. Another impact of this economic boom was the increasing consumption pattern
among the people of Palembang. Imports of goods also increased, ranging from imported
food up to luxury goods. Cars, as luxury goods, seemed to be used only as a prestige of that
era rather than being utilized for its actual function. Besides that, the use of cars also began
to cause a decline in the river culture. Apparently, the Palembang people were happier to
travel to places using a car rather than going by boat or ship. This last point brought an unfavorable impact for the development of businesses which were mainly owned by natives/locals
of Palembang as they spent more money for consumptive purposes and for prestige rather
than for business development. These issues show how developments in the economic sector
had affected the people’s lifestyles and also changed the public perception on certain values,
such as a shift in the meaning of the river.
REFERENCES
Abdullah, M., et al. (1985) Kota Palembang Sebagai Kota Dagang dan Industir (The city of Palembang
as a Trade and Industrial City). Jakarta, Depdikbud.
Ali, N. & Sujiwati, M. (2015) Pembangunan Kota Palembang dengan Konsep Tata Ruang Hijau pada
Masa Hindia-Belanda (The Construction of Palembang City with a Green Environmental Concept
during the Ditch-Indies Era). Journal Tamaddun (UIN Raden Fatah Palembang) Vol. XV No.1.
Colombijn, F. & Coté, J. (2015) Cars, Conduits, and Kampongs, the Modernization of the Indonesian City
1920–1960. Leiden, KITLV.
Dalton, G. (1971) Economic Development and Social Change. New York, American Museum Sourcebook in Anthropology.
Faille, P.D. (1971) Dari Zaman Kesultanan Palembang (Since the Era of the Palembang Sultanate).
Jakarta, Bhratara.
Furnivall, J.S. (2009) Hindia Belanda, Studi Tentang Ekonomi Majemuk (The Dutch-Indies, A Study on
Plural Economics). Jakarta, Freedom Institute.
Irwanto, D., et al. (2010) Iliran dan Uluan (Iliran and Uluan). Yogyakarta, Eja Publisher.
Irwanto, D. (2011) Venesia Dari Timur: Memaknai Produksi dan Reproduksi Simbolik Kota Palembang
Dari Kolonial Sampai Pasca Kolonial (Venice of the East: Understanding the Symbolic Production and
Reproduction of the City of Palembang from Colonial to Post-colonial Times), Yogyakarta, Penerbit
Ombak.
Linblad, J.T. (2000) Sejarah Ekonomi Modern Indonesia Indonesian (Modern Economic History).
Jakarta, LP3ES.
Linblad, J.T. (2002) Fondasi Historis Ekonomi Indonesia (The Historical Foundation of Indonesian Economy). Yogyakarta, Pustaka Pelajar.
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Mashyuri. (1993) Perdagangan Lada dan Perubahan Sosial di Palembang 1790–1825 (Pepper Trade and
Social Change in Palembang 1790–1825). [Thesis]. Departemen Ilmu Sejarah, Universitas Indonesia,
Indonesia.
Newspaper Hanpo 1926.
Newspaper Kemoedi 1926.
Newspaper Moesi 1928.
Newspaper Pertja Selatan 1926.
Peeters, J. (1997) Kaum Tuo-Kaum Mudo, Perubahan Religius di Palembang (The Old and The Young,
Religious Change in Palembang) 1821–1942. Jakarta, INIS.
Rahim, H. (1998) Sistem Otoritas dan Administrasi Islam, Studi tentang Pejabat Agama Masa Kesultanan
dan Kolonial di Palembang (Islamic Authority and Administration System, A Study on Religious
Officials of the Sultanate and Colonial Era in Palembang). Jakarta, Logos.
Reid, A. (2011) Menuju Sejarah Sumatra (Toward Sumatran History). Jakarta, Yayasan Obor Indonesia.
Van Sevenhoven, J.L. (1971) Lukisan Tentang Ibukota Palembang (A Description of the Capital City of
Palembang), Jakarta, Penerbit Bharata.
Soekanto, S. (1983) Teori Sosiologi Tentang Perubahan Sosial (Theory of Sociology on Social Changes).
Jakarta, Ghalia Indonesia.
Stibbe, D.G. (1919) Encylopaedie van Nederlansch-Indie. Gravenhage-Martinus Nijhoff Leiden, N.V.E.J.
Brill.
Sjamsudin, H. (2007) Metodologi Sejarah (Historical Methodology). Yogyakarta, Penerbit Ombak.
Sztompka, P. (2011) Sosiologi Perubahan (Sociology of Change). Jakarta, Prenada.
Utama, N.J. (2015) Perebutan Ruang Sungai di Palembang (The Conquest for River Space in Palembang). Presented at Third Graduate of History Seminar, Universitas Gadjah Mada.
Wheatly, S. (No year) Malaka. Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University.
Wolters, O.W. (2011) Kemaharajaan Maritim dan Perniagaan Dunia Abad III-VII (The Maritime Empire
and World Trade in the 3rd–7th Century). Jakarta, Komunitas Bambu.
Vlekke, B.H.M. (2008) Nusantara Sejarah Indonesia (Nusantara, the History of Indonesia). Jakarta,
KPG.
Zed, M. (2003) Kepialangan Politik dan Revolusi Palembang 1900–1950 (Political and Revolutionary
Brokerage of Palembang 1900–1950). Jakarta, LP3ES.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The impact of modernization on the economy for fishermen
in Makassar City
P. Rifal & L. Sunarti
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This paper discusses the impact of modernization on the economic
development of fishermen in Makassar. In general, fishermen are considered as a group
of people who are poor with a subsistence oriented economy. However, the fishermen in
Makasar tend to show a more commercially oriented economy compared to those in other
regions in Indonesia. More advanced living began to emerge as they started to use modern
technology, such as actuator boats, fish preservation (cold storage), and trading networks.
With modernization, the economic life of those fishermen developed significantly as
seen from their income per capita, which is higher than that of the workers in the field of
construction and those working at sugar and rice mills. With higher incomes, every family
of the fishermen could afford to buy a ‘golden ringgit’ as a symbol of wealth in the BugisMakassar tradition. This research is a historical study using a qualitative approach. The data
were obtained through interviews with fishermen and entrepreneurs of the local fisheries.
Furthermore, the data were processed using the historical method, which includes heuristic,
criticism, interpretation, and historiography.
1
INTRODUCTION
In general, fishermen are considered as poor and marginalized people. BPS recorded that in
2011, the number of poor fishermen in Indonesia reached 7.87% or 25 million people, and
14% of the national total poor population reached 31.02 million people (Koran Sindo, the 4th
April 2016 edition). From the record compiled by Koran Sindo (2016) there were 16 million
fisherman households, which had revenues of 1.1 million rupiahs per month. From an
economic perspective, most fishermen are known to be more oriented towards subsistence
economy rather than commercial fishing. However, the fishermen in Makassar tend to adopt
a market economy such as those in Singapore. This economic orientation began to appear
after they started to use modern technology in fishing. At the macro level, in 1973 they had
a surplus of 2000–3000 tons of catch. Cooperating with Japan, companies like Sendid and
Bonecom successfully exported 400 tons of catch (Pedoman Rakyat, edition XXVII No. 1.
Saturday, the 5th May 1973, and Pedoman Rakyat, edition XXVII No. 77, Friday, the 1st
June 1973). At the micro level, most fishing households in Makassar would possess several
“golden ringgits,” which symbolize success in the tradition of the Bugis-Makassar people.
The annual income per capita was Rp.69,800.000, with a monthly income of Rp.5,816.000
(Harian Fajar, the 11th October 1973, and Pedoman Rakyat, edition XXVII No. 77, Friday,
the 1st June 1973). Their income was higher than that of workers in other sectors. Based on
the data from the Statistical Pocketbook 1968 (as cited in Booth, A. and Sundrum, 1981,
p. 263), the income of sugar factory workers and those working at Gilligan rice mills was
Rp.2,179,000/month, while the highest salary received by professional and technical workers
in the private sector was as much as Rp.4,479.00/month. Therefore, the fishermen’s income
was twice as much as that of sugar factory workers, and in fact it was even higher than that
of workers in the engineering field.
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Prior to modernization, such a phenomenon would have been almost hard to find. With
fishing areas located along the coast, the fishing production was greatly influenced by climatic conditions. During the western monsoon between October and April, it was difficult
to catch fish, since the fishing boats could be used only in the area near the coastline. The
study of modernization and its socio-economic impacts on fishermen was carried out by
Sumardiati (1999). The findings show that modernization does not necessarily help improve
the fishermen’s livelihood. Instead, it may cause conflicts between the modern and the traditional fishermen. However, in the case of Makassar fishermen, modernization does not seem
to inflict such conflicts.
According to de Jonge (1989), modernization will attract new investors. However, as the
operational costs increase due to modernization, fishermen will have to borrow money from
investors. In addition, their catch is usually monopolized, since investors will determine the
selling price of the catch, which leads to further dependence on the investors. This would create
an unfavorable condition for the fishermen. Nevertheless, Makassar fishermen do not experience this problem. The income of the sawi (small fishermen) is higher compared to the income
of workers in other sectors. Social mobility occurs vertically upward among fishermen. From
the above statement, it is necessary to further understand the factors related to the economic
progress among Makassar fishermen and the impact of modernization on their livelihood.
In view of the above circumstances, this article aims to analyze the impact of modernization on the lives of Makassar fishermen. The “golden ringgit” owned by most fishermen
households, which have a relatively large income per capita, serves as an entry point in analyzing the factors of economic development. Progress in science is always correlated with
advances in technology, which will eventually alter the production means used by fishermen. According to Schoorl (1980, p. 1), modernization is a process of transformation and
a change in the community in all aspects. The real modernization should be understood not
only as a change from traditional practice to modern techniques, but it also changes the
means of production such as marketing and preservation of fish and transforms the mindset
of the society (Ahmadin, 2009, p. 29). Thus, modernization includes changes in technology,
fish preservation, marketing, and people’s mindset.
2
RESEARCH METHODS
This research is a historical study using the qualitative approach. The data sources of this study
are archives that include documents related to the economic activities of fishermen, taken from
the Library and Archives Board of South Sulawesi, which was in the form of Municipality
Government Archives of Ujung Pandang for the period of 1926–1988. In addition to these
documents, there were also newspapers such as Harian Fajar and Pedoman Rakyat published
around 1970s and also used as data sources. Upon reviewing these documents, we conducted an
interview with Haji Abdul Rahman Baddu, one of the resource persons for historical data, who
received direct benefits of technological changes in fishing boats. The information retrieved from
the documents and interviews was then analyzed chronologically in a dialogue, which is separated from experience, using historical imagination (Kartodirdjo, 1992, pp. 90–92). As a result,
the historical fact obtained through criticism and interpretation was written in historiography.
2.1
The living condition of Makassar fishermen
Most fishermen of Makassar live in the coastal areas and the islands around Makassar.
According to Sutherland (2009, pp. 100–101), the Makassar indigenous people living in the
coastal areas have long worked in the fishery sector and have trade skills like those of the
Chinese. Using wangkang boats, the fishermen would catch sea cucumbers for the local market in Makassar, which also serves as the center for financial transactions and commercial
activities. This happened around the 1720s until the 1840s, but in the subsequent years these
economic activities became rare. Based on the records, the trade export of sea cucumbers had
decreased, and in fact the fishing activities for export became obsolete.
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Entering the beginning of the independence era, fishing activities were still very much
influenced by weather conditions. The types of boats used in the 1960s or before modern
technology were Pa’jala, Paterani, Balelang, Sampan, Seppe-seppe, Lepa-lepa, and Perahu
Pemancing (Archive of the Municipality of Ujung Pandang Reg. 1179). The best type of
boat used by fishermen was the canoe. This type of boat is made from a large piece of wood
that can fit two or three people. Riding this boat was relatively easy and it was only used for
fishing near the coastline. Therefore, these fishermen from Makassar in that era were considered to be traditional fishermen. From an economic perspective, these fishermen were more
oriented towards a subsistence economy since their catch would mostly be intended to fulfil
their own daily needs. If they were able to catch more fish, they would share them with their
neighbors who were also fishermen. When they sold their catch, they would make a profit.
Once they managed to collect the capital return from the sale, they would give the remaining
catch to their needy neighbors. This indicates a subsistence economy rather than one oriented
for profit.
After the modernization, the area of the catch expanded to the offshore area. Having boats
with high-tech engine, they could overcome big waves when fishing. Therefore, fishermen
were now able to fish in farther areas that had once been unreachable when using traditional
boats. These modern boats enabled the fishermen to catch more fish as they expanded their
fishing areas.
2.2
Boat modernization
Technology is one of the driving forces of human creativity in a competitive world. In this
case, technology can transform input into output with a high economic value. As a result, it
may help to enhance the welfare of the community. Thus, technology plays an important role
in poverty alleviation (Masyhuri, as cited in Bondan et al., 2009, p. 58). The use of advanced
technology in the modern era is unavoidable where efficiency is required. When selecting
the appropriate technology, it is necessary to avoid the extensive use of advanced technology before considering the impact or benefits for the society (Thee Kian Wie, 1981, p. 63).
With the changes in technology such as the use of wind power, sails with mechanical power
become a positive trend for the Makassar fishermen. The distribution of fishing boats and
sailboats in Indonesia is presented in the following table:
The below table shows that Sulawesi has the largest number of motor boats and sailboats.
The change of the actuator from sailboats to motorboats is quite significant. As recorded in
1970–1971, the rise of the number of motor boats in Sulawesi reached 93.81%, while other
regions, such as Java and Kalimantan, only increased by 4.35% and 8.83% respectively. Thus,
apparently the Sulawesi fishermen are more open for advancement in technology compared
to their counterparts in other regions, especially in Java and Kalimantan. Their openness
to technology became more apparent after they had established cooperation between local
entrepreneurs and Japanese companies. The year 1968 marked the beginning of the development of fishing technology. At that time, the company chairman, Abdul Rahman Baddu,
Table 1.
Distribution of motorboats and sailboats for fishing 1970–1973.
Motorboats
Sailboats
Area
1970
1971
1972
1973
1970
1971
1972
1973
Java
% Increase
Borneo
% Increase
Sulawesi
% Increase
736
768
4.35
1023
8.83
188
93.81
1197
55.86
1856
81.43
278
47.87
1200
0.25
1900
2.37
300
7.91
41558
42481
2.22
18012
−6.22
103954
−13.11
44027
3.76
19802
9.88
102.640
−1.26
44.000
−0.18
20000
1
102000
−0.62
940
97
19.216
119664
Source: ANRI, Ministry of Agriculture Reg 361.
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entered into a collaboration with Japan (Interview Baddu Abdul Rahman, the 16th April
2016). In the 1960s, cooperation with other countries was widely open, especially after the
enactment of foreign investment laws. Through Bonecome, the company that managed the
fishery, Japanese businessmen provided subsidies in the form of machinery and capital for
boat building.
Abdul Rahman Baddu (2016) stated that he then asked for the machinery for catching
shrimps offshore, so that the boats could even face bad weather conditions where they had
to deal with big waves. After he gained a lot of profit from his fishing business, he bought
houses, a piece of land, and a car. With huge profits, in 1970, he again asked for a Brand
Yanmar engine with the boat size of 33 PK and the capacity of 10 tons. It was a very large
boat, and when compared to the largest boat today, there is a 7-ton difference between them.
After that, the number of boats and their size increased. Similar to Makassar fishermen, the
increasing demand for machines encouraged the government of Ujung Pandang Municipality
(now Makassar) on the 12th August 1970 to provide Marcuri 60 PK outboard motor with the
engine number 1106048 Mark 751 model through the Fisheries Cooperative of Management
Municipality of Ujung Pandang (Municipality Archives of Ujung Pandang, Reg 102). Having
new machine tools, the fishermen were able to reach areas that had previously been unreachable. The fishermen of Makassar, especially those in Kampung Baru and Kampung Gusung,
were able to reach up to Australian waters, and even local authorities (Police XVIII Sul-Selra)
were overwhelmed in supervising them (Municipality Archives of Ujung Pandang, Reg 1190).
In the early days of the mechanization of fishing, the fishermen were not able to operate the machines properly. The most common problem among them was the damage to the
actuator of the engine. According to Baddu (2016), who became Chief Executive of Bonecom, in the process of installing engines on fishing boats, his company immediately asked for
assistance from a mechanic specialist from Japan. The boats were made in Ara, BiraBulukumba, and some smaller boats were made in the islands of Makassar such as Kodingareng
and BarangCaddi. However, the rapid technological development did not necessarily alienate
the traditional fishermen. They tried to use the technology that they thought would bring
economic benefits for them. Smaller boats were modified to adjust to the engine, but the
shape of the old boats did not change much. The only change was the tonnage of the boat.
The more fish they caught, the bigger their desire to enlarge their boats. Thus, the presence
of motorized boats among the fishermen affected their economic status.
2.3
Marketing of fishermen’s catch
According to the Accountability Report Management Board and Supervisory Fisheries
Cooperative Insan PPI Paotere Makassar, in 2015 there were 120 group leaders who joined
the cooperative, and every leader was responsible for “guiding” as many as three to five
boats. To run the boat, the crew usually consists of one juragan (captain) and three to six
sawi (fishermen laborers). The number of group leaders and fishermen who are members of
cooperatives are 2206 people (LPJ Insan Fisheries Cooperative, 2016, pp. 28–78). Each cooperative serves to bring together economic perceptions between the head of the group and his
fishermen. If any problems occur between the two, or between them and other parties, the
cooperative is there to provide solutions to the problems.
In the context of Makassar fishermen, the local entrepreneurs have taken part in the fishing activities. Most of them later would become the heads of the group providing the capital
and marketing the catch (Rifal and Linda Sunarti, 2016, p. 10). In the 1970s, the trading
networks of the catch expanded. Prior to that, the trading network was limited to the local
market. For the local consumption, the fish were sold at nearby markets, or sold by papalele
(distributor/seller) in every house sambalu (subscriptions) in the community. In the 1960s,
the marketing area was still around nearby markets, such as Pasar Sentral, Pasar Pongtiku,
the outskirts, Pasar Maricaya, Pasar Cidu, Pasar Kalimbu, Pasar Sawah, and Pasar Terong
(Municipal Archives of Ujung Pandang, Reg. 523). Markets were usually open early, and by
riding a bicycle singkking, the papalele brought the fish to the market. In addition, papalele
also sold fish directly to the people who mostly came from the Paotere Fishery Port. Besides
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selling to nearby markets, they also sold fish to areas such as Sungguminasa (Gowa) and
Maros that led directly to nearby countries. A few years later, after the rapid growth in transport technology, cars began to be used to transport fish. Since the use of cars, the marketing
network has spread to farther areas, such as Sidrap, Enrekang, and Palopo.
During the period of international trade, the development of fishing industry in Makassar
was more complex. To facilitate the development of trade networks, in 1973 two exporting
companies, namely Serdid and Bonecom, were established. Based on the records, until May
1973 Sendid could export 178 tons of catch, which exceeded their expectation. The target was
actually 400 tons, but after entering the month of May the export increased by 50%. The target could be achieved with a surplus. Meanwhile, the company Bonecom, on behalf of Abdul
Rahman Baddu and Supu in May 1979, was able to collect a catch (especially shrimps) totaling
32,210.6 tons, some of which were exported (Pedoman Rakyat, edition XXVII, Saturday the
5th May 1973, and Municipal Archives of Ujung Pandang. Reg 1182). The fishing industry in
the city of Makassar was profitable for both the local traders and fishermen. Industrialization
also benefited the local government as the revenue increased through taxation, market distribution, and exports. Mariso Marauni, B.A. (Head of District) delivered the message of the
Mayor of Ujung Pandang, “The majority of the fish caught for our people come from marine
fisheries, stretching from the District Tallo Utara Kota to the coastal region of Tamalate District. The fishermen continue to improve techniques of fishing, because fish are an important
source for rich nutrients (if consumed), and therefore those can support regional development”
(Marauni, Pedoman Rakyat edition XXXII No. 32. Friday the 7th April 1978).
2.4
Fish preservation system (cold storage)
Besides the development of technology for the boat, the local government in cooperation
with PT Astra branch of Ujung Padang on the 30th May 1972, provided cold storage facilities in every fish auction in Makasar, especially the fish auction in Paotere (Archive of the
Municipality of Ujung Pandang, Reg 279). The auction is a fish trading center in the city
of Makassar, a meeting place for merchants and fishermen. The cold storage facilities could
also produce ice blocks for the fishermen to preserve their catch. The catch would be stored
and covered with shards of ice blocks, which could last for days. The more ice was used, the
longer the fish could be kept fresh. This was the first time the production of fresh fish could
be implemented by the majority of the fishermen. Before using cold storage facilities, fishermen relied on salt to preserve their fish; as a result, many people consumed dried fish instead
of fresh ones. They used nets to dry the fish under the sun on their boat. The fish were cut
in half or fengka and then dried. The price of fresh fish was usually higher than that of dried
ones since fresh fish are more nutritious.
The new knowledge became something needed by the fishermen. Without proper knowledge, it was difficult to develop expertise in the fishing business. With the potential for sizeable
fishery accompanied by the development of more advanced technology, it was necessary for
fishermen to improve their knowledge. On the 7th April 1978 a course was held for the fishermen. This course was conducted for 1 month, from the 6th April to the 6th May 1978. It was
attended by fishermen from 23 areas in South Sulawesi (Pedoman Rakyat, edition XXXII. No.
31. Friday, the 7th April 1978). The course focused on improving fishermen’s understanding in
the use of technology, such as engines and cold storage (cooling devices), and in anticipating
bad weather. Through this course, the fishermen could compare their prior knowledge with the
new knowledge they learned from the course. For example, they could combine their skills in
forecasting weather using astrology with weather-forecasting machines. With more advanced
knowledge and technology, they could overcome all sorts of constraints.
3
CONCLUSION
Modernization has an important role in developing the economy of the fishermen of Makassar. The increase in catch was able to improve the lives of the fishermen, who previously
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could not afford to buy gold. After modernization, many fishing households could afford to
buy gold as an investment instrument. Per capita income of fishermen was higher than that
of those working in the technical fields and factories. Traditional boats such as canoes and
seppe-seppe gradually transformed into sophisticated modern boats with a larger size. Therefore, fishermen could expand fishing areas farther from the coast. The houses of fishermen
made of wood in the coastal cities and islands of Makassar were renovated with concrete.
This shows that modernization could change the economy of the fishermen of Makassar and
bring them closer towards prosperity.
REFERENCES
Ahmadin. (2009) Ketika lautku tak berikan lagi (When my sea no longer provides). Makassar: Rayhan
Intermedia.
Arsip Kotamadya Ujung Pandang (Archives of Ujung Pandang Municipality). (the 12th August 1970)
Kebutuhan alat angkutan laut bagi tugas pengurus pusat koperasi perikanan/nelayan Kotamadya
Makassar (The need for means of transport on the sea for the central administrators of the fishing/
fishermen cooperative in Makassar Municipality to conduct their duties). Reg 102.
Arsip Kotamadya Ujung Pandang (Archives of Ujung Pandang Municipality). (the 15th February
1975) Adanya perahu-perahu pelayan yang sering mengadakan operasi penangkapan ikan di
perairan Pantai Australia (The fishermen boats often catching fish in the waters near the Australian
coastlines). Reg 1190.
Arsip Kotamadya Ujung Pandang. (Archives of Ujung Pandang Municipality) (the 30th May 1972)
Adanya cold storage pelelangan ikan Kotamadya Ujung Pandang atas kerjasama antara Pemerintah
Daerah Kotamadya Ujung Pandang dengan PT. Astra, Cabang Ujung Pandang (Cold storage in the
fish auction place in Ujung Pandang as a result of the cooperation between the Local Government
of Ujung Pandang and PT. Astra, Ujung Pandang Branch). Reg 279.
Arsip Kotamadya Ujung Pandang. (Archives of Ujung Pandang Municipality) (the 5th June 1979)
Laporan realisasi pembelian/pengumpulan udang di Kotamady Dati II Ujung Pandang, Bulan Mei
1979 (The report of shrimp purchase/catching in Dati II Municipality of Ujung Pandang, May
1979). Reg 1182.
Arsip Kotamadya Ujung Pandang. (Archives of Ujung Pandang Municipality) (September 1966)
Jumlah ikan yang ikirim keluar melalui Pelabuhan Makassar untuk bulan Juni s/d September 1966
(The number of fish exported through Makassar Port from June to September 1966). Reg 1179.
Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia. (National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia (the 15th June
1974) Tabel penyebaran kapal motor dan perahu layar tangkap 1970–1973 (Table of the motorboat
and sailing boat distribution 1970–1973). Reg 361.
Baddu, H.A.R. (the 16th April 2016) Ketua Koperasi Insan Perikanan Pelabuhan Perikanan Paotere
(The Head of Fishermen Cooperative of Paotere Fishing Port). Wawancara Pribadi (Personal
Interview). Kota Makassar.
Booth, A. & Sundrum, R.M. (1987) Distribusi pendapatan (Distribution of income). In A. Booth &
P. McCawley (Eds.), Ekonomi Orde Baru (The Economy of the New Order regime). Jakarta: LP3ES.
Harian Fajar. (the 11th October 1973) Kesejahteraan kaum nelayan saat ini cukup baik (The welfare of
the fishermen is good enough nowadays).
Jonge, de H. (1989) Madura dalam empat zaman: Pedagang, perkembangan ekonomi dan Islam (Madura
in four eras: Traders, economic development and Islam). Jakarta: Gramedia.
Kartodirdjo, S. (1992) Pendekatan ilmu sosial dalam metodologi sejarah (The social science approach in
historical methodology). Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Koperasi Insan Perikanan. (2016) Laporan pertanggungjawaban Badan Pengurus dan Pengawas tahun
buku 2015 dan rencana kerja tahun buku 2016 (The accountability report of the Management and
Supervision Staff of the 2015 and the work plan of the 2016). Makassar: PPI Paotere Makassar.
Koran Sindo. (edition of the 4th April 2016) Ironi nelayan di negeri surga maritim (The irony of
fishermen in the maritime heaven country).
Masyhuri. (2009) Iptek dan dinamika ekonomi nelayan (Science and technology and fishermen
economic dynamics). In Bondan Kanumoyoso, et al. (Eds.), Kembara bahari: Esai kehormatan 80
tahun Adrian B. Lapian. Depok: Komunitas Bambu.
Pedoman Rakyat. (XXVII edition. No. 1 Saturday, the 5th May 1973) Ekspor udang Sulsel terus
meningkat (the South Sulawesi’s shrimp export keeps increasing), p.1.
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Pedoman Rakyat. (XXVII edition No. 77. Friday, the 1st June 1973) Produksi udang Sulsel dapat dipasarkan sampai ke luar negeri (the South Sulawesi’s shrimp production can be marketed abroad), p. 1.
Pedoman Rakyat. (XXXII edition No. 32. Friday 7th April 1978) Nelayan punya andil besar dalam
pembangunan (Fishermen having a big role in the development), p. 1.
Pedoman Rakyat. (XXXII edition No. 31. Friday, the 7th April 1978) Motorisasi kapal pegang peranan
penting (Boat motorization having an important role), p. 8.
Rifal & Sunarti, L. (2016) Local enterpreneurs of Makassar fishermen 1954–1998. A paper presented
on the 10th Internasional Conference on Malaysia-Indonesia Relations, Universitas Malaya, 16–18th
August 2016.
Schoorl, J.W. (1980) Modernisasi pengantar sosiologi pembangunan negara-negara sedang berkembang
(Modernization: Introductiomn to the sociology of development of developing countries). Jakarta:
Gramedia.
Sumardiati, S. (1999) Perikanan dan usaha nelayan di Kecamatan Muncar Kabupaten Banyuwangi
1969–1983 (Fishing and fishermen’s effort in Muncar District Banyuwangi Regency of 1969–1983).
The thesis of Program Studi Ilmu Sejarah Program Pascasarjana Bidang Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya
Universitas Indonesia.
Sutherland, H. (2009) Teripang dan perahu wangkang perdagangan Makassar dengan China pada abad
ke-18 (kl. 1720-an -1 840-an) (Dried sea slugs and wangkang boat, trading between Makassar and
China in the 18th century (from 1720s to 1840s). In Rogel Tol, Keesvan Dijk, Greg Acciai-oli (Eds.),
Kuasa dan usaha di masyarakat Sulawesi Selatan (Power and business in South Sulawesi Society).
Ininnawa: Makassar.
Wie, K.T. (1981) Pemerataan, kemiskinan, ketimpangan (Equality, poverty, disparity). Jakarta: Sinar
Harapan.
747
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Colonial modernity, Indonesian nationalism, and urban
governance: The making of a colonial city, Surabaya
(ca. 1890–1942)
A. Achdian
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Studies on the socioeconomic problems experienced by the local people in
the built environment of Indonesia have always provided information about the practice of
late colonial politics from the 19th to the early 20th century. However, the engagement of
nationalist politics to shape and influence the direction of the policy-making process on a
city’s governance is rarely considered in systematic ways. By focusing on Surabaya in the
early 20th century and its importance as an intersection of eastern and western parts of
the Indonesian archipelago, this study highlights the political articulation of nationalist
politics at the local level. It also shows the sustained and persistent efforts made by Indonesian nationalists to offer unique versions of city governance as well as propose a substantial
challenge to the structure of colonial power at the local level.
1
INTRODUCTION
Toward the end of January 1931, tensions rose during the regular session of Gemeenteraad
van Soerabaja (Surabaya’s City Council). Council member J.K. Lengkong, the leader of an
indigenous fraction, started a debate regarding the issue of equitable representation in the
council. He criticized the overrepresentation of European members despite their minority
in the city compared to the native Indonesians. Lengkong wanted to increase the number
of seats for the representative of indigenous people in the council, at least equal to that of
European members. He also proposed the removal of taxes and property prerequisite in the
voting system that barred the natives to elect their representatives to the council. Surabaya’s
mayor and council’s chairman, Mr. W.A.H. Fuchter, suspended Lengkong’s proposals to the
next session in the first week of February.1
During the discussion of Lengkong’s proposal, Mayor Fuchter opened the session by calling
it as irrelevant because “the distribution of seats was not determined by local economic conditions alone”, but “other” factors beyond the council’s decisive authority.2 He said that the current
practice was “sufficient” and there is no need of such a discussion. However, Fuchter’s attempt to
halt the discussion was to no avail. Lengkong insisted that his fraction remains with their position
to table the motion, even if the Chinese fraction—their devoted allies—would not lend their support. The Chinese members Tan Tjiang Ling and Ong Swan Yoe, however, took a neutral stance
by reminding that the increase of the number of seats of the council was not within the domain
of the council’s authority, but within that of the Volksraad or National Council.
The Indo-Europeesche Vereeniging (Indo-European Union) and Vaderlandsche Club
(Fatherland Club) as the major fractions in the council rejected the proposal. Council
member Guldenar, the speaker of the IEV fraction, stated the reason for him rejecting the
1. “De Stadsgemeenteraad van Soerabaja.” Soerabajasch Handelsblad, 29 January 1931.
2. “Staadsgeementeraad van Soerabaja.” Soerabajasch Courant, 3 February 1931. Overall relevant
descriptions of the debate that occurred as a response to the motion of Lengkong were rooted in this
article.
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proposal was the city council was an institution exclusively designed for Europeans or those
assimilated as Europeans under the jurisdiction of Gemeente van Soerabaja (Surabaya’s city
administration). He further said that although the majority of the members of the council were Europeans, it did not mean they overlooked the interest of the native population.
He reiterated how Europeans in the council vehemently worked for the advancement of
native Indonesians in the city. Councilmember Jan Verboom, a spokesperson from the conservative party, the Vaderlandsch Club (Fatherland Club), shared Guldenar’s view by adding
a racial tone representing a grim fact of Surabaya as a colonial city. He said that the council
was “a western enclave in the eastern society” and further argued that the development of
Surabaya as a major commercial city was unquestionably the result of western capital and
European labors; hence, it was logical if they then dominated the council.
The heated debates about the natives’ political rights and their participation in the local
political body in Surabaya at the time marked an interesting feature of a neglected theme in
the historiography of nationalist movement: the articulation of nationalist politics about the
city. The current historiography has several limitations in its view about the historical significance of Indonesian nationalist politics. First, it viewed the nationalist practice as only a
movement of organizations, ideologies, ideas, and the paramount importance of nationalist
leaders. Second, it overlooked the repertoire of collective actions and public performances of
Indonesian nationalist to reclaim and reterritorialize the city in line with their political project
about the city. Third, it came under the orthodoxy of reading the sources and dynamics of
nationalist politics from the viewpoint of colonial central administration in Batavia, thus
misrepresenting the rich texture of political contestation that pitted the nationalist vis-à-vis
private Europeans as dominant social and economic forces in the colonial city. Drawing on
empirical evidence from Surabaya as a major colonial city at the turn of the 20th century, this
study is an attempt to provide an overlooked feature about the nature of nationalist politics
in the city and their efforts to influence the city’s governance to cause a nationalist practice.
1.1 Surabaya and the making of colonial urban governance
From the late 19th to the early 20th century, Surabaya rose into prominence as the center of
commerce and industry in the Dutch colony of the Netherlands–Indies. The opening of the
Suez Canal in 1869 and the introduction of colonial liberal policy in 1870 accelerated the
waves of European capital, enterprises, institutions, technology, and migrants, which doubled
the number of European residents in Surabaya from 4,500 in 1870 to 10,000 in 1890 (Von
Faber, 1931). In the early 19th century, European settlements were more characterized by the
presence of colonial soldiers and bureaucrats inside the fortress, whereas, by the mid-19th
century, lawyers, doctors, bankers, engineers, journalists, book holders, clerks, and whitecollar workers working for European companies—who call themselves orang particulier sadja
(literally private citizens) – dominated urban life.
By 1930, the population of Surabaya had increased to 341,000, making the city the second
highest populated area after Batavia as the center of Dutch colonial administration, which
had a total population of approximately 533,000. The natives constituted the majority with
271,255 people or 79.6% of the city’s population, followed by the Chinese and Foreign Orientals comprising approximately 44,245 people or 13% and Europeans with 25,9003 people
or 7.6% of the total population (Volkstelling, 1930). A diverse racial background of the city’s
population and the dominant position of European citizens in the modern sector of economic development made Surabaya a typical colonial city like any other major cities under
European colonialism in Asia and Africa from the late 19th to the early 20th century (Yeoh,
2003).
An important event that occurred during the so-called “imperial globalization” period
(Kidambi, 2007) was the emergence of what official city historians at the time called
3. Among the Europeans, the Dutch was the majority with 87%, followed by the Japanese (2.4%), British (1.2%), and Armenians (1%). There were also another 3% of those legally equated as Europeans
(Dick, 2003: 125).
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de middenstanden, (the middle class), that is, “a group of people who were not too rich but
saw themselves as above ordinary citizens” (Von Faber, 1931). Together with their ascendancy as the dominant social forces in the late 19th century, the white European middle class
became the patrons of burgeoning public culture, artistic, and cultural development in various European clubs, associational life, and newspapers that thrived in Surabaya. The two
major newspapers, the Soerabajasch Handelsblad and Nieuwe Soerabajasch Courant, were
keen to publish various opinions highlighting the population demand, at least among Europeans, for an autonomous local body to manage the city’s affair. The poor condition of
the infrastructure, health, and cleanliness of the people had become a persistent subject of
critical discussions against the colonial state among the European citizens, as well as criticism to the centralized colonial bureaucracy and the incompetence of local colonial officials.
Especially during periods of plagues,4 criticism turned into public resentments and indignant protests as exemplified by petitions sent to Queen Wilhelmina in the mother country.
The petitions, signed by hundreds of European citizens, expounded complaints about the
ignorance of colonial officials to their long-awaited proposal for the construction of modern water supply in the city rampaged by cholera plagues. The depth of exasperation of the
citizens to the work of the colonial bureaucracy and local officials might best be illustrated
through the words of Adriaan Paets tot Gonsayen, a staunch liberal and successful lawyer,
who openly stated in public meetings that the ambtenaars and their obsession with careerism
in Indie were a “disaster”.
The hopes for the autonomous local body, however, had to wait a decade until the initiation of the Dutch’s Ethical Policy and the commencement of the Decentralization Law in
1903 (Decentralisatie Wet 1903), which provided the legal bases to furnish the participation
of citizens (medezegenschap) in local affairs. On 1 April 1906, De Gemeenteraad van Soerabaja (Surabaya’s Council) was formally established, albeit far from satisfying the hopes of
European citizens in Surabaya. The total of 15 seats reserved for the European members of
the council were filled with 8 officials appointed by the government and 7 others elected by
registered Surabaya city-dwellers. As an effort “to educate” the natives and other groups to
the practice of European “democratic” institution, the government appointed three native
officials in the colonial government and three others from Chinese and Arab community
leaders. The government also amended the 1854 Colonial Constitution by removing the legal
restriction that prohibited any political activities in the colony. The establishment of the city
council as a key political institution in major colonial cities, therefore, marked the beginning
of a modern urban governance in Surabaya at the turn of the 20th century.
1.2
The political articulation of Indonesian nationalists
Despite the 1930 census showing that half of the total number of native Indonesians who
settled in Batavia, Bandung, and Surabaya were born in urban areas and the rest were born
in provinces with large cities (Volkstelling, 122–123), they were not regarded as city residents. This feature was most clearly reflected in the statistics record system of the city, which
merely displayed the citizen profiles of European, Chinese, Arabic and other foreign orientals and excluded the native population from the category in the statistical calculations
(Verslag van den Toestand der Staatdsgemeente Soerabaja, 1937). This statistical registration
model remained until the end of Dutch colonialism in Indonesia (Statistische Berichten der
Gemeente Soerabaja, 1930).
The absence of native Indonesians as a social category in the official demographic calculation throughout colonial cities in the Netherlands-Indies did not mean an absence of
their roles and concerns toward urban environment. Since the beginning of the formation
4. Throughout the 19th century, the city experienced five cholera outbreaks that took the lives of
natives as well as Europeans. The poor conditions of the city’s sanitation infrastructure and water supply became the main theme for European private citizens to blame the colonial officials and the overcentralization of colonial bureaucracy that was considered as the main problem of the governments’
irresponsiveness to the needs of local population.
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of autonomous cities as well as the establishment of city councils to become representative
bodies for the citizens in line with the decentralization policy of the colonial government, the
educated native Indonesians from various political groups have continued to speak up their
insistence and demand for improved social conditions as well as their political rights as citizens. Similarly to many European citizens, they turned into persistent spokespeople in raising issues related to the life of natives as equal citizens, such as their political rights, sanitary
conditions, and healthy neighborhoods, or even the effort to improve the life conditions of
native Indonesians as the major population of the cities. In the case of Surabaya, the formation of political contestation symbolized not only their resistance toward colonial political
practices represented by the colonial state but also their opposition to the European citizens
as the dominant social power in the colonial city of Surabaya.
As portrayed in several Indonesian nationalist publications in Surabaya during the second
and third decades of the 20th century, they could provide indications on how “city politics”
appeared to feature the activities of Indonesian nationalists. An article published in the newspaper Proletar, again, showed the indication to how the patterns of actions were formed in
an urban environment:
Thousands of Proletar bulletins were spread throughout Surabaya city, to go against
the ice companies union which asked for monopolies to the government.
Proletar considered not to wait until the proposal had been approved by the government. Yet, Proletar previously intended to refuse the proposal since the government is not supposed to help capitalists. As what had already happened by now... the
proposal of ice companies union was refused. This means we prevailed.
However, Surabayans, please do not lose yourselves in the euphoria, because
tomorrow or the day after, such a proposal can be on the table of officials. Thus,
let’s strengthen the people and labor unions, as a political movement that will be
against all the capitalist politics.5
For readers of the current generation, the description as quoted above seems to be close
to the contemporary experience of Indonesians at present. The collective actions undertaken
by some educated student activists, labor unions, journalists, and others that have influenced
the current Indonesian political dynamics, in the end, is no longer a new narrative within
the historical experience of Indonesian society. Through their publications, the anticolonial
activists conveyed how collective actions will affect the direction and orientation of public
policy within their urban environment.
In contrast to communist groups, which stood outside the political mainstream by not
being involved in urban governance, other groups in Surabaya who joined the Indonesian
Study Club under the leadership of Dr. Soetomo featured different methods by participating in the city council. It is indubitable that their involvement was limited by a representation system that provided an unbalanced proportion within the representative body, as
the majority of the seats were occupied by European and Indo-European representatives.
European’s view on cooperative native Indonesians in colonial politics and their engagement to aspire the future development of the city could be seen from the notes in Locale
Belangen, showing an optimism of a few Europeans toward the political participation of
native Indonesians.
Lately appeared a small group of native Indonesian intellectuals who started to be
actively engaged in their role as modern citizens. Every beginning is difficult for
certain. Despite the fact that the concern is either still limited, or neglected because
of their passive sentiment of non-cooperative, after all, we are not supposed to be
affected by such kind of attitude...
We can see that there is a significant development within the society of the
Netherlands-Indies that is still growing...Urban life in the Netherlands-Indies
demonstrates the way of progress, which becomes the beginning of a new phase:
5. “Kemenangan Kita”, Proletar, 01/07/1925.
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a disconnection from the past that paves a way for the development of modern
citizens.6
However, a positive outlook toward Indonesian nationalist participation in the political
realm had to overcome the challenges from Europeans who were worried about this political progress. As mentioned in the beginning, the political mechanism of colonial policy was
retained to ensure the dominance of Europeans in the city council. Together with those limitations, the activists of the Indonesian national movement ran their political agendas from
compromises to confrontations. This was captured in political maneuvers taken by Soetomo’s
group in the city council. In April 1925, the members of the city council decided to appoint
Mr. Van Gennep as the council representative for executive affairs, as Dr. Soetomo and three
colleagues resigned from their positions as the representatives of Indonesians, which then triggered political turmoil over the city and forced the colonial government to appoint any native
Indonesians who were willing to replace Dr. Soetomo and colleagues in the city council.
The political attitude of Soetomo and his colleagues received a positive response from
other political powers outside the colonial political institutions, such as PKI. A daily newspaper Proletar reviewed Soetomo’s resignation as follows:
Dr. Soetomo Standing on Two Boats
We have just heard that regarding his engagement in the popular movement and his
resignation from the city council, Mr. Soetomo has been warned by his superior.
It is clear that a threat to Dr. Soetomo will come if he remains constantly engaged
in the movement, and then he will be imposed with certain rules.
In an attempt to make a decision due to this case, we have no capacity, though, as
we are not yet able to make sure whether the news was actually true or not. According to what we have known, the proof which reveals the truth of the news has not
been acknowledged. Yet, would it be impossible that Dr. Soetomo will encounter
such threats.7
Proletar, in this way, described the “pressure” that might have arisen as a result of the
political attitudes of Soetomo and his colleagues as they resigned from the city council. On
the next reviews, it was mentioned that the impact of their political maneuver within the city
council was quite effective to influence the way and development of politics in the city council related to the interests of Indonesian natives:
Then the strike of government officials occurred, the government seems to like this
hassle. For the village, the government doesn’t mind spending f100,000 in 1925.
If the government actually does, let’s clean up the villages which are dirty or have
no ditches.
And strangely enough, why was the money recently disbursed while the village
has long been abandoned? Why after the strike at the city council?
If we relate it to the strike of those four members, it costs f100,000 or f25,000
per person. Amazing. It is what appears at a glance, and further, it is the result of
political contestation, although it doesn’t seem visible, it is precious. Shortly said a
multiple of thousands as the fruit of the actions mentioned above.8
Considering the above review by Proletar, changes in a policy within the Surabaya city council in line with the action taken by Soetomo and his colleagues provided an interesting insight
about the articulation of the city politics amid the political maneuver of Indonesian nationalists. It indicated that the pace of modernity in the colony through the growth of colonial cities
and political institutions had influenced the perspectives and actions of Indonesian nationalists
on the formulation of the urban policy. Their political practice created a contestation arena in
6. “A Tudor. “De stedelijke traditie in Nederlandsch-Indie”, in Locale Belangen, 15e Jargaang,
1 September 1928.
7. “Pemerintah dan Pemogokan Empat orang lid Gemeenteraad Soerabaja.” Proletar, 30 May 1925.
8. “Tjiamah Tjiung, Goemintah”, Proletar, 30 May 1925.
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urban governance that served the interests of not only Europeans as the dominant social group
but also the native Indonesians as the major population in the city of Surabaya.
2
CONCLUSION
A picture of Indonesian nationalist contribution in the city council has provided interesting clues in some aspects. First, it is related to their concern for city politics, which remains
neglected in history studies of the last decades of Dutch colonialism in Indonesia. The direction and orientation of the studies on Indonesian nationalism, which emphasizes more on
ideas, figures, institutions, and organizations as well as their confrontation with the colonial
state, have inevitably missed an interesting overview of everyday political practices in characterizing the history of anticolonial movements.
Surabaya as a colonial city in the Netherlands-Indies has demonstrated an important role
of Indonesian nationalists in city politics through a series of their open actions and political
articulations within formal institutions that offered a different form of “governance” beyond
the social and political dominant power of the white Europeans. As citizens, activists of the
anticolonial movement were also sensitive to issues in the city they lived in the scope of the
discourse of anticolonial politics. In addition to the popular conception of the nation as an
“imagined community” (Anderson, 1983), it is necessary to mention that Indonesian nationalism is a particular product of urban community as the center of colonial modernity in the
20th century in the Netherlands-Indies.
Through the development of cultural hybrid in the colonial cities, new categories in enriching the studies on British colonialism in India are withdrawn to the debate concerning the
practices of the colonial power at the local level, racial segregation that overlapped with the
discourse on class and identity politics, as well as colonial power structure that was filled with
uncertainty and inconsistency compared to the nature of power, which was monolithic and
final within the old historiography of British colonialism in India. A review on the development of Surabaya’s urban history has also revealed a similar picture. The development of
urban environment from the late 19th century to the early 20th century portrays that the firm
boundaries of racial and ethnic segregation that formed the typology of the colonial city as
presented by the king did not entirely appear.
REFERENCES
Anderson, Benedict. R’OG. (2006) Imagined Community. 1st Edition. London, Verso.
Basundoro, P. (2012) Sejarah Pemerintah Kota Surabaya (The History of Surabaya City Government).
Yogyakarta, Elmatera.
Departement van Economische Zaken, Afdeeling Nijverheid: 1949.
Dick, H. (2003) Surabaya. City of Work. A Socioeconomic History, 1900–2000. Singapore, Singapore
University Press.
Elout, C.K. (1930) De Groote Oost. NV. Den Haag, Boekhandel.
Laporan-Laporan tentang Gerakan Protes di Jawa pada Abad ke-XX (Reports on Protest Movements in
Java in the 20th Century). Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia. Jakarta. 1981.
Politiek-Politioneele Overzichten Van Nederlandsche-Indie. Deel III. 1931–1934.
Ricklefs, M.C. (2012) Islamisation and Its Opponents in Java. Singapore, NUS Press.
Shiraishi, T. (1990) An Age in Motion. Popular Radicalism in Java, 1912–1926. Ithaca, Cornell University
Press.
Statistical Pocketbook of Indonesia. Batavia Landsdrukkerij. 1941.
Tudor, A. De stedelijke traditie in Nederlandsch-Indie, dalam Locale Belangen, 15e Jargaang,
1st September 1928.
Volkstelling 1930. Volume I. Batavia, Landsdrukkerij, 1936.
William, F. (1989) Pandangan dan Gejolak. Masyarakat Kota dan Lahirnya Revolusi Indonesia (Views
and Turbulence of City Society and Birth of a Revolution in Indonesia). Jakarta, Gramedia.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Efforts to overcome the problems of food demand in South
Sulawesi in the Guided Democracy period (1959–1965)
A.A.A. Mulya & M. Iskandar
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Indonesia is no different from other developing countries of the world when
it comes to facing problems related to meeting food demands of the people. Unfortunately, in
South Sulawesi, strategies to overcome food demand, especially demand for rice, resulted in
not only increased rice production but also increased smuggling activities by the emergence
of separatist movements of Darul Islam/Tentara Islam Indonesia (DI/TII) Kahar Muzakkar.
The aim of this study is to reconstruct the efforts made by the government in the Guided
Democracy period in South Sulawesi to overcome the problems. It is crucial to explain the
efforts made by the current government as well as the challenges faced by during 1959–1965.
Both qualitative and quantitative data are presented in this study. Methods used in this study
were heuristic, critics, interpretation, and historiography.
1
INTRODUCTION
Rice has long been the staple food of Indonesians. According to some experts, Indonesians
have known rice since 1000 BC (Khudori, 2008). However, the exact period of its emergence
as staple food remains unknown. Nevertheless, it is hypothesized that rice production has
been widely practiced since the 8th century in Java.
Studies about rice are interesting to be investigated, especially those with regard to its role
among the people of South Sulawesi. At present, when we talk about the Bugis-Makassar
tribe that resides in the south peninsula of Sulawesi, their maritime aspect attracts our attention. This is true because people of the tribe are widely known as great seamen. Nonetheless,
this tribe should also be recognized for their agricultural practices. Cristian Pelras, in his book
Manusia Bugis (The Bugis People) stated that the Bugis-Makassar tribe had been known for
their agricultural practices long before they were known for their maritime activities. This is
evident in their customs, such as Mappadendang, in which the members celebrated their successful rice harvests by organizing parties. Furthermore, the book Mattulada, Lingkungan
Hidup Manusia (Human Environment) mentions one of the three main aspects of the great
kingdoms of Bone, Luwu, and Makassar in the South Sulawesi peninsula and their vast and
wide agriculture land (padangmaloang). This shows that agriculture played an important role
in the past glory. Unfortunately, studies about food demands, particularly of rice, in South
Sulawesi, are scarce, as most of them address problems related to rice in Java or in Indonesia
in general. Therefore, the aim of this study is to review the problems of food demand, particularly of rice, in South Sulawesi in the Guided Democracy period (1959–1965). Several
prominent problems in this period were the increase of price, pest attacks that obstructed
rice production, and peace intrusion by Darul Islam/Tentara Islam Indonesia (hereinafter
abbreviated as DI/TII).
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1.1
Background of the study
South Sulawesi1 is one of the main rice producers in Indonesia, apart from Java. Production
areas include Pinrang, Sidenreng Rapang (Sidrap), and Bone Regencies. South Sulawesi
receives regular interchanging annual rainfall, which is advantageous for agricultural practices, especially the production of rice. In Sulawesi, the agriculture sector is divided into two
groups, namely foodstuff and plantation sectors. The foodstuff sector includes rice, corn,
yam, and bean cultivation. The varieties of rice cultivated in South Sulawesi are rice paddy
(Oryza sativa), gadu paddy, and gogo paddy. Meanwhile, the plantation sector includes coffee,
chocolate, and coconut production.
Rice, on the one hand, holds an important position in the Bugis-Makassar culture. This
is evident in a widely known cultural tradition called Mappadendang, in which the society
celebrates successful rice harvests to show gratitude to God. The name Mappadendang is
derived from the practice of singing (dendang) traditional songs by the women during rice
pounding. Because this tradition is considered very sacred, the women usually wear bajubodo.2 The women of the Bugis-Makassar tribe wear traditional clothes, whereas the men wear
a coiled headband, black clothes, as well as black sarong around their bodies.
Meanwhile, covering approximately 20% of the province’s total area, paddy fields are considered one of the largest contributors in the island of Sulawesi (Southeast Sulawesi and
North Sulawesi). This is also evident since South Sulawesi has become a rice producer in
Indonesia, particularly in Pinrang, Sidrap, and Bone regencies. The rice cultivation areas
are supported by four distinct irrigation systems, namely technical irrigation, half-technical
irrigation, village irrigation, and rain-fed irrigation, of which the village irrigation system
is mostly used by the farmers in South Sulawesi. Meanwhile, Sidrap and Pinrang regencies,
whose cultivation areas are the largest, used the technical irrigation system. These activities
are supported by the construction of dam Bendungan Benteng, which has been active since
the period of Dutch colonialism in Indonesia.
The spacious cultivation area of South Sulawesi is proportionally in line with its number
of farmers. It is presumed that, 60% of South Sulawesi population were farmers in 1906,
which increased to approximately 71% in 1930. Furthermore, there was no sign of job switch
for the past 20 years in the South Sulawesi society (Harvey 1989).3
The farmer society in South Sulawesi, especially the Bugis-Makassar tribe, is divided
into three structural levels, namely kings and royal families (bangsawan), liberate people (to
maradeka), and servants (ata’) (Abdullah, 1985).4 In general, noblemen own the cultivated
lands and employ the liberate people or servants to manage their lands. Before Indonesia’s
independence, these workers were only given food and drinks as payment for their labor. This
is seen as a special tribute for the landowners because of their high societal status. In addition, the landowners managed an authority to solve problems related to the workers within
the society.
The agrarian law in Indonesia during the period of 1959–1965 was closely related to the
condition in Indonesia that put the Guided Democracy into practice. This was first marked
by President Soekarno’s decree on 5 July 1959, according to which all government policies
were sourced from the president. The policies applied to all sectors, including the agrarian affairs. One of the agrarian policies applied in this period was the Basis Agrarian Law
(also referred to as UUPA) number 5 of 1960. This policy was founded on the basis of the
spirit of anti-colonialism and feudalism as mentioned by the then Agrarian Minister Mr
Sadjarwo that “the struggle to reform our agrarian laws is firmly connected with Indonesian
history of struggle to be free from the grasps, influences, and other remnants of invasion,
1. In the beginning of its establishment in 1960, Southeast Sulawesi Province was combined with the
South Sulawesi Province. The area was then called as Level I Area of South-Southeast Sulawesi. In 1964,
the province was divided into Level I of Region Province into South Sulawesi.
2. The traditional clothes of Bugis-Makassar women.
3. Harvey, B. Pemberontakan Kahar Muzakkar; dari Tradisi ke DI/TII, p. 59.
4. Abdullah, H., Manusia Bugis Makassar, Inti Idayu Press. 1985. p. 109.
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particularly the struggles of peasant society to free themselves from the feudal systems of
land and exploitation of foreign capital” (Wibowo, 2009).
1.2
The condition of South Sulawesi’s agriculture in the beginning of the Guided
Democracy period
During the early periods of implementing the newly practiced policy, Indonesia experienced
higher rainfalls (in 1960) compared to the previous years. This condition lasted throughout
the year, which then contributed to the increase of harvests in South Sulawesi. In Pinrang
regency (Level II Region),5 the rainfall recorded was 2,086 mm with an average of 115 rainy
days annually. In addition, 41,856 Ha of total cultivated paddy fields was verified in the
regency, larger than that in the previous year (32,542 Ha). An increase in land utilization for
paddy cultivation of 9,314 Ha is evident from these data.6 Out of the total 41,856 Ha of the
land, 20,000 Ha was irrigated using the technical irrigation system, 3,700 Ha used the halftechnical irrigation system, 13,400 Ha used the traditional irrigation system, and the remaining 4,756 Ha depended on rainfall for its irrigation.7
Different types of rice were cultivated in these areas. The farmers in Pinrang regency
planted three varieties of rice, including rice paddy (Oryza sativa), gadu paddy, and gogo
paddy. However, the most common species was rice paddy, which occupied 39,574 Ha of the
land. Rice production from such large areas reached 49,467 tons, which rapidly increased in
1959 to 48,993 tons from just 32,981 Ha of cultivated lands. On the contrary, gadu paddy and
gogo paddy were produced on 5,519 and 665 Ha of cultivated lands, achieving harvests as
much as 7,392 and 399 tons, respectively. In line with the increase of the areas of cultivated
lands, the gadu paddy harvest also increased by 1,693 tons from the previous year, while gogo
paddy did not experience such increase.
In regions of Bone regency, the data of the rainfalls in 1960–1961 from the Department of
Agriculture in Bone show that the rainfall distribution in the first three months of 1961 was
identical to that of the last three months in 1960. This high rainfall facilitated rice cultivation.
However, there was minor land damage due to flash floods that flooded as much as 16 Ha8
in the first three months of 1961.
In Bone regency, gadu paddy cultivation also developed in terms of land occupied. This
is apparent from the data obtained from the first three months of 1961, according to which
3,010 Ha of land was used to produce this rice variety, slightly larger than that in 1960 (2,292
Ha). On the contrary, land occupied by gogo paddy fields decreased. In the first three months
of 1960, it was 2,180 Ha, which decreased to 1,729 Ha in the same period of 1961, a decline
of 460 Ha. The total volume of rice harvested throughout the South Sulawesi region in 1960
was 515,000 tons with 435,000 Ha of cultivated lands.
The increase of land use for cultivation is believed to be due to the increasing demands
of food in Indonesia, particularly in Java (Mubyarto, 1989),9 which continuous increase of
population. On the contrary, the population of South Sulawesi did not grow as rapidly as
that of Java. Essentially, according to the 1961 data, the food demand of Indonesia was
90 kg/year. This high demand urged the government to maximize cultivation lands outside Java.
1.3
Problems of food demand in South Sulawesi in the Guided Democracy period
Despite satisfactory outcomes in the agriculture sector in South Sulawesi, particularly its rice
production, efforts were not easy. Data from 1960–1961 show increase of rice production;
5. Level II Region is equal to Regency/City. Maschab, M. Politik Pemerintahan Desa di Indonesia, p. 99.
6. The Yearly Report of Level II Region Department of Agriculture of Pinrang in 1961.
7. Opcit.
8. Archives of Department of Agriculture of Bone in 1961.
9. Annual increase of agricultural production in Java was only 2.9%. Mubyarto, Pengantar Ekonomi
Pertanian., p. 31.
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however, in 1962, pest attack was a major threat to paddy fields. The pest is called sundep10 (a
type of caterpillar that eats young leaves of paddy plants) in the district of Sidenreng Rappang (Sidrap). Meanwhile, the separatist movement of DI/TII also caused other problems in
South Sulawesi regions. Besides, high prices of all staple commodities, especially rice, became
a hurdle to agriculture in South Sulawesi.
Data obtained from Marhaen’s daily report on 14 January 1960 show that there was about
30% increase in the cost of rice, from Rp 3.5 to Rp 5 per kilogram. (Marhaen Daily, 1960)11
The data also included an interview with the head of Indonesian Rice Mill and Traders Society
(IPPBI) of Makassar, Mr M. Daud Latif, according to whom, this increased price of rice was
due to the absence of licensed rice distributors among the farmers who milled rice (millers).
A report from Sidenreng Rappang district submitted to the Governor of Southeast
Sulawesi shows that approximately 2,147 Ha of land was damaged due to sundep attack. The
attack occurred in a large scale and led up to 100% destruction of the contaminated paddy
plants. This attack occurred because the plants were not sprayed with pesticides. Meanwhile,
in Pinrang district, there were mice attacks, damaging hundreds of acres of paddy fields.12
The threat from DI/TII also aggravated the problems related to agriculture in South
Sulawesi. Sidrap Regent’s Report described the situation of rice harvest in mid-1962, in
which DI/TII group demanded the farmers to hand over 20% of their rice harvests. They also
forced the farmers to pay Rp 5 for every paddy they gave.13 Furthermore, in Pinrang regency,
the gadu paddy farmers were chased away from their rice fields by the DI/TII members. They
did not only intrude the farmers’ work but also forced them to hand over their rice harvests.
They also threatened to beat the farmers and prohibit them from cultivating their lands.14 In
fact, a farmer named Manrung Padjalele from Patampanua district of Pinrang regency was
kidnapped and was held as a captive from August 1964 by DI/TII, which ended in his death.15
1.4
Efforts to overcome the problems of food demand in South Sulawesi
It has been mentioned in the previous section that the high price of rice, pest attacks, and threats
from DI/TII are the three main problems in the government’s efforts to improve the agriculture
sector and resolve the problems of food demand in South Sulawesi. Therefore, Level 1 Region
(Province) of South Sulawesi cooperated with the Level 2 Region (Regency) to solve the problems.
In order to decrease the high price of rice, the government provided several solutions.
First, miller farmers were allowed to sell their rice directly without any agents. Then, a shop
was established specifically for provision of staple commodities. These efforts were made to
control and stabilize the rising price of rice and other foodstuff within the province.
Meanwhile, to improve the agriculture sector and increase the rice production, the government of Sidenreng Rappang regency on 9 January 1963 instructed the use of high-quality
seeds in Maritengngae district. The rice varieties used for this purpose were Bengawan and Si
Gadis. It also instructed and supported the rice cultivation by using high-quality rice plants,
making good use of land, and fertilizing plants by spraying, weeding, and exterminating
pests. The regency government even launched a 1-month cultivation course facilitated by
officers of the agriculture office to improve the harvests.16
In addition, an organization named South Sulawesi Agricultural Development Foundation
was officially established on 8 February 1961 to carry out agricultural development plans and
provide recommendations and technical supports to not only individuals but also agricultural
10. Sundep is a kind of caterpillar pests that attack the paddy field areas. It usually attacks young leaves,
causing the plant to wilt and then die.
11. Marhaen Daily, 14 January 1960.
12. Damage caused by mice in Pinrang regency was not mentioned in detail in the Archives of the
Department of Agriculture of Pinrang.
13. Report of Regent of Sidenreng Rappang, on 28 June 1962.
14. Report of Head of Patampanua District, Pinrang Regency on 11 November 1963.
15. Report of Regent of Pinrang, Andi Djalante Tjoppo on 26 August 1964.
16. Instruction of Regent of Sidenreng Rappang, Andi Sapada, on 28 November 1962.
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companies when needed. Ibrahim Manwan was appointed as the head of the foundation. It
was highly expected that this foundation would succeed in increasing South Sulawesi’s food
production, which is the mission and vision of the foundation.17
Alternatively, in Pinrang regency, the efforts to increase its agricultural production and
prevent land destruction from pest attacks included fertilization of gadu paddy plants as
instructed by the head of the Department of Agriculture of Pinrang. This instruction was
mandatory to all gadu paddy farmers.18
In order to solve the problems and security threats caused by DI/TII, the head of the foundation urged the farmers not to feel intimidated by such threats. Andi Muhammad Dalle,
the Commander of Mattiro Walie District Military Command, instructed all merchants who
wanted to buy and sell rice to submit a report to the district military command. This was in
order to prevent and block DI/TII from disrupting the economy. In addition, some security
personnel were appointed to monitor and provide security to the farmers so that they could
continue cultivating their lands without feeling threatened by DI/TII soldiers.19 Eventually,
the security disruption caused by DI/TII soldiers reduced over time as they disunited. Some
of the heads and members quit and even surrendered voluntarily.
2
CONCLUSION
The measures taken for increasing the agricultural production in South Sulawesi in the Guided
Democracy period began in 1960. The situation in the beginning of this period, particularly in
South Sulawesi’s regencies of Pinrang, Sidrap, and Bone, showed good outcomes between 1960
and 1961. It was evident from the increased harvests compared to the previous year. Climate
and high rainfall was a contributing factor for this. Some cultivated fields were damaged due to
the high rainfall. However, it did not have any impact on the volume of harvest.
Unfortunately, the efforts were not always easy. The two main hurdles to the increase of
food production were the attack of a pest called sundep and security interference by DI/
TII soldiers. In Sidrap regency, sundep attacked approximately 2,000 Ha and inflicted 100%
damage to the paddy plants. In addition, the farmers were threatened by the demands from
DI/TII soldiers to hand over 20% of their harvest and pay Rp5 for every bunch of rice they took.
The South Sulawesi government made significant efforts to overcome these problems.
The first instruction was to inform the farmers to start cultivating high-quality paddy seeds.
Besides, they were told to irrigate their fields, fertilize their crops, and perform weeding.
Furthermore, the government initiated a forum of agriculture extension carried out by the
officers of the agriculture office to help the farmers improve their harvests.
Meanwhile, to help the farmers from the security interference caused by DI/TII, it was
instructed that the farmers must submit a report on the goods they sold to the District Military
Command. This was done to block DI/TII’s economy. The security personnel also provided the
farmers with security so that they could work without worrying about the threats from DI/TII.
It is interesting to note here the shift of a patron–client pattern in the South Sulawesi society, which was made possible by the nation’s interference in the agricultural practices of the
society. It has been mentioned that the traditional patron–client pattern of this society was
centered in the noblemen (arung/karaeng) as the landowners and in maradeka as well as ata
as the workers. Nevertheless, this position began to shift when the state took part in becoming the patron for the farmers. The shift, however, was even more evident during the New
Order Period with Sidrap farmers’ tradition of Tudang Sipulung.20 In the past, this tradition
17. Report of the Board of Patrons of South Sulawesi Agricultural Development Foundation on 8
February 1961.
18. Head of Pinrang Department of Agriculture instruction, Abdullah Lawi, on 26 October 1965.
19. Instruction of Commander of Mattiro Walie District Military Command, A.M. Dale, on 13 October
1962.
20. Tudang is referred to sitting, while Sipulung means together. The literal meaning of Tudang Sipulung
tradition is to sit together.
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was held by the farmers to determine the patterns of rice cultivation. In the New Order
period, the government of Sidrap regency turned the tradition of Tudang Sipulung into an
agenda, which served as a means to deliver the government’s agricultural programs. This
agenda was then led by the Regent of Sidrap.
REFERENCES
Abdullah, H. (1985) Manusia Bugis Makassar (Bugis Makassar People). Jakarta, IntiIdayu Press.
Greg A. (1994) What’s In A Name? Appropriating Idioms in the South Sulawesi Rice Intensification
Program. The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, 35, 39–60.
Harvey, B. (1989) Pemberontakan Kahar Muzakkar; Dari Tradisi Ke DI/TII (The Rebellion of Kahar
Muzakkar: From Tradition to DI/TII). Jakarta, Pustaka Utama Grafiti.
Instruction of Commander of Mattiro Walie District Military Command Vak. B/ Dim 1406/, AM. Dale,
dated 13th October 1962. Archives of Level II Region of Sidenreng Rappang.
Justus M.K. (1963). Indonesia’s Rice Economy: Problems and Prospects. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 22 (3), 379–392.
Khudori. (2008) Ironi Negeri Beras (The Irony of ‘Rice Country’). Yogyakarta, INSIST Press.
Lindblad, T., et al. (1998) Sejarah Ekonomi Modern Indonesia (The History of Indonesia’s Modern
Economy). Jakarta, LP3ES.
Marhaen Daily dated 24th November 1959.
Marhaen Daily dated 13th January 1960.
Marhaen Daily dated 14th January 1960.
Marhaen Daily dated 20th February 1960.
Marhaen Daily dated 6th February 1960.
Maschab, M. (2013) Politik Pemerintahan Desa di Indonesia (The Politics of Rural Governance in
Indonesia). Yogyakarta, Penerbit Pol Gov.
Mattulada. (1994) Lingkungan Hidup Manusia (Human Environment). Jakarta, Pustaka Sinar Harapan.
Mubyarto. (1989) Pengantar Ekonomi Pertanian (Introduction to Agricultural Economics). Jakarta,
LP3ES.
Pelras, C. (2006). Manusia Bugis (The Bugis People). Jakarta, Penerbit Nalar.
Report of the Board of Patrons of South Sulawesi Agricultural Development Foundation regarding
‘Establishment of Yayasan Pertanian Sulselra’ dated 8th February 1961. Archives of Level II Region
of Bone.
Report of the Head of Mattiro Bulu District, Muhammad Arsjad, regarding ‘Hundreds of Acres of
Lands Attacked by Mice,’ dated 8th May 1964. Archives of Level II Region of Pinrang.
Report of the Head of Patampanua District, Muhammad Musjtari, dated 11th November 1963.
Archives of Level II Region of Pinrang.
Report of the Head of Pinrang Agriculture Office regarding ‘A Comprehensive Report of O.G.M,’ for
January 1963, dated 5th March 1963. Archives of Level II Region of Pinrang.
Report of the Head of Pinrang Agriculture Office, Abdullah Lawi, regarding ‘Plans on Food Production
Increase,’ dated 26th October 1965. Archives of Level II Region of Pinrang.
Report of the Regent of Pinrang, Andi Djalante Tjoppo, regarding ‘A Kidnap of P. Manrung Kp.
Padjaleleby Group of Men,’ dated 26th August 1964. Archives of Level II Region of Pinrang.
Report of the Regent of Sidenreng Rappang, Andi Sapada, regarding ‘Investigation and Examination
of people’s Rice,’ dated 3rd April 1962. Archives of Level II Region of Sidenreng Rappang.
Report of the Regent of Sidenreng Rappang, Andi Sapada, regarding ‘Twenty Percent (20%) Extortion
of Rice and so on from People by Individuals on Behalf of Organisation ex. DI/TII and Act of
Tax Collection on Rice Brought from Villages to Cities,’ dated 28th June 1962. Archives of Level II
Region of Sidenreng Rappang.
Report of the Regent of Sidenreng Rappang, Andi Sapada, regarding ‘Agriculture Course to All Rice
Field Officers in Level 2 Region of Sidenreng Rappang,’ dated 28th November 1962. Archives of
Level II Region of Sidenreng Rappang.
Wibowo, L.R., et al. (2009) Konflik Sumber Daya Hutan dan Reforma Agraria: Kapitalisme Mengepung
Desa (Conflict of Forest Resources and Agrarian Reform: Capitalism surrounding the villages).
Yogyakarta, Alfamedia Citra.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
A study on how Uber seizes the transportation space in Jakarta
D.T. Gunarwati & L. Kurnia
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: In this study, we address the development of the application-based transportation service organization Uber, which has caused a direct disturbance to the taxi company
Blue Bird, which had dominated for decades in Jakarta. Uber is considered illegal by the
government due to its noncompliance to the existing regulations. Uber uses informational
ways and forms a network society, which is a concept proposed by Manuel Castells (1996).
Uber seizes the consumption space of taxi users and opens up the employment production
space in Jakarta’s transportation industry. The data were obtained by ethnographic approach
(field study), including in-depth interviews with the drivers and users of Uber, and literature
review on the topic of Uber controversy in mass media. The result of the research shows the
presence of loopholes, which are not in accordance with the pattern of the network society
and informational capitalism proposed by Castells. Uber’s informational capitalist system
has initiated a discussion on the shifting forms of capitalism, which is being responded by
the state.
1
INTRODUCTION
Jakarta has been the capital city of the Republic of Indonesia since the Indonesian Proclamation of Independence on 17 August 1945. Traffic congestion has been one of the concerning
issues in Jakarta for many years. This is due to the significantly uneven proportion of private
vehicles and public transportations in the streets of 98% and 2%, respectively. The population
of Jakarta was 10.2 million in 2013 (Damardono, 2013, p. 9). In the absence of reliable public
transportations, the urban community prefers to use private vehicles or taxis. Despite their
status as public transportation, taxis, being more convenient and faster than other means of
public transportation, are often associated with people of the upper middle class.
The popularity of taxis declined after the increase of taxi tariff, due to the increasingly
severe traffic congestions and fuel price increase. At the same time, technological advances
led to the development of online mobile applications that offer transportation services similar to taxis. Uber, which officially began to operate in August 2014, has rapidly become a
popular alternative among Jakarta urbanites. However, Uber, which is available in 68 countries, has caused controversies, such as lacking the official license to operate unlike regular
taxi companies. The increasing popularity of Uber among Jakarta urbanites incites issues
with the authority. The Provincial Government (Pemprov) of DKI Jakarta and the Land
Transportation Organization (Organda) of the Special Capital Region (DKI) of Jakarta have
considered Uber illegal due to the use of black license plates for their vehicles, which signifies
their status as private vehicles, allowing them to evade commercial vehicle tests required by
the Law of Road Traffic of 2009.
The operational expansion of Uber and other application-based companies created conflict with the providers of conventional public transportation, particularly taxis. Public
transportation drivers staged a large-scale demonstration on Tuesday, 22 March 2016. The
demonstration organized by the taxi drivers allegedly was organized due to the disturbance
caused by the operation of Uber to the business of taxi companies, such as Blue Bird Group,
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the biggest taxi network in the country. The government later issued a regulation allowing
Uber to operate only after meeting some requirements.
In this study, we aim to show how the development of Uber has changed the transportation pattern of Jakarta urbanites, the pattern of employment, and the relationship between
employers and workers. Although its operation is in contrast to the existing regulations, Uber
has received support from the community. Hence, the government has to negotiate confronting this global company. This study focuses on the changes in urbanites’ consumption patterns and the employment pattern in the transportation business, as well as the government’s
position in law enforcement to confront this global public transportation company.
The theoretical framework used by the authors is informational capitalism proposed by
Manuel Castells, a professor of technology and community communication at Annenberg
School of Communication. In his book trilogy, Information Age: Economy, Society, and
Culture (Castells, 1996; Castells, 1997; Castells, 1998), he observes the emergence of new,
and even revolutionary, types of society, culture, and economy. This new inclination first
developed in the United States, which has been quite visible since the 1970s, namely the emergence of information technology marked by the dominance of television, computer, and the
likes. The revolution progressed, and since the 1980s, a phenomenon described by Castells as
informational capitalism has emerged, which has simultaneously led to the formation of the
informational society.
In the case of Uber’s operation in Jakarta, the authors assume that a cultural transformation process has taken place due to the operation of a global network company (Uber) practicing informational capitalism. This has a pervasive effect on human civilization as Uber users
form a global community, and it slowly gains control over transportation in many countries.
Here, we use a cultural studies approach from the perspective of Manuel Castells’ informational capitalism, which is argued to be promoted by certain actors, namely the network company (global company) represented by Uber. The authors further argue that the negotiation,
contestation, and resistance between the older capitalism, represented by taxi companies, and
the newer capitalism, represented by Uber, have seized the consumption space of the urbanites and the labor production in Jakarta’s transportation sector.
In addition to literature review, this study collects relevant data using ethnography methods, which are carried out through in-depth interviews, directive interviews, nondirective interviews, and quoting an Uber user from a private blog. The field study requires the
authors to take some trips using Uber to get the first-hand experience as Uber passengers.
Meanwhile, to obtain information from other stakeholders, the authors utilize selected mass
media publications in both printed and electronic forms.
1.1
Seizing the transportation space in Jakarta
The city of Jakarta is well known for traffic congestion. The TransJakarta Bus system introduced in 2004 to resolve Jakarta’s traffic congestion has yet to serve its purpose effectively.
The urban society prefers to use private vehicles as a more convenient means of transportation. Taxis, as part of public transportation, have a different characteristic and market share
compared to other means of public transportation. Taxis are considered as an exclusive form
of public transportation. The market share of taxis in Indonesia’s large cities is rather high,
particularly among passengers with a high level of mobility or those who opt for a particular
kind of convenience and safety (Sjafruddin, Widodo, & Kuniati, 2001).
Blue Bird Group is the taxi company that dominates the market share in the country until
today. It is the extension of industrial capitalism ruling the transportation industry in Indonesia. Industrial capitalism is determined by the amount of capital deposited by the company
to establish their businesses. As stated by David Harvey (1992 in Scott, 2012, p. 2), capitalism,
at its core, is a system of production involving the search for profit by means of investment in
physical assets and the employment of workers to produce sellable goods and services.
The domination of Blue Bird taxis in Indonesia has started to cease when the taxi tariff
was increased in December 2014 due to the increasingly severe traffic congestions in Jakarta.
With regard to Uber, through its mobile application, users of Uber can estimate the cost of
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a journey. Uber operates on a business model that stems from the “sharing economy”, as
mentioned by Julyet Schor (2015), and allows people from the lower-economy class to use
certain assets that they do not have. One of the Uber users interviewed by the researchers,
RS, 31, mentioned that one of the reasons for her to choose Uber was the feeling of having
a personal driver.
“Actually, I also use Uber as it makes me feel like I have my own driver. Aside from
that, Uber does not require payment in cash. They use credit cards. So the payment
is easier. I do not need to worry if I do not have enough money when the street is
heavily congested, or when I do not bring a lot of cash with me.” (Interview with RS
was conducted on 7 April 2015)
Unlike any other forms of public transportation, Uber offers the sensation and feeling of
having a personal driver without necessarily having one. Furthermore, Uber provides a more
competitive price compared to taxis. By using Uber, the consumers enjoy the feeling of being
part of the “upper class”, indicated from the feeling of “as if ” having a personal driver, as
quoted above. This has been made possible by Uber, which uses cars with black license plates,
meant for private vehicles.
Even so, as an extension of informational capitalism, Uber service can also be exploitative toward its users. The rising popularity of Uber among Jakarta urbanites has led to the
increasing demand of their service, which may trigger the increase of surcharge from the
current basic price. The imposing of surcharge occurs when the number of Uber vehicles in a
location is limited and the demand is high. For example, on weekends, the tariff of Uber can
be double that of the normal price, and will only decrease when the demand for Uber service
drops within the next 30 to 50 minutes.
As a network company, Uber, which has operated in Jakarta since August 2014, allows the
formation of a more open system in labor absorption. According to Castells, the key factor
in a global international economy and network society is the network company, that is, work
individualization through aspects such as more flexible time. Nevertheless, essentially, the
transformation process varies between countries (Ritzer, 2012, p. 970 in Rahayu, 2015, p. 20).
Uber allows the formation of a more liquid employment pattern. LM, of age 41 years, said
that aside from being an Uber driver, he also works as a driver for Grab Car. He does this
to compensate for daily operational costs. According to him, even though he works for two
different mobile application-based companies, as long as he meets the required targets, there
are no problems.
Researcher: How is your experience of being an Uber driver to date?
LM:
Not bad. It’s because I handle two jobs, one with Uber, one with Grab.
Since Uber gives weekly payment, we (the drivers) struggle with the (operational) costs. Weekly payment is a daily struggle. With Grab, we get daily
payment.
Researcher: What are the differences?
LM:
It’s quite the same. But for money, Grab is faster. Grab has higher tariff
compared to Uber.
Researcher: Then, the car is yours?
LM:
Yes, it’s my own car.
Researcher: Pak, aren’t there any legal regulations stating you cannot be a Grab driver
if you are already an Uber driver, and the other way around?
LM:
There are no problems with that.
(Interview with LM was conducted on 16 February 2016)
What LM does by becoming a driver for Uber and Grab Car service can be viewed as an
act of negotiation within the existing working system. LM, temporally and spatially, can be
a driver for both Uber and Grab Car. This is made possible by the informational capitalism
business model performed by Uber that creates what Castells proposed as a space of flows
in which space has turned into a world dominated by processes instead of physical locations.
Nevertheless, the physical locations continue to exist in reality.
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As previously explained, the recruitment mechanism for drivers is not too complicated.
However, the absence of a written contract between the drivers and network companies like
Uber allows the company to conduct exploitative action toward the workers. An informant
interviewed by the researchers, SP, 36, confessed that working in Uber is like being under a
massive exploitation system.
“I got minus (earnings) working as taxi driver, but here with Uber, at least I got plus
(earnings), although it really wears me out, since the meter is half of the taxis’. So
you see my work here is the same with me driving two taxis. The (tariff of) taxi from
here to the airport is IDR 100,000, but they (Uber) only charge IDR 59,000. It’s like
almost half the taxi tariff, around 40%. But everywhere I go, there will be orders. My
previous passenger was still in the car when I got another order notification. When
I was at Ciracas, it was the same; the notification went off for the order I just said.”
(Interview with SP was conducted on 20 March 2016)
SP’s disclosure builds on the argument of Uber being the embodiment of informational
capitalism, which exploits labor. Referring to Castells’ informational capitalism, Uber’s exploitation resembles the characteristic of the previous capitalism, which creates an exploitative
production relation by marginalizing the social structure and other culture. Orders are given
regardless of the working shifts or working hours for the drivers. Rejecting orders leads to
unfavorable ratings for the drivers and consequently the suspension of their accounts. When
a driver’s account is suspended, the driver will no longer be able to go online and receive any
orders from passengers.
Uber, which is now also available in 68 countries, has caused controversies due to the
absence of legal business licenses unlike regular taxi companies. Similar to other countries,
Uber, which has gained more popularity among Jakarta urbanites, has raised issues with
the authority. Prohibition toward Uber has been done a couple of times, by the provincial
government (Pemprov) of DKI Jakarta as well as the Organda of DKI Jakarta, the Department of Transportation of DKI Jakarta, and the Governor of DKI Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja
Purnama. Despite being banned by the provincial government of DKI Jakarta, this global
application company has not terminated their operations in it. Uber services can still be
accessed by the users. The spokesperson of Uber claims that Uber is a technology company
and not a transportation company.
On 17 December 2015, the Indonesian Government, this time represented by the Ministry
of Transportation, officially banned application-based transportation services in Indonesia. The prohibition is stated in the Notification Letter No. UM.3012/1/21/Phb/2015 dated
Figure 1.
Jokowi’s tweet @jokowi on 17 December 2015.
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9 November 2015 signed by the Minister of Transportation, Ignasius Jonan. The decision immediately caused a controversy among the netizens. Just a day after the prohibition, President Joko
Widodo requested the ban to be lifted through his Twitter account. Although the president’s
directive is informal, the Transportation Ministry later revoked the prohibition order.
The President’s order as stated in the tweet was sufficient enough to revoke the regulation
issued by the Ministry of Transportation.
The indecisiveness of the government, both the central government and the provincial government of DKI Jakarta, in banning Uber’s operations shows that the state has started the
disposition in countering Uber as a form of foreign informational capitalism. Implementing
Castells’ framework (1996), the state has become weaker in a world of new economic globalization, and its dependency to the global capital markets will increase simultaneously having
less bargaining power. In the case of Uber in Jakarta, the state’s position also keeps changing
due to different opinions among the stakeholders.
The state’s vacillating attempt to counter this global multinational company and the failure to ban the transportation application led to a large-scale demonstration organized by
public transportation drivers, particularly taxi drivers, on Tuesday, 22 March 2016. The protest ended in anarchy. As the situation was worsening, the management of Blue Bird Taxi,
which had the most drivers demonstrating on the streets, later organized a press conference.
The Commissioner of Blue Bird Plc., Noni Purnomo, explained the company’s corporate
stance as the provider of taxi transportation service, in which they claimed that there was no
real competition with the online transportation services. She stated that they had released a
statement 2 days before the massive demonstration mentioning that they did not condone
their drivers to join the protest.
Even so, the anarchical actions of the taxi drivers were video-recorded and widely circulated through social media, drawing criticism from the netizens. According to one netizen,
Nuniek, in her private blog, the anarchical demonstration smeared the reputation of taxi
companies.
“In the press conference held today, the Blue Bird management stated they are not
held accountable for what happened today. They released a statement 2 days ago
that they do not encourage their drivers to join mass demonstration. But no one
can push aside the fact that the demonstration today was dominated by taxi drivers
wearing their uniform, driving their fleets. The polite, honest, reliable taxi drivers
has transformed into “hangry” people. Hangry is a special term made by my 8-year
old daughter to describe someone who is hang (read: error) because s/he is hungry
and angry at the same time. The 24-hour free ride offer didn’t get good sympathy
from netizens.”
Nuniek in her blog deplored the response of the company’s management stating that they
were not responsible for the demonstration conducted by their drivers. The previous image of
Blue Bird drivers being honest, polite, and reliable instantly changed into a group of hungry
and angry people.
Castells in The Informational City mentioned the shifting from the structural logic to the
flow logic, or known as the flow hegemony. In the informational capitalism era, those who
control the network are the dominant issue ruler. This is what has made Uber, with their network power, to gain great sympathy from the society and to receive wide support to proceed
with their operations. On the contrary, Blue Bird was ridiculed and considered to have failed
to innovate and improve their working system in the face of emergent competitors equipped
with information technology excellence.
After the mass protest of the public transportation drivers, the government set 31 May
2016 as the deadline for online application-based transportation services to comply with the
existing public transportation regulations. During the transition, they were allowed to operate but prohibited to expand their business. One of the mandatory terms is the establishment
of an official business entity of their own or cooperating with operators or business entities
that have transportation operational licenses. The vehicles are also required to take a commercial vehicle test to warrant the eligibility of passengers’ safety (Simbolon, 2016).
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2
CONCLUSION
Through information technology, Uber has rapidly expanded its service in more than 400
cities in 68 countries in just about 6 years. Uber, which uses new vehicles owned by their
partners and provides services with lower price compared to conventional taxi, has changed
the consumption pattern of the urbanites, including in Jakarta. The existence of “space of
flows” as proposed by Castells (1996), which is defined as remotely communicated simultaneous social practices material support, has allowed Uber, which is based in the United States,
to operate online across the world.
In the case of Uber’s operation in Jakarta, the researchers conclude that Uber’s network
power has established a network society, which has now developed into a global system with
new characteristics in the current globalization era. Even so, the findings in the research also
show certain loopholes that are not in accordance with the patterns of the network society
and informational capitalism proposed by Castells.
Uber is mostly used by the middle-class community to feel the experience previously
reserved for the “upper class community”, which is having personal drivers and private vehicles. The class issue in transportation is something characteristically Indonesian. Together
with the urban development starting from Batavia to Jakarta and recently the concept of
Smart City, the idea of owning private vehicles and personal drivers has always been thought
to raise the prestige of the passengers. However, there are still a number of issues faced by
some Jakartans who are less technologically literate, such as the surcharges applied by Uber
application during rush hours, which is often beyond their understanding.
Uber has also changed the existing employment system by opening opportunities for workers outside the range of productive ages to work as drivers and earn income. The technologybased companies have also reduced the power relations between the workers and employers.
The partners and drivers of Uber are still willing to work with the regulation stipulated by
Uber, despite only working through the application system on their gadgets. Uber has no
longer highlighted interpersonal relations. Instead, Uber accentuates human and technology
relations. However, in Jakarta, there are also Uber drivers who resist the system, for example,
by also working as Grab Car drivers.
Uber has faced several challenges in many countries, including Indonesia, due to its noncompliance toward the regulations on investment return shares between the company and
the state. However, the state’s resistance toward Uber has been responded differently by the
community. Uber, which develops their operations through a global Internet network, has
created a network society. This causes the state from initially being repressive toward Uber
to slowly being more accommodative in order to gain benefits from the operations of the
informational capitalism company.
REFERENCES
Ajidarma, S.G. (2004) Layar Kata (Words Screen). Yogyakarta, Bentang.
Arvirianty, A. (2016) Saham BIRD, dan TAXI Fluktuatif (BIRD and TAXI Stock Values Fluctuate).
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Belk, R. (2014) You are what you can access: Sharing and collaborative consumption online. Journal of
Business Research, [Online] 67 (8): 1595–1600. Available from: http://www.greattransition.org/publication/debating-the-sharing-economy [Accessed 16th December 2015].
Castells, M. (1996) The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture Volume I. Oxford, Blackwell Publishers.
Castells, M. (1997) The Power of Identity: Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture Volume II.
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Castells, M. (1998) End of Millenium: Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture Volume III.
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Damardono, H. (2013) Ayo Lawan Kemacetan (Let’s Fight Congestion). Jakarta, PT Kompas Media
Nusantara.
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Kusno, A. (2009) Ruang Publik, Identitas dan Memori Kolektif: Jakarta Pasca-Suharto (Public Space,
Identity and Collective Memory: Jakarta Post-Suharto Era). Yogyakarta, Penerbit Ombak.
Kusumawijaya, M. (2004) Jakarta: Metropolis Tunggang Langgang (Jakarta: Helter-Skelter Metropolis).
Jakarta, Gagas Media.
Rahayu, Wahyono, B., Rianto, P., Kurnia, N., Wendratama, E., Siregar, A.E. (2015) Menegakkan
Kedaulatan Telekomunikasi & Penyiaran di Indonesia (Defending Telecommunication and Broadcasting
Sovereignty in Indonesia). Jakarta, Yayasan Tifa and PR2Media.
Rahayu, Wahyono, B., Rianto, P., Kurnia, N., Wendratama, E., Siregar, A.E. (2016) Membangun Sistem
Komunikasi Indonesia: Terintegrasi, Adaptif, dan Demokratis (Establishing Indonesia Communication
System: Integrative, Adaptive, and Democratic). Jakarta, Yayasan Tifa and PR2Media.
Rhea, A. (2015) Defining the Digitally Networked Sharing Economy: A Rhetorical Analysis of Airbnb.
[Thesis] Departments of English and Economics, Texas Christian University, Forth Worth, Texas.
Saputra, I., Simbolon, C.D. & Arvirianty, A. (2016) Taksi Daring Siap Penuhi Persyaratan Pemerintah
(Online Taxis Agree to Government’s Conditions). Media Indonesia: page 1.
Schor, J. (2015) The Sharing Economy: Reports from Stage One. [Online] The Boston College. Available
from: https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/schools/cas_sites/sociology/pdf/TheSharingEconomy.
pdf [Accessed 15th January 2016].
Scott, A.J. (2012) A World in Emergence: Cities and Regions in 21th Century. Celthenham, UK,
Northampton, MA, USA, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
Shaheen, S. & Chandari, N. (2014) Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) University
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Sjafruddin, A., Widodo, P., & Kurniati, T. (2001) Demand rate and elasticity of the urban taxi service
based on the stated preference data case study in Bandung, Indonesia. Journal of the Eastern Asia
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Suwardiman. (2015) Penetrasi Internet Belum Merata (Internet Penetration has not been Evenly
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Yuliani, P.A. (2014) Tarif Taksi Naik Operator belum Untung (Rising Taxi Tariff, Operators are yet to
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Commuter line e-ticketing system and the disciplining
of urban citizens
A. Sandipungkas & L. Kurnia
Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The e-ticketing system and its following policy have managed to change the
culture of urban society in using public transportation. The e-ticketing system has changed
the perception of train stations from a dirty, crowded, unorganized, and unsafe environment
to a cleaner, safer, more comfortable, and more systematic environment. This research examines the disciplining practices in train stations and the Commuter Line trains in relation to
the implementation of the e-ticketing system. The purpose of this research is to understand
how the state political culture contributes to the process of disciplining and educating the
people through the new system.
1
INTRODUCTION
Since 2013, there has been a significant change in the Jabodetabek (the areas of Jakarta,
Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi) Commuter Line train service with the implementation of the E-Ticketing system. The system has altered the area of train stations from a
dirty, crowded, unorganized, and criminal-filled place to a cleaner, safer, more comfortable,
and more systematic environment (BeritaSatu.com, 2016). Since its implementation, it has
managed to change the culture of urban society in using public transportation (Antaranews,
2013). This research examines the disciplining practices that occur in train stations and the
Commuter Line in relation to the implementation of the e-ticketing system. The purpose of
this research is to understand how the state political culture contributes to the process of disciplining and educating the people through the automation of public transportation service.
One of the previous studies addressing the e-ticketing system is the research carried out
by Grace Ng-Kruelle, et al. entitled E-Ticketing Strategy and Implementation in an Open
Access System: The case of Deutsche Bahn (2006). The research analyses the advantages and
challenges surfacing from the implementation of the e-ticketing system for the train service
business in Germany, as well as its developmental strategies in utilizing the open access ticket
system, which gives users direct access to tickets (Loh, Kramer, & Kruelle, 2005; Kruelle,
2003 in Kruelle, 2006, p. 7). In Indonesia, Singgih Rahadi, in his thesis entitled Proses Inovasi Layanan Sistem e-ticketing pada Kereta Commuter Jabodetabek (The E-ticketing System
Innovation Process in Jabodetabek Commuter Trains) (2014), describes the innovation process
of the e-ticketing provided by PT KAI Commuter Jabodetabek. The research addresses the
motive behind the innovation, the dynamics in developing the innovative idea, as well as the
implementation strategies and the benefits of the e-ticketing system. Another study focusing on the Commuter Line station following the implementation of the e-ticketing system is
carried out by Ratna Kusmiati, in her thesis entitled, Analysis of Commuter Line Passengers
Queue toward the Exit Door of Tanah Abang Central Jakarta (2014). Kusmiati finds that the
long queues in Tanah Abang train station have not only been caused by inadequate facilities
and infrastructure, but also by problems emerging from the implementation of the e-ticketing system. Meanwhile, Abidin Kusno, in Chapter V of his book entitled Ruang Publik,
Identitas, dan Memori Kolektif: Jakarta Pasca-Suharto (Public Space, Identity and Collective
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Memory: Jakarta Post-Suharto Era) (2009), examines the public transportation policy and
its relation to the politics of urban culture. He finds that the Busway Project, as a form of
populist policy of the administration of Jakarta’s former governor Sutiyoso acts not only as a
‘shock therapy’ to resolve Jakarta’s traffic congestion issue, but also as a form of disciplining
technique in Jakarta. The Busway Project serves as an apparatus used by the city government
to restore its authoritative power before the people after diminishment following the end of
Suharto’s regime. Kusno’s research on the Busway Project is used as the model of analysis
for this research.
1.1
E-ticketing: The innovation of commuter line service
In 2008, PT KAI (Kereta Api Indonesia) created a subsidiary company called PT KAI Commuter Line (hereinafter referred to as PT KCJ) in accordance with the President’s Instruction
No. 5/2008 and the SOE Ministry Letter No. 5-653/MBU/2008. PT KCJ is established to
improve the focus and quality of the train service in the Jabodetabek area (krl.co.id, 2013),
with a scope of works ranging from public and cargo transportation businesses, maintenance
of infrastructures, support in the concession of train infrastructures and facilities, and performance based on the general purpose of implementing the principles of a limited liability
company (The Deed of Establishment of PT KAI Commuter Jabodetabek number 457:15,
2008). Previously, the Urban Transport Division of Jabodetabek, under the management
of PT KAI, operated the Commuter Line service. Since 2013, one of PT KCJ’s strategies to
achieve its main purpose is by implementing the e-ticketing system (The Internal Report of
the National Train Revitalization Technical Team: 30, 2008).
The e-ticketing, or electronic ticketing, system is an electronic card-based system in which
a computer chip containing information, such as balance, fare, and travelling plan, is planted
to replace paper-based tickets. The e-ticketing system was first implemented in American
business flights in the 1980s, and it revolutionized the conventional ticketing system through
its efficiency and practicality. The implementation of the system requires a set of operational
tools, which include electronic cards, card dispensers, and automatic gates for tapping in/
out. Generally, the benefits of the e-ticketing system are easier access for train passengers,
improvement of the service quality of the ticketing system, and optimization of revenue (NgKruelle, Swatman, and Kruelle, 2006).
The quality of the Commuter Line service and the conditions of the train stations before
the implementation of e-ticketing were problematic and far from convenient. The stations
were dirty and unorganized due to overcrowding. There were a great number of unsupervised
and unregulated illegal activities. The Commuter Line service experienced recurring delays
and technical problems. The ineffectiveness of the conventional paper-based ticketing system
also caused many problems, such as the so-called atapers, long queues, and pickpockets in
the trains and stations. The term atapers refers to passengers who sit on the roof, or atap in
Indonesian, of the trains during the ride. Some stated that the atapers are usually associated
with free riders, while in fact there are some people who buy tickets but still prefer to sit on
the roof. Thus, the management of PT KCJ considers the e-ticketing system as the appropriate solution to resolve all of these issues, while at the same time improving the service quality. This system is believed to be capable in improving the service system, while at the same
time changing the culture of the unruly passengers that have been going on for a long time
(Rahadi, 2014). Preparation for the implementation of the e-ticketing system in Jabodetabek
Commuter Line started with the sterilization process of the stations from peddlers and illegal
kiosks both within and around the stations, the closings of illegal access to the stations, and
the rearrangement of the stations in order to install the operational tools for the e-ticketing
system. The implementation of the e-ticketing system in the Jabodetabek Commuter Line
results in the usage of single and multi-trip electronic cards replacing paper-based tickets, the
usage of automatic gates for the passengers to check in and out replacing the ticket inspector officers, and the implementation of the progressive fares. In other words, the e-ticketing
system means the automation of the stations. The term ‘automation’ is derived from the word
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Figure 1. The procedure of purchasing a conventional ticket with flat rate: the same rate is applied for
both short and long-distance trips IDR 8,000. (Mechanism: purchase the ticket at the counter—obtain
the paper ticket with the destination information—ticket inspection process inside the Commuter
Line—leave the station freely).
Figure 2. The procedure for the e-ticketing system with the progressive rate: the rate for the first five
stations is IDR 2,000 and increases by IDR 1,000 for every 3 next stations. Since April 2015, the progressive rate is based on the travel distance of the commuter line in order to make it fairer. The first 25 km
is IDR 2,000, and it increases by IDR 1,000 for every next 1–10 km (Mechanism: Purchase ticket on the
counter—Obtain card ticket from dispenser—Tap the card on the automatic gate—Tap again on the
automatic gate to leave the station).
Grundrisse by Marx which refers to a time when the social structure of the capitalist society
depends heavily on the development of technology (Marx in Mulyanto, 2013).
1.2
Marginalization from e-ticketing
Before the implementation of the e-ticketing system in stations, PT KCJ had begun the sterilization process of the stations by evicting street peddlers and illegal residents and closed
illegal access for almost 7 months since 2012. This was followed by the rearrangement of
the stations, namely the installation of the operational tools required for the e-ticketing system. In carrying out the sterilization process, PT KAI as the owner of the station area collaborated with security forces to clear out the kiosks on the train platforms and the stations’
parking areas. The eviction process faced great resistance especially from the merchants and
people who had peddled and lived around the station areas for a long time. They felt that
their presence did not violate any laws, especially because they had already paid rent money
to the station administration. In certain areas, resistance even led to violent frictions between
protesters and the securities deployed by PT KCJ. Moreover, in some stations such as Pondok
Cina, Depok, an altercation occurred between the passengers and the protesters because the
Commuter Line passengers felt that the protesters’ action to close some parts of the Commuter Line railway interfered with their travel.
Although encountering resistance, PT KAI remained adamant in carrying out the eviction process for the passengers’ convenience. Ignasius Jonan as the KAI director at the time
said that the eviction was done for convenience and safety reasons, as the number of Commuter Line passengers were increasing. Jonan considers the eviction legitimate, since the
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traders’ rent contract in the station had gone up. This case is similar to the eviction targeting
street peddlers and a number of trees in certain roads in Jakarta to improve the development of the Busway Project in 2005. For the purpose of public convenience, the lower-class
citizens were forced to be evicted in the process (Kusno, 2009). This phenomenon can be
commonly found in urban areas where the lower-class citizens are marginalized for the sake
of public convenience. According to David Harvey (2006), urban restructuration, which
includes the restoration of the transportation infrastructure, must go through the ‘creative destruction’ phase with the marginalization of lower-class citizens. This also includes
those who are marginalized from political power as a result of the dispossession of their living spaces. The term ‘creative destruction’ refers to the Schumpeter theory popularized by
David Harvey (2006), which means that to build a progressive capitalistic production system
the non-capitalist system must be left to die or be destroyed first. This is then followed by
technological advancements, increased labour productivity, as well as increased efficiency
of social relations and the distribution of work for production/circulation to accumulate
maximum capital (Harvey, 2006). The practice implemented by PT KAI through PT KCJ
is a form of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2006) to implement the e-ticketing
system and to improve the quality of the Commuter Line service as the backbone of public
transportation and as a significant source of future income. The DKI Jakarta Regional
Regulation No. 5 of 2014 Article 141 on Commuter Line states that Commuter Line service
is expected to be the backbone of urban transportation in the Jabodetabek area. The Presidential Decree No. 14 of 2015 on the Master Plan for the Development of National Industry
2015–2035 also states that trains are expected to be capable of sustaining the national economic growth (the Jakarta Regional Regulation 5: article 141 of 2014 and the Presidential
Decree 14 of 2015).
1.3
E-ticketing as a disciplining technique
Jacques Ellul in the introduction of his book entitled The Technological Society states, “In
our technological society, technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency in every field of human activity” (Ellul, 1964, p. XXV). Ellul explains
that, the “techniques in the technological society blanket all human activities, and abolish
individuality in a network that transforms or obliterates the qualitative” (Ellul, 1964, pp. 284,
287). Techniques are needed by the state in order to exercise power, while simultaneously
achieving the maximum quality of the institutional functions under its control, which include
disciplinary and social-economic functions.
Before the implementation of the e-ticketing system, the spaces in the station and the train
platforms were almost without supervision and control of power. Criminal activities in the
stations were even considered as normal occurrences. The exits from the station were too lenient and led to a lack of control in the calculation of the passengers who actually paid for the
tickets. It was also difficult to control peddlers inside the stations who even used the stations
as their illegal settlements. Consequently, train stations and their platforms became dirty,
unorganized, and unruly. The root of this problem was the feeling of freedom of not being
under any supervision inside the stations and the Commuter Line trains. The e-ticketing system and its apparatus deprive them from the feelings of freedom and being unsupervised.
By purchasing and possessing the e-ticket, a person consciously registers themselves to a
system that forces them to submit to a set of rules reinforced by the system. The e-ticket also
requires a minimum nominal value that has to be paid as an insurance for every person who
uses the train service and can be reimbursed when they tap-out upon arriving at their destination. This implies that without paying a certain amount of money a person does not have the
right to enter the station. This qualification becomes the minimum standard in disciplining
train passengers following the implementation of the e-ticketing system, which is in line with
Deleuze’s argument,
The disciplinary society is composed of enclosed spaces, and individuals are continually trapped in one or another of those spaces (family, school, factory, army,
prison, and hospital) that have moulded them (Deleuze, 1992, pp. 3–5).
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In these spaces, people are being supervised and controlled so that arbitrary activities that
contradict or oppose the interest of the state’s exercise of power can be minimized or even
eliminated. Because of the implementation of the e-ticketing system on every Commuter
Line stations, we can no longer find any street peddlers selling their merchandise freely, performing street musicians, people smoking cigarettes freely, brawls between students, even
demonstrations against the government’s policy staged inside the stations and the trains.
Commuter Line service users, who are mostly citizens from satellite areas commuting to
and from Jakarta, can notice that today there are security officers patrolling and stationed
in various places inside the stations as well as inside the trains. They are aware that CCTV
cameras are installed in every train station and platform. They will hear the voice from the
loudspeakers both in stations and Commuter Line trains reminding them not to smoke and
litter, and informing them about the safety line on the platform, the waiting lounge, and
the special carriage exclusively for women. When those restrictions are broadcasted, people
will feel that these messages are directly addressed to them personally. If there is someone
who happens to litter in the stations or in the Commuter Line trains while those messages
are being broadcasted, other people will feel obliged to remind the person to stop doing
so. The feeling of being watched and the ability of the stations and the train developers to
immediately handle the offenders make every person in the stations and the trains watch
themselves and others. They are conditioned to constantly be alert and not to let one self or
another violate the rules and become the target of punishments, such as being reprimanded,
expelled, and fined.
1.4 E-ticketing and the presence of the state
Before the implementation of the e-ticketing system for the Commuter Line passengers, the
control for entering and exiting the stations and trains, especially the economy-class trains,
were loosely enforced. Illegal kiosks spread everywhere in the stations. Thousands of passengers without tickets were commonly seen in the stations and the trains. People could freely
carry any kind of objects inside the trains, such as sacks, cardboards, bicycles, vegetables,
and even farm animals like chickens or ducks. They occupied the spaces in the trains which
significantly reduced the space for other passengers. These occurrences, which happened on a
daily basis, became an enormous detriment for PT KCJ to provide quality service and caused
them as the operator of the Commuter Line service experienced a great financial loss.
The ideal purpose in implementing the e-ticketing system is to improve the service quality and increase the income for PT KAI through PT KCJ and to resolve the issues that have
prevented PT KAI from gaining potential and maximum financial profit from every train
passenger. By filtering the people entering the station area, PT KAI through PT KCJ ensures
that only those who have purchased the ticket can gain access inside the station, and only
those who possess official licenses are allowed to operate their businesses inside the stations.
The filtration through licensing and automatic gates has eliminated the potential losses for
PT KAI as happening in the past. The implementation of the e-ticketing system, along with
its regulations and supporting apparatus, ensures that the Commuter Line passengers and
the station space users are only those who are rightfully entitled to be there. In other words,
every party involved must pay to PT KAI through PT KCJ. As a result, the atapers and other
free-riders have ceased to exist. The same goes for the peddlers, both in the stations and in
the train carriages, as well as illegal residents. Most importantly, there is also a decrease of
potential criminal activities in the station areas and inside the train carriages after the implementation of the e-ticketing system (kereta-api.info, 2013).
By implementing the e-ticketing system, the state has exercised its maximum function in
controlling the source of income through the disciplining of its citizens, in this case the passengers of the Commuter Line and the parties that utilize the station areas for commercial
purposes. At the same time, the state is present through PT KCJ and exercises its function
as a protector and public servant by optimally providing comfort for those who obey the
existing regulations and mechanisms. In the end, it is clear that harmonious and regulated
cooperation from every party involved could bring benefits for all, not only for the state as
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the operator of mass transportation, but also the citizens who are in need of a public transportation system that is safe, comfortable, and free from traffic congestion.
REFERENCES
Antaranews.com. (2016) Mengubah Budaya Bertransportasi Warga Ibukota (Changing the Transportation
Culture of Jakarta Citizens). [Online]. Available from: http://www.antaranews.com/print/383155/
mengubah-budaya-bertransportasi-warga-ibu-kota [Accessed 23th May 2016].
Beritasatu.com. (2016) Direvitalisasi, Stasiun KRL Kini Megah dan Cantik (Revitalized, Train
Stations are Now Luxurious and Beautiful). [Online] Available from: http://www.beritasatu.com/
megapolitan/341823-direvitalisasi-stasiun-krl-kini-megah-dan-cantik.html [Accessed 20th May 2016].
Deed of Establishment of PT KAI Commuter Jabodetabek No. 457 of year 2008 dated 15th September
2008.
Deleuze, G. (1992) Postscript on the Societies of Control. (M. Joughin, Trans.). October 59 (Winter): 3–7.
Cambridge, MIT Press.
DKI Jakarta Regional Regulations. (2014) Number 5 Article 141.
Ellul, J. (1964) The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books.
Harvey, D. (2006) Neo-liberalism as creative destruction. The ANNALS of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science. 88 B(2),145–158.
Kusmiati, R. (2014) Analisis Antrean Penumpang Commuter Line Jabodetabek Menuju Pintu Keluar Stasiun Tanahabang Jakarta Pusat (Analysis of Commuter Line Passengers Queue toward the Exit Door
of Tanah Abang Central Jakarta). Depok, Universitas Indonesia.
Kusno, A. (2009) Ruang Publik, Identitas, dan Memori Kolektif: Jakarta Pasca-Suharto (Public Space,
Identity and Collective Memory: Jakarta Post-Suharto Era). Yogyakarta, Ombak.
Merdeka.com. (2013) Bentrok penggusuran pedagang Stasiun Duri, 11 luka-luka (Clash during Peddlers
Eviction Process in Bukit Duri Station, 11 Injured). [Online]. Available from: http://www.merdeka.com/
jakarta/bentrok-penggusuran-pedagang-stasiun-duri-11-luka-luka.html [Accessed 12th June 2016].
Ng-Kruelle, G., Swatman, P.A. & Kruelle, O. (2006) e-Ticketing Strategy and Implementation in an Open
Access System: The case of Deutsche Bahn. Germany.
Presidential Decree. (2015) Number 14. On Master Plan for the Development of National Industry
2015–2035.
PT. KAI Commuter Jabodetabek. Tentang Kami (About Us). [Online]. Available from: http://www.krl.
co.id/#m_tentangkami [Accessed 23th May 2016].
Rahadi, S. (2014) Proses Inovasi Layanan Sistem e-ticketing pada Kereta Commuter Jabodetabek
(E-ticketing System Innovation Process in Jabodetabek Commuter Trains). Depok, Universitas
Indonesia.
Rosa, D.F. (2013) KAI Sukses Halau Atapers Berkat E-ticket (KAI Succeeds in Driving Away Atapers
with E-Ticketing). [Online]. Available from: http://kereta-api.info/kai-sukses-halau-atapers-berkat-eticket-1516.htm [Accessed 23rd June 2016].
Salim, H.J. (2013) Pembongkaran 83 Kios di Stasiun UI, Mahasiswa dan Polisi Bentrok (Eviction of 83
Stalls in UI Station, Students and Polices Clash). [Online]. Available from: http://news.liputan6.com/
read/599058/pembongkaran-83-kios-di-stasiun-ui-mahasiswa-dan-polisi-bentrok [Accessed 2nd June
2016].
Seruu.Com. (2013) Penggusuran 82 Kios di Stasiun Pasar Minggu Berujung Bentrok (Eviction of 82
Stalls in Pasar Minggu Station Ends in Riot). [Online]. Available from: http://indonesiana.seruu.com/
read/2013/04/18/158334/penggusuran-82-kios-di-stasiun-pasar-minggu-berujung-bentrok [Accessed
29th May 2016].
Tim Teknis Revitalisasi Perkeretaapian Nasional. (2008) Laporan Interim Tim Teknis Revitalisasi
Perkeretaapian Nasional (Interim Report of Technical Team for the National Trains Revitalization).
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The dynamics of production and consumption in Islamic housing
J.D. Shanty & M. Budianta
Department of Literature Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This paper aims to show Islamic identity construction in Qoryatussalam
Sani, one of the new Islamic housing estates in Depok. Established in 2010 next to the KSU
road in the Sukmajaya Regency, Depok, West Java, this Islamic estate promotes the concept
of the New Madinan Society, with an underlying conservative Tarbiyah ideology. In marketing the product, this housing estate does not focus merely on the physical dimensions of
the housing, but more on the Islamic community building. This orientation can be seen in
the promotional brochures and advertisements, which stress the proposed religious activities.
The paper argues that within the increasingly strong hegemonic paradigm of the Tarbiyah
ideology, there is room for negotiation and contestation.
1
INTRODUCTION
The commodification of religion in the housing business has become rampant in Indonesia
since the fall of the New Order regime in 1998. The process of democratization after this
Reform Era has opened spaces for competing life styles and freedom of expression. Hedonism and religiosity compete in the consumer society. As a response to the fear of globalization and capitalism, many housing developers market their products with the label “Islam/
Muslim/Syar’i/Syariah” attached to the concept of their housing projects. The public interest
in housing with such labels was considerably high (Zainab, 2015). Even though some scholars
have argued that this is just a new kind of capitalism wrapped in religiosity, Islamic housing is
clearly still high on demand in urban and suburban areas in Indonesia, especially in Java.
As one of the satellite towns around Jakarta, Depok also has many Islamic housing clusters
in various locations. With a large number of the working-age population (according to Central
Bureau of Statistics in 2010, nearly 70% of the population in Depok is at the age 20–44, and a
majority of them are Muslims), Depok is a potential site for Islamic housing business. This idea
is supported by the mayor of Depok who continues to promote the existence of Islamic housing (Nurdiansyah, 2016). The demand for this Islamic kind of housing has made the housing
developers expand their business from the center to the remote areas of Depok, ranging from
the eastern part (Cimanggis) to the western part (Sawangan) of Depok, and from the northern
part (areas near Universitas Indonesia) to the southern part (Citayam) of Depok. It shows that
almost all areas in Depok are tinged with Islamic housing clusters.
For the developers whose orientation is merely on business and profit, commodification of
religion on housing business in Depok seems quite promising due to the large and increasing
number of urban middle-class Muslims in Indonesia. According to Lukens-Bull (2008), the
idea of infusing religious values into commodities is a strategic entry into the market of the
pious. However, such an assumption could be taken as a simplification of the matter because
there are some housing projects developed not to gain profit but to spread certain ideology,
such as creating Islamic spaces in the midst of urban social life whose values have become
increasingly distant from what is idealized (al-Laham, 2012). This ideological contestation
underlies the construction of residential Muslim housing as a social space that can control
and perpetuate a form of power (Lefebvre, 1991).
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Qoryatussalam Sani follows the model of other Islamic housing development by placing
the mosque, the house of worship, as the focal point that marks the public and social facilities
of the usual Islamic housing. Nevertheless, this physical aspect has never been the primary
focus in marketing its product. It is the community building that brings the target market to
this housing estate. This can be seen from the written concept on how to construct a New
Madinan Society at residential community level in its brochures which are more prominent
than the designs of the houses offered. Moreover, the advertisements of this housing also feature an ulama figure, Ustadz Amang Syafruddin, Lc., as the conceptor of the New Madinan
Society development for the residential community. Through an advertisement on YouTube,
Ustadz Amang explained further the concept of the housing that represents an idealized
Islamic community. In its effort to realize the community, Qoryatussalam Sani has managed
to entice da’wah activists to buy the property and help build the community.
By studying the production and the consumption of an Islamic housing cluster, this
research aims to investigate the process of place-making through the development of Islamic
housing with the concept of “the New Madinan Society,” used as the tagline by the developer. It will examine how the ideology of Tarbiyah is formulated and disseminated by the
housing developer of Qoryatussalam Sani through advertisements and how the concept of
the Islamic residential community is practiced by the dwellers. The data gathered for this
research consist of written texts from the brochures as well as the training manual authored
by the developer management team, and ethnographic descriptions based on a four-year
fieldwork I conducted in Qoryatussalam Sani from 2012–2016. This paper has been developed out of a concern to understand the ideology behind the place-making and structured
in two subtopics: the first one deals with issues relating to the production of the concept,
and the second one discusses the consumption continuing with the implementation phase or
reproduction of the concept.
1.1
The Tarbiyah movement in the concept of the New Madinan Society
Towards a New Madinan Society is not just as a mere tagline attached to Qoryatussalam Sani,
but also the underlying marketing concept. In Islamic discourse, the concept of a Madinan Society is a guideline that functions as a benchmark for the progress of a civilization.
It is also a representation of the hopes and dreams of Muslims in order to realize Islamic
revivalism. This concept refers to the social order city-state of Medina during the reign of
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in 622 AD (Azra, 2004: 9–11). Adhering to such a notion, the
developer, as a cultural intermediary, intended to build a community as exemplified by the
Prophet in its housing products. The concept then was developed based on what is believed
to be an Islamic way of life in accordance with the guidance of the Qur’an and hadith. It
has proved to be a quite powerful marketing strategy that can be evidenced by the number
of consumers who have bought houses based on considerations of the concept (16 out of
19 informants interviewed stated that the housing concept was an important consideration).
The desire to construct the imagined Madinan Society is represented through the content of
the brochures and YouTube video advertisement. Unlike any other housing projects intended
for the middle-class society, Qoryatussalam Sani does not use names commonly used for housing estates in Indonesia, such as Griya, Graha, Estate, or Residence. The name ‘Qoryatussalam’
is taken from Arabic meaning ‘Kampung Damai’ or peaceful village. In Indonesian the term
Figure 1. Head of the various official letters and advertising brochures of Qoryatussalam Sani housing.
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Figure 2. Page of the brochure that features notions on how to build a New Madinan community
featuring Ustad zAmang Syafruddin, Lc.
‘kampung’ (village) has a connotation that does not represent middle-class residence, but it is
often associated with a sense of warmth and humility. Meanwhile, the word ‘Sani,’ according
to some informants, means ‘Yang Kedua’ or ‘The Second’ (in Arabic ‘tsani’), assuming that
the first peaceful village is the hereafter. It turned out that the word ‘Sani’ might have referred
to the name of a person who had an important position in the development of this housing,
Mr. Herman Sani. In addition to using Arabic for its name, the representation of Islam in
this housing is reinforced by the colour green, complete with the picture of a mosque with its
minarets framed by an octagonal star as seen in its logo. The concept of a Madinan Society
intended for the housing community is further explained by a public figure from the Justice
and Prosperity Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera), the rising political party after the reform.
The figure of Ustadz Amang Syafruddin, Lc, who is active in the field of Islamic education,
appeared both in the brochures and YouTube video advertisement.
In the brochures, the concept of a New Madinan Society is presented in the form of a
concept map containing notions on how to build a community based on the example of the
Prophet’s society. It is explained that the intended New Madinan Society originates from a
‘Learning Society’. Learning and education are the key words that appear most frequently in
the brochure. The importance of education is also the final goal of the concept. Therefore, in
building this community the presence of educational forums becomes significant. The families expected to support this community are “religious and noble” families with “spiritual,
intellectual, and emotional capacities” to uphold the noble values of morality, civilization,
law, democracy, and independence. Two other terms mentioned in the brochure are the quality of being “moderate” and “democratic.” The text on the brochure is then narrated through
a video advertisement on YouTube. The last two words which suggest openness and tolerance
of differences seem at odds with Ustadz Amang’s overall concept of an Islamic way of life.
In the YouTube video advertisement uploaded on 16th March 2011, Ustadz Amang stated,
“This is how we prepare for a generation, a new generation, the generation of the Quran. It’s
a generation who loves learning, a generation who understands law, even ethics, and morals. They will grow up in an atmosphere of the reconstruction of Islamic personality....” The
religious leader also said, “Each week they (the residents) will also be involved in various
training activities, for self-development, family development, and community development.”
He invites the audience (i.e. prospective consumers) to construct “various competencies”
toward “a great and noble civilization.” In other words, this concept represents the ideals and
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Figure 3.
Qoryatussalam Sani Youtube video advertisement.
expectations which can only be achieved through congregational living with the love of learning to form an Islamic personality that leads to a Quranic (holy) generation. A strong desire to
make the values of Islam as a way of life to revive the glory of Islam is clearly expressed in the
message. The vision in building the community through activities corresponds to the function
of Tarbiyah as discussed by Hasan al-Banna (al-Banna, 2004, in Machmudi, 2010: 2).
Tarbiyah, a revolutionary socio-religious movement allegedly changed the face of Islam in
Indonesia in the 1980s and enriched the classification of Islam that originally focused only on
traditional Islam and modern Islam (Machmudi, 2008). Tarbiyah, in essence, is a reflection
of the Western concept of education (Al-Attas, 1980: 28). In the context of Indonesia today,
the term Tarbiyah is better known as the label of an Islamic movement which flourished in
secular campuses (Machmudi, 2010). This movement was then transformed in 1998 into a
political party named the Justice Party, which later turned into the Justice and Prosperity
Party (PKS) in 2003 (Machmudi, 2008: 217), a party that has won the regional elections in
Depok since 2005. The idealized concept of this housing seems to be in tune with the spirit
of the Tarbiyah movement that focuses on education.
1.2
Tarbiyah ideology dissemination through trainings
The concept of Madinan Society subsequently entered the stage of socialization through
trainings conducted by the developer for its first consumers. From the website page created
by the developer team, it is reported that the initial training was carried out on 29th August
2010 attended by 20 participants who were among the first occupants. This training confirmed that the developer had serious intentions in initiating a community. As an initiator of
the community, the developer did not organize the community developed in the housing, but
rather gave advocacy to the occupants who were expected to build the community themselves
(Stoecker, 1997:11). The occupants were supposed to be the backbone of the community.
Hence, trainings were needed to disseminate the underlying concept of the community.
According to the manual, to construct a New Madinan Society, two approaches are
required, namely cultural and structural approaches. It is mentioned that the orientation of
the cultural approach is to raise awareness and develop a habit to establish an Islamic personality, while the structural approach aims to construct a structured society whose terminal
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Figure 4. Approaches to construct a New Madinan Society. (Source: Training Manual, page 7).
Figure 5. Invocation to transform to a state of surrendering only to God. (Source: Training Manual,
pages 31 and 35).
objective is to build the civilization of Islam. The cultural approach is further elaborated in
the manual as personality development becomes the basis for disseminating the concept.
Programs with regards to moral issues and thoughts are some of the main concerns of the
Tarbiyah movement (Machmudi, 2010). Mental and moral formation is the foundation of
the fundamentalist concept of individual militancy, where life is kept simple by referring to
religious teachings. The emphasis on the spiritual (ruhiyah) aspect continually is expected to
strengthen their faith and make the people surrender only to God.
Having faith in religion involves feelings, thoughts, and behavior. Placing a religious concept over a community can be interpreted as an attempt to homogenize and naturalize the
way of feeling, thinking, and behaving as “common sense.” When religion dominates, those
who feel, think, and act outside the given guidelines might indirectly feel excluded from the
community. Therefore, religion serves as a discourse in which meanings are constructed
(Hall, 1996), while at the same time it functions as a means of tightening community ties.
In order to make religion become the living culture of a community, the developer proposed daily, weekly, and even annual agenda for the community members. These schedules
are designed with a reference to rituals of Islamic worship. These individual and collective
routines unconsciously construct experiences which influence the thinking and actions of the
people in the community. Culture in everydayness disguises the ideology underneath, so it
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Figure 6. The proposed daily agenda that suggests religious activities in public and private sphere.
(Source: Training Manual, page 40).
Figure 7. Propagating the ideology through learning groups. (Source: Training Manual, page 18).
looks natural (Hall, 1996). The ideology represented in the concept is wrapped in a religion
which regulates everydayness which makes it difficult for the members to resist. The strategy
that regulates the everydayness of the community gives structure to frame and control the
everyday practices of its members (de Certeau, 1984).
Broadening the spectrum of the ideology to a wider environment is also the expectation in
establishing this community. Groups are formed in small study circles (halaqah) that consist
of 5–10 members each, scouted continuously in competence-based levels. From those circles,
networks can be developed and widened. This community is to become a pilot project of
the New Madinan Society development that is expected to grow and affect the surrounding
areas. The tendency to share what is believed to be the truth is the reason to disseminate the
ideology (Dant, 1991).
Establishing an idealized community in commercial housing such as Qoryatussalam Sani
can be considered as an act of place-making where the intention to create public spaces that
promote religious life is capitalized (Schneekloth & Shibley, 1995). This is a political act that
encourages disciplines in pursuit of the intended religious qualities.
1.3
Implementation of the concept through the consumption of meaning
The message conveyed by the developer through the training can be seen as a discourse that is
decoded further into a new one by the consumers. Approximately 60% of the trainees (about
23 out of the 38 families) took the dominant-hegemonic reading position where the meaning of the concept was received as intended, while about 12–13 families were on negotiated
position and even fewer kept their oppositional position. Those who took the negotiated
position recognized the legitimacy of the dominant reading, but could not fully accept what
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was intended, whereas those who took the oppositional position understood the literal and
connotative meaning of the discourse, yet were in opposition to the dominant discourse
(Hall, 2001: 172–173). Therefore, the consumption of this concept faced many challenges
in its implementation. There were suspicions and fears that hindered the concept from finding its concrete form for a number of reasons. First, the colour selection of one type of the
housing resembled the official colours of the Justice and Prosperity Party. Second, the brand
ambassador of Qoryatussalam Sani, Ustadz Amang Syafruddin, L.c., was affiliated with the
same party. Lastly, the models of the community activities offered are similar to the ones in
the party.
In the first half of 2014, there was an incident caused by the resentment of the residents
toward the developer who was negligent in providing the public infrastructure and facilities
of the housing. Ustadz Amang Syafruddin who was in the front row of the director staff
became the target of their exasperation. The hatred turned to criticism of the background
and ideology of the developer. On the other hand, there were people who felt that Ustadz
Amang was the figure who was not supposed to be blamed because he was the only one who
could bridge the residents with the developer. One of the informants interviewed saw how the
conflicts escalated due to differences in understanding the daily practices and certain rituals
in Islam. He was suddenly aware of the ideology infiltrated in the neighborhood, although
he also believed that this ideology would not get a positive response if imposed. Nevertheless, this conflict split the residents into two. Although the conflict was admitted as a mere
misunderstanding and has long been considered resolved, the trauma of the dispute is still
clearly visible on both sides.
The disagreements due to the colour of the political party in this housing became the
dynamics of the early formation of the community. It ended with a “cold war” that actually exacerbated and obstructed the communication in the neighborhood management. For
a while, the activities to build the community stopped due to various disagreements among
the residents. Not long afterwards, one of the informants, a mother of six, said that she could
not remain silent and do nothing. She decided to move on and reorganized the community.
She was also one of the few mothers who decided to enliven the mosque with religious activities. They were former campus activists who used to be engaged in student organizations,
social events, and political parties. They have proven to consistently develop the small circles
in and outside the community with active Islamic study groups. These community activists
became important social actors who mobilized the community, constructed daily practices,
and educated the members of the community (Ledwith, 2011). They acted as models for other
members to determine the direction and objectives of the community by disseminating the
dominant ideology embedded in our cultural attitudes, defining what is normal and acceptable
(Thompson, 2007). The way they dress, speak, and behave becomes a common symbol system
shared with the community, as an indication that they are part of the community. In other
words, it is difficult for other community members to ignore the dominant ideology brought
by these activists.
The community activists become a model for the inhabitants and indirectly produce what
McMillan and Chavis (1986) called the boundaries of the community membership. How
these community activists present themselves is seen by its members as a representation of
kaffah (true; complete; perfect). They helped establish the community norms, direct the members to the “right” ways to frame their identity (Thompson, 2007). They always look simple
and flexible with their unassuming long, loose veils in soft colours. Their demeanor is one of
humility enhanced by polite, focused, and well-chosen vocabulary. They are hardly ever seen
to raise the intonation of their voices. They consistently work hand in hand in organizing
weekly religious studies (majelis taklim), and take turns in giving talks on light and easy-todigest materials related to everyday household routines. Gradually the other members of the
community follow and appropriate the attitude of these activists.
To strengthen the community ties, the need of similar perspectives of the world is constructed
through the frequency of interaction (Nisbet and Perrin, 1977). Therefore, the community
activists endeavoured to invite the inactive members by involving them in the communication
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Figure 8.
Community interaction using Whatsapp Groups.
network built through Whatsapp group media and assist them in forming the mentality that
suits the desired character of the community. The use of Whatsapp group has expanded from
announcements and warnings to the socialization of their programs and the monitoring of the
residents’ activity. Through the interaction in this forum, the rest of the inhabitants are aware
that their participation is monitored; thus, the actual supervision is conducted by the fellow
members of the community. The effort to influence other members has made this forum effective as a panopticon in establishing the hegemony of the Tarbiyah ideology.
2
CONCLUSION
The flourishing of Islamic housing in Depok has become a marker of the rise of a new
Islamic middle class in Indonesia. By using Qoryatussalam Sani as an illustration, this study
offers a critical perspective on the use of physical space to create a new social arena in which
political and religious ideologies overlap. Although the grandiose community development
as idealized by Ustadz Amang has not yet materialized, it has generated an organic community building embodied in the process of the place-making. It is made possible by the
space creation that invites the participation of members in the community activities. The two
words mentioned by Ustad Amang in the advertisements, “moderate” and “democratic,”
were put to test in the process. The pressure to conform to the intended Islamic way of life
shows that the utopian concept of a New Madinan Society was far from being moderate and
democratic. Although met with some resistance, the strategy used by the residential activists
in building the community has in a way been successful in reproducing the ideology. Whether
or not this residential community will become a model in spreading the Islamic community
requires further research.
REFERENCES
Al-Attas, M. (1980) The Concept of Education in Islam. Kuala Lumpur, ISTAC.
Al-Lahham, A. H.-D. (2012) Housing Communities between Islamic Freedom and Capitalist
Kaleidoscope. Architecture & Planning, 24, 99–116.
Azra, A. (2004) Menuju Masyarakat Madani (Toward Peaceful Society). Bandung, PT Remaja
Rosdakarya.
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Dant, T. (1991) Knowledge, Ideology, and Discourse. London & New York, Routledge.
de Certeau, M. (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. (S. Rendall, Trans.) Berkeley, Los Angeles, &
London, University of California Press.
Hall, S. (1996) The problem of ideology: Marxism without guarantees. In S. Hall, D. Morley, & C.
Kuan-Hsing, Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogue in Cultural Studies London: Routledge. pp. 24–46.
Hall, S. (1997) Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices. London, Sage.
Hall, S. (2001) Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works. In: M. Durham, & D. Kellner, (eds.). Malden
and Oxford, Blackwell.
Ledwith, M. (2011) Community development: A critical approach. Bristol Policy Press.
Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space. Cambridge, Mass., Blackwell.
Lukens-Bull, R. (2008) Commodification of Religion and the ‘Religification’ of Commodities: Youth
Culture and Religious Identity. In: P. Kitiarsa (ed.), Religious Commodifications in Asia: Marketing
Gods London, Routledge. pp. 220–234.
Machmudi, Y. (2008) Islamizing Indonesia. Canberra, ANU E Press.
Machmudi, Y. (2010) Islamism and Political Participation: A Case Study of Jemaah Tarbiyah in
Indonesia. The International Workshop on Islamism and Political Participation in South-East Asia:
Global Context and Trends. Sydney, Lowly Institute for International Policy.
McMillan, D.W. & Chavis, D.M. (1986) Sense of community: a definition and theory. Journal of
Community Psychology (14)1, 6–23.
Nisbet, R. & Perrin, R. (1977) The Social Bond. New York, Knopf.
Nurdiansyah, R. (2016) Walikota Depok Dukung Keberadaan Perumahan Bernuansa Islami (Depok
Mayor Supporting the Presence of Islamic Nuance Housing). Retrieved from: http://nasional.
republika.co.id/berita-/nasional/jabodetabek-nasional/16/07/26/oaxcpf365-wali-kota-depokdukung-keberadaan-perumahan-bernuansa-islami [Accessed on 15th August 2016]
Schneekloth, Lynda H. & Shibley, R.G. (1995) Placemaking: The Art and Practice of Building
Communities. New York, Wiley.
Stoecker, R. (1997) The CDC model of urban redevelopment: a critique and an alternative. Journal of
Urban Affairs, 19(1), 1–22.
Thompson, N. (2007) Power and Empowerment. Lyme Regis, Russell House.
Zainab, W.O. (2015) Di Bawah Bayang-bayang Labelisasi Syariah (Under the Shadow of Syariah
Labelling). Retrieved from: https://islamindonesia.id/kolom/di-bawah-bayang-bayang-labelisasi-sya
riah.htm [Accessed on 10th August 2015].
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Typical French linguistic process on Facebook
F.G. Junus & M. Laksman-Huntley
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The widespread use of Facebook (FB) as social media greatly affects the
development of the world’s languages. Many new forms of language have emerged as an
impact of that medium. Crystal (2006) stated that conversations using the Internet as a
medium tend to use a language variation, ‘netspeak,’ or spoken-writing. FB users prefer to
write their conversations in the way they speak. The French language, which is known for its
very complicated relationship between grapheme and phoneme, faces the same phenomenon.
This paper is based on a research on the use of the French language on FB. The aim of the
research is to describe what linguistic process occurs in the use of the French language on
FB. The data used were taken from the status blocks of 111 accounts. From each account,
we took five status blocks, so there are 555 files as corpus data. ‘Antconc,’ an application to
determine the frequency of words in a corpus, was used in processing data. The result illustrates that there are some linguistic processes, such as abbreviation, morphophonemic, and a
new phenomenon that are typical processes on FB.
1
INTRODUCTION
Language as a communication tool is continually growing and changing in human life. Over
the past decade, communication technology has grown rapidly and has become more sophisticated. Communication between individuals or groups in a community is becoming faster
and traversing geographic boundaries, crossing not only the island but also the continent.
Technological developments have changed the way people communicate. Hellen Watt (2010),
in her research on the influence of modern communication technologies on language, as
cited in Crystal, called this new era the era of written speech and spoken writing that uses
communication technology such as the Internet or social networks, which tend to be rid of
oral communication. Baron (2008) claimed that the Internet is dramatically changing the
way people communicate. This phenomenon also affects language change, both locally and
globally (Thangaraj & Maniam, 2015).
Crystal, in his book Language and the Internet (2004), stated that the use of the Internet
greatly impacts language; he used the word ‘netspeak’ to explain the use of language on the
Internet. According to Crystal, ‘netspeak’ is a language variation that occurs in graphic,
orthographic, grammatical, lexical, and discourse features. Moreover, for Crystal (as cited in
Baron, 2003) the suffix ‘speak’ in Netspeak refers not only to ‘speak’ but also to ‘write’ activities, including the receptive elements that are ‘listen and read’.
Communication technology using the Internet constantly evolves. In the history of its development, communication modes, such as iDegrees.com., LiveJournal, Friendster, LinkedIn,
MySpace, and Hi5, have already existed since 1997 and become pioneers of social networking, such as Facebook and Twitter (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). According to Ellison, Steinfeld,
and Lampe (2007) in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, social networking
sites have an orientation that ranges from contextual work (LinkedIn.com), exploration of
romantic relationships (which is the original purpose of Friendster.com), a common interest
in music and politics (MySpace.com), to campus student population (the original intention
of the establishment of Facebook.com).
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Unlike other types of social media networks, Facebook (FB) appeals enormously to the
social networking users. According to statistical data (http://expandedramblings.com/index.
php/by-the-numbers-17-amazing-facebook-stats/), there are over 1.65 billion monthly active
FB users, which is a 15 percent increase year over year. With the number of users per month
of 1.65 billion (as of the 27th April 2016), the number of FB users is far beyond that of other
social media such as WhatsApp which has a billion users (http://expandedramblings.com/
index.php/whatsapp-statistics/), Twitter with its 310 million users (http://expandedramblings.
com/index.php/march-2013-by-the-numbers-a-few-amazing-twitter-stats/), and Line with its
218 million users (http://www.statista.com/statistics/327292/number-of-monthly-active-lineapp-users/). Nowadays, FB is the most popular among social media (https://zephoria.com/
top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/). FB users spread all over the world, and all people with
different backgrounds, ethnic groups, and languages, use the site as an alternative to build
social relationships with each other. Today, statistical data (http://www.statisticbrain.com/)
states that FB is available in more than 70 languages.
The number of FB users in France until September 2015 was around 30 million. Laurent
Solly (Chantrel, 2015), the Director General of the French FB, said that today, nearly one in
two French people use FB to share many subjects. In other words, FB has become the most
popular social media in France, defeating Snapchat, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter, and others.
Children and teenager social network users in France most frequently use FB; they prefer
using FB than Snapchat (http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Young-Social-Network-UsersFrance-Love-Facebook-Snapchat/1013682#sthash.X00LQmDf.dpuf). This is why we have
based our research on the use of the French language on FB.
The data used in this study have been taken from http://www.facebook.com/. To create
corpus data, we picked out the status and its comments that were uploaded in 2015. From
the corpus of 555 files or conversations, 220,946 total word tokens, 19,105 word types, there
are 184 words to be analyzed. The data have been compared with the words, phrases, and
clauses compared to written language convention to find the linguistic processes that occur.
For phonetic transcription of every data, we refer to the Dictionnaire de la prononciation
française dans son usage réel (Martinet & Walter, 1973) and French International Phonetique
Alphabet in Bechade (1992, pp. 14–15).
1.1
Language use on FB
As a highly efficient mode of communication in the era of technology that needs speed, FB
becomes the first choice of many people. FB users not only share news, but are also able to
speak directly, such as conducting face to face conversation with others. This is the reason
that makes people prefer to communicate using social media like FB rather than to communicate with their neighbors. It is evident everywhere that people prefer to establish communication by using their gadget with other people who are physically distant from them rather
than with people around them.
The use of FB as a mode of communication not only reduces oral communication, but
has also brought a change in the use of language, especially written language. In French, for
example, we can find many linguistic changes that have occurred in the writing of words,
phrases, and clauses created by the French FB users. Changes in writing graphemes have
become very interesting. French is known as a language which is very complicated in its relation between spelling and pronunciation, while FB communication needs simplicity in writing conversations because of space and writing time limitation. Therefore, the FB comment
space becomes a lexical creativity space for French speakers. They must be smart in producing
a written conversation which is proper and communicative for reasons of language economy.
Language economy reason has no longer been relevant since 2011 when FB increased
the capacity of space from only 420 characters to a maximum of 63,206 (Protalinski, 2011).
Likewise, the providers of technological devices have made improvements by adding communication device features that enable users to write correctly; nevertheless, this lexical creation
in writing on FB conversations is still conducted by FB users and is becoming increasingly
varied.
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1.2
Linguistic processes in French conversations on FB
In their FB conversations, French language users do some lexical creation as follows:
1.2.1 Abbreviation and truncation
One of the lexical creations always done by FB users is abbreviation. It is a process of shortening words using only the initial letters of the word (Krautgartner, 2003). One type of abbreviation eliminates the end of a word or syllable known as apocope. In our corpus there are 20
data, for example, mdr (mort de rire) ‘laugh out loud’ and bg (beau garcon) ‘handsome boy,’
pv (privé) ‘private,’ and cc (coucou) ‘hello.’ However, not only at the end of syllables have FB
users eliminated letters, but they have also eliminated the segment in the middle of a word or
syncope. There are 23 data, such as in pr (pour) ‘for,’ vs (vous) ‘you,’ and dc (donc) ‘so.’ In
the process of abbreviation, the only thing occurring in the creative process of writing is that
the abbreviated form is not pronounced letter by letter, but is read based on the words that
compose it. An interesting phenomenon of the abbreviation performed by FB users is that
they abbreviate a word, phrase, or clause by using consonants which have the same pronunciation. For example, there is the replacement of the grapheme <q> with grapheme <k>, both
of which have the same pronunciation, such as /k/ as in tkt for t’inquiète /tε∼kjεt/ ‘don’t worry,’
and pk for pourquoi /pu k / ‘why,’ or the replacement of the grapheme <c> with grapheme
<s> which has the same pronunciation /s/ in the dsl for de cela /d s l / ‘thereof,’ or replacement of both <q> and <s> in psk for parce que /pars k / ‘because.’
Another lexical creation occurring in French writing on FB is truncation. According to
Bouzidi (2009), truncation is a lexical creation process consisting of deletion or removal of
one or more syllables of a word. The truncation process occurs because the word seems too
long. Unlike abbreviation, the result of truncation is read as a word, not the basic word. In
FB conversations, the users conduct some truncation processes, such as aphaeresis or omission of segments at the beginning of the word as in the word ti (petit) ‘little.’ This case refers
to what French speakers do in a verbal conversation, for example the phrase un petit peu
∼p tipø/ ‘a little bit’ which tends to be uttered as /œ
∼tipø/. Furthermore, in FB conversations
/œ
the removal of a segment at the end of the word or apocope (22 data) can also be found, as
in the word fort (fortement) ‘strongly,’ deg (degueulasse) ‘disgusting,’ pro (prochain) ‘next,’
dispo (disponible) ‘available,’ and perso (personellement) ‘personally.’
In some cases, FB users add some grapheme after doing truncation (4 data) as in frero
(frère) ‘brother,’ and bise (bisous) ‘kiss.’ They also replace the grapheme <s> with <z> like in
biz (bisous). The purpose of these additions or replacements is that the final consonant in
the truncated word can be pronounced or pronounced differently. However, there is also an
addition on truncated words that does not change the pronunciation of the word, as in choux
(chouette) ‘great,’ which is a modified writing that does not alter the meaning of the word.
Moreover, FB users also reduplicate words that have been truncated (5 data), such as dodo
(dormir) ‘sleep,’ mimi (mignon/e) ‘cute,’ and tata (tante) ‘aunt.’
1.2.2 Morphophonemic
FB users also seem to write their conversations with alternative words that have the same pronunciation as the words or phrases to which they refer, or they write the conversations on FB
as if in verbal conversations, whereas the trend in a verbal conversation is that the speakers
frequently change phonemes. Phoneme change occurs mainly when there is a meeting of two
or more morphemes, a phenomenon that is called morphophonemic. In French, omission, or
the process of removing a segment of the phonetic context, often occurs. This usually occurs
because of the emphasis on segments that follow, for example, the removal of the last vowel
of a word when the following word also begins with a vowel. Another example is the removal
of the vowel /y/ which is represented by a grapheme <u>. It can be seen from the change of
tu es /ty e/ ‘you are’ to tes /te/, or the clause tu as /ty–a/ ‘you have’ to tas /ta/. The last is still
experiencing another removal of a non-pronounced grapheme <s> and becomes ta /ta/.
The omission that is the most common in verbal conversations is the omission of schwa / /.
This omission occurs in two cases. First, the omission occurs on the first syllable of a phrase
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or clause due to the emphasis on segments that follow. Second, when a clause contains multiple schwas, then the first schwa will be eliminated. In FB conversations, any omission in the
first case is illustrated by the removal of grapheme <e>, which represents the pronunciation
of schwa as in dla (de la) ‘of the,’ and jsui (je suis) ‘I am.’ The second case can be seen in the
writing of the clause jme (je me).
1.2.3 Other linguistic processes in FB conversations
In FB conversations, users seem to arbitrarily write a word, phrase, or clause. They only rely
on the pronunciation of those words because when the words are detached from the context of
the utterance, they would not have the same meaning as referred to in the context. There are 18
data, for example sa ‘his/her’ for ça ‘it,’ mes ‘my’ for mais ‘but,’ and foi ‘faith’ for fois ‘time.’ They
also write words that have other grammatical forms (3 data) such as quel ‘which’ (masculine)
to replace quelle (feminine), because both have similar pronunciation. FB users freely use some
words that do not exist in French (10 data), as in ke (que) ‘that,’ ‘who,’ kan (quand) ‘when,’ and
koi (quoi) ‘what.’ Moreover, they do not write letters that are unpronounced like some final
consonants such as s, p and t in the words (6 data) ouai (ouais) ‘yeah,’ tro (trop) ‘too,’ and vien
(vient/viens) ‘come’ or unpronounced graphemes in verbal conversations such as <l> and <ls>
as in the subject pronoun il or ils. In other cases, these two subjects are also replaced by <y>.
These two cases occur when the pronoun subject is followed by a verb with a consonant initial,
such as i prend ‘he takes’, i sont ‘they are,’ y parle ‘he speaks,’ and y va ‘he goes.’
Another form created by FB users is replacement where they replace a word or clause
with a single alphabet (6 data) which has the same pronunciation as the word or the clause
referred to, such as in a (as) ‘have,’ c (c’est) ‘it is,’ and g (j’ai) ‘I have.’ They also replace
nasal final vowels in the interjection ben /bã/ with oral vowels such as ba /ba/ and beh /be/.
The phenomenon of written oral conversation in French FB conversations is also seen in
the presence of several dialects, such as the dialect of Southern France nan (non) ‘no’ and
oue (ouais) ‘yes’ or the dialect of Northern France which is known as Chtimi, ch that refers
to c’est.
Another interesting thing in written conversations on FB is the siglaison or sigle formation
which is categorized by Bouzidi (2009) as an acronym. Unlike abbreviation, acronyms are not
spelled letter by letter but are pronounced as a word. Acronyms are made not only by taking
the initial letters of each word, but also other elements of the basic word, such as the syllable.
The acronymization (Beard, 2001; Bouzidy, 2009) takes place in order to ease pronunciation. FB users apply some acronymization that has similar pronunciation with a phrase or
referral clause. The differences are minimal and often overlooked in verbal conversations. An
example is in ct /sete/ which replaces c’était /setε/ ‘it was’; or at tmtc /teemtese/ which replaces
toi même tu sais /t m mtys / ‘you, yourself know’; and in oklm /ok elem/ that replaces au
calme /okalm / ‘be calm.’
Also found in FB conversations as frequently as in verbal conversations is ellipsis. Ellipsis
is the omission of certain elements in a sentence. In verbal communication, the speakers often
omit the negation ne in their utterance. An example is c’est pas instead of ce n’est pas ‘it is
not,’ In FB conversations, the acronym for this ellipsis is seen in jpp / pepe/ which stands
for je peux pas / pøp / ‘I cannot’ or jmp / i mpe/ stands for j’aime pas / mp /‘I do not like.’
The ellipsis of the subject il occurs in ya (il y a) ‘there is’ and fo (il faut) ‘it must.’ The latter
example replaces the digraph <au> with <o> which is homophonous, and a the omission of
final consonant <t> which is not pronounced in oral communication.
FB users during some conversations often create an atmosphere as if they are communicating orally or face to face. It is seen from the abbreviation which shows some action such as
mdr (mort de rire) ‘laugh out loud’ (7 data), and ptdr (pété de rire) ‘laugh so hard’ (4 data).
Moreover, in writing some of these expressions, they also make some repetition to give the
impression of long duration, as in mdrrrrr, mdddr, and ptdrrrr. The repetition also performed
on the final vowel in a word gives the impression that the duration of “saying” the words is
very long as in merciiiiii (merci) ‘thank you’ or ouiii (oui) ‘yes.’
People sometimes use argot in verbal conversation. According to Dubois (1999, p. 105),
argot is all words, phrases, or grammatical forms used by people from the same social group or
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profession to distinguish them from other groups. FB users tend to use argot (8 data) to give a
different impression in their talk. For example, the word kiffer (aimer) ‘love,’ taffer (travailler)
‘work’ (verb), taffe (travail) ‘work’ (noun), gosse (enfant) ‘child,’ niquer (faire l’amour) ‘make
love,’ and wesh (salut) ‘hi.’ All of these argots are loaned from Arabic, while from English the
argot is oki (d’accord). Another argot known as verlan is also used by FB users. Verlan is an
argot in the French language featuring inversion of syllables in a word, and it is very common
in youth language, for example: meuf (femme) ‘woman’ and tof (photo) ‘photo.’
As in verbal conversation, FB users also perform ‘code switching’ in their conversation. It
was found in the data that they switch the French language into several other languages, such
as English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic. FB users do implement code switching into
English only on special occasions, such as while saying “Happy birthday” or “I love you” and
also when answering comments from friends who speak English. Meanwhile, FB users use
code switching into Spanish and Portuguese when they comment on the status or photos or
reply to their friends’ comments written in those languages. For example, in Spanish “Eres un
Fenomeno cariño” ‘you are very remarkable, dear’ or, in Portuguese “obviamente” ‘of course.’
Therefore, it can be concluded that code switching into Spanish and Portuguese is situational.
Likewise, the use of Arabic occurs in the use of argot as kiffer, taffer, etc. In some online
dictionaries, such as Reverso, Linternaute, Exionnaire, those argots have been entered as a
new vocabulary in French, but in Word Reference and Larrouse online, only taffe and kiffer
have become the entries.
However, the number and frequency of foreign languages used in FB conversations are
very small compared to the use of the French language itself. Based on the interviews conducted, French FB users also use a language other than French with friends who cannot
speak French, for example, by using English, Spanish, créole marocaine, or French Patois,
Japanese, and Indonesian. In situations when they have to use foreign languages, they prefer
to use English which allows them to communicate with friends from around the world. Thus,
it can be said that French FB users are more proud in using French than other languages
because they speak more in French than other languages, and they switch from French to
another language merely on some occasions.
2
CONCLUSION
Creative processes of writing by FB users are abbreviation, morphophonemic, and other linguistic processes. The first two processes are commonly performed in general writing, while
the latter process is typical in written FB conversations. In writing and understanding conversations, users rely heavily on an understanding of the context because the words which are
written sometimes have another meaning or no meaning at all when they are removed from
the context. A typical thing in FB conversations is FB users trying to animate the situation of
a verbal conversation and package it in a variety of abbreviations as an activity record during
a conversation. They also do creative writing with the aim of reinforcing the impression that
the conversation is ‘exactly’ reported as it is.
This is in line with Barron (2008) and Crystal (2004), who explain that communication on the Internet, although in a written form, feels more like talking than writing.
It also confirms what is stated by Crystal (2004) that netspeak also arises at the level of
grapheme. The phenomenon of language use and their change on FB as we found in this
research not only confirms what is said by Crystal about netspeak but also indicates the
tendency of French people to simplify French orthography. This phenomenon may show
the aspiration of the French speakers to change the spelling (orthography) of French—
which is renowned as being very complicated—to be easier and simpler. However, it still
needs further research.
Although this phenomenon seems to show that French FB users want an alteration in
French orthography, they remain proud of the French language, which can be seen from the
frequency in the use of French as being much higher than that of other languages in their
conversations. In addition, from the interviews conducted, French FB users said that they
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used other languages in their conversations just in order to build communication with people
from all over the world. These facts may also indicate that French FB users are now more
open or have a more positive attitude towards foreign languages.
REFERENCES
Bamman, D., Eisenstein, J. & Schnoebelen, T. (2014) Gender identity and lexical variation in social
media. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 18(2), 3–46.
Baron, N.S. (2003) The language of the Internet. In Farghali, A. The Stanford handbook for language
engineers. Stanford: CSLI.
Barron, N.S. (2008) Always on: Language in an online and a mobile world. New York: Oxford University.
Beard, R. (2001) Derivation. In Spencer, A. & Arnold, Z. M. The handbook of morphology (pp. 44–65).
Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers.
Bechade, H.D. (1992) Phonetique et morphologie du Français: Moderne et contemporain. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France.
Besner, D. & Smith, M.C. (1992) Basic process in reading: Is the orthographic depth hypothesis
sinking? In Frost, R. & Katz, L. (Eds.) Orthography, phonology, morphology and meaning (pp. 45–66).
Amsterdam: Elsevier Publisher B.V.
Bouzidy, B. (2009) Créativité lexicale par réduction en français contemporain. Synergies Algérie, 5,
111–117.
Boyd, D.M. & Ellison, N.B. (2007) Social network sites: Definition, history and scholarship. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication. 13(1), 210–230.
Burki, A., Fougeron, C., & Gendrot, C. (2007) On the categorical nature of the process involved in
schwa elision in French. Interspeech, 1026–1029.
Chantrel, F. (2015) Facebook dépassse les 30 millions d’utilisateurs actifs en France. In Blog du
Moderateur. Retrieved from http://www.blogdumoderateur.com/facebook-france-30-millions/.
Coëffé, T. (2016) Les 50 chiffres à connaître. In Blog du Moderateur. Retrieved from http://www.
blogdumoderateur.com/50-chiffres-medias-sociaux-2016/.
Crystal, D. (2004) Language and internet. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Dubois, J. (1999) Dictionnaire de la langue française: Lexis. Paris: Larousse-Bordas.
Durrand, J. (2009) L’alphabet phonétique international. In Herrenschmidt, C., Mugnaioni, R. M.Savelli, J. & Touratier, C. Le monde des écritures. Paris: Gallimard. 1–19.
Fagyal, Z., Kibbee, D., & Jenkins, F. (2006) French a linguistik introduction. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Fromkin, V., Rodman, R. & Hyams, N. (2003) An introduction to language. USA, Wadsworth.
Krautgartner, K. (2003) Techniques d’abréviation dans les webchats francophones. Linguistik online,
15(3/03), 47–67.
Lampe, E. C., & Steinfield, C. (2007) Benefits of Facebook “friends”: Social capital and college studenst’
use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1143–1168.
Léon, P. (1992) Phonétisme et prononciation du français. Paris: Nathan.
Martinet, A., & Walter, H. (1973) Dictionnaire de la prononciation française dans son usage réel. Paris:
France Expansion.
Philips, S. (2007) A brief history of Facebook. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/
technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia.
Pooley, T. (1996) Chtimi: The urban vernaculars of Northern French. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters
Ltd.
Protalinski, E. (2011) Faceook has increased the status update box character limit to 63.206. That’s
more than a 12-fold increase the last limit of 5.000 characters. Retrieved from http://www.zdnet.com/
article/facebook-increases-status-update-character-limit-to-63206/#!.
Smith, C. (2016) By the numbers: 200+ Amazing Facebook User Statistic. Retrieved from http://
expandedramblings.com/index.php/by.the.numbrs-17.amazing-facebook-stats/.
Thangaraj, S. & Maniam, M. (2015) The influence of netspeak on students’ writing. Journal of Education
and Learning, 9(1), 45–52.
Watt, H.J. (2010) How does the use of modern communication technology influence language?
Contemporary issues in science communication and disorders (144–148).
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Indonesian-English code-switching on social media
M. Aulia & M. Laksman-Huntley
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: In most Indonesian urban cities, code-switching is not related to the use
of regional languages but to the use of English, which is taught in schools. In addition,
many city dwellers also receive exposure to the language by contact with English speakers,
which may occur extensively in daily conversations. This research aims to investigate the
way speakers communicate on the internet, particularly through social media. Even though
virtual communication is expressed through the medium of writing, it still has features of
a speech act. Preliminary research was conducted in 2015 to describe the code-switching
used by radio announcers. Previous study showed that intrasentential switching occurred
mostly in conversations, and it relates to the speaker’s ability to speak both languages. In
this research, the authors highlight the frequency of code-switching on social media by
examining 30 Facebook status updates of a radio broadcaster. The research uses a qualitative method by analyzing the topic of the statuses and its correlation with the language
used. The result shows that the participant uses English to express herself, while Indonesian
is used only when she is triggered by something in Indonesian or about Indonesia, and to
promote products.
1
INTRODUCTION
Speaking two or more languages within an utterance is common in multicultural countries
such as Indonesia. This is based on people’s need to communicate across cultures leading
to language contact. The contact may take the form of bilingualism relating to codeswitching (Appel & Muysken, 2005). However, in most Indonesian urban cities, codeswitching is not related to the use of regional languages but to the use of English. This
phenomenon occurs extensively not only in daily conversation but also in mass media,
such as radio.
If we listen to most conversations on radio shows in Jakarta, the broadcasters often use a
mix of Indonesian and English. This kind of language use occurs frequently in almost every
radio programme on most radio stations. This language mixing may reflect the bilinguality
of both the speakers and the listeners.
Research about code-switching in radio has been conducted before (Aulia, 2015), and the
results show that there were 725 code-switching in the recorded conversations. According
to Poplack (1980), code-switching is divided into three types: intersentential switching,
intrasentential switching, and tag switching.
As a continuation of the study by Aulia, this research examines how one of the radio
broadcasters, whose conversations were investigated in the earlier study, uses her language.
The investigation focuses on the use of Indonesian and English, and how they are used
through the social media, particularly on her Facebook status updates. This starts with a
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question: How does the radio broadcaster use her language on Facebook? In other words,
does she use Indonesian-English code-switching when she writes as she does when she speaks?
Crystal (2001) states that language used on the internet has features of spoken discourse,
although it is written. Therefore, by conducting this research, the authors can identify if there
is a difference between code-switching used by the broadcaster when she speaks and when she
writes a written form of a spoken language on Facebook.
Using a qualitative method, this research analyzed 30 status updates of a radio broadcaster on her social media account, Facebook that were collected in May 2016. The analysis identifies the pattern of language use, particularly code-switching between Indonesian
and English, on the status updates. The factors of the occurrence of code-switching are also
investigated to identify the speaker’s motivation to switch languages.
2
CODE-SWITCHING ON FACEBOOK
Poplack (1980) defines code-switching as the alternation of two languages within a single
discourse, sentence, or constituent. She divides code-switching into three types: intersentential switching, intrasentential switching, and tag switching. In this research, the language switch found in the data is separated mostly between discourses. Intersentential
and intrasentential switching occurs only at the level of words and phrases, as well as tag
switching.
The result shows that language switch often occurs on the broadcaster’s Facebook status
updates. Thirty status updates were investigated, 18 are in English, four are in Indonesian,
and 8 updates are a mix of both languages. It was found that there are certain patterns in
choosing the language she uses when she writes her status updates. The following are some
examples found in the data.
Status updates in Indonesian
“Saya bersama Yuyun.”
(‘I am with Yuyun.’)
(attachment: a picture inscribed with the words ‘Saya Bersama Yuyun #Nyala
UntukYuyun’, with a long caption written in Indonesian about a girl named Yuyun)
“Terharu pagi2:’)”
(‘Still early but I am touched.’)
(Attachment: a video of two Indonesian citizens taking part in a talent show in
England, with a caption written in Indonesian)
Indonesian is used to write a status if it is shared together with an attachment (pictures,
videos, articles) relating to issues about Indonesia or the Indonesian language. In other examples found in the data, Indonesian is also used to promote some products. Therefore, status
updates in Indonesian occur only if the language user is triggered to use it.
− Status updates in English
“Hosted the launching of Fitflop new collection for Spring Summer 2016. This is
definitely the most comfortable I’ve been MCing an event. Thanks to the footwear.”
(Attachment: a picture of herself)
“Lotsa stuff on FB (or internet in general) can turn you into a depressed cynic.
Thanks Chewbacca Mom for bringing back good ol simple fun to my timeline. Go
get em!” (Attachment: an English article about a person dressed in Chewbacca costume, with pictures)
From the topics and the attachments included in the status updates above, English is used to
express herself. English is also used to talk about her personal life. This shows that personal
thoughts and reflections are mostly written in English.
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− Statuses in Mixed Languages
There are two types of language mixing in this category. The first type is status updates in
Indonesian with a slight occurrence of English as seen in the example below.
“Hari ini Tiga Mami Kece ngobrol-ngobrol dengan majalah Mother & Baby, mengenai
me-time, persahabatan, dan peran ibu. Seru banget!
Tunggu cerita lengkapnya di Mother & Baby Indonesia edisi Juni.”
(‘Today Three Cool Mommies chit chat with Mother & Baby magazine about metime, friendship, and mother’s role. So exciting! Wait for the full story in Mother &
Baby Indonesia June edition.’)
(Attachment: a picture of herself with her two friends)
The second type is status updates in English with a slight occurrence of Indonesian, for
example as below.
“That’s right girls. The only BS you need to have in your lives are Bags and Shoes.
Camkan.”
(‘Note that.’)
(Attachment: a picture of her two children holding a purse)
The occurrence of one language when talking in a different language is found in the data,
as shown in the examples above. The broadcaster’s reason to choose which language to use,
based on the authors’ observations of the base language used to write the statuses, remains
the same as previously described. Indonesian is used to promote some products and English
is used to talk about personal life. The occurrence of the other language is significantly lower
compared with the base language used in the whole discourse of the status updates, which
only occurs at the level of words, short sentences, or taglines.
2.1
Language and identity
As we mentioned above, from 30 Facebook status updates observed, 18 were in English and
three were in English with a slight occurrence of Indonesian. Thus, it can be said that there
are 21statuses that were written in English (the occurrence of one language in the other one
is discussed on (10) in 2.2), which shows that English is used more than Indonesian.
In these 21status updates, the subject mostly talks about herself, her family, and her friends.
The topics also focus on expressing her thoughts, daily activities, or trips abroad with friends.
By using a particular language to talk about all of these, it is expected that there are reasons
for her language choice.
Fishman (1965) states that one of the factors of language choice is the desire to be identified as a member of a group. Guy (1988) also states that language relates to identity. This
means that a person can show his/her identity from the language he/she uses.
In Indonesia, the use of English has a particular effect in the society. A person who can use
English is considered as someone who has higher status than those who can only use Indonesian. As a fact, English language learning can be accomplished only through education,
therefore, being educated means that a person is more likely to be able to move to a higher
social status. Another reason that has more to do with a phenomenon in the mindset of the
Indonesian society, is that by embracing all “Western” features, one would be regarded as
being modern and superior. Then, a person will be considered or consider him/herself inferior if he/she cannot adapt to modernity. This relates to what Edwards (2009) explains about
Asian societies. They often think that European languages are superior, and this is not based
on linguistic reason but on the experience of those language societies. This mindset about
superior-inferior is the reason why English is considered a social status determinant.
Therefore, the 21status updates written in English can be related to the subject’s identity.
Below is another example:
“Our next vlog series will be on Sydney, an urban wonderful of glamour and natural charm. We saw and cruised the beautiful harbor, enjoyed the dynamic cultural
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landscape and innovative fashion scene, proved its gastronomical reputation, and
experienced for ourselves an outdoor lifestyle more vibrant than anywhere else.
Subscribe to our Youtube channel and join us as we explore one of the world’s most
iconic cities, and see for yourselves why we fell madly in love with Sydney.” (attachment: a link to a vlog about her trip to Sydney)
Here, she talks about her experience exploring Sydney, a city in Australia, and the activities
she did in that city. By using English, there is an impression that she has a particular social
status making her different from the others. Readers also get the impression that she reflects
something that is perceived to belong to a higher class by the society.
English structure is used to write her English status updates. Indonesian structure in those
statuses is not found. This means that she can distinguish both structures so that there is no
language interference or the use of one language pattern in another.
2.2
Language and situation
There are four status updates written only in Indonesian, while there are five status updates
written in Indonesian with a slight occurrence of English. It can be said that there are nine
status updates written entirely in Indonesian. The authors found that she uses Indonesian
only if she is triggered by pictures, articles, or videos in Indonesian or about Indonesia. See
an example below.
“Buat Ahok!”
(‘For Ahok!’)
(Attachment: a picture of herself holding her identity card, standing beside a banner
inscribed with the words ‘KTP Gue Buat Ahok’ [‘my identity card is for Ahok’])
Fishman (1965) states that one of the factors of language choice in multicultural societies is
a situation. He stated that there are some particular situations that can make a person choose
one language over the other, and that one thing relating to a situation is his/her surrounding.
In the example above, Indonesian is used because of a situation. The status is shared with
a picture of a banner inscribed with Indonesian words. It can be said that the banner is the
trigger for her to use Indonesian.
The use of Indonesian to promote something is also found in the data.
“Buibuk, kalau mau cari buah-buahan segar berkualitas main2 aja ke Citos, di atrium
lagi ada Melbourne Market yang jual buah2an aneka rupa dan sayur-mayur segar
yang semuanya produksi Victoria, Australia. Gampangnya sih kapan aja bisa belanja
ke Hypermart dan Foodmart, selalu tersedia berbagai pilihan buah-buahan segar, termasuk buah2 berkualitas terbaik Victoria ini.
Live healthy, eat healthy, eat Australian fruits!” (‘Moms, if you want to find good
quality fruits just go to Citos. In the atrium, Melbourne Market is selling various
fresh fruits and vegetables produced in Victoria, Australia. You can find them easily at any time in Hypermart and Foodmart, they always provide various choices
of fresh fruits, including these good quality fruits from Victoria. Live healthy, eat
healthy, eat Australian fruits!’) (attachment: a picture of herself hosting an event)
The example above can also be related to a situation. The status update is shared with a picture of herself hosting an event. By using Indonesian to promote a product, in this case Australian fruits, and writing in Indonesian to update her status, she repeats what she said earlier
as the host of the event. The combination of the picture and the topic can be considered as a
situation triggering the use of Indonesian.
We can also see an English sentence in the example. Nevertheless, the occurrence does not
affect the examination of the whole status because it is only used as a tagline for the event.
Taglines generally are said to fulfill the need to communicate the values of a product; it is not
something that a person chooses to say about what he/she thinks.
Fishman (1965) also states that another factor of a language choice is topic. He said that
one of the things that relates to topic is the need for specific terms that can be used to make a
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conversation more effective and easier to understand. A person will use a particular language
if he/she thinks that it has a more precise word than in any other languages as seen in the
example below.
“My latest blog is about Lilou’s Jedi Camp Birthday party last month, and how
our family’s collective love of Star Wars will be one of our shining lights to guide
us through the galaxy of mess and troubles in life. Lebay? Maybe a little bit. If you
love Star Wars, read this, you must. If you’re just stuck in traffic, read this, you can.”
(‘exaggerating’) (Attachment: a link to her blog, with a picture of her daughter)
In the data above, she used the Indonesian word lebay as a language switch. There is an
equivalent word in English, which is ‘exaggerating’, but lebay is considered more powerful
to express her feelings, so she chose to switch to Indonesian. The example above is what we
have mentioned earlier in 2.1. in which the occurrence of one language in another can also be
found in the data. Another example of this discussion is found in the status update (5).
2.3
Language on the internet
Crystal (2001) states his view about the use of language on the internet. He used the term
netspeak to name the conversations that occurred on social media. He states that although
it is written, language that is used on the internet is much more like spoken language. This
means that people are likely to use a spoken style rather than a written style when they communicate via the internet.
There are various forms of netspeak found in the data. In example (2), netspeak can be identified with the use of ‘2’ as a reduplication form and a face symbol to reflect self-expression. In
example (4), netspeak can be identified in the form of lotsa (lots of), ol (old), and em (them). These
compressions occur so that the writing process can be done more quickly, similar to other examples found in the data such as omg (oh my god), BS (bull shit), and congrats (congratulations).
From 30 status updates posted on Facebook, netspeak only occurs in nine updates in which
five are written in English and four are in Indonesian. Netspeak in English occurs in the form
of a compression style, while netspeak in Indonesian occurs in spoken style of written words
and the use of ‘2’ as a reduplication. The few occurrences of netspeak in the data are most
likely caused by the medium of the language: the status updates. In social media, a status is a
one-way communication, where a person does not need to converse with another person, like
chatting. Unlike chatting, which needs more speed and simplicity in replying messages, status
writing provides more time for the writer to express what he/she wants to express. Therefore,
most status updates that are posted are still in a written style.
If we relate this to the previous study, this study attempts to compare the occurrence of
code-switching in a particular speaker, i.e. if the large quantity of code-switching occurs
in his/her spoken language it will also appear in his/her written language as netspeak. The
result shows that the occurrence of a language switching in a status update generally varies
depending on the topic. In other words, code-switching when speaking is not likely to occur
in writing. As it was mentioned before, these status updates are in a written style and English
netspeak only occurs in the form of compression.
3
CONCLUSION
Based on this study, we can conclude that the speaker has a language preference when updating her statuses on Facebook, which refers to her identity and the situation. She uses English
to write about her personal life and to express herself, and this relates to her desire to create
a particular identity to be seen by society. Meanwhile, she uses Indonesian when triggered by
something in Indonesian or about Indonesia and to promote some products. This means that
she needs particular situations in which to use Indonesian. Nevertheless, this conclusion is
made based only on analyzing the data. A further study about this case needs to be done by
interviewing the subject to understand her exact language attitude.
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Netspeak is found in the data, although it is not frequent. It is presumably because a
Facebook status is a one-way communication, so the time taken to write it is slightly longer.
It is different from a two-way communication, like chatting, that does not provide a long time
to reply to messages.
The theory about netspeak expects the researcher to analyze the subject’s language switch
in her writing, and compare it with the results found in the previous study (Aulia, 2015).
However, the language style found in the data are mostly written not spoken, so there is no
code-switching as when a radio broadcaster talks orally during a radio show. The only thing
that occurs is a patterned language switch based on what the radio broadcaster is talking
about. English structure is also used in the radio broadcaster’s status update in English.
In other words, those status updates are not literal translations of Indonesian causing
language interference.
REFERENCES
Appel, R. & Muysken, P. (2005) Language Contact and Bilingualism. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University
Press.
Aulia, M. (2015) Bentuk-bentuk Alih-kode di Radio. Prosiding Seminar Nasional Sosiolinguistik–
Dialektologi (Forms of Code-switching in Radio. Proceedings of The National Seminar on
Sociolinguistics Dialectology), FIB UI, 9–10 November 2015, 264–269.
Crystal, D. (2001) Language and the Internet. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Edwards, J. (2009) Language and Identity: An Introduction. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Fishman, J.A. (1965) “Who speaks what language to whom and when?” in: Wei, L. (eds.) The Bilingualism
Reader. London, Routledge. pp. 82–98.
Guy, G.R. (1988). “Language, social class, and status” in: Mesthrie, R. (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook
of Sociolinguistics. New York, Cambridge University Press. pp. 159–185.
Poplack, S. (1980) “Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish y Termino en Español: toward a typology
of code-switching”. in Linguistics. 18 (7/8), 581–618.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Use of English hedges by 12 learners in academic writing:
A case study of pragmatics
Y. Widiawati & F.X. Rahyono
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The main purpose of academic writing is to inform other researchers about
the writers’ findings in certain research. In this case, the writers will propose claims. For nonnative English speakers like Indonesians, this is a tough task to do. L2 learners find difficulty
in writing academic texts or making claims. One of the strategies that L2 learners use is using
hedging devices. This study aims to identify the hedges in academic writing produced by
Indonesian researchers or writers. According to Levinson (1987) in his theory of FTA (Face
Threatening Act), those words mostly function as a tool for speakers or writers to make them
comfortable and save negative face. It means that the writers should choose the appropriate
words to achieve their communicative goals. The data were taken from 5 dissertations written in English. The method used is a descriptive-qualitative analysis. The study focuses on 2
kinds of hedging strategies proposed by Hyland (1996), namely, writer-oriented hedges and
reader-oriented hedges. The first strategy consists of (1) passive voice, (2) dummy subjects,
and (3) abstract rhetors. The latter consists of (1) personal attribution and (2) conditionals.
The results reveal that writer-oriented hedges, such as: passive constructions and dummy
subjects, are the most frequent hedging devices used by Indonesian researchers. The conclusion of this study is that Indonesian researchers frequently used passive constructions and
modality (can, may, might, should). It means that Indonesians like to let the data talk for
themselves in order to avoid a potential conflict and hence maintain a harmony between the
writer and readers.
1
INTRODUCTION
For most Indonesians writing in a foreign language is difficult. It is a difficult task for
L2 learners of English, especially when they have to write academic texts or writings. As
members of a particular discourse community or researchers or writers, they wish to publish
their works or findings in international journals. To reach this goal, the use of hedges in their
writing will be important as hedges can be used in conforming to academic writing standards
(Banks, 1996).
It was Weinrich (1966) who first introduced the word “hedge”. He called these devices
“metalinguistic operators”. A few years later, Lakoff (1972) in his article entitled Hedges:
A Study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts made this concept more popular
and it has created the greatest initial impact. Lakoff defined this concept as “words whose
functions are to make meanings fuzzier or less fuzzy”. He said that “sort of ” is an example
of a hedge. The following year Fraser (1975) introduced the hedged performative. He states
that a hedged performative is based on the use of modality, such as: will, can, must or semi
modality like want to, would like to, wish to.
Hedges are pragmatic features that the speakers or writers use to strengthen their assertions,
tone down uncertain or potentially risky claims, emphasize what they believe to be correct,
and appropriately convey collegial attitudes to the listeners (Hyland, 1996). Myers (1989)
also states that hedges can be used to mitigate propositions. Hedges will help reach “the
optimal relevance” (Sperber and Wilson, 2001) between speaker and listener or writer and
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reader. The writer should make some choices in strategy and linguistic forms in order to
adapt to his or her intentions. Hedges are often chosen to achieve goals. Brown and Levinson
define hedges as particles used to mitigate propositions to less strong. Indonesians are well
known as friendly people who like to keep a low profile. Most of them can easily make
friends with others, both local and foreign people. They show intimacy and warmth to people
around them (Maryanto, 1998).
Furthermore, Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness (1987) states that an FTA is a
violation of the speakers’ or writers’ privacy and freedom of action, for which hedges could
provide a possible compensation. Hence, negative politeness enables the speaker or writer
to go on record, but with redress, which means that the speaker or writer makes an effort to
minimize the imposition of his/her claims.
Hedges may also influence writers when they write texts, especially academic texts. This
argument is supported by Hyland (1996) who states that academic texts are full of hedges.
Hedges (particles, lexicons, and clausal hedges) are pragmatic markers that attenuate or
weaken claims. Academic texts or scientific texts are not only content-oriented and informative, but also seek to convince and influence their audience. There is an increasing number
of research studies about the use of hedges in a variety of disciplines (for example: Hyland,
1994, 1996, 1998, 2000; Salager-Meyer, 1991, 1994, 1998; Skelton. 1997; Meyer, 1997). In
addition, Myers (1998) examined a corpus of biology research articles.
In scientific writing, vagueness can be seen as a motivating factor for the use of hedges, for
example in the case of where some exact data is missing or if precise information is irrelevant
in the preliminary results. Hedges will protect writers from making false statements by indicating either lack of commitment to the truth value of propositions or a desire not to express
that commitment categorically. In contrast, Salager-Meyer (1994, 151) asserts that hedges are
“ways of being more precise in reporting results”. She adds that by doing this, the credibility
of a statement may be increased.
Along with the argument of being vague, Joanna Channel (1994) states that the language
system permits speakers to produce utterances without having to decide whether or not certain facts are “excluded or allowed by” them. Hedges, however, are sometimes required to
capture the probabilistic nature of reality and the limits of statements (Toulmin, 2013). In
fact, the use of hedges is typical of professional writing to make absolute statements more
accurate (Hyland, 1998). Moreover, hedges play a critical role in academics’ presentations of
their own work (Hyland, 1998).
Hedging is an important interactional strategy used in communication. This strategy can
make the communication go more smoothly. Therefore, to become an effective communicator, a speaker should be able to know how and when to use hedging devices in different
processes of communication. Hedging devices here mean the verbal propositions employed
by participants of communication (both speaker and listener) to prevent conflict, to avoid
being blunt, to weaken or strengthen the illocutionary force and protect the face (Brown &
Levinson 1987; Stenstorm 1994, Salager-Meyer 1994).
Leech (1983) proposes six maxims of politeness principles (PP), which are tact, generosity,
approbation, modesty, agreement, and sympathy. The tact maxim regulates the operation of
directive speech acts and addresses the dominant type of politeness that can be measured on
a cost-benefit scale. The more costly the action, the less polite it is. Brown & Levinson (1987)
claim that in any social interaction participants devote much of the time to face-work. They
argue that “face” is something that concerns human beings universally, and it is divided into
negative and positive faces. The first one deals with a negative politeness strategy, which gives
freedom to individual actions and a desire to be unimpeded. In other words, it is called a
strategy of independence or deference politeness strategy. Meanwhile, the positive face deals
with a positive politeness strategy, which attempts to save the listener’s face. This strategy is
also called the strategy of involvement or solidarity politeness strategy. The following is an
example of this: I really sort of think/hope/wonder.... (Brown & Levinson, 1987, 116).
Being polite means being a considerate conversational partner. In terms of negative politeness, being polite means choosing the right words to express communicative messages that
might be felt to be face-threatening for the addressee, such as refusals, criticisms, or claims
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in order to prevent conflicts. In written communication, researchers present their own findings or claims by using pragmatics markers, or hedges. Hedging devices are the critical tools
to prevent potential arguments and save FTA. Look at the example: close the window if you
can (Brown & Levinson, 1987, 162). By using “if ”, this sentence of command is weakened
or hedged.
1.1
The importance of scientific Hedging
Hedging devices are mostly used to mitigate propositions or claims. As Hyland (1996) states
in his article Nurturing Hedges in the ESP Curriculum: “Hedges, therefore, have an important
role in a form of discourse characterised by uncertainty and frequent reinterpretation of how
natural phenomena are understood” (Hyland, 1996, 478). Furthermore, he adds that academic discourse involves interpretative statements because cognitions are variably hedged.
Writers offer an assessment of the referential they provide, rather than being factual and
impersonal in order to alert readers to their opinions.
In addition to this, hedges are used to prevent conflicts in order to avoid humiliation
of both speakers and listeners or writers and readers. In the context of academic writing,
authors tend to mitigate the force of their scientific claims by means of hedging devices in
order to reduce the risk of opposition and minimize the face threatening acts (FTA) involved
in making claims. This argument goes along with Hyland who states that one of the functions of using hedges is to allow writers to anticipate possible negative consequences of being
wrong (Hyland, 1996, 479). Academics seek agreements for the strongest claims they use for
their evidences, as this is how they gain their academic credibility, but they also need to cover
themselves against the embarrassment of categorical commitment to statements that later
may be shown to be inaccurate. Hedges also help writers to develop and maintain their relationship with the readers, addressing affective expectations in gaining acceptance for claims.
Although academic writings try to persuade and convince the readers, they can be rejected.
Thus, they should use the strategy of preventing it by using the hedges.
Following Hyland’s theories about hedges from the perspective of relationship between
writers and readers, I conducted investigations on Writer-oriented Hedges and Readeroriented Hedges in dissertations. I am interested in investigating the relationship between
writers and readers because this has not much been explored by researchers, especially hedges
used by L2 learners in academic writing. The Writer-oriented hedge is a kind of strategy that
facilitates the communicative strategy by which writers can get his readers to see the real
world from their points of view. The writers persuade readers to accept their claims by seeing the evidences through three subcategories: (1) passive voice, (2) abstract rhetors, and (3)
dummy subjects (Hyland, 1996). Meanwhile, Reader-oriented Hedges try to involve the readers in the writers’ claims to minimize the uncertainty from the readers, which might happen.
The subcategories belonging to this are (1) personal attribution and (2) conditionals.
2
METHODOLOGY
The corpora for this data were taken from 5 dissertations written in English by Indonesian
student writers who were studying at the Faculty of English Applied Linguistics in one of the
prominent private universities in Indonesia.
The research methodology used was the qualitative descriptive method. I employ this
method because my intention was to obtain insights into the strategies used by postgraduate student writers of English Applied Linguistics. I studied a relatively small number
of dissertations. This is in accordance with the main characteristics and spirit of the qualitative approach which states that what stands out in a qualitative study is the depth and
breadth of the analysis, not the number of subjects studied. A qualitative study has nothing
to do with statistical significance; rather it seeks to pursue a profound understanding of
a particular phenomenon by utilizing all resources, data, observation, and even subjective
interpretation.
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Corpus Selection. In this study, I chose to analyse the Discussion section of the dissertations for two reasons:
a. The Discussion section is the section where postgraduate student writers put in their
claims of their research;
b. This section is the most important and crucial part of their dissertations.
Data Collection Techniques. In collecting data, I listed all propositions found in the
Discussion sections that contain hedges. When investigating such hedges, I categorized them
by the subcategories being determined. This section will include the contexts, graphs, tables
and interpretations of the results.
3
RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
I used both theoretical and empirical perspectives to make sense of what happened, as well
as, the context that caused it to happen. After that I interpreted the collected data to seek
answers for my research questions.
The steps that I undertook were:
a. I identified hedged words, phrases, and clauses based on the indicators provided by Hyland
(1998). Those are found in the Results and Discussion section of every dissertation;
b. I classified those hedges into the subcategories being determined;
c. I put the hedged units in the tables to show how they are distributed in percentage. By calculating the frequency of hedges, it would be easy to look at the tendencies of the hedging
strategy used;
d. Finally I interpreted the data in relation to the strategy being used.
3.1 The data
For this study, I investigated the Results and Discussions section in 5 (five) dissertations
written in English by student writers who were studying at the Faculty of English Applied
Linguistics. I chose the names randomly, but I preferred to pick them based on the year when
these dissertations were written, which ranged from 2011–2013. The names are kept in initials
to keep them confidential. The data are as follows:
Table 1.
Topic selection.
No
Writer
(initials)
1
CH
2
YY
3
IID
4
HT
5
SS
Title of dissertation
The production and recognition of
english word stress: an auditory
word priming study
Verbal communication of emotions:
A case study of obama-mccain
presidential debates
EFL learners’ metaphor competence
english proficiency, english exposure
and learning style
English collocational mismatches
in second language writing
The construction of self in academic
writing: A qualitative case study
of three indonesian undergraduate
student writers
Number of page
of results &
discussion section
Number of hedged
units in results &
discussion section
124
137
122
142
89
101
178
191
84
114
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I was interested in investigating the Results and Discussion section because this section is a
very important part of the dissertation as this is the part where the student writers make their
claims of the results of their research. When making claims, student writers try to persuade
readers who come from their academic community. In scientific writing, hedges are effective
and propositional functions that work in rhetorical partnership to persuade readers to accept
knowledge claims (Myers, 1985).
4
RESULTS
Table 2.
Realization of hedges.
No.
Initial
1
CH
2
YY
3
IID
4
HT
5
SS
Writer-oriented
PV: 33.23%
DS: 12.34%
AR: 24.21%
PV: 38.68%
DS: 19.54%
AR: 12.30%
PV: 36.25%
DS: 18.64%
AR: 14.45%
PV: 40.25%
DS: 16.56%
AR: 21.32%
PV: 28.35%
DS: 19.68%
AR:15.54%
Reader-oriented
Others
PA: 8.54%
C: 2.35%
Others:
19.33%
PA: 10.37%
C: 1.56%
Others:
17.55%
PA: 6.35%
C: 1.75%
Others:
22.56%
PA: 4.92%
C: 1.55%
Others:
14.4%
PA: 17.65%
C: 2.24%
Others:
16.54%
Notes:
– PV: Passive Voice;
– DS: Dummy Subjects;
– AR: Abstract Rhetors;
– PA: Personal Attribution;
– C: Conditionals.
5
5.1
ANALYSIS
Writer-oriented Hedges
From the results obtained, it can be seen that the student writers often use passive constructions (PV). This is because they want to avoid being blamed for making errors in presenting
their claims (Brown & Levinson, 1987, 194). The sentences below are a few examples of this:
1. Verbal communication can be expressed literally (YY, p. 51).
2. The results are summarized in the following table (CH, p. 135).
3. Metaphors were produced most by low English proficiency (IID, p. 103).
From the examples above, the absence of agency (Hyland, 1996b, 444) is central to the
characteristics of Writer-oriented Hedges. Those sentences (1, 2, and 3) are the first subcategory of this strategy. In connection with agency, as an agent in the process of producing a
piece of scientific knowledge, a scientific writer seeks to place their discoveries in a wider
community.
Meanwhile, the second subcategory of this strategy is the dummy subject (DS). For grammarians like Quirk et al. (1985), dummy subjects are considered to be expletive, meaning that
“it” in English is regarded as an “empty” subject as can be seen in the sentences below:
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1. It seemed that learners from the high English proficiency were more serious (IID, p. 162).
2. It can be seen that their vision and mission were presented in series of words (HT, p. 112).
The above sentences show that “it” is used as a dummy subject as it is the most neutral
of the pronouns and thought to be an “impersonal subject”. The dummy subject ‘it’ can be
used with other reporting verbs like “seem” as shown in example no. 4 above (Sinclair, 1990,
331).
The last subcategory in this strategy is abstract rhetors (AR). Scientific writing can perhaps be used to challenge the theory of classical rhetoric. Within classical rhetoric, humans
are recognised as the only actors that can speak (Myers, 1996, 22). The term ‘rhetor’ can
simply be defined as an orator, and therefore has been understood to be a practitioner of the
art of using language skilfully for persuasive purposes. However, scientific writing can now
be used to imagine a rhetorical situation in which everything is a possible rhetor, including
non-humans, such as: a piece of a research. Look at these sentences below:
1. The table above shows that words with final stress produced much less correct… (CH,
p. 154).
2. The results show that on average learners knew 71% of the relationship… (IID, p. 104).
Usually humans are subjects of the various verbs of saying. However, in scientific writing
humans are not always the subjects of the actions that people are talking about. The data
that the researchers find can be said to be stating arguments. These can be regarded as an
explanation.
5.2
Reader-oriented Hedges
The second strategy is the reader-oriented hedge, which tries to involve the readers in the
writer’s claims. These hedges will help a scientific writer make sure that his/her research is
reliable. Personal Attributions (PA) are the substrategy that a writer uses not only to convey
information but also serves as a professional attitude about the readers and their negotiation
of knowledge claims (Hyland, 1996b, 446). Personal perspective can be attributed to scientific claims. This can be observed in the following sentences:
1. We can infer that the students will get benefit more from repetition (CH, p. 143).
2. Our interaction partner expects that we will feel this way (YY, 142).
The second subcategory of this strategy is conditional (C). Alternative opinions such as
conditionals are commonly used as personal views. Alternative conditionals are widely discussed by the grammarian Quirk et al. (1985) who argue that they may be used for open or
hypothetical conditions. On the one hand, open conditionals are neutral; they leave unresolved the question of nonfulfillment of the condition. On the other hand, a hypothetical
condition conveys the writer’s belief that the condition will not be fulfilled and hence the
probable or certain falsity of the proposition. Look at the claims below:
1. If we understand the words’ meaning, we can see the speaker’s feeling.. (YY, p. 151).
2. The result shows that if 20 items were used, then reliability of the instrument would be
low... (IID, p. 87).
6
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS
Hedging devices are often used by Indonesian student writers because such devices help them
conceptualize the claims that they are going to convey. Moreover, such devices will assist the
student writers to communicate with their readers and academic community because the
claims will be accepted by the readers if the writers successfully communicate them to them.
It can be said that hedges are communicative tools to negotiate with the potential readers.
A claim can be presented by using PV, DS, and AR, which belong to writer-oriented hedges.
Meanwhile, reader-oriented hedges give the maximum degree of visibility to the writers. The
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writers try to develop a relationship with their readers. Reader-oriented hedges make the
content of the claims more tentative. In conclusion, the use of writer-oriented hedges is more
preferable because the empirical evidences are able to explain and describe what the findings
of the research are. Thus, the student writers do not need to say much about them.
The findings of the study have important implications to the study of academic writing
as one of the compulsory courses taught in Indonesian universities where English is still not
given much attention. In universities, English is only a minor subject in non-English Departments. It has been indicated that the writers’ awareness of the use of hedging in writing is
essential because the ability to use hedging devices helps writers craft their statements appropriately to produce credible, rational, and convincing claims.
Hedging is also important to maintain the writers’ academic credibility. Furthermore
hedging will help writers protect their reputation as scholars and minimize possible damage. In science, writers may hedge because of small samples, preliminary results, uncertain
evidence or imperfect measuring techniques (Hyland, 1996:479).
REFERENCES
Brown, P. and Steven C.L, (1987) Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press.
Channell, J. (1994) Vague Language. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Cherry, R.D. (1988) Politeness in written persuasion. Journal of Pragmatics, 12 (1), 63–81.
Fraser, B, (1975) Hedged performative. In Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics
3: Speech Acts. New York, Academy Press, 187–210.
Fraser, B, (1980) Conversational mitigation. Journal of Pragmatics, 4 (4), 341–350.
Fraser, B, (1990) Perspective in politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 14 (2), 219–239.
Holmes, J. (1984a) Modifying illocutionary force. Journal of Pragmatics, 8 (3), 345–365.
Holmes, J, (1984b) Hedging your bets and sitting on the fence: Some evidence for hedges as support
structure. The Relo, 24 (3), 47–62.
Hubbler, A. (1983) Understatement and Hedges in English. Amsterdam, John Benjamins Publishing
Company.
Hyland, K. (1996a) Talking to the Academy: Forms of Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. Written
Communication 13 (2), 251–281.
Hyland, K. (1996b) Writing without conviction? Hedging in science research articles. Applied Linguistics,
17 (4), 433–454.
Johnson, B. and Christensen, L. (2008) Educational Research: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed
Approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publication.
Lakoff, G. (1972) The Pragmatics of Modality. Chicago Linguistics Papers, 8, 229–246.
Lakoff, G. (1973) The Logic of Politeness: or, Minding Your p’s and q’s. Papers from: Regional Meeting
of the Chicago Linguistics Society 9.
Leech, G.N. (1983) Principles of Pragmatics. London, Longman.
Lyons, J. (1995) Linguistic Semantics: An Introduction. London, Longman.
Maryanto. (1998) Hedging Devices in English and Indonesian Scientific Writings: Towards a
Sociopragmatic Study. [Thesis] Jakarta, Atmajaya University.
Myers. (1985) The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles. Applied Linguistic, 10 (1), 1–35.
Nikula, T. (1997) Interlanguage view on hedging. In: Markannen R. and H. Schoder (eds.). Hedging
and discourse: Approaches to the analysis of a pragmatic phenomenon in academic texts. Berlin, Walter
de Gruyter, 188–207.
Prince, E.F., Joel F., and Charles B. (1982) On hedging in physician discourse. Proceedings of the Second
Annual Symposium on Language Studies, 83–96.
Skelton, J. (1988) The care and maintenance of hedges. English Language Teaching Journal, 42 (1),
37–48.
Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. (1995) Relevance: Communication and Cognition (2nd edition), Blackwell,
Oxford.
Thomas, J.A. (1983) Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics. 4 (2), 91–112.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
“You are what you eat ... and post”: An analysis of culinary
innovation and cultural branding in Panggang Ucok’s
Instagram account
S.M.G. Tambunan & M.R. Widhiasti
Department of English Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Culinary practices in our everyday lives have been analyzed in a great deal
of researches arguing that food and drinks are essential parts in identity construction.
The main function of culinary practices is to establish a sense of belonging in a particular
environment. One of the tools in disseminating information about culinary practices whilst
constructing one’s cultural identity through culinary practices is social media, in this case
Instagram. Through a Cultural Studies perspective, this research investigates how Panggang
Ucok, a culinary business in Jakarta, relies heavily on culinary innovation mixing localities
from all over Indonesia to sell its products. At the same time, through its Instagram account,
there are multiple strategies used to construct personalized images by emphasizing on the
owner’s family as well as close and friendly relationships with the employees and customers
unlike other Instagram pages owned by other culinary businesses, which focus solely on the
products. In other words, in the dynamic relationship between the business owner and the
‘imagined audience’ of the Instagram page, Panggang Ucok is constructing an ideal image of
a traditional-modern, commercial-private, and local-global articulation of identity.
1
INTRODUCTION
Social media has become a space where we document and curate our everyday lives, including
the meals that we eat daily. People are snapping photos of their meals before they eat either
in a fancy restaurant or a food stall on the side of a busy road. This has transformed a cultural practice as a necessary daily routine to a competitive sport between social media users.
They will hunt for the newest and most trendy/happening culinary gems to elevate their own
personal status. Eating has always been a focal point in socializing, and our culinary practices
reflect an array of social and cultural status, such as our class, gender, and to which generation we belong to (Rousseau, 2012). Furthermore, the existence of social media in its connection to culinary practices has destabilized the dissemination of food information through old
media without the presence of a centre of information flow. The driving force of social media
is a conversation opening new spaces to talk about food and culinary practices. Instagram,
for example, has become a tool for today’s consumers to learn about products based on the
experiences of other consumers instead of experts or food critics, or even food reviews by
journalists in the old media, namely printed newspapers or magazines.
Marketing via social media in the culinary business has experienced a significant development in the last few years. “Unlike traditional media such as company websites or paid outdoor
advertisements, social media create a two-way street between businesses and their core consumer
segments” (Bui 2014, 6). Even though, on one hand, owners of culinary business make use of
social media as a promotional tool, consumers are also able to give feedbacks to the business
owners through their social media posts. As mentioned earlier, conversations created by social
media between the actors are tools to construct particular images and build brand awareness for
new consumers. In the process of branding, business owners need to continuously innovate, even
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though their first priority is to gain profit. However, at the same time, they need to construct
images that will become the main characteristic of that culinary business.
For culinary business owners selling traditional menus, innovation marketed through
social media could also be seen as a representation of identity. As a case study, this research
investigates a culinary business, Panggang Ucok, which was established in August 2015, selling Babi Panggang or Roasted Pork from North Sumatra. However, Panggang Ucok (which
will be abbreviated into PU throughout this article) is not only selling its Bataknese or North
Sumatra identity. This particular ethnic identity is somehow obscured since there are constant
innovations repackaging the food they sell inspired from different localities in Indonesia. The
research focus is on how Panggang Ucok as a representation of ‘traditional yet modern’ culinary business owners utilizes social media through strategies of innovation and collaborative
yet emotional branding. By conducting a thorough textual analysis on its Instagram account,
the main objective is to investigate how social media is constructing the desired images, creating conversations between culinary actors, and articulating a dynamic identity formation
through culinary practices.
1.1
“Make yourself feel at home”: PU’s strategic branding
PU has used its Instagram account (@panggangucok) to promote the restaurant’s products
by constantly posting the pictures of the products and alluring testimonials from their consumers. There are several narratives that are used to signify the culinary business’ distinct
features. One of the main narratives being used is the discourse of family. Among the photos
posted on @panggangucok instagram page, almost half of them are photos portraying Bang
Ucok (the owner)’s family or employees, who are depicted as part of the Panggang Ucok’s
family. Most of the pictures are depicting his family or his employees’ daily lives because as
business grows strong, the family’s centre of activities is at the restaurant. By posting pictures
related to his personal life, Bang Ucok uses @panggangucok Instagram account more like his
personal account, even though it is used to sell roasted pork. The account is exclusively used
as a business account since it has been created for business purposes. The strategy to manage
the account like a personal account creates amity between Panggang Ucok and its consumers. This is a strategy that is rarely used by other online culinary business owners who mainly
use impersonal or very business-like posts to sell their products.
In general, the pictures (and captions) of family members and employees posted in
@panggangucok reflect a sense of affection and gratitude towards the people who work
for the business. When this account gained 1000 followers, for example, @panggangucok
posted a picture of its employers holding a cake with a caption “All credits go to these humble people behind every pork bowl we have enjoyed.” Furthermore, before Eid Mubarak,
@panggangucok posted a picture of Ucok sending his employees away to go mudik or go
back to their hometown to celebrate Eid Mubarak. By showing these pictures and from the
captions, PU is expressing an identity of kinship that has become the foundation of the business. Moreover, PU relies mostly on online transportation apps, such as GoFood from Gojek
or GrabFood from Grab, for the order-delivery system. In @panggangucok, we can see a
lot of posts depicting PU’s gratitude towards the drivers from Gojek or Grab. These drivers,
from the posts, are considered as part of the family because of their contribution to the business. As an example, PU posted pictures of Gojek drivers having a free meal or a corner in
the restaurant with free drinks for the drivers who come to pick up orders.
By emphasizing on the discourse of family and kinship reflecting the restaurant as a ‘home,’
PU strategically uses the converse nature of modern culinary practices, which relies on business-like features of convenience, casualness, and speed. Moisio, Arnould, and Price (2004)
argue that in modern times, particularly in an urban setting, food consumption has been
altered to fit the fast-moving lifestyles. The consumers’ culinary habits have been changed, for
example, the development of fast-food industry altering family life and consumption rituals.
PU is reassessing the meaning of eating out or even eating at ‘home’ as relying on its family
and kinship identity to create a more ‘feel at home’ or ‘be part of the family’ nuance, not only
from the food they sell but also from their business features depicted in their social media.
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1.2
Panggang Ucok’s ambiguous Bataknese identity
In the past, PU’s was an online culinary business selling its product by mainly posting the
products on Instagram. Customers could order the food via instant messaging services and it
would be delivered to the customer’s house by Gojek, the online transportation service. The
restaurant used to be the main kitchen in which Ucok and his staff cooked and prepared
the food before being delivered to the customers. Even though their main menu is Bataknese roasted pork, PU is different from a regular traditional Bataknese restaurant, which is
called Lapo. If someone wants to eat Bataknese roasted pork or other Bataknese delicacies in
Jakarta, they will immediately think about Lapo. The word Lapo actually refers to a tavern
or a space in many areas in North Sumatra where people (mostly men) gather to drink coffee,
tea, or tuak, a traditional alcohol fermented drink, and some Bataknese food. In its origin,
Lapo is not actually a place to have big meals as it mainly sells drinks and a few choices of
food. The main function is as a space to get together and engage in conversations. However,
in Jakarta, Lapo is, first and foremost, a restaurant selling Bataknese food for the Bataknese
diasporic communities in the capital city.
PU portrays its restaurant as the ‘modern’ lapo, but the only thing that signifies the restaurant as lapo is simply because it sells Bataknese roasted pork as the main menu. The interior
or even the types of food and drinks they sell are completely different from the regular lapo.
However, by referring to lapo in constructing their images on Instagram, PU is associating
itself with the image of a Bataknese restaurant. On the other hand, not only do they sell food
that one could never find in a regular lapo, the way they serve the traditional Batanese roasted
pork is also distinct. In a lapo, roasted pork is served in a plate separated from the rice. Other
dishes will also be served on separate plates. However, in PU, the roasted pork is served in the
same plate with the rice and other delicacies, such as the Medanese anchovies and chilli. This
style of serving roasted pork is actually quite similar with the Chinese nasi campur (mixed
rice dish) in which rice is served with multiple pork dishes in one plate.
Besides the menu, the interior design in the restaurant is different from a regular lapo as it adds
a modern and trendy touch to the setting of the restaurant. On the walls of the restaurant, the
owner has put some posters with inspiring yet also funny quotes about eating (or eating pork).
This type of interior design is often found in many modern/contemporary/urban cafés in Jakarta.
Some examples of the writings on the wall are: “people who love to eat are always the best people”
or “eat lots of pork when times get rough, and eat even more when times are great”. This modern
touch of the interior design is parallel with the packaging PU used to serve their menus, which is
a combination of the ‘old’ and the ‘new.’ For delivery and take away, for example, PU serves the
roasted pork in a rice bowl. This is uncommon for a lapo, which usually prepares the takeout in
food wrapping papers. Through this practice, PU once again makes itself distinct from a regular
lapo, therefore distancing itself from a Batakense identity, but at the same time uses other Bataknese identity features. The name Panggang Ucok is the main signifier. Among the Bataknese people, the word panggang (literally means roasted) refers to babi panggang (roasted pork), although
there are other kinds of roasted meat. In other words, when someone hears the word panggang,
they will not associate it with roasted chicken or beef because it has been associated with roasted
pork. Moreover, Ucok is a widely popular Bataknese name, which actually means a young Bataknese man, and in PU, Ucok refers to the owner, Sahat Gultom.
Another signifier of PU’s Bataknese identity is the way it interacts with the customers on
Instagram. When PU responds to the customer’s comments or in the caption, it often uses
Bataknese language, or the content is related to the Bataknese identity. For example, in one
of the posts, it says: “Mauliate, sold out! Thank you.” It was actually an announcement that
they no longer have any roasted pork they could sell that day. Mauliate in English means
thank you, and by using this Bataknese word to show his gratitude, PU articulates its Bataknese identity and at the same time shows respect to his Bataknese customers as the ones who
can understand the language. This does not mean that PU’s customers are mainly Bataknese
people because nowadays PU has been very successful and the customers come from a variety of ethnicities. Even so, it still uses Bataknese language to often communicate with its
customers implying a strong association with its Bataknese identity.
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This indefinite representation of identity through PU’s culinary practices is a result of
constant negotiation between continuity and transformation reflecting the dynamics of culture. Roland Barthes (1997) in his article “Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food
Consumption” states that food and culinary practices need to be seen as “a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situation, and behaviour” (21). Food
has become signifiers and the meanings are produced in the process of making the food or
the way we consume it. “Techniques of preparation” and “habits” of consumption, or their
contexts—how, why, when, where, and by whom the units of signification are prepared and
eaten” (22) are the foundation of the process of identity formation in culinary practices.
1.3
Re-inscribing culinary practices through innovation
To explore the implication of PU’s ambiguous representation of its Bataknese identity, the
analysis will look at one of the most renowned menus, which is the Roasted Pork Burger. It
looks like any regular burger but besides the roasted pork, it also contains anchovies from
Medan, North Sumatra, and andaliman chilli, a traditional Bataknese chilli. The anchovies
and chilli are known as Bataknese food, but through innovation, Ucok, the owner of PU, has
made these two types which were originally eaten in supplementary with rice now eaten as
part of a burger. Innovation is done by transforming the way of serving the dish in order to
attract the consumers. On one hand, the changes in the culinary practices have made roasted
pork and Medanese anchovies (and andaliman chilli) famous or more renown because now
one does not need to eat them with rice. On the other hand, PU’s roasted pork has also been
considered as less Bataknese compared to the ‘original’ one. One of the reasons is because the
roasting process is not the same since PU uses modern ways of roasting the meat unlike the
traditional way of roasting the pork directly on top of firewood. Original roasted pork will
have black marks from the firewood roasting, which you will not see in PU’s roasted pork.
PU menus are incorporating elements of Bataknese traditional cuisines with local dishes
coming from other parts of Indonesia disarticulating the Bataknese identity. Menus, such
as Babi Gepuk Sambal (Chili Pork), exemplify innovation and the mix of culture between
Bataknese and Sundanese (Gepuk is a Sundanese dish) culinary practices. Gepuk is actually
made out of beef because in West Java where this disc comes from, the dominant population is Muslim. Therefore, it is unimaginable to have gepuk to make out of pork. However,
in North Sumatra, most of the populations are Christians and most of the dishes are porkbased meals. A mixing of culture in this sense does not only come from two different ethnicities, but it is also heavily influenced by the religious beliefs, which in turn affect the culinary
practices in the two different locales. Besides from Indonesian localities, PU also creates
meals inspired by American or European food, such as the aforementioned Pork Burger and
Panacota Pudding, an Italian inspired dessert. It could be concluded that through constant
innovation in the menus, PU is articulating ‘traditional yet modern’ culinary practices, which
are also reflected in the setting and design of the restaurant.
Culinary practices are spaces where individual and collective identities are constructed
and articulated. According to Gabaccia (1998) in We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the
Making of Americans:
“…. the production, exchange, marketing, and consumption of food have generated
new identities—for foods and eaters alike … eating habits changed and evolved long
before the rise of a modern consumer market for food. Human eating habits originate in a paradoxical, and perhaps universal, tension between a preference for the
culinary familiar and the equally human pursuit of pleasure in the forms of culinary
novelty, creativity, and variety.” (Gabaccia, 5–6)
Changes and evolution of culinary practices, just like what is being done by PU, should not
only be seen as an effect of the changing market or merely as an economic practice. There
is a cultural dynamics reflecting constant negotiation between the familiar, the food we are
comfortable with, and the new, creative, and innovative ones. Most of the time, the need
to innovate comes from limitations; for example, for diasporic communities, when the first
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generation, like Ucok’s mother and father, left their hometown, they carried their culinary
knowledge and experiences that became the basis of their culinary practices in the new place
(Tan 2011). The need to reinvent new food through localization and invention bring about
the reproduction of familiar food and taste from existing local ingredients and resources,
which might be completely different from what they have in their hometown.
2
CONCLUSION
To sum up, PU exemplifies its identity through its Instagram account by emphasizing on
narratives of family, ambiguous identity, and innovation. In relation to identity, Panggang
Ucok is at the same time Bataknese food and not Bataknese food as it is both modern and
traditional. Innovation is an important factor, as recipes are constantly reinvented to try to
find familiar flavours from the past whilst creating new ones. These narrations on identity
and innovation could be concluded as part of the identity formation of the culinary actors,
in this case for the owner of Panggang Ucok. It has become a space where narrations could
be conveyed and where culinary actors could make meaning out of their fluid and complex
identity. The exploration of the re-inscribing of culinary practices does not only inform us
about how food is constantly transforming, but also problematizes the dynamics of culture
and its implications.
REFERENCES
Bui, T.V. (2014) Social Media on a Stick: A Uses and Gratification Approach toward Helping Mobile Food
Vendors Engage Consumers on Instagram. Retrieved from: http://hdl.handle.net/11299/166761, the
University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy.
Barthes, R. (1997) Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption. Food and culture:
A reader, 2, 28–35.
Bhabha, H.K. (1994) The Location of Culture. United Kingdom, Psychology Press.
Dalessio, William R. (2012) Are We What We Eat? Food and Identity in Late Twentieth-century American
Ethnic Literature. Amherst, NY, Cambria.
Gabaccia, Donna. (1998) We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Cambridge,
Harvard University Press.
Hall, Stuart. (1997) Cultural Identity and Diaspora. pp. 222–237.
Lai, A.E. (2010) The Kopitiam in Singapore: An Evolving Story about Migration and Cultural Diversity.
Asia Research Institute Working Paper Number: 132.
Moisio, R., Arnould, E.J. & Price, L.L. (2004) Between Mothers and Markets: Constructing Family
Identity through Homemade Food. Journal of Consumer Culture, 4(3), 361–384.
Rousseau, S. (2012) Food andSocial Media: You are What You Tweet. Rowman Altamira.
Sidharta, M. (2011) The Dragon’s Trail in Chinese Indonesian Foodways. In: C. B. (Ed.). Chinese food
and foodways in Southeast Asia and beyond. Singapore, NUS.
Tan, C.B. (2011) Cultural Reproduction, Local Invention and Globalization of Southeast Asian
Chinese Food. In: Chinese Food and Foodways in Southeast Asia and Beyond (pp. 23–45). NUS Press,
Singapore.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The use of cohesive devices in deaf and hearing children’s writing
Novietri & B. Kushartanti
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This research aims at exploring the use of cohesive devices by deaf and
hearing children, 15–19 years of age. The sources of the data are their handwriting. The
instrument is a story picture. It is found that both the deaf and hearing children groups
show similar tendencies towards the use of ellipsis, hyponyms, meronyms, and collocations.
Similarities are also found in conjunctions—except adversative and temporal markers,
which are used more productively by the hearing children. The deaf children tend to use
repetitions and antonyms, whereas the hearing children tend to use references and synonyms.
These similarities and differences in using cohesive devices are influenced by several factors,
amongst which are the teaching method, children’s ability, family, children’s environment,
and the sign language used by the deaf. The findings deal with the strategies on learning at
school.
1
INTRODUCTION
In the first five years of their life, hearing children learn to interact verbally with adults,
which includes telling stories, both in verbal and written forms. In comparison, deaf children
do not have access to hearing speech in order to understand or to react. Therefore, there are
some delays in their language development, including their production (Bernaix, 2013, p. 5).
They need some treatments in order to communicate with others. The way deaf and hearing
children interact with others influences their capacity for using cohesive devices in writing.
Cohesive devices are important tools for understanding and interpreting a discourse
(Halliday and Hasan, 1976, p. 4). Halliday and Hasan (1976) divide cohesive devices into
grammatical and lexical cohesions. Grammatical cohesion is a relation between elements in
discourse, which can be found in reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction (Halliday
and Hasan, 1976; Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014). Reference is a semantic relation
indicating that information has to be retrieved from elsewhere (Halliday and Hasan, 1976).
There are three types of reference: personal, demonstrative, and comparative. Substitution is
a replacement of a certain constituent by word or sentence. Ellipsis is an omission of a word
or part of a sentence. Conjunction is a relationship indicating how a subsequent sentence or
clause is linked to the preceding or the following (parts of the) sentence (Renkema, 2004).
Halliday and Hasan (1976, p. 238) distinguish four categories of reference, namely additive,
adversative, causal, and temporal references.
Lexical cohesion is a relation between lexical elements in a discourse, which can be found
in repetition, synonym, hyponym, meronym, antonym, and collocation (Halliday and Hasan,
1976; Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014). Repetition is a relationship in which one lexical item
restates another (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014). Synonyms are different phonological
words that have the same or very similar meanings (Saeed, 2003). Hyponym is a relation of
inclusion; the meaning of a more general word (Saeed, 2003). Meronym is a term used to
describe a part-whole relationship between lexical items (Saeed, 2003). Antonym is a relation
of lexical items which are opposite in meaning. Collocation is a relation of two lexical items
having similar patterns (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014).
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The paper aims at comparing the use of cohesive devices in writing production by hearing
children and deaf children. This is part of the first author’s thesis (Novietri, 2016). In this
study, we mainly apply Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) and Renkema’s (2004) theories on cohesive devices to analyze the children’s writing. We also examine factors that influence the use
of cohesive devices by both groups.
Participants in this research are 15–19-year-old high school students. Two groups are compared: hearing and deaf children. Each of the group consists of 10 children. All of them
come from middle class families. In general, they were born in Jakarta. Participants in the
hearing group are those with a good academic report, as suggested by their teachers. Participants in the deaf group are those who have 90 dB of deafness (for characteristics of deafness,
see Rodda and Grove, 1987).
The sources of the data are the children’s handwritten stories, based on a task of storytelling composition. We used a pictured story titled Gara-Gara Usil (Dwi and Sabariman, 2014)
as an instrument. It was taken from Bobo—a children’s magazine. After the handwriting was
obtained, we transcribed and typed it in a written document format using the Microsoft
Word application. Once the orthographic transcription was done, we grouped the data sentence by sentence and numbered each of the sentences. The cohesive devices were identified
and classified. Once they were classified, the use of each type and its appropriateness in text
and context was then analyzed. We also counted the occurrences of each type in order to
examine the tendencies found in both groups. To have an overall illustration on the use of
cohesive devices by the deaf children, we also interviewed their teachers. Based on these steps,
we have analyzed the influencing factors on the use of cohesive devices in children’s writing.
2
DISCUSSION
It is found that both groups use various types of cohesive devices, except the substitution.
Both use grammatical and lexical cohesions. We find references, ellipses, and conjunctions
(the grammatical cohesion), and repetitions, synonyms, hyponyms, meronyms, antonyms,
and collocations (the lexical cohesion) in the children’s writing. Nevertheless, we find that
there are some differences between both groups, as shown in Table 1.
2.1
The use of references
We find that deaf children tend to use the singular first person pronoun saya or ‘I’,—a pronoun
which is used mostly to show formality (for more detail, see Table 2). They also tend to use proper
names to refer to the characters in the story. They did not use the pronoun aku or ‘I’—an informal
Table 1.
The use of cohesive devices in deaf and hearing children’s writing.
Cohesive
device
Reference
Ellipsis
Conjunction
Repetition
Synonym
Hyponym
Meronym
Antonym
Collocation
DC
HC
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
DC = deaf children; HC = hearing children
Number refers to individual participant.
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Table 2.
The use of references.
DC
HC
Reference
1
2
Saya
Aku
Kami
Kita
Kamu
Ia
Dia
Nya
Mereka
Itu
Tersebut
√
√
√
√
3
4
5
6
7
8
√
√
√
√
9
10
1
2
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
4
5
6
7
8
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
3
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
9
10
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
DC = deaf children; HC = hearing children
Number refers to individual participant.
variant of saya ‘I’, which is used mostly in casual or informal situations—in all contexts. Meanwhile, hearing children use aku in informal contexts, or in quoted conversation, besides saya.
Based on our interview with their teachers, the deaf children learn language mostly based
on daily conversations. To interact with these children, the teachers use the standard Indonesian from which the children learn how to use the references. Therefore, they opt for saya,
instead of aku. The deaf children are also used to using saya in daily conversations.
It is important to briefly discuss the Indonesian sign language, its users, and its dictionary,
in relation to the use of references. Deaf children use mainly sign language in conversations.
The pronouns aku and saya are also included in the Indonesian sign language system. Kamus
Sistem Isyarat Bahasa Indonesia (2001) (hereinafter referred to as KSIBI; Sistem Bahasa
Isyarat Indonesia, or SIBI, is one of the Indonesian sign language systems), an Indonesian
sign language dictionary, distinguishes the visual signs of aku and saya. Meanwhile, aku and
the first person possessive personal pronoun –ku are not distinguished. In comparison with
SIBI, according to Bahasa Isyarat Jakarta (2014) (hereinafter referred to as BIJ), a JakartaIndonesian sign language dictionary, the visual sign of aku and saya is the same. BIJ is a variant of Bahasa Isyarat Indonesia (hereinafter referred to as BISINDO), another Indonesian
sign language system. At school, the deaf children learn SIBI. They talk and use SIBI in
classroom, while they learn BISINDO from their deaf friends or family.
We find that deaf children use the first person plural pronoun kami (exclusive) and kita
(inclusive) in both appropriate and inappropriate contexts. The similarity between kami and
kita, in terms of some semantic components, may cause inappropriate use; hearing children
are no exception. Kami and kita, in some regional languages, are not distinguished, as well.
Kamu or ‘you’, the singular second person pronoun, in children’s writing occurs when
there is a dialogue in the story. When there is no dialogue, the pronoun is not used. There are
only a few kamu in the story, as only a few of participants use dialogues in their story.
The hearing children tend to use the singular second person pronoun more frequently than
their counterpart group. Nevertheless, the differences between both groups are not striking.
Kamu can be used to address either an older to younger and familiar person, a person whose
status is higher than the interlocutor, or a person in an intimate situation (Alwi et al., 2000,
p. 253). Both groups use the pronoun in the appropriate context.
Deaf children use more kinship terms or proper names to address the second person. The
finding correlates to the technique of conversation, which is learned at school, as it may influence the use of the address terms. Usually, the teachers ask the children to write down what
they have been told. Therefore, the deaf children’s writing rarely uses dialogues in their writing.
The third person pronoun tends to be used frequently by hearing children. It occurs in stories which consist of more than two characters. Meanwhile, it is rarely used by deaf children.
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For deaf children, it is easier to do a dyadic conversation than a triadic or more. They need
face to face interaction with their interlocutor. In daily conversations, they tend to point or
mention the person’s name instead of using pronouns. For them, it makes their intention
clearer. For example, when deaf children use the pronoun dia or ‘he/she’ to refer to one of
their friends, they need to point the person they refer to. The interlocutor and the pointed
friend should pay attention to his mouth or gesture. Many of the deaf children often make
mistakes in using third person pronouns in writing a story. Therefore, they tend to avoid
using them and opt for repeating the character’s name.
In comparison with their counterpart group, the deaf children tend to use less the demonstrative itu or ‘that.’ This finding is in line with the interactions with their teachers and friends
in class. When deaf children intend to mention unknown or unnamed objects, they will point
at them through gesture or picture. In an ongoing conversation, deaf children tend to mention the objects they know about without using itu. Therefore, in a written story, demonstratives are rarely used to refer to the objects they discuss as they think the objects are already
known by both the writer and the reader.
The hearing children use more the demonstrative tersebut or ‘the mentioned’ than their
counterpart group. It is influenced by their written language and daily conversations. Even
though tersebut and itu are similar in terms of their semantic element, both have to be distinguished in terms of their visual sign. There is a visual sign for itu in KSIBI (2001), but no
visual sign for tersebut. Itu may occur at any situation and at any kind of books. Meanwhile,
tersebut mainly occurs in books. As mentioned by Purwo (1984, p. 121), tersebut is mainly
found in newspapers, scientific papers, or speech texts. Therefore, books read by children
influence the children’s competence on the use of tersebut. Deaf children begin to learn how
to write from their spoken language. The absence of tersebut in the spoken language may
influence its frequency in the written form.
2.2
The use of ellipses
In our data, it is found that hearing children use ellipses more frequently and variously than
deaf children do, but the difference is not striking (for more details, see Table 3). Deaf children can use ellipses in an appropriate context, but many of them opt for repetition in order
to make the readers understand. This is also in line with the teaching method in class where
the teachers use more repetitions in conversations. The children often write down what they
have talked about, and write down the repetitions. In turn, the teachers often ask the deaf
children in order to make sure that they understand their own writing.
2.3
The use of conjunctions
Both hearing and deaf children used various kinds of conjunctions. They use different types
of conjunctions: additive (dan or ‘and’, lalu or ‘and then’), adversative (tetapi or ‘but,’ sedangkan or ‘whereas,’ and namun or ‘however’), and temporal (ketika or ‘when,’ saat or ‘when,’
seraya or ‘while,’ sembari or ‘while,’ and setelah or ‘after’). Nevertheless, we find that hearing
children and deaf children tend to use various types of conjunctions respectively. The hearing
Table 3.
The use of ellipses in deaf and hearing children’s writing.
DC
HC
Ellipsis
1
2
3
4
Word
Phrase
Clause
√
√
√
√
5
6
√
7
8
√
√
√
9
10
1
√
√
√
√
2
√
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
10
√
DC = deaf children; HC = hearing children.
Number refers to individual participant.
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children tend to use adversative and temporal conjunctions more frequently than their counterpart group. They use tetapi, sedangkan, namun, ketika, saat, seraya, sembari, and setelah.
The deaf children tend to use additive conjunctions. They use dan and lalu more frequently
than hearing children.
In KSBI (2001), not all conjunctions are found. Therefore, not many deaf children know
that actually there are more conjunctions in the written language. The use of temporal conjunctions by deaf children depends on the number of books they read. The more often deaf
children read books, the more various temporal conjunctions are used in their writing. The
use of conjunctions is summarized in Table 4.
2.4
The use of repetitions
As discussed before, the deaf children use repetitions more frequently than their counterpart
group. Using repetitions indicates that they confirm what they mean, or they want to show
some degree of importance of things in their writing. It is already discussed in the previous
section that the teachers use more repetitions in conversations. The teaching method also
influences deaf children in writing. Moreover, repetitions influence children’s memory. Since
they lose their hearing, deaf children rely on what they see in order to interact. It is reflected
in their written language. Repetitions are also used as a strategy to make readers understand
their writing and to make it more comprehensive. In other words, deaf children use repetitions in order to make coherent writing. The use of repetitions is summarized in Table 5.
Table 4.
The use of conjunctions in deaf and hearing children’s writing.
DC
HC
Conjunction
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Dan
Lalu
Tetapi
Tapi
sedangkan
Padahal
Namun
Ketika
Saat
Seraya
Sambil
Sembari
Sebelum
Setelah
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
DC = deaf children; HC = hearing children.
Number refers to individual participant.
Table 5.
The use of repetitions in deaf and hearing children’s writing.
DC
HC
Repetition
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Word
Phrase
Clause
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
8
9
10
√
√
√
√
√
DC = deaf children; HC = hearing children.
Number refers to individual participant.
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2.5
The use of synonyms
Synonyms are used more frequently by the hearing children than by their counterpart group.
It is found that deaf children do not use various lexical choices. As already discussed, deaf
children prefer to use repetitions. According to their teachers, the deaf children do not fully
understand the concept of synonyms. For example, they understand the concept of bangku
or ‘seat’ and kursi or ‘chair,’ but in sentences they do not use those alternately. Once they
choose a lexical form, it is possible that they will not substitute it with other lexical forms that
have the same semantic component.
2.6
The use of hyponyms
It is found that both the hearing and deaf children groups have the same tendency to use
hyponyms, especially in verbs. The use of hyponyms is influenced by the instruments, which
are pictures composed as a linear story. They use some similar words referring to the objects
in the pictures. The use of hyponyms indicates the children’s intention to tell specific objects
in order to be understood by the readers. An example is the use of the words olahraga or
‘to do sport’ and lari pagi or ‘jogging.’ They are aware that olahraga has a general meaning
that needs to be specified in its varieties. Therefore, they add lari pagi. Some use one of the
options. The finding on hyponyms would have been different if they had been given a theme
without pictures to elicit the story.
2.7
The use of meronyms
As in hyponyms, it is found that both the hearing and deaf children groups have the same
tendency to use meronyms, especially in nouns. The reason is also similar in regard to how
the pictures, being the instruments, influence their lexical choices. It is also found that the
children’s competence in writing is dependent on their ability to imagine and develop the
plots.
2.8
The use of antonyms
Antonyms tend to be used more frequently by the deaf children than their counterpart group.
The deaf children tend to use verbal antonyms in their story, especially tanya or ‘ask’ and jawab
or ‘answer.’ In fact, many of them use dialogues in their writing. They use direct sentences like
Dia bertanya, “Ada apa…?” or ‘He asked, “What happened…?”’ and Dia menjawab, “Ada...” or
‘She answered, “There was...”.’ Some of the hearing children use this kind of sentence, but the
pairings are inappropriate, such as tanya/balas or ‘ask/reply,’ tanya/kata or ‘ask/tell,’ ucap/jawab
or ‘say/answer,’ and ujar/jawab or ‘state/answer.’ Therefore, it leads us to an assumption that deaf
children are more competent in using antonyms. It is also shown that deaf children can describe
pictures more variously by using antonyms, such as kiri/kanan or ‘left/right’ or kurus/gemuk or
‘thin/fat.’ We find one deaf child who uses a pair of adverbial antonyms sudah/belum or ‘already/
not yet.’ The pair is used in tag questions, which are mainly found in an ongoing conversation.
The use of a tag question indicates that his spoken language influences his writing.
2.9
The use of collocations
We found that the deaf children use collocations more frequently than their counterpart
group. Nevertheless, the difference is not striking, as both groups use the same instrument.
They use words relating to the pictures, from which children use lexical choices related to
sport, kinship terms, emotion, communication, house, and its parts. The analysis on collocations shows that both the hearing and deaf children groups can develop a story using their
imagination, even though there are certain things that are not illustrated in the instrument.
The use of collocations is summarized in Table 6.
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Table 6.
The use of collocations in deaf and hearing children’s writing.
DC
HC
Collocation
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Sport
kinship term
Emotion
Place
communication
Character
Food
House
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
8
9
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
10
1
2
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
3
4
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
5
6
√
7
8
√
9
10
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√
DC = deaf children; HC = hearing children.
Number refers to individual participant.
3
CONCLUSION
It has been shown that both the hearing and deaf children groups can use cohesive devices in
their writing. An interesting finding in this research is on the use of references. Both groups
use various kinds of references. Nevertheless, it is found that the use of certain references in
the deaf children’s writing is influenced by the corresponding visual signs. This particular
finding has to be explored further in order to have a full picture on how deaf children learn
both written and spoken languages through sign language.
It has also been shown that there are some differences between the groups in terms of their
competence in composing a story. We have also discussed that the differences are influenced
by the teaching methods used—especially for deaf children. Yet, some evidence that supports
this conclusion is still needed for further investigation.
REFERENCES
Alwi, H., Dardjowidjojo, S., Lapoliwa, H., & Moeliono, A.M. (2000) Tata bahasa baku Bahasa Indonesia
(The standard grammar of Indonesian language) (3rd ed.). Jakarta: Balai Pustaka.
Bernaix, N.E. (2013). Oral and written narrative production in children who are deaf and hard of
hearing. Independent Studies and Capstones, 1–15. St. Louis: Washington University School
of Medicine.
Departemen Pendidikan Nasional (Department of National Education). (2001) Kamus sistem isyarat
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian sign language system dictionary) (3rd ed.). Jakarta: Departemen
Pendidikan Nasional.
Dwi & R. Sabariman (2014) Paman Kikuk, Husin, dan Asta: Gara-gara usil (Uncle Kikuk, Husin, and Asta:
Due to being naughty). Bobo: Teman bermain dan belajar (Bobo: Play and learning mates), 27, 30–31.
Halliday, M.A.K. & Hasan, R. (1976) Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
Halliday, M.A.K. & Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (2014) Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar
(4th ed.). New York: Routledge.
Novietri. (2016) Penggunaan alat-alat kohesi dalam tulisan anak tuli dan anak dengar (The use of cohesive
tools in the writing of deaf and hearing children). [Unpublished Thesis]. Depok: Universitas Indonesia.
Purwo, B.K. (1984) Deiksis dalam Bahasa Indonesia (Deixis in Indonesian language). Jakarta: Balai
Pustaka.
Renkema, J. (2004) Introduction to discourse studies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Rodda, M. & Grove, C. (1987) Language, cognition, and deafness. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Saeed, J.I. (2003) Semantics (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Tim Produksi Bahasa Isyarat Jakarta (Jakarta Sign Language Production team). (2014) Bahasa
isyarat Jakarta: Kamus pendamping untuk buku pedoman siswa 1 tingkat 1 (Jakarta sign language:
Supplementary dictionary for student guidelines I level I). Depok, Universitas Indonesia.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Acoustical analysis of pitch contour in autism spectrum disorder
L. Roosman, T.W.R. Ningsih, F.X. Rahyono, M. Aziza & Ayesa
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This study is aimed at examining a pitch contour of Indonesian prosody in
children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The sample data are taken from utterances
of ASD children sitting on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade of an Indonesian elementary
school. The PRAAT program was used to analyse acoustic data in the pitch contour. The
stimuli used are declaratives and interrogatives modes contrasted to get information of the
pitch contour differences between the two modes of sentences. The results of the research
revealed that there are no significant differences between the two modes in the F0 mean,
pitch movement, and pitch range. The ASD children show a low F0, flat pitch movement
and a narrow pitch range; therefore, they are significantly different from the control speakers.
The boundary tone and pitch variation are not found in the pitch contour of ASD speakers.
In most cases, the results show that the pitch contour of ASD is flat, while the TD speakers
could produce the pitch contour of statements and questions differently.
1
INTRODUCTION
First-language acquisition during childhood proceeds with apparent ease. Children
will learn to speak their language with a perfect pronunciation and perfect command of
grammatical rules. Intonation is an important aspect of language that seems to be easily, if
not automatically, acquired by children in L1 (Chun, 2002: xiii). However, for children with
autism syndrome, this is not the case.
Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder and is defined as abnormal development,
in terms of abnormal social interactions, communication, certain behaviour, stereotype, and
repeated actions (Wing and Gould, 1979; Aitken et al., 1998). Recent research in autism focuses
on three autism disorders domains: socialization constraints, language, and imagination
deviation. In language disorder, many autistic children encounter mute conditions or difficulties in acquiring the language as well as using the language in certain styles, such as infrequent
initiation of starting conversations, inability to do voice imitation, recurring repetitions or
parroting words and sentences, and having odd intonations or vocal rhythms.
Baltaxe and Simmons (1985) state that one of the communication disorders of autistic
individual is prosody deviation. The prosody of ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) speakers
tend to be more atypical especially shown in a pragmatic affective aspect (Shirberg et al.,
2001). They also have difficulty in understanding the changing of tones, modulation, or
accentuated words from people’s speech (Koning and Magil-Evans, 2001 in Attwood, 2008:
218). This shows that speech sound perception has an implication towards the speech sound
production. Hubbard and Trauner (2007) found that the difficulty in prosody imitation of
ASD speakers is because they have a wider pitch range than the affective prosody imitation.
It means that the children who were subjects of this study exaggerated the intonation they
heard. Moreover, they did not use duration signs so their responses did not show certain
emotional features accurately.
Baltaxe et al. (1984) analysed the intonation of five ASD children compared to Aphasia
and TD (Typical Developed) children of 4–12 years old. The spontaneous controlled speech
was recorded and analysed acoustically in terms of pitch range, declination, pitch contour,
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and the influence of frequency declination and intensity. One of the findings shows that the
pitch contour of ASD is wider than a child with aphasia, but the difference from TD children
is insignificant. However, ASD speakers have a varied pitch range more than others. They
can speak either very fast or very slow; there is no average pitch range information provided
to show their specific intonation patterns.
Prosody is the properties of speech sounds that can be found beyond sequence segments.
The properties occur in language units vary from syllables to longer units as sentences and
paragraphs. Noteboom (1997: 640) provides some examples of prosody, such as the pitch
of speech, stretching and shrinking duration of utterances, loudness, and intonation. The
parameters of prosody can be arranged in two structures: melodic and temporal structures.
The melodic structure of utterances consists of pitch parameters that are high and low pitch
movements, and the intonation. The temporal structure contains the rhythm of speech, a
combination of short–long utterances, and pauses.
Prosodic functions operate in different domains. Prosody has a lexical function on a
word domain. At the word level, tone in tone languages is distinctive* similar to stresses in
stress languages like English and Dutch (Cutler & van Donselaar, 2001). Other functions of
prosody work in different domains. As a boundary marking, prosody can demarcate word
boundaries, phrase boundaries, and sentence boundaries. Speeches are usually prolonged
and fall with a lower pitch in the final position. Prosodic characters also define communication differences. A statement usually ends with a falling pitch, while a question with a rising tone (Ladefoged and Johnson 2011: 24). An accentual focus is carried out louder, with
some pitch movements, and sometimes a longer duration (Beckman, 1989; Eefting, 1991;
Eefting & Nooteboom, 1991).
Pitch is one of the acoustical parameters that play an important role in the speech melody.
Pitch is investigated by measuring a vocal fold vibration and fundamental frequency (F0)
(Nooteboom, 1999: 642). The more the vocal folds vibrate, the higher the fundamental frequencies are. Combinations of pitch movements form the intonation of the sentence.
A previous study has shown that children with autism cannot differentiate declarative and
interrogative sentences in their speeches. Therefore, we investigated whether such a case also
occurs in Indonesian autistic children. Simple declarative sentences can be realized as interrogatives if they are spoken with a certain degree of a rising tone at the end of a sentence.
2
METHODOLOGY
This experimental phonetics research uses production experiments to investigate the intonation of the sentences. The production data are digitized, and the intonation contours are
extracted. Perception experiments in this paper are not performed. Perception analyses are
performed by the researchers to elicit the “close-copy of ” the intonation contours.
The current phonetic researches use computer programs to analyse the speech sounds. This
prosodic research uses a specific computer program called PRAAT (Boersma & Wenink,
2015), to depict the pitch contours and to measure the fundamental frequencies (F0 in Hz).
In particular, we measured the mean F0 of all sentences and calculated the pitch ranges by
measuring the F0 maximum and F0 minimum. Furthermore, to investigate the occurrence of
declination in the pitch contour of the declaratives, we measured the initial F0 and finale F0.
The subjects are five elementary school children (grade 3 and higher) with autism syndrome disorder. They were asked to produce two sentences in two modes: declarative and
interrogative modes. The data for this study are two sentences (1) Dia membaca buku ‘He/she
reads a book’ and (2) Dia bermain bola ‘He/she plays football/soccer’ in two different modes.
To illustrate the differences in the intonation contours between the declaratives and interrogatives, below are examples of the sentence Dia bermain bola spoken by a normal TD child
of the same age delivered in two modes: declarative and interrogative one.
* In Mandarin, the domain of tone could be a bound morpheme (Yip 2002).
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Figure 1. The pitch contours of Dia bermain bola in declarative and interrogative modes.
Figure 1 shows that the declarative sentence has a declination (55 Hz), which ends with a
lower pitch. An interrogative usually ends with a rising tone. English-speaking children aged
10 normally have a pitch range between 200 and 500 Hz (Gut, 2009: 172). However, previous
studies indicate that the pitch range is language specific (Van Bezooijen 1995, Mennen 2007).
Indonesian children might have a wider pitch range or the opposite of a narrower pitch
range. Our TD children have a pitch range of ca. 130 Hz (F0 mean 291.5 Hz) in the declarative sentence and ca. 293 Hz (F0 mean 271.1 Hz) in the interrogative sentence.
The data recording were performed by reading passages. The sentences were typed on a
sheet of paper and the subjects were asked to read them aloud for four times. However, during this study, we only selected one with the best quality. As a comparison, a simple imitating
experiment was performed in which the ASD children had to imitate their speech therapist.
3
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The results of the pitch measurements listed in the table are the mean pitch of the sentence
(F0 mean), the initial pitch (F0 start), the final pitch (F0 end), the lowest pitch (F0 min), and
the highest pitch (F0 max). By taking the F0 min from the F0 max, we are able to have the
pitch range of the sentence. The table is made separately for each sentence mode.
3.1
Declarative sentences
From Table 1 we can see that four of the five ASD children have a relatively high F0 mean
(266.3 Hz on average), but one of them has a lower F0 mean (ca. 179 Hz). On the other hand,
nine of the ten sentences have a relative small pitch range (ca. 70 Hz), only ASD3 has a relative wider pitch range (ca. 159 Hz), while reading “Dia bermain bola.” It seems that our ASD
subjects read the sentences in a rather flat manner; they did not make adequate pitch movements. The following contours are from ASD1 and ASD3 reading “Dia bermain bola”
It is noticeable that the intonation contours of the declarative sentences do not always
imply a clear declination. The contour of ASD3 from Figure 2 has, for instance, a declination of 27.66 Hz. ASD1 has no declination; it even looks more like an inclination. The two
contours differ from each other. The pitch contour of ASD1 is rather flat, while the pitch
contour of ASD3 indicates occurrence of pitch movements.
From Table 1 we can see that not all sentences end with a lower pitch. In other words, our
ASD children are inconsistent in repeating a declining declarative sentence.
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Table 1.
Pitch parameters of declarative sentences read by 5 ASD children.
ASD1
F0 mean (Hz)
F0 start (Hz)
F0 end (Hz)
F0 min (Hz)
F0 max (Hz)
Pitch range (Hz)
(F0 max−F0 min)
ASD2
ASD3
ASD4
ASD5
Book
Ball
Book
Ball
Book
Ball
Book
Ball
Book
Ball
183.88
175.8
142.1
142.11
202.69
60.58
179.44
166.3
190.1
159.85
196.41
36.61
258.74
274.38
228.49
209.93
301.17
91.24
265.40
261.86
255.66
252.06
294.73
42.67
267.9
239.3
284.7
231.95
326.61
94.66
271.46
221.98
194.32
194.32
353.53
159.21
295.43
297.9
313.2
257.59
340.87
83.28
290.12
258.65
286.52
258.08
311.96
53.88
236
240.75
230.93
191.23
265.46
74.23
237.78
245.2
205.4
193.78
269.93
76.15
Figure 2. Intonation contours of declarative sentences “Dia bermain bola” spoken by ASD1 (left) and
ASD3 (right).
3.2
Interrogative sentences
The F0 mean (248.88 Hz) is rather lower than that of normal children. If we compare the
pitch parameters in Table 2 with those in Table 1, we might see that the differences are small.
The ASD subjects are indeed insensitive to the differences between declarative and interrogative sentences. The following is the intonation contours of ASD3 reading “Dia bermain bola”
in the declarative sentence (straight line) and interrogative sentence (dot-dash line).
However, the pitch ranges of the interrogative sentences (82.49 Hz) are higher than the
declarative sentences. They have attempted to make a rising tone somewhere in the sentence.
Below is the intonation contour of the interrogative sentence “Dia bermain bola” read by
ASD4. In Figure 4, the final pitch of the interrogative (267.25 Hz) is lower than the initial
pitch (288.97 Hz). However, if we observe the overall intonation contour, the sentence ends
with a final rising tone. It has a declination contour (dashed line) towards the final position
and a rising tone on the last constituent, the object of the sentence “bola.” Below is a comparison with another interrogative sentence with a rising tone at the end of the sentence “Dia
membaca buku” as read by ASD3.
From Figure 5 we can see that the contour starts to rise on the predicate “membaca”, and
rises higher on the object “buku”. This interrogative melody differs from the interrogative
contour from the same speaker in Figure 3.
The melodic structures of declarative sentences of the ASD subjects indicate atypicality.
Their mean pitches are relatively high, but the pitch ranges are small. It means that they
often speak with higher tones, but do not make adequate pitch movements. In other words,
their speeches are relatively flat. Moreover, when they were asked to read the interrogative
sentences, they could hardly produce a representative melody. In most cases, the interrogative sentences were read with almost the same contour as the declarative sentences. However,
the interrogative sentences have somewhat wider pitch ranges than those of the declarative
sentences. In a few cases, they could make a final rising tone. It is noticeable that the ASD
children have a prosodic problem in reading the sentences.
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Table 2.
Pitch parameters of interrogative sentences read by 5 ASD children.
ASD1
F0 mean (Hz)
F0 start (Hz)
F0 end (Hz)
F0 min (Hz)
F0 max (Hz)
Pitch range (Hz)
(F0 max−F0 min)
ASD2
ASD3
ASD4
ASD5
Book
Ball
Book
Ball
Book
Ball
Book
Ball
Book
Ball
182.8
179
131.1
131.1
200.9
69.8
172.45
188.6
175
134.51
197.8
63.29
256.59
276.5
252.4
227.16
301.01
73.85
254.98
287.4
255.2
201.94
303.06
101.12
272.74
238.28
273.93
232.03
321.35
89.32
272.19
239.30
219.09
219.09
343.81
124.72
284.83
270.98
265.03
264.72
334.05
92.54
261.16
288.97
267.25
209.90
300.97
91.07
242.18
251.9
191
190.37
323.86
133.49
271.79
288.4
307.5
223.86
316.84
92.98
Figure 3. Intonation contours of “Dia bermain bola” in declarative (straight line) and interrogative read
by ASD3.
Figure 4. Intonation contour of interrogative sentence “Dia bermain bola” read by ASD4.
Furthermore, when the ASD children were asked to say the same sentences by imitating
their speech therapist, their intonations to some extent are more adequate. The therapist said
aloud the same sentences as in the reading task, and the ASD subjects had to imitate him
immediately. Let us take a look at the following illustrations.
The pitch contour of the declarative sentence of ASD1 resembles the pitch contour of
the therapist. Both contours have slight declinations and gently rise on the subject of the
sentence “Dia” and the object “bola”. The therapist has a pitch range ca 51.30 Hz, and the
speaker ASD1 has a pitch range circa 53.92 Hz.
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Figure 5. Intonation contour of the interrogative sentence “Dia membaca buku” read by ASD3.
Figure 6. Declarative sentence spoken by therapist (left) and imitation spoken by ASD1 (right).
Figure 7.
Interrogative sentence spoken by therapist (left) and imitation spoken by ASD1 (right).
When the therapist produced the interrogative sentence and the ASD subject imitated the
therapist, we have the following contours.
The pitch contours as illustrated in Figure 6 do not look similar to each other; it is noticeable that the ASD subject could produce the interrogative sentence with a final rising tone.
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The pre-final syllable “bo” is realized in both utterances with a pitch point, although the
point made by the therapist is much sharper than that of the ASD speaker. It suggests that
the ASD speaker can produce, to some extent, pitch movements. Furthermore, the pitch
range of ASD1 (88.61 Hz) resembles the pitch range of therapist (90.95 Hz).
4
CONCLUSION
This experimental research reveals that the ASD children have difficulty in differentiating
interrogative from declarative sentences when they were asked to read word sequences ending with a question mark and the same sequences ending with a full stop. They spoke with a
relatively high tone, but with a narrow pitch range. Almost all of the sentences were read without obvious pitch movements. The declarative sentences are relatively flat, declination occurs
infrequently, and the boundary tone has in most cases no remarkable fall. The pitch parameters of the interrogative sentences are almost similar to the pitch parameters of the declarative
sentences. One of the ASD children realized the interrogative sentence with a similar melody
to the declarative sentence. Nevertheless, the interrogative sentences have, on average, wider
pitch ranges than the declarative sentences. A few interrogative sentences indicate the occurrences of pitch movements. These sentences have a rising tone on the final constituent.
The imitating task apparently was better performed than the reading task. The experiment with the therapist as role model shows that ASD children are familiar with imitation
therapy. The autistic children were able repeat the intonation of the therapist adequately. The
imitation task reveals a declarative pitch contour with a declination and a falling boundary
tone, and the interrogative sentence is realized with a noticeable pitch rise at the end of the
sentence.
REFERENCES
Aitken, K. et al. (1998) Children with autism diagnosis and intervention to meet their needs. London, Jessica Kingsley.
Attwood, T. (2008) A complete guide to Asperger’s Syndrome. London, Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Baltaxe, C. (1984) The use contrastive stress in normal, aphasic and autistic children. Journal of Speech
and Hearing Research, 27, 97–105.
Baltaxe C.A. & Simmons, J.Q. (1975) Language in childhood psychosis. Journal of Speech and hearing
Disorders, 40(4): 439–458.
Beckman, M.E. (1986) Stress and non-stress accent. Dordrecht/Cinnaminson, Foris.
Bezooijen, R. van (1984) Characteristics and recognisability of vocal expression of emotion. Dordrecht,
Foris.
Boersma, P. & Weenink, D. (2015) PRAAT, doing phonetics by computer, version 5.4.18, [www.praat.
org].
Chun, D.M. (2002) Discourse Intonation in L2: From Theory and Research to Practice. Amsterdam,
John Benjamin.
Cutler, A. & van Donselaar, W. (2001) Voornaam is not (really) a homophone: Lexical prosody and
lexical access in Dutch, Language and Speech, 44, 171–195.
Hefting, W. (1991) The effect of ‘information value’ and ‘accentuation’ on the duration of Dutch words,
syllables, and segment, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 89, 412–424.
Eefting, W. & Nooteboom, S. G. (1991) The effect of accentedness and information value on word
durations: a production and a perception study. Proceeding of the 22nd International Congress of
Phonetic Sciences (pp. 302–305), Aix-en-Provence.
Gut, U. (2009) Introduction to English phonetics and phonology: [including CD]. Frankfurt, M: Lang.
Hubbard K. & Trauner, D.A. (2007) Intonation and emotion in autistic spectrum disorders, J.
Psycholinguist Res Mar; 36(2), 159–173.
Ladefoged & Johnson (2011) A Course in Phonetics. International Edition (with CD-ROM), Boston,
Wadsworth, Cengange Learning.
Mennen, I. (2007) Phonological and phonetic influences in non-native intonation. In: Trouvain, J. & Gut,
U. (eds.) Non-native Prosody: Phonetic Descriptions and Teaching Practice (Nicht-muttersprachliche
Prosodie: phonetische Beschreibungen und didaktische Praxis) (pp. 53–76). Mouton De Gruyter.
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Nooteboom, S. (1997) The Prosody of Speech: Melody and Rhythm. In: W.J. Hardcastle & J. Lavers
(eds) The Handbook of Phonetic sciences. Oxford, Blackwell. p. 640–673.
Shriberg, L.D., Paul, R., Mc Sweeny, J.L. Klin, A., Cohen, D.J. & Volkmar, F.R. (2001) Speech and
prosody characteristics of adolescents and adults with high functioning autism and asperger
syndrome. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44, 1097–1115.
Wing, L. & Gould, J. (1979) Severe impairments of social and associated abnormalities in children:
Epidemiology and classification. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 9, 11–29.
Yip, M. (2002) Tone. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Characteristics of word duration in children with autism
spectrum disorder
T.W.R. Ningsih, F.X. Rahyono & Ayesa
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This study focuses on the prosodic aspect of Autism Spectrum Disorder
(ASD) associated with characteristics of the disorder. The subjects are male ASD speakers
aged 9 to 12 years old. The data was collected using reading and imitation techniques and
subsequently processed using the PRAAT program. The results show that there are variations in duration among ASD speakers. The duration from the reading technique tended to
be longer in comparison to the imitation technique, and the size of the differences varied
greatly. Both techniques, reading and imitation, produced longer durations for interrogative sentences than declarative sentences. Interrogative sentences produced by ASD speakers
tended to be longer on the final syllable of the object constituent. This indicates that ASD
speakers have difficulties in detecting the end of a speech boundary. Meanwhile, the short
duration produced by ASD speakers on a subject constituent indicates that they have a tendency to fail to understand the function of a subject constituent in a sentence.
1
INTRODUCTION
Duration can be defined as a series of articulators and the time dimension of an acoustic
signal. Lehiste (1970) argues that duration can be associated with quantity if it functions as
an independent variable in the phonological system of a language. Duration is related to the
determination of an articulator’s movement and its measurable channel. The speech duration
can be influenced by several phonetic factors, while the duration of a segment can be determined by the nature of the segment itself, namely articulation point and behavior. According
to Sugiyono (2003b), duration is the time span required for the realization of a sound segment that is measured in milliseconds. If the segment is in the form of a sentence, the time
span is usually called temporal. Structural temporal, which is also known as duration, is a set
of rules that determines the duration of a speech pattern.
Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder whose symptoms appear before the age of
three. Children who show autism symptoms (ASD) often have a very slow speech development. Symptoms that can be identified include an underdeveloped vocabulary, for example
the ability to give meaning to an object is not developed. A verbal symptom especially prominent among ASD speakers is their difficulty to understand the meaning of a word during a
conversation. Incorrect pronunciation is another symptom. Even if the vocabulary is well
developed, it is often not used for communication. Word repetition, echolalia, and incoherent grammar are several other symptoms. In addition, children with autism show qualitative
disturbances in social interaction, play, and communication that are often accompanied with
repetitive behaviors and stereotyped patterns (American Psychiatric Association, 1994; Klin,
et al., 2000).
ASD speakers are also inept in social communicative functions. Researchers suggest that
the disorder also affects the speech prosody. McCann et al. (2007) believe that the accuracy level of prosodic production is related to the language skill level. Peppé et al. (2010)
also state that prosodic functions are related to the level of communicative function. ASD
speakers may have linguistic abnormalities (Ploog et al., 2009), which eventually will affect
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the perception and production of their prosody. Pecora (2009) discovered that children with
ASD tend to speak in higher tones and with longer durations. This finding is also supported
by research that was conducted by Bonneh et al. (2010). They proved that children with ASD
have a wider tone range and greater variations. Diehl (2012) investigated ASD speakers’ difficulties in producing appropriate durations, responding and mimicking the prosody, and
having prosodic perception.
Speech production disorders are associated with speech reflective motor differences particularly stress and duration. Some researchers reported that ASD speakers pronounce words
and sentences with different stresses (Paul et al., 2005; Shriberg et al., 2001). This is perhaps related to ASD speakers’ difficulties to understand and process the theory of mind
(McCann & Peppe, 2003). Other speech disorders involve speech duration, frequent pauses,
and the length of the pauses (Zajac et al., 2006). Paul et al. (2005) developed a hypothesis arguing that ASD speakers are unable to produce normal prosody and have social skill
impairment and poor communication.
The ASD speakers’ prosody disorder is identified as a communication disorder (Baltaxe &
Simmons, 1985). However, this disorder is often overlooked, despite the fact that prosody
impairment is considered a main obstacle to social group acceptance (Shriberg et al., 2001).
Moreover, as prosody disruption can occur at an unpredictable duration of time, by then
other disorders will have already been resolved. This is supported by Paul et al. (2005) who
state that if ASD speakers have difficulties in adapting to social environment and social imitation, the prosody they produce is atypical.
Based on previous studies, one of the ASD symptoms is a deficit in the production of
duration. The duration produced through a spontaneous speech is declared unstable. The
duration produced by ASD speakers using reading techniques is also unstable, and there is a
tendency to expand the duration of the final syllable. This trend is associated with production deficit of final speech (Shriberg et al., 2001). However, so far there has been no detailed
explanation about the indications of the disorder. Several tests using certain techniques need
to be conducted in order to identify the indications of the disorder.
This study used two techniques of data collection, namely reading and imitation techniques. Both of these techniques enabled a comparison of speech production among ASD
speakers. As already known, imitation is a technique used by therapists to provide speech
therapy to ASD speakers. Similarly, the echolalia symptom is shared among most ASD speakers. Researchers suspect that the imitation technique yields more significant results than the
reading technique. It is expected that through these two techniques, the capabilities of ASD
speakers to perform receptive and productive speech can be revealed.
2
RESEARCH METHODS
The subjects were male ASD speakers aged 9 to 12 years old. They were diagnosed with
autism disorder when they were 3 years old and received treatment in a rehabilitation center
for children with special needs at an early age. During data collection, the subjects were students in the same elementary school but at different grade levels. Subjects A (9 years old),
B (9.7 years old), and C (9.8 years old) were 3rd grade students, while subject D (11.4 years
old) was a 5th grade student, and subject E (12 years old) was a 6th grade student.
This study is a phonetic experimental study using the subjects’ utterances as data. Utterances produced by each subject were recorded using a special recording device in a soundproof room. The recorded utterances were saved as wav files and then processed using
the PRAAT program (Boersma & Weenink, 2001). This study applied the IPO approach
(Instituut voor Onderzoek Perceptie) (‘t Hart Collier & Cohen, 1990; Rahyono, 2003). IPO
approach includes three main activities, namely (1) experimental speech production, (2) the
speech acoustic analysis, and (3) the experimental speech perception test.
To obtain the data, two techniques were used, namely reading and imitation techniques,
and the following instruments were employed.
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Instruments 1: 1.a.
1.b.
Instruments 2: 2.a.
2.b.
2.1
Dia (he)
subject
Dia (he)
subject
Dia (He)
subject
Dia (He)
membaca (reads)
verb
membaca (reads)
verb
bermain (plays)
verb
bermain (plays)
buku (a book). (Declarative sentence)
object
buku (a book)? (Interrogative sentence)
object
bola (soccer). (Declarative sentence)
object
bola (soccer)? (Interrogative sentence)
Subject
verb
object
Data screening techniques:
1. The reading technique
The subjects were asked to read the text (research instruments) three times using the reading technique. The data was screened three times considering that it was selected based
on the degree of speech naturalness. The utterances were recorded using a high-quality
recorder.
2. The imitation technique
The subjects were accompanied by a therapist to carry out imitation. The therapist read the
text, and the subjects were asked to imitate. Similar to the reading technique, the imitation
was carried out three times. The number of utterances obtained from the reading technique
is 45 (3 × 5 × 3) utterances of declarative sentences (instrument 1 and instrument 2), and
45 utterances of interrogative sentences (instrument 1 and instrument 2). The imitation
technique generated 45 utterances of declarative sentences (instrument 1 and instrument 2)
and 45 utterances of interrogative sentences (instrument 1 and instrument 2).
2.2 Data selection test
The data selection test was conducted in order to obtain a natural primary contour of
declarative and interrogative utterances. The selected data were 45 utterances produced by
5 research subjects for each instrument. The data selection test provided information of
the score of each utterance. The data consisted of two declarative sentences and two interrogative sentences for each subject. The imitation technique generated the same number
of data.
2.3 Acoustic analysis
After the data selection test was conducted, the primary contour of declarative sentences and
interrogative sentences was obtained. The data was then processed in the acoustic analysis
stage. The first phase is the segmentation of the utterance. The segmentation is useful to
determine the boundaries of the constituencies to be analyzed, and it is useful as a basis for
measuring the duration of each constituent.
3
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Based on the results of the acoustic analysis, the values of F0 and duration were obtained.
A sample of duration calculation using the PRAAT is presented in Figure 1.
Figure 1 illustrates the acoustic analysis and duration using PRAAT, ‘Dia membaca buku?
(He read the book?)’. It also illustrates the respective value of the duration of each syllable. Syllable ‘di’ has a duration value of 180 ms, while syllable ‘ya’ (94 ms), syllable ‘mem’
(174 ms), syllable ‘ba’ (174 ms), syllable ‘ca’ (140 ms), syllable ‘bu’ (248 ms), and syllable
‘ku’(331 ms). The total duration in Figure 1 is 1444 ms.
Based on the selected data, the values of F0 and speech duration produced by each subject
using two different techniques were obtained.
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Figure 1.
3.1
Duration measurement in PRAAT.
The reading technique (Instrument 1)
The speech durations produced by the subjects were analyzed acoustically. The results of duration measurements in the reading technique are depicted in Table 1 and Table 2. Table 1 shows
that the longest duration in declarative sentences was produced by subject A at 2052 ms, and
the shortest duration was produced by subject E at 1219 ms. In interrogative sentences, the
longest duration was produced by subject B at 2408 ms. The lowest duration was produced by
subject E at 937 ms. Based on the analysis of the durations of declarative and interrogative sentences, subject E produced the shortest duration, and it was consistently on the subject constituents. The shortest durations on the subject constituent, i.e., syllable ‘di’ and syllable ‘ya’, were
produced by subject E with the subject constituent being shorter than the other constituents.
The duration of the instrument ‘bola/ball’ shows that declarative sentences had the longest duration, which was produced by subject B at 1896 ms on the subject constituent, and
the shortest duration was produced by subject E at 945 ms on the object constituent. In
interrogative sentences, the longest duration was produced by subject A at 1975 ms on the
predicate constituent, and the shortest duration was produced by subject E at 236 ms on the
predicate constituent.
Based on the duration analysis of instruments 1 (buku/book) and instruments 2 (bola/ball),
subject E shows the same characteristics. E produced durations which were shorter than the
durations produced by the other subjects. In the second instrument (bola/ball), subject E
produced the shortest duration on the predicate constituent, which is at the beginning of the
syllable ‘ber’.
3.2 Imitation technique
The results of duration measurement in the imitation technique are shown in Table 3 and
Table 4.
The data show that the longest duration on declarative sentences (buku/book) using the
imitation technique was produced by subject A at 1313 ms on the object constituent. The
shortest duration was produced by subject E at 521 ms on the subject constituent. In interrogative sentences, the longest duration was produced by subject A at 2569 ms on the object
constituent, and the shortest duration was produced by E at 52 ms on the subject constituent.
Subject E produced the shortest duration on the subject constituent.
In a declarative sentence mode, the shortest duration was produced by subject A at 1611 ms
on the object constituent, and the shortest duration was produced by subject E at 605 ms
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Table 1.
Subject
Duration with the reading technique (Instrument 1).
Age
A
9
B
9.7
C
9.8
D
11.4
E
12
Table 2.
Subject
Age
9
B
9.7
C
9.8
D
11.4
E
12
Subject
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
Syllables
di
ya
mem
ba
ca
bu
ku
285
233
477
447
222
197
109
97
159
94
279
270
179
525
285
284
178
109
53
112
201
268
217
273
223
117
167
235
420
88
207
173
237
182
146
303
86
79
65
87
188
219
228
243
267
689
181
134
114
162
326
312
202
437
193
258
171
197
145
135
566
499
406
301
234
359
361
261
263
259
Duration with the reading technique (Instrument 2).
A
Table 3.
Instrument
DCL/INT
Instrument
DCL/INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
Syllables
di
ya
ber
ma
in
bo
la
169
169
456
477
247
346
125
97
104
128
394
557
255
165
208
304
287
109
99
880
137
159
180
213
141
167
152
235
55
99
273
267
142
213
205
260
141
79
71
112
296
211
260
160
217
137
152
134
137
113
232
204
187
227
210
231
134
197
132
137
307
408
416
256
522
565
474
261
347
236
Duration with the imitation technique (Instrument 1).
Age
A
9
B
9.7
C
9.8
D
11.4
E
12
Instrument
DCL/INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
Syllables
di
ya
mem
ba
ca
bu
ku
250
40
20
183
289
197
148
50
62
52
270
147
189
168
139
284
133
121
100
38
197
207
208
182
160
117
169
179
68
81
192
174
185
193
229
303
127
128
89
127
146
122
175
122
158
689
140
152
146
105
233
288
226
275
292
258
123
245
385
129
147
303
217
243
401
359
392
298
226
106
on the subject constituent. In interrogative sentences, the longest duration was produced by
subject A at 2858 ms on the object constituent, and the shortest duration was produced by
subject E at 953 ms on the predicate constituent. The results of duration measurement show
that subject E produced the shortest duration on the two types of sentences.
The overview of the total duration comparison between the reading technique and imitation technique using instrument 1 is presented in Figure 2.
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Table 4.
Subject
Duration with the imitation technique (Instrument 2).
Age
A
9
B
9.7
C
9.8
D
11.4
E
12
Instrument
DCL/INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
DCL
INT
Syllables
di
ya
ber
ma
in
bo
la
278
205
124
161
245
305
80
129
58
97
254
103
270
118
116
355
190
305
97
113
120
172
395
153
163
164
133
294
97
134
174
196
101
196
241
275
132
232
49
90
216
631
216
156
173
142
117
224
136
146
271
262
173
183
213
219
133
223
84
112
298
289
261
375
458
438
317
422
84
261
Figure 2.
Duration in instrument 1 ‘buku’ (book).
Figure 3.
Duration in instrument 2 ‘bola’ (ball).
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The comparison of the total duration produced by each subject using instrument 2 is presented in Figure 3.
The results of the speech duration calculation are presented from Table 1 to Table 4. Each
table describes the durations of utterances produced by the subjects using two techniques on
declarative sentences and interrogative sentences. The results show that subject E produced
the shortest duration on both reading and imitation techniques. There was no significant
difference between the duration of the declarative sentence mode obtained from the reading
technique and that from the imitation technique. In interrogative sentences, the highest duration was produced on the object constituent. In the second instrument, the results show that
the longest duration in both reading and imitation techniques was on the object constituent,
while the shortest duration was on the subject constituent.
This study shows that the measurement results of contrastive durations using reading and
imitation techniques show different results. The difference in durations was calculated based
on the duration per syllable on each constituent, namely subject, predicate, and object, and
the total duration. Based on the four instruments, the longest duration was on the interrogative sentence mode, which is characterized by extending the vowel in the final syllable.
Declarative sentences are produced in a shorter duration than that of interrogative sentences.
The results of the duration measurements reveal abnormality in the length of the duration
which indicates a production problem among ASD speakers.
4
CONCLUSION
The durations produced by ASD subjects show various results, especially from the reading
technique. In this technique, the duration produced by one of the subjects is considered to be
very short, especially when producing the subject constituent. This indicates that the subject
did not focus on the subject constituent. Meanwhile, another ASD subject produced utterances with a longer duration on the object constituent. This also indicates that the ASD subject has difficulties to determine speech boundaries. Based on the measurement results, it can
be concluded that the duration production of each subject varies widely, which is presumably
because the subjects did not have enough knowledge about how to produce declarative sentences and interrogative sentences. Another probable explanation is the emotional instability of ASD speakers in producing speech that leads to instability in their speech duration
production.
REFERENCES
American Psychiatric Association. (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(4th ed.). Washington, DV: Author.
Boersma, P. & Weenink, D. (2001) PRAAT, a system for doing phonetics by computer. Glot International,
5 (9/10), 341–345.
Bonneh, Y.S., Levanon, Y., Dean-Pardo, O., Lossos, L., & Adini, Y. (2011) Abnormal speech spectrum
and increased pitch variability in young autistic children. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 4, 1–7.
doi:10.3389/fnhum.2010.00237.
Diehl, J.J. & Paul, R. (2012) Acoustic differences in the imitation of prosodic patterns in children with
autism spectrum disorders. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 6, 123–134.
Hart, J., Collier, R. & Cohen, A. (1990) A Perceptual Study of Intonation: An Experimental-Phonetic
Approach to Speech Melody (1990). Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Klin, A. & Volkmar, F.R. (2000) Treatment and intervention guidelines for individuals with Asperger syndrome.
In: Klin A, Volkmar FR, Sparrow SS, eds. Asperger syndrome. New York, Guilford Press; pp. 340–366.
Lehiste, I. (1970) Suprasegmentals. Oxford, England: MIT Press.
McCann, J. & Peppe, S. (2003) Prosody in autism spectrum disorders: a critical review. International
Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 38(4), 325–350. doi:10.1080/1368282031 000154204.
McCann, J., Peppé S., Gibbon, F.E., O’Hare, A., & Rutherford, M. (2007) Prosody and its relationship
to language in school-aged children with high-functioning autism. International Journal of Language
& Communication Disorder. Nov–Dec; 42 (6), 682–702.
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Noterdaeme, M., Mildenberger, M., Minow, F. & Amorosa, A. (2002) Evaluation of neuromotor
deficits in children with autism and children with a specific speech and language disorder. Europe
Child Adolescent Psychiatry 11, 219–225.
Paul, R., Augustyn, A., Klin, A. & Volkmar, F. (2005) Perception and production of prosody by speakers
with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders, 35, 205–220.
Paul, R., Shriberg, L. D., McSweeny, J., Cicchetti, D., Klin, A., & Volkmar, F. 31(2005b) Brief report:
Relations between prosodic performance and communication and socialization ratings in high
functioning speakers with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,
35(6), 861–869. doi:10.1007/s10803-005-0031-8.
Pecora, L. (2009) Acoustic and Prosodic Characteristics of Spontaneous Speech in Autism. Unpublished
Senior Honors Thesis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.
Peppé, S., Cleland, J., Gibbon, F., O’Hare, A. & Castilla, P. M. (2010) Expressive prosody in children
with autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 24, 41–53.
Ploog, B.O., Banerjee, S. & Brooks, P. J. (2009) Attention to prosody (intonation) and content in children
with autism and in typical children using spoken sentences in a computer game. Research in Autism
Spectrum Disorders, 3(3), 743–758. doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2009.02.004
Rahyono, F.X. (2003) Intonasi Ragam Bahasa Jawa Keraton Yogyakarta (Kontras) Deklarativitas,
Interogativitas, dan Imperativitas (Disertasi) (Intonation of Keraton Yogyakarta Javanese Language
(Kontras) Declaravity, Interogativity, and Imperativity (Dissertation). Jakarta, Universitas Indonesia.
Shriberg, D.L., Paul, R., McSweeny, L.J., Klin, A., Cohen, J.D. & Volkmar, F.R. (2001) Speech and prosody
characteristics of adolescents and adults with high-functioning autism and Asperger Syndrome.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44, 1097–1115. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2001/087).
Sugiyono (2003) Pedoman Penelitian Bahasa Lisan: Fonetik (Guidance of Oral Language Research:
Phonetics). Jakarta, Pusat Bahasa.
Zajac, D.J., Roberts, J.E., Hennon, E.A., Harris, A.A., Barnes, E.F. & Misenheimer, J. (2006) Articulation
rate and vowel space characteristics of young males with fragile X syndrome: Preliminary acoustic
findings. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49(5), 1147–1155.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Experimental approach of perception toward autism spectrum
disorder intonation
F.X. Rahyono, T.W.R. Ningsih, Ayesa & M. Aziza
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This study aims at finding intonation patterns of utterances produced by
speakers with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The acoustic units used to mark the intonation pattern are: 1) pitch movement, 2) final intonation, and 3) baseline slope. The data were
uttered sentences in declarative and interrogative modes produced by 11-year-old children
with ASD and TD (Typical Development). This is an experimental research using an IPO
approach and a PRAAT program to analyse acoustic data. Based on real contour utterance
patterns produced by the speakers with ASD and TD, the synthesis and substitutions of pitch
movement between the ASD and TD intonations were made. The stimuli of pitch movement
synthesis and substitution were then tested to know the meaning of acceptability through
perception test and statistics using the Likert scale. The perception test results show that the
speakers with ASD did not produce different utterance intonation between declarative and
interrogative modes. The pitch movement, in both declarative and interrogative modes tends
to be flat and show a pitch range under three semitones.
1
INTRODUCTION
Each language speaker has the ability to use the language in order to communicate with
each other. Such a speaker has certain conventional sound systems, both in the segmental
and the supra-segmental systems called prosody, which they collectively agree with. On a
certain limit, even speakers of a young age have mastered the prosody of their mother tongue.
Baltaxe and Simmons (1985), as cited by Azizi, state that prosody is an important variable
from a children’s language acquisition perspective. The prosody ability, which consists of
emotional, and pragmatics utterances might be less stable for autism children compared
to children with no learning difficulties since the latter are able to improve their awareness
and prosodic abilities (Zahra Azizi, 2016). Peppe et al. (2007) state that this knowledge has
improved the understanding of communication aspects, such as utterances filled with emotion, behaviour, and social signs.
Mozziconacci (1998) explains that prosody characteristics provide information about
one’s identity, physical and emotion conditions, attitudes, as well as utterances and act situations. The problems arise when the prosody variation that significantly deviates from the
conventional prosody system is found. According to Mozziconacci, the speaker’s health
and emotional conditions are important factors to determine the prosody profile produced.
A speaker with ASD is an example of those who produce deviant prosody characteristics
from acceptable or natural prosody characteristics. The deviant prosody characteristics occur
due to cognitive disorders suffered by the speakers with autism which cause intentional and
comprehension constraints as well as other cognitive disorders (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and
Frith (1985); Frith (1989); Happ’ (1993); Baron-Cohen, Tager-Flusberg, and Cohen (1993)).
Fay and Schuler (1980) describe a subset of autistic individuals who used a singsong mode
to communicate rather than in a flat pattern. Goldfarb, Braunstein, and Lorge (1956) and
Pronovost, Wakstein, and Wakstein (1966) found unusually high fundamental frequency
levels in autistic speakers. Other voice disorders, such as hoarseness, harshness, and hyper
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nasality, have also been identified (Pronovost et al., 1966). Aitken et al. (1998) explain that
autism is a pervasive development disorder (PDD), which incorporates abnormal development in social interactions, communication, certain behaviours, stereotypes, and repeated
actions. Furthermore, autism starts from 36 months old (DSM-IV 1994), and nowadays
social failures are seen as the main symptom of autism by many people (Baron-Cohen 1989).
Peppé (2009) explains that there are two expressive prosody disorders in speakers with
ASD: the ‘function’ prosody disorder and ‘pattern’ prosody disorder. The ‘function prosody’
disorder causes the speakers with ASD to be unable to differentiate utterance intonation
when only prosody is used. Based on the research, Peppé (2009) used declarative sentences
contrasted with interrogative sentences. The result (Peppé, 2009) shows that speakers with
ASD have failed to differentiate the contrast of the two sentence modes.
This study focuses on intonation, which is among one of the prosodic expressions. Intonations are ensembles of pitch variations in utterances caused by varying periodicity in the
vibration of the vocal cord (t’Hart, Collier, and Cohen, 1990). The intonations are controlled
by intonation sub-components (called prosody), in which the realizations are the forms of
pitch, accent, loudness, duration, rhythm, and sound quality. These prosody features form
intonation patterns. In a language intonation research, intonations serve as supra segmental;
phonetic features are used to deliver lexical meanings structurally (Ladd, 1996). Based on
Pierrehumbert (1980) who states that intonations are parts of structured linguistic prosody,
and in American English, the intonations basically consider pitch stress, sentence accent, and
pitch range.
Referring back to the prosody variation problems stated above, a language has productive characteristics. Rising and falling pitch movements that represent intonation have consequences to the variations of pitch contours. The sentence mode differences spoken have
resulted in different intonation contours. Therefore, every speaker can produce different
intonation contours. Pike (1972) states that variations of pitch movements, which build the
intonation contour of a sentence, are not random variations. The variations of patterns, as
well as their changes, are set in certain orders. The problem arises here when people with
ASD produce the variations.
The debatable arguments of ASD speakers’ different prosody production compared to
normal speakers are interesting to be studied. Therefore, the researchers conducted an experiment to find out the intonation indicators or parameters produced by speakers with ASD
and the prosody produced by normal speakers. This study was conducted to analyse two
important things in the intonations: production of acoustic analysis, and utterance perception of informant with ASD and normal speakers. The intonation features as the product of
the utterances, used PRAAT, which is F0 score, pitch variation, excursion, and pitch ranges
from the two informants with different verbal development ability. A perception test was
conducted to assess the utterance production acceptability by speakers with ASD.
This study focuses on measurement of the intonation components consisting of: 1) pitch
movement; 2) final intonation, and 3) baseline slope. Therefore, this study aims to answer the
following research question: “How is the acceptability intonation of speakers with ASD as
natural utterances?” Acoustic parameters used to mark the ASD intonation patterns were:
pitch movements, pitch variations, and baseline slope intonation contours.
2
METHODOLOGY
This is an experimental study on the intonation characteristics in the speakers with ASD.
This study used IPO scale (Instituut voor Perceptie Onderzoek), which is a phonetics experimental model, which examines signal acoustic analysis to statistics analysis of the utterance
acceptability (‘t Hart et al., 1990). The main procedures are utterance production, acoustic
utterance analysis, hypothesis making and experiment design, stimulus making, perception
test, and statistics analysis.
The data of this study are uttered sentences produced by speakers with ASD and TD.
Both speakers were requested to say the same sentences: 1) Dia membaca buku, and 2) Dia
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bermain bola. Each sentence was stated in two modes: in declarative and interrogative modes.
The data of both sentences were produced by a reading technique. In speakers with ASD, the
utterance production also used an imitation technique.
The acoustic analysis step is a process of digitizing the utterances, which consists of two
activities; utterance segmentation and utterance synthesis. The acoustic analysis was conducted using PRAAT* software program. In this step, the data acoustic collected are in the
forms of fundamental frequency scores, pitch, duration, as well as pitch movement features
and contour patterns.
The perception test started from designing stimulus based on the hypothesis and experiment design. The respondents of this study consisted of 219 normal adults (students) with
TD. The main point of this method is the perception test. The intonation patterns, which are
the point of this, study are collected from data utterances that have been checked through the
perception test. The perception or acceptability test was conducted to find out whether the
hypothesis works on the production results of real utterances and re-synthesis utterances.
The perception test of stimulus acceptability was conducted using the Likert scale and
counted based on the descriptive statistics analysis. Next, the perception test was counted
using the statistics analysis by software SPSS program ver. 17. The analysis was done with
the Wilcoxon test.
3
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The result of the experimental production seems to indicate that utterance intonation of
declarative modes shows a contour pattern, which significantly differs between ASD and TD
utterance contours. Figure 1 shows that the ASD utterance on the sentence “Dia membaca
buku” was marked by a fundamental frequency (F0) variation that is relatively flat in the
whole utterance.
The TD utterance is marked by a decline—in that the fundamental frequency (F0) variation tends to decline from the beginning to the end of the utterance. Perceptually, the initial
pitch of TD utterance at 19.79 st declines to 13.2 st at the end of the utterance. Based on
the pitch produced, ASD utterance starts at 9.77 st and ends at 6.09 st in the final syllable /
ku/. However, the final pitch is insignificant as a referent to form the baseline slope. The final
pitch contour in the syllable /ku/ creates a declining pitch movement from 11.6 st to 6.09 st.
Overall, the baseline slope that generates the flat characteristics was taken from the syllable /
di/ in dia at the pitch 9.77 st and the syllable /bu/ in buku at the pitch 9.66 st. Hence, the baseline slope in ASD contour utterance is flat.
Figure 1. Contour pattern in declarative mode. Figure 2.
Contour pattern in declarative mode.
* PRAAT is software designed by Paul Boersma and David Weenink (Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer, version 3.4.). University of Phonetics Sciences of the University of Amsterdam, Report
132. 182.
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Figure 2 below shows that ASD utterance (Dia bermain bola) is also marked by the fundamental frequency (F0) variation, which is relatively flat throughout the utterance. Similar to the
sentence Dia membaca buku, the TD contour is marked by a decline, from 18.12 st, it declines to
13.47 st at the end of the utterance. The ASD pitch starts at 9.17 st and ends at 8.9 st in the final
syllable /la/. The pitch range is 0.18 st and it does not significantly change the flat characteristics
of the baseline slope. In contrast with the contour in the sentence Dia membaca buku, the final
contour of Dia bermain bola creates an inclining pitch movement of the syllable la from 8.9 st
to 11.31st. This data production shows inconsistent contour pattern of ASD.
Based on the four selected contour patterns of declarative mode produced by ASD and
TD speakers (cf. Figures 1 and 2), the hypothesis built on this study is: “intonation contour pattern on declarative modes of ASD utterance tends to be flat”. The first experiment
was conducted to test the acceptability intonation of the declarative utterance of the ASD
compared to the acceptability intonation of TD utterance. The stimuli perception test was
designed from the manipulation contour as follows:
1. The contour of the ASD was replaced by the contour of TD;
2. The contour of the TD was replaced by the contour of ASD.
Table 1 shows the result of experiment 1. Stimuli (1) and (5), the original contour of
ASD for the sentence Dia membaca buku and Dia bermain bola resulted in a continuously
a low score at 2.14 (‘not good’) and 1.89 (‘not good’). Stimuli (2) and (6), the original contour of TD on the second sentence, scores continuously 3.6 (‘good’ to ‘very good’) and 3.3
(‘good’). Stimulus (3), the contour of the ASD whose pattern has changed into the TD contour resulted in a mean score of 2.31. It means that the score increased from 2.14 to 2.31.
Although this score increase is insignificant to change the level from ‘not good to good’, at
least there is an increasing acceptability stimulus of ASD utterance after the contour pattern
has been changed into a TD contour pattern. Stimulus (7), the sentence Dia bermain bola
resulted in a mean score of 1.84. In this stimulus, there is no increase in acceptability score,
even if it was lower by 0.05, since this was deemed insignificant.
Stimulus (4), the contour of the TD, which was replaced by the ASD contour pattern has a
decreasing acceptability score, yet it insignificantly changes from ‘good’ to ‘less good.’ In the
stimulus (8), the acceptability score decreased significantly from ‘good’ to ‘not good.’
Experiment 2 was conducted to test the manipulation result of the F0 slope. The modification experiment of this baseline slope was proposed to modify the intonation contour
from the flat characteristics to the intonation contour, which has declining characteristics.
The intonation contour on predicate and object declined to 1, 2, and 3 semitones. There are
four stimulus utterances in this experiment, they are: 1) original utterance, 2) modification
utterance declined to 1st (min 1st), 3) modification utterance declined to 2 st (min 2 st), and
4) modification utterance declined to 3 st (min 3 st).
Table 1.
Mean value of declarative stimulus.
Number
Speaker
Sentence
Stimulus
(1)
(2)
(3)
ASD
TD
ASD
Dia membaca buku
Dia membaca buku
Dia membaca buku
(4)
TD
Dia membaca buku
(5)
(6)
(7)
ASD
TD
ASD
Dia bermain bola
Dia bermain bola
Dia bermain bola
(8)
TD
Dia bermain bola
Original contour
Original contour
The contour of the ASD replaced
by the contour of TD
The contour of the TD replaced
by the contour of ASD
Original contour
Original contour
The contour of the ASD replaced
by the contour of TD
The contour of the TD replaced
by the contour of ASD
Mean
value
2.14
3.6
2.31
3.14
1.89
3.3
1.84
1.98
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The perception test toward the four stimulus utterances resulted in the mean scores as
shown in Table 2 below.
The stimulus of original utterance, marked by a flat characteristics in the baseline slope,
which is the pitch line dragged from the initial utterance in the syllable [di] from the word dia
‘he/she’ and the syllable [bu] on buku ‘book’, received the lowest mean score (2.23, meaning
‘not good’). Continuously, the baseline slope showed a decline with a score acceptability of
2.43, on the stimulus min 1st, 2.63 on the stimulus min 2 st, and 2.26 on the stimulus min 3 st.
The highest mean score from the stimulus utterance min 2 st indicates that the decline on this
utterance will be ideal if the end of the utterance is 2 st. If the final decline is more than 2 st,
on the stimulus min 3 st, then the utterance will be unacceptable.
Experiment 3 was conducted to test the intonation acceptability of the interrogative ASD
utterances by comparing them to TD utterances. The stimuli perception test was designed
from the following manipulation contour:
1. The contour of the ASD was replaced by the contour of TD;
2. The contour of the TD was replaced by the contour of ASD.
The result of the experimental production seems to indicate that utterance intonation of
the interrogative modes shows the contour pattern is significantly different from ASD to TD
utterance contour. Figures 4 and 5 show that ASD utterance is marked by a fundamental
frequency (F0) variation that is relatively flat throughout the utterances. This contour pattern
indicates that the flat pattern of a baseline slope in the declarative utterance is the same as
the interrogative utterance. In the interrogative sentence, though insignificant, there is a tendency of a declining pattern. The TD contour pattern of interrogative modes is marked by
an inclination, which is a tendency of the fundamental frequency (F0) variant that increases
from the beginning to the end of the utterance. However, from the data, the inclining pitch
is found only in the final contour. This inconsistency appears in the final syllable of ASD
pitch contour in the interrogative modes. In the sentence of Dia membaca buku? The pitch
Figure 3. Modification of the baseline slope.
Table 2.
Mean values of baseline slope modification.
No
Stimulus utterance
Mean
1
2
3
4
original utterance
minus 1 st
minus 2 st
minus 3 st
2.23
2.43
2.63
2.26
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Figure 4. Contour pattern in interrogative mode.
Table 3.
Figure 5.
Contour pattern in interrogative mode.
Mean value of interrogative stimulus.
Number
Speaker
Sentence
Stimulus
(1)
(2)
(3)
ASD
TD
ASD
Dia membaca buku
Dia membaca buku
Dia membaca buku
(4)
TD
Dia membaca buku
(5)
(6)
(7)
ASD
TD
ASD
Dia bermain bola
Dia bermain bola
Dia bermain bola
(8)
TD
Dia bermain bola
Original contour
Original contour
The contour of the ASD replaced
by the contour of TD
The contour of the TD replaced
by the contour of ASD
Original contour
Original contour
The contour of the ASD replaced
by the contour of TD
The contour of the TD replaced
by the contour of ASD
Mean
value
1.9
3.2
2.46
1.57
2.05
3.38
2.46
2.02
movement in the final syllable /la/ moves down, but in the sentence of Dia bermain bola? The
final pitch movement of the syllable/la/ is up and down.
Table 3 shows the result of experiment 3. Generally, the deviation of the ASD contour
pattern in both declarative and interrogative modes appears in the fundamental frequency
(F0) variation which creates a flat baseline slope and pitch movement in the final contour.
In the ASD interrogative contour, although insignificant, the decline can be seen. In the TD
utterance, there is a significant difference between the contour pattern of declarative and
interrogative modes marked by a variation of F0 patterns. The contour of declarative modes
is indicated by a decline, while in the interrogative modes it is marked by an inclination.
Table 2 shows that the stimulus utterances of ASD, both real and modified, resulted in low
scores.
Figures 6 and 7 below are the contour patterns of declarative and interrogative modes
created by the experimental production with the imitation technique. The pitch movement
throughout the contour indicates significant differences between the contours of declarative
and interrogative modes. It means that speakers with ASD may actually realize the different
intonation of declarative and interrogative modes through the imitation. Yet, the flat baseline
slope patterns, as well as the inconsistent pitch movement patterns, appear in the contour
patterns. Therefore, the utterances of the speakers with ASD tend to be flat with uncertain
pitch variations.
Table 4 below shows the mean values acceptability contour produced by the imitation
technique. The highest score (2.9 – ‘very close’ to ‘good’) resulted from stimulus no 3, which
is the contour interrogative mode in the sentence of Dia membaca buku. The contour pattern
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Figure 6. Contour pattern of declarative Figure 7. Intonation of contour patterns of
and Interrogative mode produced by imitation declarative and interrogative modes produced by
technique.
imitation technique.
Table 4.
Mean values of baseline slope modification.
Number Mode
Sentence
Mean
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
Dia membaca buku
Dia bermain bola
Dia membaca buku
Dia bermain bola
2.0
2.6
2.9
1.8
Declarative
Declarative
Interrogative
Interrogative
in the stimulus 3 is similar to that in the interrogative mode produced by normal speakers in
Figure 4.
4
CONCLUSION
Communication disorder of speakers with ASD has given some effects toward intonation
patterns, in both declarative and interrogative modes. Their intonations in both modes do
not show any significant contrasts to mark the differences in such modes. The pitch ranges
produced from the utterances are less than three semitones. Therefore, the pitch movements
produced by speakers with ASD indicate a rather flat intonation contour. Besides, the pitch
range that is relatively low, and the baseline slope of the ASD utterances from the speakers
with ASD in both modes have flat patterns as well. Inconsistent contours are productively
found in the final pitch movements. In the utterance production of imitation, the speakers
with ASD also produced inconsistent final intonation contours. Based on the deviant findings of speakers with ASD, the hypothesis proposed for this study is that unstable emotion of
the speakers with ASD could result in inappropriate final utterances. In other words, speakers with ASD may complete their expressions or utterances, but they are not able deliver the
messages to properly.
REFERENCES
Aitken, K.J. (1998) Behavioural phenotypes in developmental psychopathology. Association for Child
Psychology and Psychiatry Occasional Papers Series, 5–19.
Azizi, S.S.Z. (2016) The Tilt Model Acoustic Survey of intonation in Children with Severe Autism.
International Journal of English Linguistics, 78–86.
Baltaxe, C.A.M. & Simmon, J.Q. (1985) Prosodic development in normal and autistic children.
Communication Problem in Autism, 95–125.
Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A.M. & Frith, U. (1985) Does the autistic have a “theory of mind”? In:
Cognition, 21(1), 37–44.
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Baron-Cohen, S., Tager-Flushberg, H. & Cohen, D.J. (1993) Understanding other minds: Perspective
from autism. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen. S. (1989) The autistic child’s theory of mind: a case of specific developmental delay.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 30, 285–297.
Beckman, M.E. & Pierrehumbert, J.B. (1986) Intonational structure in Japanese and English. Phonology
Yearbook, 255–309.
Bogdashina, O. (2005) Communication issues, in autism and Asperger syndrome. London, Jessica
Kingsley Publishers.
Fay, W.H. & Schuler, A.L. (1980) Emerging Language in autistic children. Baltimore, University Park
Press.
Firth, U. (1989) Autism-explaining the enigma. Oxford, Basil Blackwell.
Fry, D.B. (1955) Duration and intensity as physical correlates of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustical
Society of America, 765–768.
Fry, D.B. (1958) Experiments in the perception of stress. Language and Speech, 126–152.
Fry, D.B. (1965) The dependence of stress judgments on vowel formant structure. Proceedings of the 5th
International Congress of Phonetics Sciences, Munster (pp. 306–311). Basel & New York, S. Karger.
Goldfarb, W., Braunstein, P. & Lorge, I.A. (1956) A study of speech patterns in a group of schizophrenic
children. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 544–555.
Happe, F. (1993) Communicative competence and theory of mind in autism: A test of relevance theory.
Cognition, 48, 101–119.
Ladd, R.D. (1996) Intonational Phonology. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Mozziconacci, S. (1988) Speech Variability and Emotion: Production and Perception. Eindhoven, Printers
of the University of Eindhoven.
Peppé, S.J. (2009) Why is prosody in speech-language pathology so difficult? International Journal of
Speech-Language Pathology, 258–271.
Peppe´, S., McCann, J., Gibbon, F., O’Hare, A. & Rutherford, M. (2007) Receptive and expressive
prosodic ability in children with high-functioning autism. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing
Research, 1015–1028.
Pike, K.L. (1972) General Characteristics of Intonation. England, Penguin Books.
Pronovost, W., Wakstein, M.P. & Wakstein D.J. (1966) A longitudinal study of speech behaviour and
language comprehension of fourteen children diagnosed atypical or autistic. Exceptional Children,
19–26.
t’Hart, J., Collier, R. & Cohen, A. (1990) A perceptual study of intonation: an experimental-phonetic
approach to speech melody. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Conflicts of interest among Indonesian university libraries
in developing intellectual capital
Laksmi & L. Wijayanti
Department of Library and Information Science, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study is to identify potential conflicts of interest among
university libraries in their efforts to develop intellectual capital. To achieve this objective,
world-class universities must maintain excellent library facilities. However, the funding and
assistance given to libraries can give rise to various types of conflicts of interest. By using a
qualitative approach and cultural-study method, the aim of this study is to identify how conflicts of interest in university libraries are efficiently and effectively addressed in their efforts
to develop intellectual capital. The findings suggest that conflicts are usually triggered by the
rectors, librarians, and other stakeholders who tend to treat libraries as convenient locations
to discuss conspiratorial ideas for potential shifts in ideology and to contest bureaucratic
power. The efforts to develop intellectual capital lack human and structural integrity which
causes the end users to become a low priority. In regards to conflict resolution, the 10 libraries reviewed rely mainly on communication, compromise, accommodation, and cooperation.
1
INTRODUCTION
Conflicts of interest among university libraries are by and large conditions that may arise
in the process of supporting the objectives of the university (Chowdhury, et al., 2008, p. 27;
Saifuddin, 2005, p. 340). Universities under globalisation are required to compete internationally to maintain their standing as world-class universities (Corrall, 2014, p. 21). Such
conditions can engender a spirit of optimism among the parties who are involved in supporting libraries, but they can also lead to the emergence of certain interests that are unfavourable
to the development of intellectual capital. Some college administrators are even involved
in the industrialisation and commercialisation of education for their own benefits (TohaSarumpaet, 2012, p. 13; Ibrahim, 2007, p. 281; Armando, 2012, p. 118).
University libraries in Indonesia assume risk when dealing with conflicts, particularly
when they operate in high-ranked universities. Based on the 2015 Decision by the Indonesian
Ministry for Research, Technology, and Higher Education (hereinafter abbreviated as
“Menristekdikti”) on university rankings, the top 10 universities from 3,320 universities
in Indonesia are ITB (Institut Teknologi Bandung), UGM (Gadjah Mada University),
IPB (Bogor Agricultural University), UI (Universitas Indonesia), ITS (Institut Teknologi
Surabaya), UNIBRAW (Universitas Brawijaya), UNPAD (Universitas Padjajaran),
Airlangga (Universitas Airlangga), UNS (Universitas Sebelas Maret Surakarta), and UNDIP
(Universitas Diponegoro) (Ristekdikti, 2015).
Based on this classification, the research question is how to address potential conflicts
of interest within the top 10 Indonesian universities to minimise any obstructions in the
development of intellectual capital. The significance of this research is that it identifies
how conflicts of interest are efficiently and effectively handled by 10 academic libraries in
the development of intellectual capital. The findings intend to provide input for university
libraries, so that the resolutions for conflicts of interest can have positive results.
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2
2.1
LITERATURE REVIEW
Conflicts of interest in university libraries and intellectual capital
A conflict of interest is a common symptom that occurs in an organisation due to differences between two or more interest groups (Trice & Beyer, 1993, p. 226). These differences
include differences in beliefs, values, and understanding. They cause resentment toward or
envy of others and generate dilemmas in professional loyalty, particularly when the general
code of conduct is ignored (Stueart & Moran, 2007, p. 377). Meanwhile, the concept of
conflict of interest in various fractions indicates the methods adopted to acquire specific
benefits either for individuals or groups acquired through power relations (Saifuddin, 2005,
p. 341).
Conflicts of interest in university libraries have become particularly salient under globalisation and are triggered by international rankings on the quality of higher education.
The ranking system requires universities to constantly improve the quality of their facilities, including libraries (Helm-Stevens, et al., 2011, p. 129). In order to develop intellectual
capital, libraries require the support of three types of capital, namely human, structural, and
consumer (Yazdi & Chenari, 2013, p. 4183). The mechanism adopted in resolving mutual
disputes between parties is usually avoidance, compromise, competition, accommodation,
or cooperation (Stueart & Morin, 2007, p. 379). Generally, leaders have a critical role in the
mediation process that is necessary for immediate conflict resolutions and accurate handling
of situations.
2.2
Academic libraries
Menristekdikti recently published a book providing guidelines for universities which designated academic libraries as technical implementation units. This publication advised heads
of universities to adopt the Tri Dharma University principles of education, research, and
community service in choosing, collecting, processing, treating, administering resources,
and particularly in contributing to society in general. The university is an entity that houses
libraries, which serve the conservation of knowledge, teachings, research, publications, and
interpretations, and a place for the creation of knowledge, through research, and knowledge preservation (Helm-Stevens, et al., 2011, p. 129). Furthermore, librarians should strive
to create a scientific community that is just, honest, truthful, and open (Sedyawati, 2012,
p. 480).
Intellectual development requires libraries to provide suitable locations to facilitate freedom of thoughts and opinions, expressions of ideas, and prevention of plagiarism. To support the university’s objectives, the general purpose of university libraries is to meet the
informational needs of all the academic members by providing reference materials and suitable facilities, lending services suited for different types of users and students of all academic
levels, and active information for university environment and local industries (Kemdikbud,
2004, p. 3).
3
RESEARCH METHODS
A qualitative approach aims to understand interaction processes that occur from conflicts
in daily life, such as behaviour, perception, motivation, and action in a holistic manner,
using natural methods (Powell, 1997). This method seeks to explain a person’s comprehension and subjectivity. Cultural studies are used to provide a critical framework to describe
such processes among group members in an organisation and the production of conflicts
through their actions, including their manners and deductive processes (Bradigan & Hartel,
2014, p. 8). The informants were determined by using purposive sampling and encompassed
the principal or staff of the university library, the leader or staff of the university, and
other stakeholders. Data collection was gathered by observation, interviews, and document
analysis.
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4
4.1
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN 10 MAJOR UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
IN INDONESIA
Activities in the development of intellectual capital
The aforementioned top 10 university libraries have developed intellectual capital through
various types of programs. In developing intellectual capital, they all employ similar methods and most of them emphasise the importance of developing human-resource quality and
improving facilities and collections.
In the development of intellectual capital, the quality of human-resource development
is considered vitally important to ensure the best possible provision of services that enable
academicians to expand intellectually. UGM library, UI library, and a number of other libraries provide the opportunity for librarians to deepen their knowledge through further education and various training courses (Universitas Gajah Mada, 2016). UI library increases the
number of subject specialists by actively recruiting graduates from various subjects who are
then given the opportunity to continue their studies in the library and information science.
Subject specialists are expected to competently meet the information needs of the users. The
libraries in UI, UGM, UNAIR, and UNDIP hold writing competitions for scientific articles
on librarianship directed at academicians. Librarians can also enhance knowledge through
FPPTI (Indonesian Higher Education Library Forum), which regularly holds forums on
librarianship knowledge.
A number of other programs that aim to improve the facilities have also become a major
preoccupation in most libraries. Space, both real and virtual, has become the main tool for
academicians to share knowledge. Besides improving facilities, parent institutions can also
gain additional operational funding through these endeavours. The development of collections is also one of the programs sought to develop intellectual capital. Under globalisation,
the 10 libraries have been developing both conventional and electronic collections. UI library
also provides open-access repositories under an agreement with UI students to make their
final projects available to the general public.
4.2
Conflict triggers
Within the 10 university libraries, most conflicts are triggered by personal interests. Conflicts of interest involve three parties, namely university rectors, heads of libraries, and other
stakeholders. Figure 1 shows the involvement of the participants in more than one program
(b) to establish joint cooperation so as to achieve the goal of intellectual capital development
that enables a university to become a world class. (c). Head librarians and their staff are the
most vulnerable parties because libraries are the central units that manage the intellectual
capital of universities. The library can also be an arena that gives research to various types
of conflicts of interests. The entire program is structured to implement the Tri Dharma University principles, ranging from collection development, services, planning, and the overall
operational control, including cooperation with external parties.
Conflicts of interest among university libraries usually emerge due to the participants’ lack
of understanding of their roles, responsibilities, performance, and environmental demands
(d). Head librarians rely very much on the university’s policy. In 2000, university autonomy
was implemented and included in several libraries parallel to faculties (Prasodjo, 2012, p. 45).
At that time, UGM library strategically made effective and independent decisions to initiate
further studies for the staff, while UI library took the opportunity to build a magnificent new
library building, which is considered to be the largest university library in Southeast Asia
(Armando, 2012, p. 113) (f). However, since the Decision was repealed in 2012, libraries are
now considered to be technical service units. This resulted in the scaling down of the authority of the head libraries and their incapacity to initiate programs freely.
A number of differences were also seen in the establishment of various information service corners funded by foreign countries, such as the United States and Saudi Arabia. Most
librarians interpret the information provided as having hidden agendas or propagandas from
the respective countries, and this is considered unethical. However, most of the libraries,
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Figure 1. Practices of conflicts of interest.
such as the one at UGM, reasoned that the University is indeed biased toward the United
States of America, so it is only natural that they have readily accepted the establishment of
the American corner. The American Embassy, as the sponsor of the corner, also donates and
funds scholarships that enable Indonesian librarians to study in the United States. However,
there is a doubt that such an offer would be accepted by the head of the library, as they
invariably believe that these offers would create a precedent for other agencies to ask for
accommodation in the library. When this type of situation occurs, it can produce conflicts
between the head of the library and the university rector.
Some university libraries have conflicts that occur among library staff, possibly due to
position, seniority, or other negative perceptions that tend to be outside the context of intellectual capital development (e) (Trice & Beyer, 1993, p. 241). Certain library positions provide many advantages, and in some universities such assignments become a political posting.
Therefore, many of the staff who aspire to these positions are discouraged, and some also
experience their reputation being undermined through unfounded innuendos or defamatory
anonymous letters to freely enable the political appointee. Regarding seniority, generally the
older group, both in terms of length of work and age, are consistently favoured over their
younger and perhaps even more knowledgeable and skillful co-workers. Seniors often make
continuing their education and travelling on business trips either abroad or to other facilities
their first preference. They also take advantage of certain conditions to improve their financial situation (f). Whether the junior staff would have been considered for the next jaunt or
not is mostly immaterial, as programs inevitably change, and this engenders resentment and
envy among the younger staff.
Conflicts with customers were not identified in any of the 10 libraries appraised. The
difference between librarians and users has been understood and well addressed by the management of governance. UI library has merged the integrated services of the entire library
of the faculties, which has resulted in some positive and negative consequences. Librarians
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consider the library’s centralised management to be more propitious, and it will help reduce
both efforts and costs (Chowdhury, et al., 2008, p. 28). However, this model has caused a
sense of discomfort among many professors. They complain that centralisation causes the
location and collection management to become less efficient, and the library facilities create
an atmosphere reminiscent to that of a crowded mall. Thus, as most of the users are students
who have lifestyles that tend to be hedonic, they enjoy the library not so much as a place to
read, but as a place for discussions, romantic liaisons, relaxing, and socialising. It must also
be understood that all the facilities provided by libraries intend to provide convenience and
comfort for the users and entice them to frequent the library.
Facility expansion and improvements of some libraries were prohibited by the limited
availability of land. At UNAIR, a cafeteria was recently set up in the library, and many
consider it the reason why the library has in some measure turned into a slum. The head
librarian is placed in an invidious position with no alternative but to play a game of cat and
mouse with the university authority. Although both sides maintain their respective opinions,
the final decision remains with the university rector. In addition, the collections and procurement process are often adversely affected by bureaucracy. For a considerable amount of time,
almost all the libraries have made inappropriate purchases for their respective collections due
to interference by the rectors.
4.3
Conflict resolution strategies
The 10 university libraries handle conflicts of interest using communication strategies, namely
compromise, accommodation, and cooperation. These strategies involve human capital and
reveal an interaction pattern among the participants (Yazdi & Chenari, 2013, p. 4183). Communication strategies are intended to maintain good relations internally and externally. As a
technical service unit, libraries do not have any authority in policy change. Thus, if there is
a policy that contradicts the library’s rules, the head of the library must handle the situation
using communication strategies through more personal approaches.
On a regular basis, the head of UGM library hosts a private dinner party at home in
attempt to build mutual trust with university leaders, submits progress reports, and proposes
strategic plans. The heads of the libraries in UI, UNPAD, and UGM hold undercover operations to investigate those who are presumed to have authority in order to identify and rectify
problems that may arise within their ranks. In addition, these operations seek to eliminate
prevalent obstacles and expunge any issues that could be detrimental to the process of building social networks with parties considered important. The head of Airlangga library generally addresses the participants as ‘bapak’, which means father and is a customary address for
adult males in Indonesia. The use of the term ‘bapak’ gives the impression of a close relationship compared to more formal terms such as professor.
Even so, not all management decisions and improvement suggestions by staff or users
are necessarily approved by the librarian. When conflicts arise in the hierarchy, the head of
UI library will accept solutions that are considered normal but reject countermeasures that
are perceived to violate the code of ethics. Discords triggered by conflicts of interest are a
violation of the professional librarian ethics. In managing knowledge and resolving conflicts,
librarians are not permitted to take sides. However, when certain influential people persistently push for setting up external information corners in the library, the head of the library
may accept this decision on the basis of maintaining good relations with external partners.
To resolve conflicts among the staff, the head of UNAIR library creates activities that aim
to engender a ‘feel-good factor’ and include talks on motivation during morning briefings.
The head of the library in UGM emphasises that he is cordial with everyone, ranging from
the janitors to the rector. Staff members who are unfriendly are counseled and encouraged
by the head of UNPAD library to be more cooperative. Almost all the staff in the 10 libraries were provided with opportunities for further studies, involved in meetings with the rector,
extended invitations to evening meals, and so forth. Conflicts are resolved through communication with users. UGM often assumes the position of a user to discover how the service is
likely to be perceived by the real users. UNPAD puts great emphasis on service to the users
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and supervision. UNAIR holds competitions that allow students to submit proposals on the
improvement of library services, so they feel that they are involved.
5
5.1
DISCUSSION
Library as social space in the growth of intellectual capital
Basically, a library is a unit that facilitates education, research, development, cultures, and
also provision for recreational functions. In fact, four of the library’s functions that should
be directly involved in promoting intellectual capital development are steered away from the
primary objective by individual and group interests. However, libraries must not be perceived
as the panacea or the front of all knowledge. Therefore, when required, students should be
encouraged to perform research elsewhere to augment their knowledge.
5.2
Library as a place for ideology shifts
Libraries should be the center for the creation, use, and dissemination of knowledge. Moreover,
in an era of globalisation, libraries should function as the supporting factor in enhancing universities’ international rankings. UI conceptualises the importance of a library’s role in science
as the epitome and standard bearer of knowledge (Universitas Indonesia, 2016). The library at
UI is impressive with its magnificent architecture and equipped with numerous amenities (TohaSarumpaet, 2012, p. 118). UI library is adjusting to its role, as symbolised by the designation of
the library as “crystal of knowledge,” and does not focus merely on infrastructure development
but the development of intellectual capital (Universitas Indonesia, 2016). Some libraries are still
regarded by many as knowledge depository and not as a site of knowledge elaboration for academicians. UNPAD library is designated as kandaga which in Sundanese language means jewelry
box or a box to store valuables. They also consider the library as a storage space.
Upturns in the ideologies of education also provide benefits for the economy. As libraries are usually in close proximity to various types of businesses, such as bookstores, cafés,
restaurants, and grocery stores, they have become a tool to generate income, particularly in
developing countries where people are under more financial pressure, and education tends
to develop capitalism, pragmatism, and encourage the removal of irrationality (Zaini, 2015).
Thus, libraries generally encourage economic advancements. In addition, some library facilities have been commercialised, and even academicians who wish to use a room, auditorium,
or classroom must pay fees (Toha-Sarumpaet, 2012, p. 118).
5.3
Library as a place for power contestation
Before the centralisation of libraries was implemented in 2012, the policy of UI was not to provide external information. Historically, the library has also never accommodated information
corners from foreign countries, such as the United States and South Korea. However, some of
those that were sanctioned have been subsequently closed as a result of conflicts between the
university authority and the head librarian. The library staff consider these contributions to be a
double-edged sword with certain subscribers wishing to spread ideologies that do not necessarily
support the intellectual capital development. In such conflicts, the power relations are dominated
by the university leaders rather than the heads of libraries who should have full authority to balance out decisions and potential benefits in accordance with a library’s function.
5.4
Practices of conflicts of interest in intellectual capital development
To become a world-class university, a library must be considered as the most strategic and
enabling asset. Thus, rectors and university leaders will inevitably endeavour to construct
libraries that are quintessentially representative with the most impressive architecture
available. These goals intend to facilitate the needs of users, namely academicians in implementing the Tri Dharma University principles. Other stakeholders can provide assistance,
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either in cash or provision of intellectual documents, for example collections, but usually
under certain conditions, it can be installment of their logos in the library, which can be
in the form of a flag, a state emblem, or a brand. Many universities provide areas suitable
for the American, Australian, and Sampoerna information corners. Accommodation is also
given for prestigious cafés and restaurants, and some libraries even provide banking facilities. Many stakeholders consider academicians as a specialist resource to generate profit, as
they are considered to have the ability to provide trustworthy and reliable scientific opinions.
However, for the majority of academicians, this is regarded as a covert propaganda.
Heads of libraries are empowered to accept or reject proposals from stakeholders, but the
rectors still hold the highest executive authority to formulate, initiate, and enable library policies. Generally, when a rector wishes to make a decision regarding a library’s stakeholders, the
rector would consult and request recommendations from the head of the library. Nonetheless,
for certain matters the rector will deliberately not contact the head of the library, particularly
if there are potential conflicts. However, if the head of a library refuses to accommodate
and set up a corner on the grounds of bias, as the head believes a library should be neutral,
this is supported by the code of ethics. Authority, such as the rector, can cause a bottleneck,
which is unavoidable due to the source of library leadership. On the one hand, a library may
not be considered a commercial enterprise, but on the other hand, there is awareness that
funding is required to provide the knowledge base required by academicians. The centralisation of library management opens opportunities for certain parties to utilise funds illegally
(Armando, 2012, p. 120). In addition, students today tend to have a hedonistic lifestyle, so
they need a place to socialise, such as cafés, parks, and places with access to Internet connection. This situation was identified by stakeholders as a means to take commercial advantage
of the opportunities presented and provide superficial facilities that do not necessarily support the development of intellectual capital. Practices of conflicts of interest are also prevalent in libraries, regarding their function and accessibility as repositories. As a knowledge
repository, libraries need to be available for institutions to access research, but they must also
be accessible to the general public. However, library leaders have objections, as they consider
collections as purely internal assets. Due to this interpretation of freedom of information, the
policy thus provides a limited kind of freedom (Koran SINDO, 2015).
6
CONCLUSION
Conflicts of interest among the three participants, namely the rector, the head of the library,
and other stakeholders, in developing intellectual capital show that the conflicts were in fact
disputes over structural capital. Conflicts tend to make the library a site of ideology shifts
and disagreements of bureaucratic power, which include the images they wish to project to
the international community and self-enrichment. Heads of the libraries and their staff in all
10 universities have programs in accordance with their capacities as librarians in developing
intellectual capital. However, they remain hampered by complicated bureaucratic processes.
The areas of problem also include staff resistance as a result of envy generated by the perception of not having realistic opportunities for further studies and advancement.
However, conflicts of interest in a library can be resolved when addressed properly by the
head of the library through good communication and sympathetic approaches. These facts
indicate that human capital is already well-established but stuck in a rut due to misunderstandings of the roles and functions of the library. Heads of libraries across the universities
handle almost all of the conflicts of interest through sound communication strategies by way
of compromise, accommodation, and cooperation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by PITTA Grant 2016 from the Directorate Research and Community Engagement of Universitas Indonesia.
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REFERENCES
Armando, A. (2012) Perpustakaan Pusat UI: boros, tak berguna, dan bocor (UI Central Library:
wasteful, useless, and leaking out). In Toha-Sarumpaet, R.K., Budiman, M., & Armando, A. (eds.)
Membangun di atas puing integritas: belajar dari Universitas Indonesia (Building on the collapse of
integrity: learning from Universitas Indonesia). Jakarta, Gerakan UI Bersih dan Yayasan Pustaka
Obor Indonesia.
Bradigan, P.S. & Hartel, L.J. (2013). Organizational culture and leadership: exploring perceptions and
relationships. In Blessinger, K. & Hrycaj, P. (eds.) Workplace culture in academic libraries, the early
21st century. Oxford, Chandos Publishing. pp. 7–20.
Corrall, S. (2014) Library service capital: The case for measuring and managing intangible assets. Libraries in the Digital Age (LIDA), 16–20.
Chowdhury, G.G., et al. (2008) Librarianship: an introduction. London, Facet Publishing.
Helm-Stevens, R., Brown, K.C., & Russell, J.K. (2011) Introducing the intellectual capital model interplay: advancing knowledge frameworks in the not-for-profit environment of higher education. International Education Studies [Online] 4 (2). Available from: www.ccsenet.org/ies/ [Accessed 17th August
2016].
Ibrahim, I.S. (2007) Wajah dunia pendidikan di balik hegemoni media: penguatan atau pemiskinan
wacana demokratik dalam ruang publik (The face of the education world behind the media hegemony: strengthening or impoverishing democratic discourse in public space). In Ibrahim I.S. (ed.)
Budaya popular sebagai komunikasi: dinamika popscape dan mediascape di Indonesia kontemporer
(Popular culture as communication: dynamics of popscape and mediascape in contemporary Indonesia). Yogyakarta, Jalasutra. pp. 271–285.
Koran SINDO. (2015) Membangun Riset Perguruan Tinggi (Building academic research). [Online]
Available
from:
http://nasional.sindonews.com/read/1064574/18/membangun-riset-perguruantinggi-1448481986 [Accessed 17th August 2016].
Prasodjo, I.B. (2012) Peran pendidikan tinggi dalam meningkatkan kualitas ilmu, karakter, dan kebangsaan (The role of higher education in improving the quality of science, character, and nationality).
In Irianto, S. (ed.) Otonomi perguruan tinggi: suatu keniscayaan (The autonomy of higher education: a
certainty). Jakarta, Yayasan Obor Indonesia. pp. 42–77.
Powell, R.R. (1997) Basic research methods for librarians. 3rd edition. Greenwich, CT, Ablex Publishing
Corporation.
Ristekdikti (2016) SK Klasifikasi dan Pemeringkatan Perguruan Tinggi di Indonesia Tahun 2015 (The
Letter of Decision on the Classification and Ranking of Higher Education in Indonesia in 2015).
[Online] Available from: http://ristekdikti.go.id/sk-klasifikasi-dan-pemeringkatan-perguruan-tinggidi-indonesia-tahun-2015/ [Accessed 11th July 2016].
Saifuddin, A.F. (2005) Antropologi kontemporer: suatu pengantar kritis mengenai paradigma (Contemporary anthropology: a critical introduction on paradigm). Jakarta, Kencana.
Sedyawati, E. (2012) Masyarakat ilmiah dalam pembangunan bangsa (Scientific society in nation development). In: Toha-Sarumpaet, R.K., Budiman, M. & Armando, A. (eds.) Membangun di atas puing
integritas: belajar dari Universitas Indonesia (Building on the collapse of integrity: learning from Universitas Indonesia). Jakarta, Gerakan UI Bersih dan Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia. pp. 479–482.
Stueart, R.D. & Moran, B.B. (2007) Library and Information Center Management. 7th Edition. Westport, Connecticut, Libraries Unlimited.
Toha-Sarumpaet, R.K., Budiman, M., & Armando, A. (2012) Membangun di atas puing integritas:
belajar dari Universitas Indonesia (Building on the collapse of integrity: learning from Universitas
Indonesia). Jakarta, Gerakan UI Bersih dan Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia.
Trice, H.M. & Beyer, J.M. (1993) The Cultures of work organization Englewood Cliffs. New Jersey,
Prentice Hall.
Universitas Indonesia. (2016) Profile. [Online] Available from: http://lib.ui.ac.id/profil.jsp?hal = 3
[Accessed 8th July 2016].
Yazdi, K.H. & Chenari, H. (2013) Intellectual capital and technological advances in knowledge society:
How are these concepts related? African Journal of Business Management. [Online] 7 (40) Available
from: http://www.academicjournals. org/AJBM [Accessed 17th August 2016].
Zaini, A.H.F. (2015) Pendidikan dalam masyarakat kredensial (Education in credential society). Jakarta,
Kompas.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Changes in the virtual reference services at Bina Nusantara
University to meet users’ information needs
M. Septiana & T.A. Susetyo-Salim
Department of Library and Information Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia,
Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Technological developments in the information age have transformed the
face of library services, one of which is the reference services. The transformation is from a
direct communication (face to face) to an online communication (virtual reference services).
This transformation also affects the reference services at Bina Nusantara University library
to meet its users’ needs. Changes have been implemented from the beginning of 2009 until
now in separate locations. Bina Nusantara University has campuses in three different locations with different online reference services. The purpose of this research is to analyse the
transformation process and the effects it has on library users. The objective is to analyse the
process of interactions between the librarians and the users following the transformation of
library reference services at Bina Nusantara University library. The method incorporates a
documentation study, observations, and interviews using a qualitative descriptive approach.
The finding of this study shows that technology plays an important role in the transformation of reference services.
1
INTRODUCTION
Library development should involve flows of information, which are more sophisticated these
days. Reference services should serve as a filter for explosion of information. The fact that
students are turning to the Internet for research assistances may mean that they are computer
literate, but this is not the same as being information literate (McDonald, 2004; Messineo &
DeOllos, 2005; Goodfellow, 2007; Rowlands, Nicholas, & Huntington, 2007, and Gurganus,
2015). The Internet carries some advantages and disadvantages for learning processes. Some
of the problems related to the internet are: (1) poor organization of documents, hence the difficulty in retrieving information leading to unsatisfactory results; (2) inadequate search tools
for facilitating a fast information retrieval; (3) documents on the internet being transient;
(4) overwhelming mass of updated documents causes the users to lose track of the original
sources; (5) restricted access or denied access to information often encountered by the users
(as cited in Ming, 2000; Shachaf & Snyder, 2007). Librarians should consider these problems
as great concerns and find solutions for the sake of the users.
The transformation of technology creates changes in reference services. The transformation from a traditional (face-to-face) to electronic services or digital services and 24/7 access
enable libraries to be responsive to the users’ needs. This may serve as a motivation for libraries to find solutions to the limited access to information. Many academic libraries provide
their services to the users by offering appropriate reference services through the available
technology, such as telephone, e-mail, instant messaging, WhatsApp, Line, and other online
applications. Lewis and DeGroote (2008) as cited in Gurganus (2015) discovered that the
more access points were added to the library and institution website, the more likely the students will use the online services.
For the purpose of this paper, virtual references, also known as digital references, are
defined as exchanges of information between the library reference staff and the users.
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The virtual references are formed from traditional reference services and aimed to provide
appropriate information to the users.
2
2.1
LITERATURE REVIEW
Virtual reference services
Virtual reference services are not different from answering questions face-to-face, but there
is a lack of connection in the communication since no tones and gestures are displayed from
the librarians to the users and vice versa. The reference services librarians may not be able to
determine whether there is good communication with the users. Misunderstandings sometimes
occur through virtual reference services. The media used sometimes cannot describe what the
users feel. The emphasis here is that virtual reference services should employ some sort of communication standards in line with the prevailing communication pattern in the community.
Green (1876) defined reference works as personal assistances given by librarians to individual readers who seek information. As Margaret Landesman observed, “The ability to search
full text … turns every collection of online texts into a reference collection and provides an
automatic concordance for every title (Bopp & Smith, 2011).” Nowadays, titles can no longer
be tidily separated into ‘reference works’ and ‘general collection.’ The previous definition
refers to the traditional method of classifying references works and books in libraries to assist
the users in obtaining their needs. More and more libraries have developed programmes to
promote reference works as their main services. In order to obtain the highest satisfaction
from users, libraries are taking some steps to meet the users’ needs with the use of technology.
Rubin adopted, from the American Library Association Reference and User Service Association (RUSA), a guideline on the ethical codes for information providers, which defines many
aspects of the elements listed and reflected in modern reference services: (1) a service-oriented
perspective, (2) responsibility to select and organize collections in order to maximize effectiveness, (3) strong knowledge of the subjects, principles, and practices in the fields, and (4) commitment to either answering questions or referring to sources capable of answering (Bopp &
Smith, 2011).
Cassell and Hiremath (2009) argued that virtual references are often underused simply because
their existence is unknown to the users. It is important that libraries clearly mark the services and
make them visible on all pages on their websites. Meanwhile, RUSA defined a reference transaction as information consultations in which library staff recommend, interpret, evaluate, and/or
use information resources to help others to meet particular needs of information. Cassel and
Hiremath (2009) also argued that virtual references librarians should aim to be approachable in
the way they word their responses to the users. When librarians provide references to the users,
they should think of a faster way to solve problems faced by the users. Librarians should know
what is best for their users. RUSA Guidelines describe the ethics of a virtual references librarian
because one has the right to get information one needs regardless of one’s personality. Virtual
reference services have various means to provide the users with what they want. Nowadays,
e-mail and other popular means of communication are readily available. Therefore, those in the
field of education must have e-mail addresses for communication. Chat applications, such as
WhatsApp, Line, Instant Messenger, are known among young generation. Media applications
are commonly used by the young generation to perform better communication. This type of
communication method is used mostly because it is faster than traditional means of communication. The users can use these applications through their mobile devices using internet connection and Wi-fi network to access a vast collection of virtual references titles. The new forms
of virtual collections are also emerging, combining electronic versions of both primary source
materials and related reference source materials (Bopp & Smith, 2011, p.389).
2.2
Information needs
Information needs are basically derived from the two words “information” and “needs”,
meaning that humans need information to perform their activities. Need itself means
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something that humans should fulfil. Psychologists divide the concept of needs into three
categories: (1) physiological needs, such as food, water, and shelter; (2) affective needs, which
are related to emotions and feelings; (3) cognitive needs, which are related to skills, plans, and
so on. From the concept of needs above, we can define information needs as affective and
cognitive needs, a requirement for something that drives the lives of human beings so that
they may live better and improve their knowledge.
When we talk about the information needs of users, we should bear in mind not to have
some notion of the fundamental, innate, cognitive, or emotional ‘need’ for information, but
a notion of information (facts, data, opinions, advice) instead as one of the means toward
the end of satisfying such fundamental needs (as cited in Wilson & Wansgsh, 1981). Information needs have something that is indescribable, clearly, because information is performed by
human cognitive and affective feelings.
Some of the research conducted on students’ information needs at the university level is
as follows:
Susana Romanos de Tiratelas, as cited in Tamara (2012) proves that, “This percentage
is higher in the humanities (66%) than in the social sciences (49.8%). Although 32.5%
in social sciences registered a frequency of less than once a week, humanities measured
12.1%. A total of 5.3% in social sciences did not know or answer how often they visited
the library against 18.9% in humanities who go three or four times a week. Humanities
scholars exhibit a more intensive use of the library.”
Heting Chu, as cited in Tamara (2012) states, “Electronic books: viewpoints from
users and potential users.” The respondents apparently preferred to use e-books that
could be obtained from libraries or the Web without incurring any direct expense to
themselves. They were unwilling to pay for e-books as they do for print books.
Broadus in Boone as cited in Tamara (2012) found, “published several articles giving the results of a survey of the material used from 1982 through 1984 by humanities
scholars at the National humanities centre, Research Triangle Park, North California.
Broadus concluded that “materials relevant to humanistic investigations are even more
widely dispersed in library collections” than previously thought. Broadus also found
that thirty-one per cent of the requests were for journals and that twelve percent of the
tides satisfied almost half of those request.”
It can be concluded that information needs play an important role to promote students’ skills
and capabilities. Information-seeking behaviour of each student from the different major is
related to their interests. It was shown that students prefer to find information in e-books
from the libraries than to pay for e-books or any related online documents themselves.
3
METHODOLOGY
This research uses a qualitative approach with in depth-interviews, observations and a documentation study.
3.1
Data collection
Data collected for this research was derived from the reference services of the campus libraries of Bina Nusantara University in the form of reports. These reports contain monthly
e-mail transactions and monthly reports from January to April 2016. The library transactions based on the monthly reference reports in 2016 are:
1. Monthly reports of library transactions through online media (WhatsApp, Instant Messenger and e-mail) and face-to-face interaction.
2. Transactions that were classified into questions on the subject forms and uses of social
media.
Interviews with the reference services librarians in charge of the reference services.
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3.2
Data analysis
The data were analysed by making some categorisation on the reference services, such as: (1)
pattern of communication and transactions between the librarian and users at the reference
services; (2) pattern of formal and informal communication in two different locations.
4
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The pattern of communication differs based on situations and conditions. The explanation
of the data analysis is shown below. The result of the communication transactions based on
media (face-to-face) and online (via email, IM, and WhatsApp) is shown in the following
figure.
Figure 1 shows the differences between the two types of media in two locations. The users
in Area 1 (Anggrek, Kijang, and Alam Sutra campuses) were more interested in coming and
meeting the librarians to ask questions for their information needs. They came and talked
directly about what they would like to know. In Area 2 (JWC and FX campuses), the users
preferred to use online media communication.
Based on the pattern of information exchanges in the two locations, it is obvious that some
users prefer to use technology to fulfil their need for information. These days, technology has
become a cultural element in society. Technology is a human attempt to conserve their energy
(power) and thought by using nature (Hoed, 2014, p. 229). The communication pattern
involving the technology significantly changes the way we communicate. It is noticeable
that technology access in the second area facilitates users to ask questions about references
to the librarians. E-mail and Instant Messenger used by the librarians make transactions
related to references efficient and effective. As cited in Cassell and Hiremath (2009), the problems with virtual reference arguably relates to the disadvantage of not having a face-to-face
interaction where the users’ tone of voice, facial expressions and body language will help the
librarians to judge whether they communicate well with the users. On the other hand, Cassell
and Hiremath (2009) stated that librarians in charge of virtual references could develop
peer-reviewing systems to help one another in order to improve the quality of their work.
Transcripts should be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that the best possible service is
provided.
Based on the interviews with the librarians of the reference services in two locations, the
users sometimes asked various redundant questions, such as access to the library’s collections, ways to find books and book borrowing systems, and errors on access in a website’s
system.
Figure 1. Number of visits by reference service users in Area 1 (Anggrek, Kijang, Alam Sutra) and
area 2 (JW and FX).
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4.1
Virtual reference services at the Bina Nusantara University Library
Bina Nusantara University Library is located in Jakarta, Indonesia. It is known as the Binus
Library. Bina Nusantara provides multiple degree programmes (Bachelor, Master’s, and Doctorate), international and regular classes with approximately 25,000 students (full and parttime). The campus libraries are located on the five different campus locations (Anggrek,
Kijang, Senayan, FX, and Alam Sutera Campuses) with approximately 35 staff members, 15
of whom are librarians. The Binus Library has combined the traditional reference services
with the virtual reference services since 2009. The Library uses social media to serve the users
because it would like to provide the best services to the users. In the Anggrek campus, the reference services librarians have a reference desk to help the users find the information they want.
The librarians will perform some in depth-interviews until they know what the users want. The
Binus Library has many reference programmes in their online services, such as consultation
about research materials, and explanations related to library collections. The users visit the
library to find information for their research, especially from the thesis and e-book collections.
In the event that they do not know exactly the information they need, they will ask and talk to
the reference services librarians who will interview them and the users must repeat the subjects
they need. On JWC and FX campuses, the users mostly use the online media to ask for help to
find e-journals, e-thesis and e-books. The users will communicate virtually through e-mail and
instant messengers. The reference services librarians will ask and answer their questions via
e-mail. This programme is changed annually and the Binus Library has transformed the services gradually. Initially, the Binus Library used a chat application with a pop-up chat application. It also transformed the use of the social media in numerous ways. Facebook has been used
to cover the information about events and activities in the campus libraries. The libraries have
made efforts to attract the users through the use of various social media, such as Line, WhatsApp, Yahoo Messenger, IM, and Viber to facilitate users when they need some help. Also, the
libraries have assigned a staff to answer users’ questions through mobile device.
4.2
Obstacles
There are some problems in the implementation of the virtual reference services programme.
First of all, the users sometimes ask redundant questions during face-to-face and virtual
meetings. In Anggrek Campus, they keep visiting the library to make sure that the reference
services librarians get their questions. Most users approach the reference desk and ask for
help to the reference services librarians. This culture is still present until now. Meanwhile,
the users of JWC library ask some reference questions through e-mail. This different culture
shows changes in the information-seeking behaviour.
Secondly, the librarians of the reference service sometimes are not attentive due to the long
questions in the interviews and other users had to wait for their turn. The third is the short
conversations via e-mail and WhatsApp cannot cover what the users would like to know.
The Anggrek campus library users usually use WhatsApp application to query books status
and operational hours. Meanwhile in the JWC campus, the library users usually ask for the
library’s e-collections. From the interviews with the librarians, the data of the reports does
not show the details on the questions asked by the users. The librarians also do not perform
in depth reference interviews in the face-to-face and virtual services communication.
4.3
Recommendations
The Bina Nusantara Library should be aware of the obstacles due to communication barriers
between the users and librarians. As cited in Westbrook and DeDecker in Katz (1993) who
argued that the mechanism for references and instructions used by librarians in an academic
setting should create a more integrated and complete approach for welcoming and validating
their users’ information needs. This structure consists of guidelines for three specific areas:
1. The Facilities should be comfortable and provide ease of use to the users: the facilities
should be warm, with good lighting, and cater to the users’ physical safety and special
needs, such as those with disabilities.
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2. Service: Librarians at the desk reference services should be proactive with regard to their
interview skills, offer access to private areas in the library and be sensitive to the different
learning styles, approaches, and depth-interviews about the users’ information needs.
3. Staff: Library staff and librarians should be aware of the needs to welcome, develop and
share the means to effectively collect messages, encourage staff involvement in setting up
policies and procedures, and emphasize awareness of local and institutional demographics
(p. 49).
Based on the analysis of this research, the Binus Library should perform the following
activities to promote the reference services:
1. Understand the users of the Binus Library and the culture embraced by them. It is important to know the users’ culture in order to approach them. The librarians, through their
nonverbal actions such as turning away from the users, may inadvertently indicate that
interview is over (as cited by Ross and Dewdney, 1999; and Cassell and Hiremath, 2009).
2. Analyse monthly reports in order to find out exactly what is needed by the users. The
librarians should simultaneously consider the following three steps to avoid scattershot
searches: (1) categorizing the answers (2) visualizing how the final answers will appear
(3) testing the waters to check if the answers head towards the right direction (as cited by
Cassell and Hiremath, 2009, p. 36).
3. Empower the reference services librarians by providing the necessary trainings on
managing and resolving problems related to information searches. The librarians should
evaluate the search results in order to provide answers effectively and efficiently. The evaluations the search results comprises (1) authority: placing authorship is a traditional way of
establishing authority on any piece of information; (2) reliability: reputable print resources
gain stature because of their credentials, authority, and transparent documentation of
publishing pedigree; and (3) currency: related to printed resources, internet references are
most valued for providing the kind of currency that print formats are unable to supply.
The virtual reference services should be made as continuous programmes and has to
be developed further in order to meet the users’ information needs. The library plays an
important role in promoting the university’s aim, which is to deliver excellent results in
education.
REFERENCES
Boone, R.W. (1994) The Information Needs and Habits of Humanities Scholar. RQ. [Online] 34 (2), 203–
215. Available from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20862645?seq = 1&cid = pdfrefe-rence#references_
tab_contents [Accessed 21th August 2016].
Bopp, R.E. & Smith, L.C. (2011) Reference and Information Services-An Introduction. 4th edition. Santa
Barbara, Libraries Unlimited.
Gurganus, A.S. (2015) Virtual reference in a community college library: patron use of instant messaging
and log in chat service. Malibu, Pepperdine University.
Katz, B. (1993) Reference service expertise. New York, The Haworth Press, Inc.
Shachaf, P., & Snyder, M. (2007) The Relationship between Cultural Diversity and User Needs in Virtual
Reference Service. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 33 (3), 361–367.
Tomic, T. (2012) Evaluation of e-mail reference service in university Donja Gorica Library. University of
Ljubljana. Faculty of Arts. Department of Library and Information Science and Book Studies.
Wilson, T.D. & Wangsh (1981) On user studies and information needs. Journal of Documentation, 37 (1),
3–15.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Students’ information behavior and the use of library reference
service at Surya International School, Jakarta
R.R. Romadon & T.A. Susetyo-Salim
Department of Library and Information Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia,
Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The Internet has changed the information behavior of students in learning
activities, especially in doing homework. The role of school library in providing reference
service has been undermined by online search engines like Google, thus limiting staff size,
collections, and opening hours. Even so, the richness of information resources on the Web
presents counterproductive effects in students’ ability to construct and articulate information
on the basis of their understandings. In this study, we analyze the information behavior of
students and its effects on the use of school library. Here, we use a qualitative approach
to collect data through focus group discussions conducted at Surya International School,
Jakarta. Findings from this study show that the digital native background of students has
a significant effect on their information behavior and use of school library. The result of
this study shows that the school library should adapt to students’ information behavior and
cooperate with other libraries to provide homework-assistance service both in person and
online. This article is expected to provide insight into the information behavior of students
for the evaluation and development of the reference service provided by the school library.
1
INTRODUCTION
The digital era has significantly changed the way people access information. Together with
the increasing popularity of the Internet and the mass use of new mobile devices, access
to information has become possible anywhere, anytime, and at the touch of our fingertips.
The latest survey conducted by APJII (2016) indicates that 51.8% (132.7 million people) of
Indonesia’s total population use the Internet. It also indicates that 25.3% (31.3 million people) of Internet users are information seekers and 67.8% (89.9 million people) of Internet
users use smartphones for information search. The result of this survey shows that people
tend to access information through online resources from mobile devices rather than printed
materials.
This phenomenon has also changed the information behavior of students in learning activities at school, especially on assignments. APJII also stated that, on the basis of profession,
students are the second largest group of Internet users in Indonesia (69.8%). The National
Library of Indonesia also stated that more than 70% of public library users are students
(National Library of Indonesia, 2013).
Most young people who are known as digital natives are very comfortable with ICT, and
this increases their expectations toward the services provided by school libraries, especially
the reference service. In general, they use school libraries to complete homework assignments
in time. However, in order to meet their increasing expectations, students will rely heavily on
search engines, thereby diminishing the use of the library’s reference service. School libraries,
which are known for their comprehensive collections, also face problems, such as the limited
staff size, collections, and opening hours. These limitations influence students’ perception
that school libraries can be substituted by search engines. However, the rich information
resources on the Web have a counterproductive effect on the ability of students to construct
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and articulate information based on their understandings. Thus, rather than approaching
this as an obstacle, it should be construed as an opportunity for the school library to maintain its role as the center for information.
For this purpose, we discuss identifying the information behavior of students and its effects
on the use of school library reference service.
2
LITERATURE REVIEW
The Internet has changed the information behavior of students in learning activities, especially assignments or homework, by providing easy online information search. Although a
wide disparity still occurs in access and skills based on socioeconomic status, most young
people are very comfortable with technology, which leads to their increased expectations of
library services. Nevertheless, the richness of information resources on cyberspace presents
counterproductive effects in the ability of students to construct and articulate information on
the basis of their understandings (Carr, 2008, Gunter, 2009, Jamali, 2011).
Even though students have their own personal information needs and interests, they generally use the library reference services for completing their homework assignments (Cassell
& Hiremath, 2009). Information behavior includes selecting, searching, and using relevant
information to complete an assignment.
In this section, we reviewed the existing literature that includes aspects of digital natives,
information behavior, especially information capture and related theories as well as evaluation of library reference service.
2.1
Digital natives
The term “digital natives” was coined and popularized by Marc Prensky in 2001. It refers
to young people who have grown accustomed to digital devices in their daily life (Dingli,
2015). Similar but more popular terms that are used interchangeably to refer to this group
are “Google Generation”, “Net Generation”, and “Millennials”.
In general, digital natives reside in major cities in which the use of technological and communication devices has increased rapidly and has a cultural impact on the community. Rowlands
(2008) and Gunter (2009) defined this generation as mostly those born after 1993, since when
the Internet has begun to develop as a source of information and communication media for public use, unlike its previous usage, which was restricted to military and academic environments.
Rowlands et al. (2008) claimed that although young people demonstrate an apparent
effortlessness and familiarity with ICT devices, they rely heavily on search engines to view
than to read, and they do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information found on the Web.
2.2
Information behavior
Wilson (as cited in Pijpers, 2010) stated that information behavior comprises two key activities, namely information seeking and information use. Information-seeking behavior is
defined as the purpose of seeking information to achieve certain goals. While seeking for
information, the person may also interact with manual information systems, such as a library
and an information center, or with ICT-based information systems, such as the Internet.
Meanwhile, information-use behavior is defined as the physical and mental activities involved
in incorporating information found in a person’s existing knowledge base.
One of the IB theories that suits students or young people is the berrypicking theory developed by Marcia J. Bates in 1989. This theory shows the impact of the search process in
the results. During the information-seeking process, the questions are refined gradually until
they meet the needs of the information seeker. This theory is indicated through the trial-anderror stage in the process of using search engines.
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Table 1.
Berrypicking theory and information capture concept.
Berrypicking theory
Information capture
Typical search queries are not static
but evolving;
Searchers commonly collect information
in bits and pieces instead of in one grand
best-retrieved set;
Searchers use a wide variety of search techniques
that extend beyond those commonly associated
with bibliographic database;
Searchers use a wide variety of sources
other than bibliographic databases.
Handwriting copy of information
that is encountered;
Photocopying a printed source, such as
book chapters or magazine articles as
a whole or partially;
Printing out an electronic document,
such as Web pages, eBooks, and online
journals;
Copying and pasting material from electronic
sources into another file, often a Word
document, which a student may be preparing
for assignment purposes.
Information capture is another theory similar to this concept (Shenton, 2010). It involves
the representation of materials, such as facts, opinions, and interpretations, in a form that
renders them useful for some later activity.
2.3 The use of library reference service
In a digital environment, the interaction between librarians and users will no longer be truly
face-to-face. Whitlatch (2001) stated that reference librarians must shift from their reference
desks and develop new strategies to connect library materials to its users. Librarians in school
libraries can develop outreach programs for students, as well as library instructional and
consultation service, or homework-assistance programs (Intner, 2010). All of these efforts
must be made for the library reference service to adapt, change, survive, and prosper in the
new digital age.
3
METHODS
This study uses a qualitative approach with the focus group discussion (FGD) technique at
Surya International School, Jakarta. We conducted a semi-structured and face-to-face interview for collecting data. FGD is a group discussion often consisting of 6–12 participants and
guided by a facilitator or researcher to gain an understanding of their attitudes and perceptions that are relevant to the topic (Gorman, 2005). We used two methods of data recording
from discussion, namely tape-recording and immediate note-taking after the discussion, to
evaluate the library service. It also allows the participants to describe and express their behavior, beliefs, viewpoints, and preferences in their own words (Beck, 2004). The remaining of
this section describes the preliminary interview with teacher-librarian, participants, interview
structure, and interview analysis.
3.1 Preliminary interview with teacher-librarian
Before starting the FGD session with the students, we interviewed the teacher-librarian to
get a first impression of the library itself, characteristics of its users, and problems in the
services of the school library. The information obtained from this preliminary interview session is used to construct the quality questions of the study. In order to acquire sufficient
background to develop the questions, we must have thorough knowledge about the study
setting. We use this interview as a “springboard” to facilitate the discussion and build a list
of possible questions for the next session with the students as the participants.
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3.2
Participants
From the preliminary interview with the teacher-librarian, we learn the characteristics of the
users of the school library and the low use of its service. Interviewing the students directly
was not easy as most of them were not comfortable talking to strangers. In order to help us
collect the data, we sought assistance from the teacher-librarian to persuade the students to
let us conduct the interview in their leisure time at the library. We interviewed seven students
from a junior high school, Surya International School, Jakarta. It is interesting to learn that
all of the participants have learned in the library or acquired literacy skills since grade 9.
They have weekly library time or information literacy session in the class.
3.3
Interview structure
The interviews were loosely structured and started by asking breaker questions such as how
much they depend on digital devices. In the next session, we asked the students about their
reasons and perspectives for using Google rather than existing library materials. Finally, we
continued asking about their experiences, feelings, and opinions regarding the library. The
interviews were conducted in the library room at Surya International School, Jakarta (SISJ)
when the students were on their break time, which they would usually spend studying, doing
assignments, and waiting for the next class session.
3.4
Interview analysis
The interview results were transcribed and interpreted by coding, and the data were linked
by connecting using relevant codes to construct the data, which were to be displayed graphically. For the internal validity of the study, we used triangulation by sharing the categories or
themes with the participants and asked them whether the conclusions match reality. We also
used the external validity to examine how the study could represent the problem in general
and whether its results or conclusions could be applied to similar studies in the future.
4
FINDINGS
Our interview session results in the identification of the students’ digital native background,
deadlines of their assignments, the lack of library collections, their false assumptions, their
information behavior, and the use of the library reference service.
4.1
Digital native background
Most of the students in SISJ are digital natives. On the basis of their age, we can perceive
that they were all born after 1993 (Rowlands, 2008, Gunter, 2009). This is indicated by the
familiarity in using mobile devices or gadgets for their daily activities both inside and outside
the classroom. They use these devices for three main reasons, namely communication, entertainment, and online search, as explained by interviewees 1, 4, and 5:
P1: We use cellphones and laptops every day.
P4: We use it for studying and accessing social media, but mostly for communication.
P5: I bring it [cell phone] into the class. I never go to school without it.
During the interview session, we observe that students always bring their mobile devices or
laptops for completing their assignments through Google search.
4.2
Assignment deadlines
The deadlines for assignment completion also increase students’ need for information. They
want the information to be available to them quickly, easily, anytime, and anywhere, as
expressed by interviewees 1, 5, and 7:
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P1: Searching information in those books must take a long time.
P5: To meet the deadline, we just copy-paste because we don’t have time to read it all at once.
P7: We prefer searching eBooks. We already have the textbooks.
Because of their digital native background, the deadlines set for the students’ assignment
sled to their high expectations toward the library to fulfill their needs. However, the school
library’s limited collections make them search for the fastest and easiest platform as an alternative solution, namely Google.
4.3
Lack of collections
Furthermore, there have been some complaints regarding the library’s limitations, such as
lack of collections, room size, computer units, and inadequate Internet connection.
P5: Maybe it is because of the lack of collections here, so we would rather search on Google
instead.
P2: Add the number of collection, at least the books that we have not bought yet.
P5: Bigger rooms, I hope.
P3: I wish there were a lot of computers here.
P2: Sometimes the Internet connection is not available here.
P1: Actually the connection is fast, but many students connect to the network causing the
connected to slow down.
The school library has limited collections, staff, and opening hours. The lack of collections has led the students to the false assumption that the library is now outdated and
obsolete (Herring, 2014). They even think that everything they need is available on the Web
(Rowlands, 2008).
4.4
Students’ false assumptions
The students, with their digital native background, are disappointed with this condition and
feel they no longer need to use the library, as everything is available on the Web (Rowlands,
2008). This is expressed by interviewees 1, 2, 3, and 5:
P1: We don’t rely on it [library] anymore for assignments. Searching information in those
books must take a long time.
P2: On Google, everything is available.
P3: It [library] doesn’t help at all.
P5: Yeah, we don’t need it [library] anymore.
From these statements, we found these false assumptions to be caused by the students’ digital native background. The Web is never a substitute to the library, but rather an additional
tool for information seeking (Herring, 2014). Therefore, the students’ false assumptions are
due to their digital native background, assignment deadlines, and lack of library materials.
4.5
Students’ information behavior
There are two major findings regarding the students’ information behavior:
1. The students still experience problems in formulating keywords for search engines that are
suitable for their needs. Even though they have been taught literacy skills at previous levels,
namely elementary and junior high, the abilities of students are still limited when articulating their information needs into words or terms that are adequate for online search:
P6: The “super-specific” topics are very hard to find. As it is, right now I am working on my
paper in the area of psychology. It’s so hard to find anything. I have difficulties formulating the right keywords for the search. But sometimes, it suddenly appears on my mind,
even though the process takes time.
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P7: To find the keywords, we do trial and error. Through this process, we can gradually get
what we are searching for.
Most of the students start the search by phrasing the questions vaguely from which thousands of search results are generated. This process is repeated by refining the keywords
until they find the most suitable sources for them. This process is in line with the principles
of the berrypicking theory (Bates, 1989).
2. The students tend to copy-paste the information from the online sources found on the
Internet without analyzing it or having a comprehensive understanding of it. They are not
even sure whether the obtained information is reliable or not:
P7: All we need to do is just search and copy-paste the information to the paper. That’s all.
P5: Well, it depends on what kind of materials is needed for the assignment, or which websites we want to use. If the source is unreliable, such as Wikipedia, we can’t use it as a
reference. But to meet a deadline, we just copy-paste it, because we don’t have time to
read it all.
P2: Unfortunately, we didn’t have any session on library skills last semester. But when we
were in elementary school, we were already taught about how to make citations.
This copy-paste habit is one of the manifestations of information capture. Information
capture is the key element in information behavior (Shenton, 2010). However, it does not
only deal with the transformation from one format to another. It must be engaged with
the transformation of information on the basis of the individual’s interpretation and
understanding.
4.6
The use of library reference service
Information behavior of students has an impact on the use of library reference service as
described below:
P1: We don’t rely heavily on the library’s collections for our assignments, because there is an
Internet connection here, right? Searching for those books must take a long time.
P4: They [collections] don’t help us at all.
P7: We prefer searching for eBooks on the Web. We already have the tutorial books.
P5: Yeah, we don’t need them [collections].
P2: On Google everything is available.
P5: Maybe it is because of the lack of collections here, so we prefer to search on Google
instead.
From the transcript, we discover that there are both direct and indirect impacts of the
information behavior of students on the library reference service. One of the direct impacts is
Figure 1.
Findings from the FGD session.
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their assumptions that they no longer need to use the library reference service for completing
their assignments as everything is available on the Web (Rowlands, 2008). Meanwhile, one of
the indirect impacts is their preference to use the library room because it is the most quiet and
comfortable place to study and discuss with their friends and teachers:
P4: We use this room [library] just for studying, for using our laptops only because it is
quiet here.
P5: We can’t use the student lounge, because it’s too noisy.
P1: This is a good spot for hanging out with friends and teachers.
From these findings, we discover that the students’ digital native background, their assignment deadlines, and the lack of library collections are the main factors behind their information behavior and false assumptions that everything is available on the Web. Finally, the
information behavior has both direct and indirect impacts on the library reference services
undermined by search engines. The analysis results are described in Figure 1.
5
CONCLUSION
We conclude that the information behavior of students arises because most of them are digital natives and have been accustomed to carrying out online search using their digital and
mobile devices. Consequently, the students’ assumption that everything can be found on the
Web is reinforced by the limited number of library collections that can help them. Even
though the students have been taught library literacy skills, they still need guidance and consultation from the librarian.
The identified information behavior of students includes: (1) the problems in articulating
and formulating the appropriate keywords during the information-seeking stage and (2) the
habit of copying and pasting the information found on the Web to their assignments without
analyzing the level of reliability and validity.
The information behavior of students also has direct and indirect impacts on the use of
library reference service. The direct impact is that they no longer use the library reference
service and collections but prefer to search for information through search engines. The indirect impact is that the library becomes a quiet and suitable place for the students to study,
discuss, or spend their leisure time with friends, librarian, or teachers. On the basis of these
impacts, the librarian must evaluate and formulate new strategies in the development of the
reference service in order to adapt with the information behavior of students.
5.1
Recommendations
The library can develop an in-house outreach program for students and change the term
reference service to homework assistance, so that it can be adjusted to fulfill the information
needs of the students in the digital era (Pfeil, 2005, Sonntag & Palsson, 2007, Dresang & Koh,
2009, Intner, 2010, Gratz, 2011). The homework-assistance program can assist the students
in areas where the Internet cannot help. This program can also illustrate how the students can
benefit from the library with all the available sources of both printed and online materials
regardless of setting. This is why the school library must also maintain good coordination
and collaboration with other school libraries, academic libraries, local public libraries, and
even the national library.
On the basis of the conclusions drawn, we find that the new important role of the reference
librarian at school is to develop cognitive skills on information-seeking behavior for students
(Mokhtari, 2013). To overcome the limitations of school libraries, such as those related to
collections, staff, and opening hours, the library must make good use of the current popular
communication and information delivery tools, such as Webpages, databases, the Internet,
Facebook, and Twitter. The result expected from this outreach program is the increase in the
ability of the school library to provide better reference services and library consultation both
in person and online.
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Pfeil, A.B. (2005) Going places with youth outreach: smart marketing strategies for your library. Chicago,
American Library Association.
Pijpers, G. (2010) Information overload: a system for better managing everyday data. Hoboken, NJ, John
Wiley & Sons.
Rowlands, I., Nicholas, D., Williams, P., Huntington, P., Fieldhouse, M., Gunter, B. & Tenopir, C. (2008)
The Google generation: the information behaviour of the researcher of the future. Aslib Proceedings,
60(4), 290–310. doi:10.1108/00012530810887953.
Shenton, A. (2010) Information capture: a key element in information behaviour. Library Review, 59(8),
585–595. doi:10.1108/00242531011073119.
Sonntag, G. & Palsson, F. (2007) No longer the sacred cow—No longer a desk: transforming reference
service to meet 21st-century user needs. Library Philosophy and Practice. Retrieved from http://www.
web pages.uidaho.edu/∼mbolin/sonntag-palsson.pdf.
Whitlatch, J.B. (2001) Evaluating reference services in the electronic age. Library Trends, 50(2), 207–217.
Retrieved from https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/8400/librarytrendsv50i2_opt.
pdf ?sequence=3&isAllowed=y#page=50.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Transformation from conventional to virtual library reference
services at Surya International School, Jakarta
D.P. Prabowo & T.A. Susetyo-Salim
Department of Library and Information Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia,
Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The school library as a learning center has an important role in reference
service for students working on their assignments. However, various gadgets, the emergence
of the Internet and popular search engines, and online encyclopedias drive students to
search information from cyberspace therefore abandoning the library reference service.
Nevertheless, the richness of information resources from the Internet has counterproductive effects on students’ ability to construct and articulate information based on their
understanding. This study analyses how reference service transformation is beneficial for
the students’ learning process at school. It uses a qualitative approach with in-depth interview and non-participant observation to examine the school library at Surya International
School Jakarta (SISJ). Findings from this study show that students would rather search
information online from their own gadgets than go to the library to work on their assignments. Thus, the school library is required to transform its reference service from conventional to virtual-based with the newest ICT commonly used by students. Chat To Librarian,
which is a gadget-based reference service, can be an alternative solution for students. This
paper is expected to provide a new perspective on school library reference services in a digital era.
1
INTRODUCTION
With the digital revolution, libraries are expected to adapt to changes in order to stay relevant
to the developing era and the demands of users, especially with regard to services at school
libraries. As a learning center, the school library plays an important role in helping students
with assignments at school. Overwhelming information search on the Internet has affected
school libraries directly and indirectly. Directly, there is a diminishing number of students’
visits to school libraries. Therefore, many library collections and services within school
libraries are used less optimally by students. Users nowadays prefer to search for information
on the Internet via smartphones, because it is easier and faster than having to visit the library.
Indirectly, the library as a source of information is gradually undermined in the eyes of users
by sophisticated search engines like Google. These search engines are capable of generating
thousands to millions of search results based on search text input within seconds. If we
compare it to conventional library information service, we are not going to find similar
information results which are as much or fast as Google. Therefore, in order to maintain
existence and credibility in the digital era, libraries must transform their reference services by
reforming and innovating library services to be able to fulfill the needs of users today.
The reason is that this service requires both physical and virtual interactions with users,
unlike most of the services at libraries. The reference librarian is considered the ‘spearhead’
of library service. In other words, in addition to the quantity and quality of its collection,
the overall library service quality depends on its reference service. Based on the problem
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previously stated, this article supports the idea of the transformation of reference service at
school libraries into virtual service.
2
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1
Reference service
Reference service is provided by librarians tasked to assist the selection and obtainment of
information based on user request (Bishop, in Genz, 1998). Another definition is given by the
Reference and User Service Association (RUSA) in Bopp and Smith (2001) in which reference service is defined as library information service and consists of various activities, including personal guidance, directory, information provision selected from reference sources, and
access to digital information for library users. The term ‘reference service’ was first coined by
Samuel Green in 1876. Green was a librarian at Worcester Public Library in Massachusetts,
USA. The term developed from his opinion on the need for librarians to help users select
books based on their needs.
2.2
Reference service type
According to Bopp and Smith (2001, p. 6), reference service consists of three basic types,
namely information provision, library information resource guidelines, and information
resource selection guidance. These three basic types of service are further expanded on by
Cassell (2010) as follows:
Library information service provides information service to users based on their requests
and fulfills their specific needs;
Learning service is the ability of the librarian to provide e-learning service on over-selection
of information and easy access;
Guidance service is similar to learning service. However, it provides more direct instructions
and guidance to those who need guidance.
2.3 Teenagers and reference service at school library
Reference service has grown well along with technological development and the needs of the
users they serve (Godfrey, 2008). The virtual reference world is still in its early stage of development, and many studies need to be conducted to determine its actual effectiveness (Forrest,
2008). Many studies have not been conducted on library service in the virtual world. Children
growth rate is a hope for the virtual world, because today’s children ‘live’ in the digital world
and have the ability to explore virtually (Lou, 2010). It is important that the library explores
how service can be provided in the virtual world, so that they are better equipped for the future.
Rapid electronic resource development as well as its availability in large amount causes
libraries to change the vision and mission of reference service (Cassell, 2010). The growing
rate of Internet usage also contributes to the need for libraries to change. Librarians and
users are regularly bombarded with a variety of information whose amount is so significant that it requires an evaluation regarding authenticity and accuracy. The school library
as part of a learning center at school also experiences change with the coming of technology (Beheshti, 2009). The large amount of digitized information has made people to prefer
to search for information using computers and from the Internet. The rise of the Internet
indulges people with free information resources that can be obtained more easily and faster.
Reference service has to respond to this challenge by providing a combination of service that
is personal in nature and based on users’ requests.
School children today from pre-school to university have used digital equipment and information as an important part of their daily lives (Druin, 2008). Children (age 13–17 years
old) have a very positive point of view towards technology, and technology is an important
part of how they define themselves (Neuman, 2003). In the development of new technology
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and library service for the young generation, children’s ideas may not be the first ideas to be
considered. When visiting libraries, adults usually speak on behalf of children but seldom to
them regarding resources and service planning or resources evaluation. Children and teenagers are potential users of virtual reference service, because they are familiar with computers
and the Internet. Therefore, virtual service, such as Chat, videoconferencing, co-browsing,
instant messaging (IM), Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and e-mail, has to be implemented at libraries, especially school libraries (Cheng, 2008).
2.4
Virtual reference service
Many studies have been conducted on reference service and the evolution of virtual reference
(see Lankes et al, 2000; Su, 2001; West, 2004; Sloan, 2006). However, a brief inspection on
virtual reference will help determine its existence and place in the context of reference service.
The separation of library service from the means of providing reference has changed and
evolved in line with the needs of library users. Face-to-face reference service and reference
interview are among the first to be developed. As technology progresses, telephone reference service has become an addition to reference service. The Internet has a deep impact on
reference service and has delivered virtual or digital reference. Meanwhile, key features such
as reference service are still in several different forms. The role of the reference librarian has
changed, as users are able to perform a simple search by themselves.
Joint (2008) and Lankes (2000) indicate that traditional reference service provides mediation between users and collections. As the collections are transformed into online formats,
assistance is required to locate the information. Virtual reference service develops as a means
to provide assistance including through e-mail and chatting services. The first e-mail reference service can be traced back to the 1980s, while synchronization of chatting reference
service began at the end of the 1990s (Stormant, 2007). Chatting and IM reference began as
commercial projects, and many advantages were offered by co-browsing. Although virtual
function is a good idea, it is often obstructed by technical problems, such as browser compatibility and problem authenticity. As a result, several libraries have shifted to IM delivery
through existing IM service, such as AIM, Hotmail, and Meebo. Variation in the delivery
method has also changed. Every new method provides a reference service that is in line with
the previous service. IM reference service does not replace the traditional or virtual reference
service. There is no single method exclusively appreciated by all library users and no replacement of one type of service with another.
3
RESEARCH METHOD
This study uses a qualitative approach with a case study method. The object of the study is
the school library at Surya International School Jakarta (SISJ). Qualitative research aims to
interpret the view point of the librarian and the students concerning the transformation of
library reference service from conventional into virtual.
This study uses a purposive sampling technique in determining the respondents, and the
chosen respondents are one librarian and three students at SISJ. According to Gorman,
research data is collected through three basic activities, namely observation, interview, and
document analysis. In this study, the author uses two activities, namely interview and observation (Gorman, 2005). Data analysis process in this research is conducted through test
processing and analysis of the collected data before formulation of the conclusion based
on theory. The steps in the analysis include data reduction, coding, presentation, and data
interpretation, as well as the conclusion.
4
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Surya International School Jakarta (SISJ) is a well-known private international middle
school in Jakarta with an international-based curriculum where every student is required to
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combine theoretical knowledge, a practice method in the field, and information technology
usage. In addition, students are required to conduct studies at an early level, so it is necessary
for them to be information literate. According to Cassell (2010), information literacy can
only be developed at libraries through reference service. The function of the library at SISJ is
to support the learning process at school. It provides a reference service called Ask Librarian,
which can be accessed in person ore-mail.
During the school’s early years, SISJ already had a school library, although at the time it
did not provide reference service. The following is the SISJ librarian’s statement:
“School library was founded together with this school. Its collection was not much, nor
was its service. Reference service did not even exist. However, despite the limitations,
we were still able to help students with their assignments.” (Librarian, 14th September
2016).
This is in line with the school library’s function as a learning center for education and a
simple research center enabling students to develop their creativity and imagination. The
establishment of a reference service at SISJ school library is perceived to be the right decision, as it clarifies the librarian’s role in providing and directing information service needed
by students. At that time, reference service was carried out more often in person. Students
would ask questions related to school assignments, such as how to search for the appropriate
reading materials.
“The launching of the reference service is intended for us, librarians, so that in helping
students we can be more directed.” (Librarian, 14 Sept. 2016).
Information technology development demands libraries to be able to fulfill all the needs of
its main users, namely the students. Students’ assignments are becoming more complex, so
they need assistance in searching for literature in the library, as stated by the SISJ librarian
below:
“ICT develops at a fast pace. As a consequence, the students’ assignments are becoming more difficult and complex. Many of them look for literature in the library and ask
directly to the librarian. It is part of the teacher’s role to direct students to visit the
library.” (Librarian, 14 Sept. 2016).
Information technology exists along with the development of smart mobile devices. Almost
all students at SISJ use these devices as a means of communication to help those complete
assignments in school. Their opinion of the smart mobile devices is given below:
“Laptop, tablet, cell phone. These three devices; it’s like everywhere [I take them].
Especially the cell phone” (Rosa, 14th Sept. 2016).
Rosa’s statement clearly shows that smart mobile devices are part of her daily activities. In
addition, these devices can be used to study and search for information related to the assignments in school.
“Well, it’s fifty-fifty. Sometimes it helps me study, like searching for information,
enhancing knowledge, but sometimes I use the cell phone for communication.” (Rosa,
14th Sept. 2016.)
This phenomenon matches the thesis statement from Druin and Neuman in which nowadays students at school access and use digital equipment and information as an important
part of their daily lives (Druin, 2008). Children (age 12–16) have a very positive point of
view towards technology, and technology is an important part of how they define themselves
(Neuman, 2003).
The development of information technology through smartphones is marked by easy
access to the Internet. It has made students prefer to search for information from the Internet through smartphones, as it is easier and saves time compared to a visit to the library.
Indirectly, the library’s function as a source of information is gradually undermined in the
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eyes of users by sophisticated search engines like Google. These search engines are able to
generate thousands to millions of information search results based on search text input
within seconds. Compared to the conventional library information service, the results will
not be as many and as fast as through Google.
“Of course, I’d prefer to use Google rather than [visit] the library because the information found in the library is not complete. Google is more complete and faster”
(Dana, 14th Sept. 2016).
Usually, conventional reference service is provided by a librarian at a reference desk whose
task is to help and guide library users search for information through reference collections,
newspaper clippings, and indexes. Unfortunately, this traditional reference service has many
deficiencies, such as the librarian’s lack of reference in terms of quantity and quality, limited
acquisition and update on reference collections, as well as the promotion of the reference
service itself. As a result, the library reference service is less optimal in service and less used
by library users than it used to be. In order to survive in today’s era, the reference service
has to adapt to changes by adopting information and communication technology supporting its service expansion in order to reach users virtually. At the moment, the existence of
sophisticated technology and the Internet in the digital era drives the transformation from
conventional reference service to virtual reference service.
According to the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) of ALA, virtual reference service is reference service that is provided electronically, just like any other real-time
service in which users use computers or other Internet-based equipment to communicate with
a reference librarian without having to be present physically at the library building (Kern &
Lankes, 2009). Based on the definition above, we can conclude that virtual reference service
uses intermediate reference librarians to answer various reference questions in the virtual
world. The communication channels that are generally used are online chat, web messenger,
video conference, voice over IP, co-browsing, e-mail, and instant messaging.
Library users nowadays have understood the method to search for information instantly
from the Internet using search engines, such as Google, as demonstrated by a survey released
by Google Indonesia which stated that 61% of the urban society in Indonesia prefers to
access the Internet through smartphones in a total of 5.5 hours per day (Jeko, 2015). However, even with easy access to the Internet and sophisticated technology, the abundance of
search results requires guidelines and validity check. Therefore, guidelines and assistance
from reference librarians are still in demand because the users need to filter and interpret
the search results from various sources on the Internet. Up to this moment, libraries are still
relied on for valid and trustworthy information. This is a great opportunity that must be
grasped in order to survive in the digital era.
At present, the reference service at SISJ library is called Ask Librarian. With this service,
users can ask questions related to assignments in school to the librarian. Ask Librarian is carried out through e-mail and the telephone. The users of Ask Librarian are not only students,
but also teachers and staff members. According to the SISJ librarian, after the service was
launched many students have been interested to use it. They even asked things related to their
subjects through e-mail.
“Usually students ask about how to write bibliography, footnote, and all the things
related to the writing format of scientific articles.They also ask about the use of reference collections, such as encyclopedia, how to cite from them, and what websites
provide free articles to be downloaded. As the students at this school are already introduced to assignments related to research, they need specific reading materials, such as
online international journals.” (Librarian, 18th September 2016)
The statement above shows that although students are adept at using Google as their information search tool, they still need the library and the librarian to explain to them how to
write bibliography as part of their research assignments. This demonstrates the relevance of
the reference service at the library.
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“They can use Google by themselves to search for information. They are adept at that.
The task of the librarian here is to direct them to reliable information sources on the
Internet. For this task, the librarian cooperates with the teachers, as the students will
submit their assignments to them. The teachers together with the librarian will direct
the students to information that is relevant. We also teach them about plagiarism,
because of the anti-plagiarism principle that we have here, so any source cited has
to have its copyright examined. This way they know how to cite from the Internet.
The point is that we can’t just take everything from the Internet.” (Librarian, 18th
September 2016).
A search strategy is the most frequently asked question from students through Ask Librarian. Sometimes students experience difficulties to obtain the information that they need from
the search engine because of an incorrect search strategy. This is where the users can benefit
from the librarian’s guidance.
“Usually they ask the questions during class. Sometimes they ask about the keywords
to search for information for their assignments. Then they search for information using
a certain keyword, but if they can’t find the result they ask a librarian about it, for
example, the synonym of the keyword. Well, that’s what happened, more or less. Sometimes in thesaurus, we can find this term, main term, related term, and what they are.
So, sometimes they don’t know about a particular term to use as the keyword for a
certain subject. The librarian also teaches them the Boolean logic so that the search
results in relevant findings. Because sometimes they just input any keyword, but if they
use the Boolean logic, there will be codes, like ‘File type: pdf’, so the search results
will all be in PDF format. Another example is the combination of two keywords using
‘AND’ or one keyword using ‘OR’” (Librarian, 14th September 2016).
Information search according to Gash (2000) is important because the “life” of information service in an information unit or library is in fulfilling information needs demanded by
users, finding information needed by users, and providing the “way” for users to obtain the
information needed. The information search process is important to yield relevant, accurate,
and precise findings or information. A precise process and equipment use will generate precise information as well. A series of field studies show that the SISJ school library has transformed its conventional service into a virtual one through e-mail. This media can be accessed
from various gadgets in order to make it easier for students to contact the librarian when they
face difficulties with their assignments.
5
CONCLUSION
The library reference service remains relevant and is still needed by users in the digital era. In
order to adapt to current developments, today’s reference service has developed into a virtual
reference service. This service, besides presenting valid and trustworthy information search
results, also provides understanding to users, especially SISJ students about filtering and
interpreting information obtained from various sources both printed and electronic. This is
the distinguishing point and opportunity for libraries to survive in the digital era. Although
users nowadays tend to use gadgets to access the Internet rather than to visit libraries, the
library’s role is not going to be replaced any time soon by sophisticated search engines like
Google. Libraries are expected to find new ways to promote and present services that are in
line with users’ needs in the 21st century and the virtual reference service.
REFERENCES
Beheshti, J. (2012) Virtual environments for children and teens. In tech. 20 (3), 271–287.
Bopp, R.E. & Smith, L.C. (2011) Reference and Information Services: An Introduction. 4th ed.
Englewood, Colo., Libraries Unlimited.
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Cassell, K.A. (2011) Reference and Information Services in the 21 st Century: An Introduction. New York,
Neal Schuman Publisher, Inc.
Cheng, Y.L. (2008) Virtual reference service. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science
and Technology. 34 (2), 6–7.
Collins, J.W. III. & Kasowitz, A.S. (Eds). (2000) Digital Reference Service in the New Millennium:
Planning, Management, and Evaluation, New York, NY, Neal-Schuman Publishers.
Druin, A. (2003) What Children Can Teach Us: Developing Virtual Reference for Children with Children.
Maryland, University of Maryland.
Forrest, L. (2008) Overvaluing the virtual, American Libraries, 39 (3) 11.
Gash, S. (2000) Effective Literature Searching for Research. 2nd ed. Hampshire, Gower.
Godfrey, K. (2008) A new world for virtual reference, Library Hi Tech, 26 (4), 525–539.
Gorman, G.E. (2005) Qualitative Research for the Information Professional: A Practical Handbook.
London, Facet Publishing.
Joint, N. (2008) Virtual reference, Second Life and traditional library enquiry services, Library Review,
57 (6), 416–23.
Lankes, R.D. (2000) Introduction: the foundations of digital reference. In: Lankes, R.D.
Lou, L. (2008) Reference service in second life: an overview”, Reference Services Review, 36 (3), 289–300.
Neuman, D. (2003) Research in school library media for the next decade: Polishing the diamond. Library
Trends, 51(4), 503–524.
West, J. (2004) Digital versus Non-digital Reference: Ask a Librarian Online and Offline. Binghamton,
Haworth Press.
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 872
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Empowering students with information literacy education
as one of the library reference service functions at
Surya International School, Jakarta
E. Cahyani & T.A. Susetyo-Salim
Department of Library and Information Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia,
Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Information plays an important role in our lives. However, information
saturation makes it difficult to determine the accurate and reliable information. In this case,
it is important to know how to search, obtain, and evaluate information from various sources
in the current digital era. This circumstance has posed a new challenge to libraries as one of
the institutions providing information. In this study, we examine the information literacy
education program as an effort made by the library of Surya International School, Jakarta,
to overcome the present challenge. Furthermore, we investigate the operation of the program
in relation to the reference service in the library. We use a qualitative approach with a case
study methodology. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and nonparticipant
observations. Findings from this study show that information literacy skills help students in
searching information in a library or the Internet efficiently. Students are able to obtain the
exact information they need to complete their assignments and meet other purposes. In this
study, we underline the importance of information literacy education in the early years of a
student’s life and its benefits on finding the right information.
1
INTRODUCTION
Library is not only about books, but also about providing services, which enable users to
find a variety of reading materials for their entertainment or their research projects. This
type of service is called reference service. The service began in the late 19th century when
public libraries started to develop, and many people “did not know how to use the library”
(Tyckoson, 2001, p. 186). One of the services offered is a library instruction. This means that
through the reference service, librarians provide information and teach users how to use the
facilities provided by the library.
With the advancement of technology, libraries face new challenges. In order to overcome
these challenges, libraries have expanded their collections and facilities, allowing users to
find information with ease. Moreover, with the rapid growth of information communication
technology (ICT), there is a great demand for libraries to apply technology to cope with the
increasing number of collections as well as the need for information.
At present, users are more familiar with electronic gadgets than in the past. The younger
generation may have been introduced to gadgets in a very early age, which makes them fully
conversant on electronics, including the Internet. Those belonging to such generation are called
digital natives, a term coined by Marc Prensky. He used the term to describe those born in the
last decade of the 20th century, the time when digital technology gained its momentum. “They
have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computer, video games, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age” (Prensky, 2001,
p. 1). According to Alvermann (as cited in Selwyn, 2009, p. 365), they are perceived as “being
literate in media and ICTs in ways that exceed what many [adults] know or even consider worth
knowing.” However, those who are not “born into the digital world but have, at some later point
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in their lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology
are digital immigrants” (Prensky, 2001, pp. 1–2). Therefore, library users of today comprise not
only digital immigrants but also digital natives. At present, the challenges for librarians who are
mostly digital immigrants are more complicated due to the rapid development of ICT. These
librarians should know how to use the technology and understand the various challenges faced
by users in using the sophisticated technology at the library.
Although ICT enables easy access to information without having to visit a library, users
are prone to gain false and misleading information from the Internet. According to Bopp and
Smith (2011, p. 223):
“Whereas prior generations may have struggled with a scarcity of information, the
challenge for today’s user is finding what is needed in an environment of information abundance. In today’s world, the information that is needed may be obscured
by the sheer volume of resources available or the distraction users face as related but
not quite ‘on topic’ information draws attention from one’s intended search task.”
Moreover, students of this generation tend to rely on the Internet for information related to
their daily activities and school assignments. They “...do not distinguish between search engine
results and, scholarly, authoritative databases” (Galvin, 2005, p. 354), because they often have
“no concepts of how information is organised...do not understand indexing and are unaware
of controlled vocabulary...and do not necessarily understand the distinction between Internet
resources and information available from electronic databases” (Warnken, 2004, p. 153). Keen
later described (as cited in Selwyn, 2009, p. 368) that they are “taking search-engine results as
gospel, thus fostering a younger generation of intellectual kleptomaniacs, who think their ability to cut and paste a well-phrased thought or opinion and makes it their own”.
Information on the Internet is supposed to be filtered to find the accurate one out of the
many found from using a search engine, because
“...information comes to individuals in unfiltered formats, raising questions about
its authenticity, validity, and reliability. In addition, information is available through
multiple media…and these pose new challenges for individuals in evaluating and
understanding it (ALA.org).”
Filtering information is therefore important, especially for academic purposes where every
piece of information needs to be verified and accountable. Library users, such as scientists,
students, and professionals, should be very careful in searching information so as to find the
reliable source of information. In general, the intended information is stored on certain Websites or in electronic journals requiring users’ access to obtain the information needed. The
role of librarians is to educate users the much needed skills, as stated by Galvin (2005, p. 354):
“It is the librarian’s responsibility to be attentive to the reference encounter and the
opportunities for teaching presented in it, to guide the student to appropriate and
valid online resources, and to teach the student to evaluate information found online.”
Mastering this skill is crucial, especially for those whose works involve research. With this
skill, one can find the data needed effectively and efficiently from reliable sources and combine them with other information to generate credible research.
2
2.1
LITERATURE REVIEW
Information literacy
The meaning of the term literacy has changed drastically. The current rapid development
phase of the world demands everyone to be literate in all aspects of life. In the present era
of digital information, in which abundant information is generated using ICT, everyone is
required to be literate in terms of information. This requires searching, selecting, and using
the information needed effectively in order to obtain true information for performing daily
activities.
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According to the Association of College and Research Libraries (2000), information literacy is “a set of abilities requiring individuals to ‘recognize when information is needed and
have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information’. Therefore, an
information literate individual is able to:
Determine the extent of information needed;
Access the needed information effectively and efficiently;
Evaluate information and its sources critically;
Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base;
Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose;
Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and
access and use information ethically and legally” (pp. 2–3).
2.2
Reference service
According to Tyckoson (as cited in Bopp and Smith, 2011), libraries perform three basic
functions in their daily activities: (1) selecting, collecting, and preserving information for
users; (2) organizing the information within its collections; (3) assisting users in their search
and retrieval of information. The third function of libraries is known as reference service
and has become a valid term worldwide as “the librarians who helped readers tend to use the
books that were located in the reference collection; they gradually became known as reference librarians” (Bopp and Smith, 2011, p. 8).
Reitz (as cited in Bopp and Smith, 2011) further defined reference service as:
“including but not limited to answering substantive questions, instructing users
in the selection of appropriate tools and techniques for finding information, conducting searches on behalf of the patrons, directing users to the location of library
resources, assisting in the evaluation of information, referring patrons to resources
outside the library when appropriate, keeping reference statistics, and participating
in the development of the reference collection (p. 13).”
Samuel Green, the first person to discuss about the concept of library reference service,
popularized this new concept in the late 19th century. He proposed the following four functions of a reference librarian (as cited in Tyckoson, 2001 and Bopp and Smith, 2011):
Teaching people how to use the library and its resources;
Answering the questions of library users;
Aiding the library users in the selection of resources;
Promoting library within the community.
Many changes have taken place in libraries since Green’s statement in 1876. Libraries
have gradually developed over time and applied various technologies to adapt to the everchanging environment, the growing number of collections, and the needs for more complex
information. However, reference service is always relevant and in high demand. Reference
librarians have existed since the era of Samuel Green, and their function have not changed
much according to Thomas Galvin (as cited in Bopp and Smith, 2011), which are:
Assistance and instruction (formal or informal) in the use of the library;
Assistance in the identification and selection of books, journals, and other materials relevant to a particular information need;
Provision of brief, factual information of the “ready reference” variety (p. 12).
Reference service in libraries can be performed in many forms, especially with the current
rapid development of technology. Some of the very early forms are still relevant to date, and
some have been modified using ICT. The following list proposed by Bopp and Smith (2011)
includes some forms of reference services offered in libraries around the world:
Readers’ advisory
Ready reference
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Research consulting
Subject specialist
Bibliographic verification and citation
Interlibrary loan and document delivery
Instruction
Literacy program
Outreach and marketing (pp. 14–18).
3
METHODOLOGY
Data required for this study were obtained through interviews with 1 librarian and 13 randomly selected students. Seven students from grade 12 were interviewed face-to-face in a
focus group discussion, and the other informants are six students from grade 10 who were
interviewed via e-mail.
Questions related to their activities at the school library, methods of literature search for
their school assignments, and the difficulties in searching for information from the Internet
were asked to the students in the interviews. The librarian was asked to explain about what
she teaches during an information literacy class, the type of reference service provided to
the students, and the difficulties in teaching. The school library was observed to check the
activities performed by the librarian and the students at the library and the types of reference
services used by the students.
3.1 Surya International School
The school applies two curricula, namely national and international, known as the IB
(International Baccalaureate). Students need to pass final examinations in both curricula to
advance to a higher grade. There is no difference in terms of school assignment and teaching method between the two curricula. The learning process has an international standard.
In this school, teachers encourage students to participate in class discussions and conduct
research by searching information from various sources.
Students are welcomed to contact teachers if they face any difficulties. They can communicate with their teachers about their assignments via an application called Manage Bac
outside the classroom. This application is used in international schools around the world for
“efficient curriculum planning, assessment, and reporting while eliminating paperwork and
enhancing communication” (managebac.com). Class schedules, students’ attendance, class
materials, school assignments, and conversations between students and teachers regarding
assignments are displayed in this application. Therefore, students who could not attend a
class can still keep up with the progress by reading the display in Manage Bac. Teachers,
students, and librarians actively participate in this application to monitor the learning process and progress of students. Parents are also given the access to this application to view the
learning progress of their children.
Most students studying in this school intend to continue their studies abroad. In this case,
the school is seen as the place to equip the students with proficiency in a foreign language
and to prepare students to be engaged in a learning process with an international standard.
Therefore, the learning atmosphere in this school is different from that in state schools. Students are given the task to write essays, in which they are required to be creative and critical
as well as observant of the environment around them.
3.2 Findings
To enhance their knowledge about the library and its use, students are directed to attend an
information literacy program regularly. This program is perceived as useful to support the
learning process of students in every subject taught in this school. This program is called
library time and is not part of the school curricula.
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Library time is a course in which students are taken to the school library to receive materials about the library and how to use the facilities in it. An application records students’
attendance, materials, and assignments given, just like any other subjects of the curricula.
However, their achievement in this course does not determine their advancement to the
next grade. The class started last year and it is held once a week for 45 min. It is purposely
intended for grade 10 students, because they have many essay assignments. Therefore, lesson
materials given in the library time focus on using reference collection, writing bibliographies
and abstracts, citing from printed books and electronic database, and obtaining information
by exploring electronic databases that provide free e-books and e-journals.
Subjects taught in this class vary at each meeting. All students are required to bring their
laptops or smartphones to practice the lesson. In the first session, they are given materials
covering the basic knowledge about the library in general and its rules. They also learn about
the school’s library website, books, call number, and the arrangement of books. The course
material also covers a more advanced level of information, such as how to explore the Web to
find information from reliable websites for their essays’ citation, how to use the principles of
Boolean logic to find specific information, and how to write citation in MLA format. As for
the next meeting, they are required to practice the lesson taught in the previous week. They
can also apply this knowledge to their other assignments.
In fact, the course materials for this class are directly applicable and arranged in such a way
to help students with areas or skills they find most difficult to master because
“It is critical that students be taught to evaluate materials they find on the Web
so they can make informed decisions about what would be considered reliable and
appropriate for their research...this also means understanding the ownership of
intellectual property as well as recognizing and accepting the responsibility to credit
others for words and ideas in whatever format—text or graphic, print or electronicthey appear (Warnken, 2004, p. 154).”
Although students are familiar in Google search, “most often they do not consider the
type of site or the validity of the information and are generally unaware of the concept of
evaluation criteria” (Warnken, 2004, p. 153). Therefore, the librarian will direct and introduce
them to credible websites providing accessible e-books and e-journals, such as EBSCO and
Proquest by the National Library of Indonesia, because the school has not yet subscribed to
electronic journals and books.
The librarian is always involved in the curriculum arrangement so that she can prepare for
the next library collection development, which supports the learning process in this school.
She communicates with other teachers to find the information needed for every class so that
she can prepare the materials for the students visiting the library seeking those materials.
Moreover, the librarian can work together with other teachers in assigning students certain
essays that require them to search for information from not only electronic sources but also
printed books. This exercise helps the students to recognize other sources and understand the
activities of the library, including the organization of call numbers.
The relationship between reference service and the information literacy program depends
on the frequency of students using the service. The more students need information to complete their school assignments, the more they will use reference service as stated by Galvin
(2005, p. 354):
“…students are more likely to use information skills when they learn these skills at
the point of need. Reference librarians report that when patrons are aware of the
wealth of resources provided by databases and other Internet sources, the reference
desk can be busier than ever. Librarians do spend more time teaching those patrons
who do come to the reference desk to use electronic resources.”
This program allows students to ask and consult the librarian anytime. Although students
are digital natives in nature, they still use the traditional method of consulting the librarian face-to-face. Some students use e-mail to contact the librarian; however, most of them
feel more comfortable asking the librarian face-to-face. Moreover, they like to spend time
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studying or working on their assignments at the school library together. In this way, they can
reach the librarian easily during any trouble.
3.3
Obstacles
The following are some of the difficulties found during the operation of this program. First,
the perception of students about library and its contents prevents them from knowing the
importance of library in supporting their life-long learning process. They are less interested
in printed books and all issues associated with books. They consider them less important
because printed books are outdated and the current trend is all about electronic. They prefer
other types of materials related to gadgets and ICT as they can gain access to information
faster and more easily. In addition, they tend to think they have found enough sources for
their school assignments in the form of e-books and e-journals, which are available free of
cost. Therefore, they think that library does not help much in terms of finding literature for
their essays. This perception of students in which they “consider their searches successful
when short search strings on popular Internet search engines yield many results,...are satisfied when they identify multiple sites” (Warnken, 2004, pp. 152–3) need to be corrected.
Their reluctance to learn about call numbers resulted in them getting lost in a larger library
during material search. They are unaware of the fact that college or university libraries have
several books, dictionaries, and encyclopedias and they have to find the information through
their call numbers. The skill to identify call number is particularly useful when they need
to search for information in such places. They do not know the importance of call number
because of their school library being relatively small.
Because of their nature as digital natives, students are already accustomed to the use of
gadgets in their daily activities. From the interviews with the students, it is obvious that they
are familiar with Google search since their early years. However, sometimes they find difficulties finding the information they need because they do not type the precise keyword based
on the principles of Boolean logic or they do not understand the vocabulary. Moreover, slow
Internet connection seems to impede their efforts to find the right information.
4
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we showed the importance of information literacy skills for high-school students. These skills are especially helpful for academic purposes when the students have to
obtain particular information to complete their assignments. Although students are familiar
with Google search, they still need to be aware of the reliability, accuracy, and authenticity of
the information they find through it. This awareness is built through the information literacy
program that encourages students to be careful when searching for information in terms of
credibility of the Web-based information.
It is expected that this program be continued to be taught in this school and in other
schools, especially because students need to be prepared to attend colleges and universities.
Being information literate is not only helpful in terms of academic life, but also that those
people will be relatively more powerful than others. Schools and particularly school libraries should provide students with information literacy skills for them to obtain information
efficiently and effectively.
REFERENCES
Bopp, R.E. & Linda, C.S. (editors). (2011) Reference and Information Services—An Introduction (4th
edition). Santa Barbara, Libraries Unlimited.
Galvin, J. (2005) Alternative strategies for promoting information literacy. The Journal of Academic
Librarianship, 31 (4), 352–357. Retrieved on 24th September 2016 from http://remote-lib.ui.ac.
id:2076/10.1016/j.acalib.2005.04.003.
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Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. (2000) [Brochure]. Chicago, Association of College and Research Libraries. Retrieved on 10th September 2016 from http://www.ala.
org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/standards/standards.pdf.
Prensky, M. (2001) Digital natives, digital immigrants. MCB University Press, 9 (5). Retrieved on 25th
September 2016 from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20%20Digital%20Natives,%20
Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf.
Selwyn, N. (2009) The Digital Native-Myth and Reality. Aslib Proceedings New Information Perspectives,. 61 (4), 364–379. Retrieved on 25th September 2016 from http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/
00012530910973776.
Tyckoson, D.A. (2001) What is the best model of reference service? Library Trends, 50 (2) Fall 2001,
183–196. Retrieved on 20th February 2016 from https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/
2142/8398/librarytrendsv50i2d_opt.pdf ?sequence=1.
Warnken, P. (2004) The impact of technology on information literacy education in libraries. The Journal
of Academic Librarianship, 30 (2), 151–156. Retrieved on 24th September 2016 from http://remotelib.ui.ac.id:2076/10.1016/j.acalib.2004.01.013.
879
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 880
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Reconstructing Joko Widodo’s national education ideology:
A critical discourse analysis on the policies in Indonesia
R.M.P. Silalahi, N.J. Malik & E. Mulyajati
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Joko Widodo, the 7th president of Indonesia and one of the most popular
politicians in Indonesia, is highly recognized for his controversial choices. Nomination
of alleged corruption figures, cabinet reshuffles and death penalty of seven foreign drug
convicts are some examples of Widodo’s controversial choices. In an educational context,
the discontinuation of the National Educational Curriculum 2013 and the abolition of the
National Final Examination are a number of controversies undertaken during Joko Widodo’s
administration. In regard to the controversial choices made by President Joko Widodo in
the education sector, this research aims to reconstruct Joko Widodo’s ideologies of national
education. In order to achieve this objective, the writers conducted a descriptive qualitative
research on Joko Widodo’s policies (which were reflected through the presidential speeches
on education, legislation, and presidential and government regulation). Fairclough’s three
dimensional frameworks include 1) the linguistic description of linguistic elements, 2) the
interpretation of discursive practice, and 3) socio-cultural explanation applied to answer
the research question. To support the analysis, the writers analysed the linguistic elements by
using Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), incorporating three linguistic metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal, and textual). This research is expected to contribute to
the improvement of discourse analysis studies and the Indonesian education system.
1
INTRODUCTION
Whether education is conducted toward oneself or toward other people, humans are always
constantly involved in the process of education (Sukardjo & Komarudin, 2009, p. 1). This
reality is the logical consequence of humans as cultural beings. The cultures build a social
construction in which people/man must always involve themselves in the process of teaching
and learning.
The Law Number 20 of 2003 on the National Education System defines education as a
conscious effort to develop intelligence, competences, morals, and characters of the people
for the sake of the country. This concept of education emphasizes the complexity of education which does not focus only on development of knowledge but also the development of
moral and spiritual aspects. Therefore, the task and responsibility to improve education do
not only lie on educational institutions but also on the entire Indonesian society.
The education in Indonesia is still in poor condition. In the survey conducted by Political
and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC), it is indicated that Indonesia is one of the countries with the worst educational system in Asia (retrieved from: http://www.kompas.com /
kompas-cetak/0109/05/dikbud/mend09.htm). The poor quality of education in Indonesia is
the result of instant education policies that are unable to meet the people’s needs of education and to improve the development of the Indonesian people.
The current government of Indonesia led by President Joko Widodo is expected to provide
a solution for the improvement of national education. A range of actions has been conducted
by the current government in order to improve the education system in Indonesia. The
discontinuation of the 2013 National Curriculum and the plan to discontinue the National
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Examinations are among President Joko Widodo’s controversial attempts to improve the
quality of national education.
Upon recognising the poor condition of the national education system in Indonesia and
after reviewing the efforts of President Joko Widodo to improve the national education, this
research aims to reconstruct President Joko Widodo’s ideologies of national education which
are reflected through his political speeches during his term of governance. The process of analysis was grounded/based on the model of Critical Discourse Analysis by Fairclough (2013)
which covers analysis on text dimensions, discourse practices, and socio-cultural context.
2
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Fairclough (2013) states that Critical Discourse Analysis is conducted through three dimensional analyses, namely description of text, interpretation of discourse, and explanation of
socio-cultural context. In this paper, the analysis on text dimensions was directed toward two
elements of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), namely lexicalization (the usage of lexical elements) and transitivity (syntactic classification at the clausal level).
Lexicalization is related to the usage of words or lexicons in a text. The usage of certain words or lexical configuration reflects a certain ideology that the creator of the text
wishes to communicate and promote through a text. For example, the word pembangunan
‘development’ dominantly appeared in the speeches by former President Soeharto. This
means that he emphasized development as the ideology and as the main goal in his political
communication.
Transitivity is a construction of syntactic elements in a clause. It is used to represent reality
through the elements of lexicogrammar. Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) classify transitivity
into several processes in accordance with the functions of verbs in a clause, which are:
a. Material process, which refers to verbs that describe physical action, such as the verb
‘make’ and ‘do’;
b. Mental process, which refers to verbs that involve the five senses, such as the verb ‘hear’
and ‘feel’;
c. Verbal process, which refers to actions conducted using articulators, such as the verb ‘say’
and ‘state’;
d. Relational process, which is related to the action of ‘defining,’ ‘symbolizing’ and so on;
e. Behavioral process, which relates the doer with certain actions, such as the verb ‘behave’;
f. Existential process, which is related to verbs that describe the existence of some entities,
such as the verb ‘be’.
The interpretation of the discourse is related to the process of production and consumption of a text. Through this dimensional analysis, the information on the background and the
implementation of power through text can be acquired. Explanation on socio-cultural context refers to the relation between the text and the social context outside of the text that influences communication process. This dimension covers social, political, and cultural aspects.
The result of this research unveils the ideology in the speeches by President Joko Widodo.
Therefore, the term ‘ideology’ has to be defined. Fairclough (2013) defines ideology as a
socially-shared belief communicated through text and geared toward certain social actions. It
is assumed that the transcription of speech by Joko Widodo contains educational ideologies.
The president as the leader of a nation promotes educational ideologies which will determine
the direction of national education.
3
METHODOLOGY
This research used the model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) by Norman Fairclough
(2013) to examine speeches by President Joko Widodo. The data cover thirty seven (37)
speeches that were delivered from 2014 (since Joko Widodo was officially elected as the
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president of Indonesia) to 2016. It was assumed that these speeches contained constituents
that reflected the concepts of education. By following the design of CDA by Fairclough
(2013), the data were analyzed in three levels of analyses, i.e. description of text, interpretation of text, and explanation of socio-cultural context.
4
ANALYSIS
President Joko Widodo emphasized the importance of aspects of character building, nationalism, and competences in his speeches. These three dimensions were clearly reflected in the
lexical configuration explained below.
From the explanation above, it can be seen that President Joko Widodo gave emphasis on
issues related to education and educational services. In addition, he explained other aspects
which are related to:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
character building
education on human values
civic education
two-way model of education
vocational education and training
educational equity
On the other hand, from the aspect of transitivity, President Joko Widodo utilized material
process in his education discourse as can be seen in Table 2.
In the table above, it can be seen that constituents related to education acted as the entity
that accepts material processes conducted by the actors or the doers of the action. This indicated that the actions conducted by the government in the context of education were directed
toward the development of national education. Referring to the explanation above, it can be
seen that education in President Joko Widodo’s point of view was directed toward the issues
below:
1.
2.
3.
4.
improvement of national education (no. 1)
priority on education sector (no. 2, 5, and 6)
cooperation in education sector (no. 3)
the citizens’ access to education (no. 7, 8, 10, 13, and 16)
Table 1.
Lexicalization.
Lexicalization
Total
Pendidikan
‘education’
23
No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Configuration
Total
Bidang pendidikan ‘education sector’
Berpendidikan ‘educated’
pelayanan pendidikan ‘educational services’
pendidikan karakter ‘character building’
pendidikan kewarganegaraan ‘civic education’
pendidikan tentang nilai-nilai kemanusiaan ‘education
on human values’
fase pendidikan ‘phases in education’
sistem pendidikan ‘educational system’
pembangunan pendidikan ‘development of education’
fasilitas pendidikan ‘educational facilities’
masalah pendidikan ‘problems in education’
pendidikan dua arah ‘two-way education’
Pendidikan Kejuruan dan Pelatihan ‘vocational education
and training’
pemerataan pendidikan ‘educational equity’
pendidikan yang layak ‘adequate education’
5
2
3
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
1
1
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Table 2.
Transitivity.
Participant
(actor)
No. Process
Participant (recipient)
Circumstances
Dana desa
‘Fund’
–
1
pelayanan pendidikan
‘educational services’
bidang pendidikan
‘education sector’
–
Kita ‘We’
3
Kami ‘We’
4
Saya ‘I’
5
material:
memperioritaskan
‘prioritize’
Saya ‘I’
6
semua rakyat ‘all
citizens’
Rakyat ‘citizens’
7
Menteri
Pendidikan dan
kebudayaan ‘The
Minister of
Education and
Culture’
Kebijakan ‘Policies’
9
material:
berkonsentrasi
‘concentrate on’
material: mengakses
‘access’
material: mengakses
‘access’
material: menguatkan
‘strengthen’
–
11
PMI ‘The Red
Cross’
12
seluruh rakyat
Indonesia ‘all
citizens of
Indonesia’
Kita ‘We’
13
2
8
10
14
material: memperbaiki
‘improves’
material:
dialokasikan
‘allocated to’
material: menyaksikan
‘witnessed’
material: memiliki
‘have’
material:
meningkatkan
‘increase’
material: ditanamkan
‘imbedded’
program kerjasama
‘cooperation program’
tenaga kerja yang
berpendidikan
‘educated workforce’
kerjasama
‘cooperation’
Pendidikan ‘education’
10,4 triliun
‘10.4 trillion’
di bidang pendidikan
‘in education sector’
–
di bidang sosial dan
budaya, terutama
pendidikan ‘in the
social and cultural
aspects, particularly
education’
–
pelayanan pendidikan
‘educational services’
pelayanan pendidikan
‘educational services’
pendidikan karakter
‘character building’
–
akses pemerataan
pendidikan ‘access
to educational equity’
kesadaran bela negara
‘awareness to defend
the country’
–
–
–
melalui pendidikan
kewarganegaraan
‘through civic
education’
–
material: memperkuat pendidikan tentang
‘strengthen’
nilai-nilai kemanusiaan
‘education on human
values’
material:
–
–
berpendidikan
‘are educated’
material: tanggulangi
‘tackle’
kemiskinan dan
melalui
pengangguran ‘poverty
pembangunan
and unemployment’
ekonomi,
pembangunan
pendidikan
‘through
development of
economy and
education’
(Continued )
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Table 2.
(Continued ).
Participant
(actor)
No. Process
Participant (recipient)
–
15
investasi kita di sistem
supaya sumber
pendidikan dan bidang
daya manusia kita
kesehatan ‘our
menjadi lebih baik.
investment in
‘for better human
educational and
resources’
healthcare system’
pendidikan yang layak
–
‘adequate education’
semua warga bangsa 16
‘all citizens’
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
material: diperlukan
‘need’
material: memperoleh
‘acquire’
Circumstances
strengthening character building (no. 9)
imbedding awareness to defend the country (no. 11)
strengthening human values (no. 12)
tackling poverty through education (no. 14)
role of education in producing human resources (no. 15)
In the context of delivery, the speeches by President Joko Widodo were addressed to all
the citizens of Indonesia. In this perspective, education in President Joko Widodo’s political
communications focused on persuasive actions which were intended to influence people of
Indonesia to support his political policies regarding education.
Joko Widodo’s administration began with the restructuring of the 2013 Curriculum which
focused more on students’ competences. The ideas of education in the 2013 Curriculum heavily emphasized aspects of neo-liberalism and puts less emphasis on aspects of nationalism.
Meeting the needs of the markets and industries had become the basis for the development
of the national education system in Indonesia.
Widodo and Kalla’s agenda on education was explicitly summarized in their vision and
missions called Nawa Cita. In Nawa Cita the policies related to education are set out in
points 5, 6, and 8:
Point 5: improving the quality of life of Indonesian citizens by improving the quality of education and training under the program of Indonesia Pintar (Smart Indonesia) with
free 12-year compulsory education.
Point 6: increasing productivity and competitiveness of Indonesian citizens at the international level by developing a number of Science and Techno Parks in several areas
and polytechnic and vocational schools with advanced technological infrastructure.
Point 8: revolutionizing national character through the development of a national education
curriculum.
The notion of education by President Joko Widodo was directed toward three basic aspects
in accordance to the vision and missions under his administration (retrieved from: http://
kpu.go. id/koleksigambar/VISI_MISI_Jokowi-JK.pdf), which are:
1. Sovereignty in (the aspect of) economy;
2. Independence in (the aspect of) economy; and
3. Character in (the aspect of) culture.
In the missions explained above, education has a very important role. Education in President Joko Widodo’s perspective was an answer to the alarming state of Indonesia. In the
area of education, the notion of national education was directed toward efforts to develop
national capability of being economically independent. This challenge focused on the preparation of qualified human resources who would reliably develop the nation specifically in the
aspect of education. Implicitly, the quality of human resources was reflected through several
aspects, such as academic level, personal character and attitude, productivity, and welfare.
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Generating qualified human resources based on Joko Widodo’s perspective could be
achieved by providing access to education for all. A number of education programs that
emphasize the improvement of access to education in Indonesia has been introduced, such
as the Indonesia Pintar Program (Smart Indonesia) and the compulsory 12-year education
‘until secondary school’, free tuition fees, and scholarships for diploma, bachelor, master,
and doctoral degrees. This affirms that education is a priority of the government in developing Indonesia.
Widodo and Kalla (2014) implemented the discourse of character revolution through education by emphasizing the importance of revolutionizing Indonesia’s character and morale.
It was done through civic studies including course subjects such as Indonesian history, patriotism and the love for one’s country, the spirit of nationalism, and ethics. The explanation
above also affirms that there were values of liberalism in President Joko Widodo’s concept
of education.
These values of liberalism were ideally proportioned with the values of nationalism in the
national curriculum under President Widodo’s administration. The national curriculum is
designed with 70% (for the elementary level) or 60% (for the practical and polytechnic education level) of the content on ethics and character building. This balance of values is in line
with Widodo’s vision of education as “a cultural character”.
President Joko Widodo positioned education as an answer to the characterless social
conditions in Indonesia. The pressure from foreign cultures caused the Indonesian culture
to experience fundamental changes. Education according to President Joko Widodo was a
specific medium for character building. There were ten priorities of President Joko Widodo’s administration (source: http://kpu.go.id/koleksigambar/VISI_MISI_Jokowi-JK.pdf
retrieved on 22nd August 2016). They were:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
emphasis on national curriculum that prioritizes civic education;
affordable tuition fee;
abolition of uniformity model;
structuring both locally and nationally balanced curriculum;
improvement of educational facilities;
provision of qualified teaching resources;
provision of life assurance for teachers;
equity of education facilities;
implementation of compulsory 12-year education; and
enhancing science and technology.
In their vision and mission, President Joko Widodo and Vice-President Jusuf Kalla (2014)
emphasized the spirit of restoration, reformation, and revolution in Indonesia. These notions
stood out in their political rhetoric which dominantly utilized expressions related to revolution, and those expressions were repeatedly conveyed in President Joko Widodo’s speeches.
Under his administration, the policies in education were directed at saving the national
education, which was previously considered unsuitable with the socio-cultural context of
Indonesia. Globally, it is apparent that the education system introduced by President Joko
Widodo actually rebuffed the education system by the former President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono, as represented by the 2013 Curriculum.
The values of neo-liberalism, which had been the focus of the previous administration
under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, mostly applied the competence-based curriculum approach. Then under President Joko Widodo’s administration, there were at least
three competence-based curriculums that were implemented as a continuation of the former
president’s policy i.e. Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi (KBK), Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan
Pendidikan (KTSP), and Kurikulum 2013. These curricula were based on the notions of neoliberalism because they focused on the efforts to meet the needs of markets and industries for
qualified and capable human resources.
However, the change of the competence-based curriculum by President Joko Widodo was
not a rejection of the entire concept of neo-liberalism in education. President Joko Widodo
continued to include subjects on skills and competences in the curriculum composition.
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However, he also emphasized course subjects that were related to character building and
nurturing the love for one’s country. Considering the issues, his administration also issued the
Regulation of the Minister of Education and Cultures 23/2015 which facilitated the values of
nationalism that were formerly absent in the previous policies. In its implementation, President Joko Widodo planned to develop a curriculum that prioritizes character and citizenship
building, followed by other studies that also focus on skill development.
5
CONCLUSION
Through a linguistic analysis, it is apparent that President Joko Widodo emphasized educational concept that focused on character building, human values, and citizenship by underlining the development of human resources’ competences and quality. This model of education
was implemented through an interactive model of education which involved a two-way education. The development of education must be simultaneous with the development and improvement of infrastructure to ensure accessibility of education for every citizen of Indonesia.
Widodo and Kalla’s agenda on national education was explicitly summarized in points
5, 6, and 8 of Nawa Cita. As reflected in Nawa Cita, Indonesia’s education is aimed to
(a) improve the quality of life of Indonesian citizens, (b) increase productivity and competitiveness, and (c) revolutionize national character. These objectives could be attained by
emphasizing the curriculum that prioritizes civic education, provides affordable tuition fees,
abolishes uniformity in education, develops a locally and nationally balanced curriculum,
increases educational facilities, provides qualified teaching resources, provides life insurance
for teachers, provides equal education facilities, implements free 12-year compulsory education, and enhances science knowledge and technology.
In a broader perspective, the educational system in Indonesia may be viewed as a form of
rejection against neo-liberalism in education. However, the education system under President
Widodo’s administration was a compromise of liberalist-nationalist. The values of nationalism were emphasized through the implementation of subjects that were based on character
building and citizenship, followed by subjects that were based on the development of knowledge and competences. The values of liberalism as reflected in several subject courses were
ideally-balanced with other subjects that promoted the values of nationalism since President
Widodo’s administration gave more emphasis on building students’ character and spirit of
nationalism than other academic competences.
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Persatuan Indonesia. (Speech of President of the Republic of Indonesia at the Congress Opening of
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Mahasiswa Islam Indonesia (PMII). (Speech of President of the Republic of Indonesia in Commemorating the 55th Anniversary of the Movement of PMII) [Online] Available from: http://www.
setneg.go.id/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9281&Itemid=26.
Widodo, J. (2015) Sambutan Presiden Republik Indonesia pada Peresmian Kampus Institut Pemerintahan
Dalam Negeri (IPDN). (Speech of President of the Republic of Indonesia at the Official Opening
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of IPDN) [Online] Available from: http://setkab.go.id/sambutan-presiden-joko-widodo-pada-peresmian-gedung-ipdn-kampus-ntb-praya-kab-lombok-tengah-20-april-2015/.
Widodo, J. (2015) Sambutan Presiden Republik Indonesia pada Penandatangan Nota Kesepakatan Rencana Aksi Bersama tentang “Gerakan Nasional Penyelamatan Sumber Daya Alam Indonesia. (Speech
of President of the Republic of Indonesia at the Signing of the MOU for the Action Plan of the
National Movement to Save Indonesia’s Natural Resources) [Online] Available from: http://www.
setneg.go.id/index.php?option=com content&task=view&id=8968.
Widodo, J. (2015) Keterangan Pers Presiden Republik Indonesia pada Joint Press Conference dengan Presiden Republik Filipina. (Press Release of the President of the Republic of Indonesia in a Joint Press
Conference with the President of the Philippines) [Online] Available from: http://www.setneg.go.id/
index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8788&Itemid=26.
Widodo, J. (2015) Keynote Speech Presiden Republik Indonesia Indonesia Outlook 2015, Jalan Perubahan
Untuk Indonesia Yang Berdaulat, Mandiri, dan Berkepribadian. (Keynote Speech of the President
of the Republic of Indonesia in presenting Indonesia’s Outlook for 2015, the road to Change for
Indonesian Sovereignty, Independence and Strong Character) Online] Available from: http://www.
setneg.go.id/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8695 &Ite mid=26.
Widodo, J. (2015) Sambutan Presiden Republik Indonesia pada Pembukaan Musyawarah Nasional
Himpunan Pengusaha Muda Indonesia (Munas HIPMI) XV Tahun 2015. (Speech of the President
of the Republic of Indonesia at the Opening of the 15th National Deliberation of the Association
of Indonesian Young Entrepreneurs in 2015) [Online] Available from: http://setkab.go.id/sambutanpresiden-joko-widodo-pada-pada-pembukaanmusyawa rah-nasional-himpunan-pengusaha-mudaindonesia-munas-hipmi-xv-tahun-2015-di-bandung-jawa-barat-12-januari-2015/.
Widodo, J. (2016) Sambutan Presiden Republik Indonesia dalam Sosialisasi Program Pengampunan Pajak
(tax amnesty) Surabaya, Jawa Timur. (Speech of President of the Republic of Indonesia in Campaigning for Tax Amnesty Program in Surabaya East Java) [Online] Available from: http://www.setneg.go.id/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11908&Itemid=26.
Widodo, J. (2016) Sambutan Presiden Republik Indonesia dalam Rapat Terbatas tentang Dana Alokasi
Khusus Kantor Presiden. (Speech of the President of the Republic of Indonesia at the Limited Meeting on the Special Allocated Funds from the President’s Office) [Online] Available from: http://www.
setneg.go.id/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11665&Itemid=26.
Widodo, J. (2016) Pernyataan Pers Bersama Presiden Republik Indonesia dan Presiden Serbia Istana
Merdeka. (Joint Press Conference of the President of the Republic of Indonesia and the President of
Serbia) [Online] Available from: http://www.setneg.go.id/index.php?option=com_content&task=vie
w&id=11484&Itemid=26.
Widodo, J. (2016) Sambutan Presiden Republik Indonesia dalam Pertemuan Bilateral Presiden Republik
Indonesia dengan Presiden Republik Serbia Istana Merdeka. (Speech of the President of the Republic of Indonesia at the Bilateral Meeting with the President of Serbia at Merdeka Palace)[ [Online]
Available from: http://www.setneg.go.id/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11656&It
emid=26.
Widodo, J. (2016) Pengantar Presiden Republik Indonesia Rapat Terbatas tentang Keuangan Inklusif Kantor Presiden. (Foreword from the President of the Republic of Indonesia at the Ministerial Meeting
of the Cabinet on Inclusive Finance of the President’s Office) [Online] Available from: http://setkab.
go.id/pengantar-presiden-pada-rapat-terbatas-mengenai-keuangan-inklusif-di-kantor-presidenjakarta-26-april-2016/.
Widodo, J. (2016) Pengantar Presiden Republik Indonesia Rapat Terbatas Kabinet Kerja tentang Tindak
Lanjut Hasil Kunjungan Kerja Presiden Ke Eropa Kantor Presiden. (Foreword from the President
of the Republic of Indonesia at the Limited Ministerial Meeting of the Cabinet as a follow up of
the President’s Visit to Europe- President’s Office) [Online] Available from: http://setkab.go.id/pengantar-presiden-joko-widodo-pada-rapat-terbatas-membahas-tindak-lanjut-hasil-kunjungan-pkeeropa-di-kantor-presiden-jakarta-25-april-2016/.
Widodo, J. (2016) Keterangan Pers Presiden Republik Indonesia Pascakunjungan Kerja Ke Jerman, Inggris, Belgia, Belanda Bandara Halim Perdanakusuma. (Press Release from the President of the Republic of Indonesia after the Official Visit to Germany, England, Belgium, Holland- Halim Perdana
Kusuma Airport) [Online] Available from: http://www.setneg.go.id/index.php?option=com_content
&task=view&id=11387&Itemid=295.
Widodo, J. (2016) Pengarahan Presiden Republik Indonesia Rapat Kerja Pemerintah dengan GubernurWakil Gubernur, Bupati-Wakil Bupati, dan Wali Kota-Wakil Wali Kota Seluruh Indonesia Hasil
Pilkada Serentak Istana Negara. (Guidelines from the President of the Republic of Indonesia at the
Meeting with the Elected Governors-Vice Governors, Regents-Vice Regent, and Mayors and Deputy
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Mayors throughout Indonesia - State Palace). [Online] Available from: http://www.pikiran-rakyat.
com/nasional/2016/04/08/hari-ini-jokowi-beri-pengarahan-kepala-daerah-terpilih−366154.
Widodo, J. (2016) Kuliah Umum Presiden Republik Indonesia Dies Natalis Ke-47 dan Lustrum Ke-8 Univesitas Negeri Sebelas Maret Solo, Jawa Tengah. (General Lecture of the President of the Republic of
Indonesia at the 47th Inauguration and the 8th Lustrum of Universitas Sebelas Maret, Solo, Centra
Java) [Online] Available from: http://setkab.go.id/transkripsi-kuliah-umum-presiden-joko-widodopada-tanggal-11-maret-2016-di-universitas-negeri-solo-jawa-tengah/.
Widodo, J. (2016) Pengantar Presiden Republik Indonesia Rapat Terbatas Kabinet Kerja tentang Pemberantasan Narkoba dan Rehabilitasi Korban Kantor Presiden, (Foreword from the President of the
Republic of Indonesia at the Limited Ministerial Meeting of the Cabinet on Eradicating drugs and
Victim Rehabilitation) [Online] Available from: http://setkab.go.id/pidato-pengantar-presiden-jokowidodo-pada-rapat-terbatas-tentang-pemberantasan-narkoba-dan-rehabilitasi-korban-penyalahgunaan-narkoba-di-kantor-presiden-24-februari-2016-pukul-14–00-wib/.
Widodo, J. (2016) Amanat Presiden Republik Indonesia Pelantikan Gubernur-Wakil Gubernur Hasil
Pilkada. (Address of the President of the Republic of Indonesia in Inaugurating Governors and
Deputy Governors elected from The General Elections) [Online] Available from: http://www.setneg.
go.id/index.php?option=com_ content&task=view&id=11047&Itemid=26.
Widodo, J. (2016) Pengantar Presiden Republik Indonesia Rapat Terbatas Kabinet Kerja tentang Pencegahan Virus Zika. (Foreword from the President of the Republic of Indonesia at the Ministerial
Meeting of the Cabinet in Preventing the Zika Virus) [Online] Available from: http://setkab.go.id/
pidato-pengantar-presiden-joko-widodo-pada-rapat-terbatas-pencegahan-penyebaran-virus-zikadi-kantor-presiden-3-februari-2016/.
Widodo, J. (2016) Pengantar Presiden Republik Indonesia Rapat Terbatas Kabinet Kerja tentang Pencegahan Tindak Kekerasan dan Penindasan Terhadap Anak. (Foreword from the President of the Republic
of Indonesia at the Ministerial Meeting on Prevention of Violence and Oppression toward Children)
[Online] Available from: http://www.setneg.go.id/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1
1054&Itemid=26.
Widodo, J. (2016) Sambutan Presiden Republik Indonesia Rapat Terbatas Kabinet Kerja tentang Kebijakan Status PTS Menjadi PTN. (Speech of the President of the Republic of Indonesia at the Ministerial Meeting on the Policy to Change the Status of Private Universities to State Universities) [Online]
Available from: http://www.setneg.go.id/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10719&It
emid=26.
Widodo, J. (2016) Pengantar Presiden Republik Indonesia Sidang Paripurna Kabinet Kerja Kantor
Presiden. (Speech of the President of the Republic of Indonesia at the Plenary Meeting of the
State Cabinet at the President’s Office) [Online] Available from: http://www.setneg.go.id/index.
php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12201&Itemid=26.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Nationalism and neoliberalism in education: A critical discourse
analysis of presidential speeches in Indonesia’s reform era
R.M.P. Silalahi, N.J. Malik & U. Yuwono
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Fundamental economic, social, and cultural changes have taken place in
Indonesia since 1998. The decline of the 32-year-long rule of Soeharto paved way for the
establishment of a new regime called the Reform era. This change of regime could not resolve
all the problems that arose from the transition of power. Education was one of the most
severely affected sectors under the new regime. Indonesia’s education system, which was
based on nationalism, is integrated with the values of neoliberalism. The poor education
system, low competitiveness of human resources, and globalization are the reasons why
Indonesia’s education system began to adopt the values of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism
resulted in Indonesia’s education system being based on meeting the needs of the industries.
Because nationalism and neoliberalism are incorporated in Indonesia’s education system,
this study aims to reconstruct and compare the practice of nationalism and neoliberalism
during the Reform era in Indonesia. In order to achieve this objective, a descriptive qualitative
analysis was conducted on 18 Indonesian presidential speeches from 1998 to 2016. We used
Fairclough’s three-dimensional frameworks incorporating linguistics.
Keywords:
1
Description, discourse interpretation, and socio-cultural explanation
INTRODUCTION
The resignation of Soeharto as the president of the Republic of Indonesia in May 1998
marked the end of the authoritarian New Order era and the birth of the Reform era. This
transition of power, however, did not necessarily address various social issues and challenges
at that time. Furthermore, the people of Indonesia had to face difficult challenges in several
aspects of life, including the economic, social, political, and cultural aspects.
One of the sectors that experienced significant change during this transition of power was
the education sector. Together with the decline of Indonesia’s economy, its education sector
declined. The survey conducted by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC)
showed that Indonesia’s education system was one of the worst in Asia (Kompas, 2001). The
poor management of the education system is evident from the issuance of various instant
government policies, which were not necessarily in accordance with the needs of the society (Rohman, 2002). Rather than addressing different social issues in the society, education
became a new problem for the people of Indonesia.
The Law of the Republic of Indonesia Number 12 of 2012 (regarding education)
(Ristekdikti, 2012), the Presidential Regulation Number 8 of 2012 (pertaining to the National
Qualifications Framework (NQF) of Indonesia), and the Regulation of the Minister of Education and Culture Number 73 of 2013 (on the implementation of NQF in Higher Education) (Ristekdikti, 2013) are a few examples that reflect the fact that education in Indonesia
was directed to meet the needs of the industry. Education, which is supposed to be directed
toward the development of knowledge and character of students, had undergone changes,
and at present, it is more oriented toward preparing students to work in the industries.
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As stated in the Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia Number 20 of 2003 on the National
Educational System, education should be directed toward not only the development of the competences of students but also building character and patriotism (Ristekdikti, 2003). On the basis
of these two premises, there are two dimensions of education in Indonesia, namely nationalism
and neoliberalism, both of which are incorporated in Indonesia’s education system. The values
of nationalism are in line with the efforts made to meet the needs of stakeholders (the industry)
and are apparently reflected in several government policies directed to produce graduates with
certain competences as required by the industry. As a result, to some extent, neoliberalism has
influenced the education sector in Indonesia. Because of this dualism of ideology and the bad
condition of the education sector in Indonesia, the researchers are interested in reconstructing
the ideas of nationalism and neoliberalism in the context of education in the Reform era.
2
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Fairclough (2013) stated that the discourse analysis is a three-dimensional analysis that
includes the description of a text, interpretation of a discourse, and the explanation from the
sociocultural context. The description of a text is related to the description of the language
elements, which reflect certain social actions. The analysis in this level uses the elements of
the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) developed by Halliday (1978), and it reflects the
three functions of language, namely ideational, interpersonal, and contextual.
In this study, we emphasized and focused more on the ideational function, which is
reflected in lexicalization and transitivity. Lexicalization is related to the usage of words or
other lexical elements (O’Halloran, 2008). In the critical perspective, the repeated usage of
words or other lexical configuration represents the ideology that the writer or the speaker of
the message wishes to communicate.
Transitivity is related to the syntactical construction in a clause. Transitivity represents reality through elements of lexicogrammar. Halliday (2008) classified transitivity into several categories according to the verbs, namely (a) material process (describing the physical actions
of the participants), (b) mental process (related to the actions involving the five senses),
(c) verbal process (related to the actions using articulators through language elements),
(d) relational process (related to the verbs describing the act of becoming, describing, identifying, and symbolizing), (e) behavioral process (related to verbs relating participants to certain
acts), and (f) existential process (related to the verbs describing the existence of some entities).
The second dimension of CDA (critical discourse analysis) is the interpretation of a discourse. This dimension is related to the production and consumption of a text, and it aims
at exposing the power communicated through a text. Explanation on sociocultural context
(the third dimension of CDA) is related to the social phenomena that influence the formation of a text. This includes social contexts, such as the institutions, media, society, culture,
or sociopolitical conditions.
3
METHODOLOGY
We used CDA to analyze the independence-day speeches delivered by the following presidents of Indonesia:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Bahrudin Jusuf Habibie (1998–1999)
Abdurahman Wahid (1999–2001)
Megawati Soekarno Putri (2001–2004)
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–2014)
Joko Widodo (2014–present).
The speeches were delivered in front of the members of the House of Representatives.
They contained information on the presidents’ accountability, achievements, and development plan for the following year.
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4
ANALYSIS
The analysis was conducted in two stages to identify the ideologies that were planned to
study, namely nationalism and neoliberalism. In the first stage of the analysis, we sought
for constituents representing nationalism in the speeches. In the second stage, we sought for
components representing neoliberalism.
The presidential speeches in the Reform era did not emphasize the values of nationalism.
Out of the 18 data items for study, we did not find any constituent that particularly reflects
the values of nationalism that are commonly manifested in expressions such as cinta tanah air
(love for the country), nilai Pancasila (the values of Pancasila as the core values of Indonesia), nasionalisme (nationalism), and kebangsaan (nationality). This affirms that the concept
of nationalism in the discourse of education was less emphasized in the political communications of the presidents.
At the beginning of the Reform era (B.J. Habibie and A. Wahid), national development
was directed toward stopping the decline of the national economy, and less emphasis was
put on the development of national education. There was no clear implementation of educational policies. During that time, the schools still used the 1994 goal-based curriculum, which
was used in the New Order era. In this curriculum, the development of morality, religion,
skills, love for country, and other competences was emphasized. This curriculum was still
applied under the presidentship of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Because the values of nationalism were considered inadequate in the education curriculum
in the Reform era, President Joko Widodo instructed to emphasize more on the subject of
history in the curriculum. The campaign on enriching history was aimed to promote the
values of nationalism. By introducing the idea of character revolution, the Indonesian government plans to change the national curriculum by stressing various course subjects that are
related to the history of Indonesia, nationality, and patriotism in a perfect balance with other
competences (Dahana, 2014).
Similarly, neoliberalism in the Reform era also acquired more emphasis under the presidents’ political persuasion. The values of neoliberalism were reflected in the constituents that
collocate with the words kerja (work) and sumber daya manusia (SDM) (human resources).
Both words were the manifestation of neoliberalism in the discourse of national education,
because the education sector at that time was aimed at producing human resources capable
of competing in the national market. Table 1 shows the total number of times the words
“work” and “human resources” together with their collocations appear in the data.
From the data presented in Tables 1 and 2, it can be observed that there are clauses with
relational processes and other constituents that reflect neoliberalism as a participant in
the syntactical construction. This affirms that the educational ideology of the presidents
during the Reform era emphasizes the role of education particularly in producing human
resources capable of competing in the employment and market context. It is apparent that
the idea of neoliberalism in Indonesian education includes several issues related to the
following notions:
Table 1.
Lexicalization.
No. Lexicalization Total Configuration
Total
1
Kerja (work)
10
2
SDM (human
resources)
5
4
4
2
3
1
1
Lapangan kerja (employment)
Kesempatan kerja (job opportunity)
Akses (terhadap) pekerjaan (access to jobs)
Kualitas SDM (quality of human resources)
Perbaikan SDM (improvement of human resources) resources
Pengembangan SDM (development of human resource) resources
Neoliberalism in the discourse of education was conveyed through the construction of relational
processes.
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Table 2.
Transitivity.
No.
Lexicalization
Participant
Process (relational)
Participant
1
Kerja (work)
Upaya itu (That effort)
mencakup (includes)
Satu tantangan utama
lapangan kerja kita
(One of the main
challenges in our
employment sector)
lemahnya kualitas SDM
(poor quality of
human resources)
adalah (is)
perbaikan mutu SDM
(improving the quality
of human resources)
pengembangan SDM
(developing human
resources)
Program ini bertujuan
untuk mengurangi
kemiskinan dengan cara
meningkatkan kualitas
SDM (This program
aims at reducing
poverty by enhancing
the quality of human
resources)
lemahnya kualitas SDM
(poor quality of human
resources)
melalui (through)
penyediaan lapangan
kerja (providing job
opportunities)
pekerja kita masih
berpendidikan SD
(that our workforce
only has primary
school education)
Kemiskinan dan tidak
adanya akses terhadap
pendidikan (poverty
and lack of access to
education)
pendidikan (education)
melalui (through)
pendidikan (education)
melalui (through)
pendidikan (education)
sebagai akibat
(as the result of)
tidak adanya akses
terhadap pendidikan
(lack of access to
education)
2
1.
2.
3.
4.
Sumber daya
manusia
(human
resources)
akibat (is due to)
Education is seen as the medium for providing employment
Education counters the low quality of the Indonesian workforce
The poor quality of education is in line with the lack of access to education in Indonesia
The quality of human resources is developed and enhanced through education.
Considering these key points, the presidential speeches were delivered so that the development plans for the education sector would be approved and then implemented under the
various forms of Regulations and Laws. Furthermore, these presidential speeches were delivered in front of two groups of audiences (members of the House of Representatives and the
people of Indonesia) so that these education initiatives could acquire legitimacy from the
Indonesian legislature in particular and gain support from the people.
Specifically, together with the ideology of neoliberalism, the presidents attempted to gain
support from the Indonesian legislatures to sustain the concept of education in the country. The aim of this concept was to satisfy the needs of the industry by providing qualified
workforce and human resources. This approach essentially was manifested through various
governmental policies, such as the Law of the Republic of Indonesia Number 12 of 2012 (on
Higher Education), the Presidential Regulation Number 8 of 2012 (on NQF of Indonesia),
and the Regulation of the Minister of Education and Culture Number 73 of 2013 (on the
implementation of NQF in Higher Education) (Ristekdikti, 2013). These policies could be
considered neoliberalistic as they focused on producing graduates with certain competences
to meet the needs of the industry. Yuwono (2016), in his research on the Website of NQF,
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found that the Qualification Framework of Indonesia uses lexicalization that reflects the
values of neoliberalism, especially those that collocate with the words kerja (work), such as
pasar kerja (job market), pengalaman kerja (work experience), and pelatihan kerja (job training). The NQF of Indonesia presented a list of qualifications that graduates of higher education should possess. From the beginning of its establishment, the NQF involved practitioners
from the industry; thus, the parameters provided by the industry were used as the benchmark
in determining the quality of graduates in Indonesia. Finally, this reflects the changes in the
purpose of national education that is more oriented toward the job market satisfying the
needs of the stakeholders.
The values of neoliberalism in national education were also reflected in the curriculum,
which had undergone changes several times in the Reform era. Neoliberalism was reflected in
the implementation of the competence-based curriculum. This curriculum was implemented
in order to produce graduates with certain competences to meet the needs of the industry.
The education sector in the Reform era had undergone the following three changes in the
competence-based curriculum:
1. Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi (KBK), which is a concept of curriculum emphasizing the
competencies of students to complete task-based assignments on particular performance
standards.
2. Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (KTSP), which is a competence-based curriculum
compiled and implemented by each education unit in Indonesia.
3. Kurikulum 2013 (K-13), which is a curriculum based on four aspects, namely knowledge,
skill, attitude, and behavior. The curriculum is implemented to produce graduates with
competences equivalent to international standards.
In the autonomous regions, the education system in Indonesia was geared toward attempts
to produce competent human resources in remote areas that are able to fulfill the needs of
the industries. The difference lies in the role of the educational institutions. KBK could not
give authority to educational institutions to develop their own curriculum, different from the
situations in KTSP and Kurikulum 2013.
Under the administration of Joko Widodo, K-13 was no longer in effect. The Indonesian
Minister of Education and Culture asked education institutions in Indonesia to use KTSP as
K-13 could not be implemented. At that time, Indonesia did not have sufficient infrastructure to run the curriculum. Meanwhile, the quality of human resources is determined by the
education level, personality, attitude, productivity, and social welfare. These indicators are
achieved through social programs named “Indonesia Pintar” or “Smart Indonesia” that offer
“free 12-year compulsory education”. Widodo and Kalla (2014) also emphasized the importance of revolutionizing the nation’s character through the program of civic study, which
proportionally incorporates educational aspects such as the history of Indonesia, patriotism,
spirit to defend the country, and ethics in the Indonesian curriculum. In the elementary education level, 70% of the content of the curriculum should consist of education of students’
ethics and character building as part of the Character Revolution (Revolusi Mental).
Widodo and Kalla (2014) emphasized the following 10 aspects of education:
1. Emphasizing nationalism in the national curriculum by teaching national history and
patriotism, nurturing the spirit to defend the country, and promoting the development
of science and technology
2. Providing affordable education to all citizens
3. Terminating the uniformity in the national education system
4. Forming a curriculum that maintains the balance of local and national content
5. Improving education facilities to support the transfer of knowledge
6. Recruiting and distributing teachers evenly
7. Providing adequate life assurance for teachers
8. Providing education facilities equally and evenly
9. Proposing a law that specifies free 12-year compulsory education
10. Implementing education based on science and technology.
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5
CONCLUSION
On the basis of the analysis of the presidential speeches in the Reform era, the education curriculum has put less emphasis on the values of nationalism although these values were clearly implemented in the education. The values of nationalism focusing on nation building are considered
contradictory to the values of neoliberalism, which focus on meeting the needs of the market and
the industry. In the Reform era, the values of neoliberalism in the education sector were regarded
to satisfy the needs of qualified human resources that are competitive in the global market.
The need for such competitive human resources in the global market has paved the
way for the development of the education system that focuses on building competences in
line with the market parameters. The industries representing neoliberalism were given the
authority and power to determine the direction and the policy of education. Neoliberalism in
Indonesia’s education sector was directed toward the following four initiatives: (a) education
is the medium for providing employment; (b) education encounters the low quality of the
Indonesian workforce; (c) the low quality of education is parallel to the low access to education in Indonesia; and (d) development and enhancement of the quality of human resources
are achieved through education.
The national education system oriented towards the efforts made to develop one’s potentials and character as well as the love for one’s country has been changed to satisfy the needs
of the industry and meet the demands for qualified workforce capable of competing in the
national and global markets. Therefore, it can be concluded that the national education in
Indonesia has deviated from its original purpose and intention.
Widodo’s administration emphasizes the importance of improving the students’ ethics and
national character building as part of the character revolution. Nationalism was emphasized
in the national curriculum through several actions, such as teaching the national history of
Indonesia, values of patriotism, and the spirit to defend the country. Education should be
focused on the efforts to not only produce competent human resources for the interests of the
industry but also strengthen national character and morale.
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Rohman, A. (2002) Akar Ideologis Problem Kebijakan Pendidikan di Indonesia Fondasi Keputusan Presiden Nomor 8 tahun 2012 tentang KKNI. (The Ideological root of the education policy problem in
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Wahid, A. (2000) Pidato Kenegaraan Presiden Republik Indonesia di depan Sidang DPR 16 Agustus 2000.
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Widodo, J. (2015) Pidato Kenegaraan Presiden Republik Indonesia dalam Rangka HUT Ke-70 Proklamasi Kemerdekaan Republik Indonesia, di Depan Sidang Bersama DPR RI Dan DPD RI, Jakarta,
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Yudhoyono, S.B. (2005) Pidato Kenegaraan Presiden R.I. dan Keterangan Pemerintah Atas RUU tentang
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Yudhoyono, S.B. (2007) Pidato Kenegaraan Presiden Republik Indonesia serta Keterangan Pemerintah atas
Rancangan Undang-Undang tentang Anggaran Pendapatan dan Belanja Negara Tahun Anggaran 2008
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Anggaran 2009 Beserta Nota Keuangannya di Depan Rapat Paripurna Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat
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Yudhoyono, S.B. (2012) Pidato Kenegaraan Presiden Republik Indonesia Dr.H Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono dalam rangka HUT ke-67 Proklamasi Kemerdekaan Republik Indonesia di depan sidang bersama
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Yudhoyono, S.B. (2013) Pidato Kenegaraan Presiden RI dalam Rangka HUT Ke-68 Proklamasi Kemerdekaan RI 16 Agustus 2013 Di Sidang Bersama DPD-DPR RI. (State Address of the President of
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Yudhoyono, S.B. (2014) Salinan Pidato Kenegaraan Presiden RI dalam Rangka HUT Ke-69 Kemerdekaan
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Values of neoliberalism in education: A comparative study
of Indonesian presidential speeches in the New Order
and Reform Era
R.M.P. Silalahi, U. Yuwono & Y.J. Aminda
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The rise of neoliberalism represents the desire of humans to dominate the various aspects of life. On one hand, this dominance will bring individual and corporate welfare.
On the other hand, it will trigger the destruction of the market system. In Indonesia, the existence of neoliberalism is clearly reflected in education. Neoliberal education has been implemented since the New Order era and has continued to develop in the Reform era. By analysing
the speeches of the President of Indonesia, the writers found that in the New Order era, neoliberal values were more oriented toward developing the country to support the demands of the
industry. Currently, the values are more directed at meeting the needs of industries. With regard
to the concept of Neoliberalism incorporated in the educational system of Indonesia and considering the impact of neoliberalism, this research aims to analyse and compare the neoliberal
ideologies in the New Order era and in the Reform era. A comparative descriptive analysis was
performed on 48 Indonesian presidential speeches from the former President Soeharto to President Joko Widodo. Fairclough’s three dimensional frameworks (the text description, discourse
explanation, and sociocultural interpretation) were applied to reconstruct neoliberal ideologies. This research is expected to contribute to the studies of inter-temporal Critical Discourse
Analysis and to provide ideas for the improvement of education in Indonesia.
1
INTRODUCTION
Venugopal (2015) as cited in Anderson (2000) states that neoliberalism is the most successful
ideology in the world. The ideology of neoliberalism represents humans’ desire to dominate
various aspects in life, particularly economy. Along with the advancement of technology and
globalization, this ideology continues to develop. Moreover, the development of this ideology
does not only occur in the aspect of economy. In Indonesia, this ideology is also evident in
the education sector. Neoliberalism in education is deeply explicated through policies that
dominantly support market needs.
Since the independence of Indonesia, neoliberalism has developed rapidly. This can be
considered as a reaction of Indonesian people to achieve economic welfare. Neoliberalism
in education is evident from various government policies which focus on generating human
resources that meet the market needs. Neoliberalism in Indonesia was initially introduced
through Indonesia’s presidential speeches. Since the New Order era until the Reform era,
presidential speeches that represent this ideology in education were further enacted in the
form of laws, regulations, government policies, and incorporated in the curriculum.
The explanation above highlights the role of the presidents in adopting the ideology of neoliberalism in education. In the perspective of communication, speeches delivered by the presidents of the Republic of Indonesia can be considered as a form of communication process
between the presidents and its people. The position of the presidents as the head of the nation
would significantly affect the urgency of the speeches because the speeches of the presidents
can influence the policies and drive the purpose of a nation. Based on that understanding, the
issue pursued by this research is how the values of neoliberalism in education in Indonesia are
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represented through the presidential speeches from the New Order era until the Reformation
era. This research aims to analyse and compare the ideology of neoliberalism from the New
Order era to the Reform era reflected in the presidential speeches from 1968, the era of President Soeharto, to the present time of President Joko Widodo.
2
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Discourse analysis is divided into three dimensions by Fairclough (1992), which are text
description, discourse explanation, and sociocultural interpretation. Text description is
related to the analysis of linguistic elements which reflect certain social actions. Discourse
explanation is related to two phases, i.e. institutional process, which is related to the institutions that also participate in the text production, and discourse process, which is related to
the production and consumption of a text (Fairclough, 1995). Finally, sociocultural interpretation is related to the contexts outside of the texts (Fairclough, 1992). Context, in this case,
includes situations outside of the analysed text, such as the context of media institution,
society, cultures, and politics.
In this research, the analysis in the dimension of text description is focused on two linguistic elements namely lexicalization and transitivity. Lexicalization in a text reflects the
ideational function, especially experiential function which is used particularly to describe
experience through linguistic elements (O’Halloran, 2008). Aidinlou (2014, p. 264) states that
there are several sub-categories of lexicalization, which are distorted lexical items, lexical
variations, over-lexicalization, under-lexicalization, euphemistic expressions, and additions
and omissions. The repeated usage of lexical configuration represents ideology communicated by the writer or the speaker.
Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) describe transitivity as a fundamental linguistic feature
that enables people to construct mental images out of the reality and to give meanings to
experiences and events. In functional grammar (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014), representation of experience consists of (1) process, (2) participant, and (3) circumstance.
Functional grammar recognises six types of process which are used to describe an event
or condition, which are (a) material process (related to physical actions that involve at least
two participants); (b) mental process (related to the acts of experiencing and feeling by using
senses and perceptions); (c) verbal process (related to the acts of stating, telling, communicating, reporting, and projecting); (d) relational process (related to the act of becoming, describing, identifying, and symbolizing); (e) behavioural process (related to the verbs that relate
participants to certain acts); (f) existential process (related to the act of creating something
that involves one participant).
3
METHODOLOGY
This research utilised CDA (modelled by Fairclough) on speeches conducted by presidents of
Indonesia in commemorating the independence of Indonesia, starting from the New Order
era to the Reform era.
4
ANALYSIS
Presidential speeches in the New Order era and the Reform era emphasized the role of education in the development of Indonesia. In the speech texts, the idea of neoliberalism is
reflected through lexical configuration such as kerja ‘work’, industri ‘industries’, sumber daya
manusia ‘human resources’, kompetensi ‘competence’, and keterampilan ‘skills’ below.
From the table below, it can be observed that in both eras, the idea of neoliberalism is
emphasized. It is clearly reflected through the use of the word kerja ‘work’ and sumber daya
manusia ‘human resources’. Globally, the communicated idea of neoliberalism in the New
Order Era and the Reform Era is related to:
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1. The role of education in providing competent workforce and human resources.
2. The provision of competent human resources through education that meets the requirements of the industries.
The difference between the New Order and Reform era lies on the emphasis of the neoliberal values. The New Order emphasized the importance of improving skills to meet the needs
of industries. This idea is clearly reflected through the repetition of words (such as industry
and skills) in Soeharto’s presidential speeches. Meanwhile, the Reform era emphasizes the
Table 1.
Lexicalization.
Lexicalization configuration
Word
New order era
Total
Reformation era
Total
Kerja ‘work’
Kerja ‘work’
Lapangan kerja ‘employment’
6
2
4
6
Ketenagakerjaan ‘workforce’
2
Kerja ‘work’
Lapangan kerja
‘employment’
Kesempatan kerja
‘job opportunity’
Pekerja ‘workers’
Industri
‘industries’
Sumber daya
manusia
‘human
resources’
‘Kompetensi’
(competence)
‘Keterampilan’
(skills)
Tenaga kerja ‘labor’
Angkatan kerja ‘workforce’
Pelatihan kerja ‘job training’
Industri ‘industries’
Pendidikan dan pelatihan
(untuk) Industri ‘education
and training for industries’
Kebutuhan industri ‘needs
of industries’
Sumber daya manusia
‘human resources’
Menciptakan sumber daya
manusia ‘creating human
resources’
Melahirkan sumber daya
manusia ‘creating human
resources’
Penghasilan sumber daya
manusia ‘income of human
resources’
Pengembangan sumber daya
manusia ‘development of
human resources’
Sumber daya manusia
berkualitas ‘qualified
human resources’
Kompetensi kerja dan industri
‘work and industrial
competence’
Pendidikan dan pelatihan
keterampilan ‘education
and training for skills’
2
1
2
1
3
2
2
3
1
3
1
1
Sumber daya manusia
‘human resources’
Kualitas sumber daya
manusia ‘quality of
human resources’
Mutu sumber daya
manusia ‘quality of
human resources’
Pengembangan sumber
daya manusia
‘development of human
resources’
2
8
2
1
4
3
Kompetensi guru ‘teacher
competence’
Kompetensi pendidikan
‘educational competence’
Kompetensi dan
profesionalisme
‘competence and
professionalism’
Meningkatkan kompetensi
‘improving competence’
2
2
1
2
2
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importance of building competences. Furthermore, the importance of competences in the
Reform era is clearly reflected in the implementation of the curriculum in the Reform era.1
There are several linguistic expressions in the clausal level that represent the idea of neoliberalism in education. Those clauses are presented in the table below.
Table 2.
Transitivity.
New order era
No. Participant
1
2
3
4
5
6
Process
Participant
–
Material: akan
Pendidikan
diperluas ‘will be
keterampilan
expanded’
‘education on skills’
Peningkatan
Material:
Peningkatan taraf
produktivitas
menunjukkan
pendidikan pekerja
‘enhancement of
‘shows’
‘increase in workers’
productivity’
education level
Salah satu upaya yang Relational:
meningkatkan pendidikan
penting ‘one of the
adalah
dan latihan ‘improving
important efforts’
‘is’
education and training’
Pengembangan sumber Existential:
pada usaha-usaha
daya manusia
terletak
pendidikan dan
‘development of
‘lies on’
pengembangan
human resources’
kebudayaan ‘the efforts
towards the development
of education and culture’
Hasil pendidikan
Material:
Sumber daya manusia
‘the outcome of
menciptakan
‘human resources’
education’
‘creates’
Pendidikan
Relational:
tujuan dan sekaligus
‘education’
merupakan ‘is’
wahana ‘both the
purpose and the
vehicle’
7
Upaya peningkatan
keterampilan ‘the
effort to improve
skills’
Reformation Era
No Participant
1
Perbaikan mutu
sumber daya manusia
‘improvement of
human resources’
2
pengembangan sumber
daya manusia
‘development of
human resources’
3
Program ini ‘this
program’
Circumstance
Terbina tenaga-tenaga
kerja ‘develop
workforce’
–
–
–
–
dalam meningkatkan
kualitas sumber
daya manusia ‘in
improving the
quality of human
resources’
–
Relational:
melalui
‘through’
berbagai program
pendidikan dan pelatihan
‘various educational and
training programs’
Process
Relational:
melalui
‘through’
Participant
Pendidikan
‘education’
Circumstance
–
Relational:
melalui
‘through’
Pendidikan ‘education’
–
Material:
bertujuan
‘aims to’
mengurangi kemiskinan
‘reduce poverty’
dengan cara
meningkatkan
kualitas sumber
daya manusia ‘by
improving the
quality of human
resources’
1. Will be explained in sociocultural interpretation.
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The use of material and relational processes emphasizes that political persuasion in
education was meant to build awareness toward the importance of education for national
development. As explained above, it can be observed that the idea of neoliberalism in both
eras emphasizes more on generating skilful human resources that meet the demands of the
industries. In the Reform era, emphasis is placed on the development of human resources to
address national issues, such as poverty and economy downturn.
In the context of discourse, the presidential speeches were delivered in front of the legislatures of Indonesia at that time, namely the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat or ‘House of Representatives’. In the context of communication, the presidential speeches were directed to address
various purposes so that the ideas that were conveyed were accepted and enacted in various
forms such as laws, regulations, or policies since these legislatures have the authority as lawmakers. The laws are thus oriented towards neoliberalism, specifically in the field of education.
Through sociocultural interpretation, the notion of education in both eras apparently
emphasizes the role of education in generating skilful human resources that would meet the
needs of the markets and industries. Education institutions are the place to produce competent individuals that are able to compete in the working world. This notion is a reaction
toward the socio-economic condition of Indonesia, which has not turned for the better. To
answer this socio-economic problem, knowledge and technology are considered as the solution and the notion of education was viewed as the medium to alleviate poverty by enhancing
the quality of human resources (Yudhoyono, 2014).
The difference between the notion of neoliberalism in the New Order and the Reform
era lies on the implementation. The New Order era emphasizes education and skills. Skills
in this case do not only refer to neoliberal purposes but also to nationalistic purposes. The
former President Soeharto (1976) emphasized that education on skills should also be directed
toward national development.
The notion of nationalistic education can also be seen from the dissemination of school
subjects during the New Order era, which continued to maintain school subjects in its structure of the 1975, 1984, and 1994 curriculum (Wirianto, 2014). The subjects emphasizing
Pancasila (Indonesia’s core values), character building, and Nationalism were in an ideal
proportion with the subjects focusing on improving skills and basic academic capabilities.
Pancasila as the core value of Indonesia should be implemented holistically in all aspects
of the nation’s life. Therefore, Soeharto’s administration provided the basic guidelines to
improve the political awareness of Indonesian citizens through a program named Penataran
Pedoman Pengayatan dan Pengamalan Pancasila (the guidelines to comprehending and
implementing Pancasila) in all educational institutions in Indonesia (Soeharto, 1979).
Furthermore, under the New Order era, industries had the opportunity to assist educational institutions inimplementing education by these corporations and by financing the
education.
Pendidikan itu dapat dilaksanakan sendiri oleh perusahaan yang bersangkutan
ataupun dengan menyediakan biaya untuk pendidikan tenaga-tenaga Indonesia guna
mengikuti sekolah, latihan-latihan dan sebagainya.
‘Education can be conducted by the corporations, or the corporations may
provide financial support for education of the Indonesian workforce to participate
in schools, trainings, and so on.’ (Soeharto, 1974)
In the Reformation era, apparently nationalism did not gain a position in national education. In this era, neoliberalism in education was more evident. Students were directed to master
certain competences in accordance to the needs of the markets and industries. In fact, during
the administration of the former President Yudhoyono (2004–2014), industries were given
ample portion and role in shaping the curriculum. Referring to the vision of competing at
global and national levels, the workforce as the products of educational institutions was generated based on the competences set by the industries. These competences were outlined in the
Kerangka Kualifikasi Nasional Indonesia (‘Indonesian National Qualification Framework’).
In his research on the distributed media of KKNI, Yuwono (2016) found that the used
lexical elements reflected the values of neoliberalism. It is clearly shown by the repetition
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of lexical items that collocate with the words ‘work’. The values of neoliberalism are also
indicated by the list of qualifications required from the graduates of higher education that is
in line with the needs of the industries. Accordingly, the setting up of KKNI should involve
practitioners from the industries. This marked the end of the education institutions’ supremacy in producing graduates.
However, under President Joko Widodo’s administration, a significant change occurred.
The 2013 Curriculum (created during the former President Yudhoyono’s term of office) was
replaced with a new curriculum since the application of the 2013 Curriculum garnered a
lot of problems (retrieved from: https://m.tempo.co/read/news/2014/11/24/079623945/alasankenapa-kurikulum -2013-bermasalah). Education under President Joko Widodo’s administration must start with character building and nurturing the love for one’s country, and then to
be followed by developing skills and competences.
5
CONCLUSION
Education on one hand is aimed to promote one’s intelligence, and to build morale and characters, on the other hand. In the history of Indonesia, education was oriented to be in line with the
values of neoliberalism. Education was viewed as the solution to meet the needs of industries for
workforce. Neoliberalism in education emphasizes the role of education in providing competent
labour and human resources and in generating competent human resources in education which
meets the demands of the industries. However, significant differences can be observed by comparing the education curriculum under the New Order era and the Reform era.
The New Order era recognizes the importance of other values besides the efforts to meet
the needs of the markets. The values of nationalism and liberalism were both incorporated in
the context of national education. Soeharto understood the importance of improving national
character and the values of Pancasila through education. Therefore, his administration provided
the guidelines in improving national political awareness through an education program in all
education institutions. On the other hand, in the Reform era, education in Indonesia put more
emphasis on the values of neoliberalism and less on the values of nationalism. In the Reform
Era, the industries were given ample portion to shape the curriculum to fulfil their needs.
However, significant change is apparent under President Joko Widodo’s administration.
President Widodo prioritises national character building before developing specific competences that are required by the industries. Widodo’s governance has changed the concepts of
education that focus on neoliberal values with the new concept of education that focuses on
developing character.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Meeting the challenges of global competition: Preserving
and revitalizing the cultural heritage of Bagansiapiapi
A.A. Harapan & L. Mariani
Department of Area Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Universitas Padjadjaran,
Bandung, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Bagansiapiapi is a small town located in Riau Province, Sumatra, which has
been designated as the capital of Rokan Hilir District since 1999. Bagansiapiapi has a long
history as one of the important cities in the Indonesian archipelago. Founded in the 19th
century by ethnic Chinese from Fujian Province, the town flourished as the second most
important fish port in the world after Norway. The colonial government of the Netherland
Indies then developed the town and built many important buildings, for example, banks,
hospitals, and churches, many of which are still intact and functional today. The inhabitants,
mostly Chinese, have many traditions that are still valid, and the most important is the ritual
of bakar tongkang, which has been regarded as one of the five icons of Riau tourism by the
government of Riau Province. However, Bagansiapiapi has much richer cultural heritage
than just the ritual of bakar tongkang. Due to globalization, the preservation and revitalization of these cultural heritages is challenging.
1
INTRODUCTION
Bagansiapiapi is a small town located in the eastern part of Riau Province, which has been
designated as the capital of Rokan Hilir Regency since 1999. In its heyday until several decades ago, the town had been famous as the second largest fishing port in the world after
Norway. Thus, it is unsurprising that this small and almost forgotten town has a long and
impressive history.
The first known notes about the region could be traced back to the days when the Portuguese invaded Melaka (Malacca) in 1511. Because of its strategic location (facing Malacca
Strait near Singapore and Penang, Malaysia), Bagansiapiapi became one of the many ports
in the busy trade routes along Malacca Strait. The colonial government of the Netherland
Indies began to build offices in the town in 1858, which later, in 1890, served as head offices
in the region, until the ouster of the Netherland Indies in 1942 (Arfan Surya, 2016, p. 10–12).
Many buildings had been constructed in the colonial era, such as the old harbor, hospitals,
churches, water treatment plant, and the Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) office—the second
bank office after the first established in Central Java.
As a coastal town, Bagansiapiapi has a multiethnic society consisting of the Malay, Chinese, Javanese, Bataknese, Minangnese, Bugisnese, and Niasnese, each of which has a unique
cultural heritage, thereby shaping the multicultural character of the town. This multicultural
trait becomes increasingly apparent considering the location of the town close to Singapore
and Malaysia, making the interactions between the inhabitants of these two neighboring
countries common in Bagansiapiapi. In such setting, cultural identity is an important aspect
of the behavior of people as it is a distinguishing feature of the individuals, which differentiates them from one community to another on the basis of decisions and choices made in
everyday life.
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According to Koentjaraningrat (1985), culture is a holistic system of ideas, actions, and
works of humans as social beings gained through the process of learning. In this regard, cultural identity decides the actions and reactions of people when faced with external challenges
in a competitive and globalized world. Parsudi Suparlan (1986) considered culture as knowledge of an operational nature, an overall knowledge gained by humans as social beings whose
contents are the instruments of knowledge models that can selectively be used to understand
and interpret the environment encountered and to encourage and take necessary actions.
In the case of Bagansiapiapi, the people have multicultural heritage, both tangible and
intangible, which contributes to their cultural identity. Having a strong cultural identity helps
the people of Bagansiapiapi to remain strong and true to themselves amid the great waves of
globalization, a fact that we, as citizens of the world, consider undeniable.
1.1
Research purpose
In this study, we discuss both the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of Bagansiapiapi
to understand the actual condition and function. The result, in turn, will be used to determine the correct means to effectively preserve and revitalize the cultural heritage in order to
strengthen the cultural identity of the multiethnic society of Bagansiapiapi. Because much
effort has already been made in preserving and revitalizing certain cultural heritage in effect,
we will also discuss these efforts and verify whether they are sufficiently effective in maintaining the local cultural identity.
1.2
Theoretical framework
The basic working concept used in this study is Stuart Hall’s concept of cultural identity,
which treats identity as being and becoming and states cultural identity as an entity jointly
owned by the members of the community or as an original form of an individual that is also
internalized in all of the people who have the same history and ancestry. Stuart Hall (1990)
stated that cultural identity is a reflection of the oneness of history in the form of cultural
codes that made a group of people into “one identity” although they appear different from
the “outside”. From this perspective, besides the oneness of history and cultural codes that
unite the people, physical traits are also an integral part of cultural identity.
Here, we try to describe how the cultural heritage of Bagansiapiapi, both the tangible and
intangible aspects, could be maintained and developed to create the “oneness” that will assist
the people in becoming deeply rooted in their own community and able to use their cultural
identity to improve their competitiveness to meet the challenges of globalization.
1.3
Method and technical procedure
We use mostly data-collecting procedures conducted directly through a field study, which is
based on a previously conducted library study. The library research does not reveal much
about the sociocultural life of Bagansiapiapi. A study by Shanty Setyawati (2009) focuses on
the decline of the fishing industry in the 1930s. Another study by Syahrul (2001) discusses the
conflict between ethnic Chinese and Malay in 1998. Only Anastasya Yolanda (2008) examined the Malay and Chinese acculturation in the housing area of Bagansiapiapi. The most
recent study by R. Didin Kusdian (2015) deals with efforts to revitalize the port of Bagansiapiapi. However, all of the studies mention the very important annual ritual of the people in
Bagansiapiapi, bakar tongkang, which is organized by the ethnic Chinese community.
The findings of the library research determine the plan and design of the field research.
The main purpose of the field study, determined after conducting a quick preliminary study,
is to collect data about the existing cultural heritage of Bagansiapiapi. Considering the significance of the ritual bakar tongkang to Bagansiapiapi cultural life, the field study was conducted in the week the ritual was held. Overall, the data-collecting activities were conducted
before, during, and after the ritual.
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The field study was conducted using the following various methods and techniques:
a.
b.
c.
d.
Participatory observation
Collection of documentation (audios, visuals, photos, and videos)
Interviews (both structured and unstructured)
Data analysis (from collected documents).
Qualitative approach was the method selected for the whole study. Consequently, the
research design is flexible and not rigid, following the findings of the field study. Even though
there are some statistics involved, they only complement the basic and primary data in the
form of pictures, photos, descriptions, and narrations.
The data sources are notably the tangible and intangible cultural heritage themselves and
the prominent figures in each ethnic community in Bagansiapiapi. In this study, the individuals interviewed are from three ethnic communities, namely Chinese, Malay, and Javanese. The
decision was made because they are the largest and most dominant ethnic communities in
Bagansiapiapi and because of the time constraint of the field study (6 days).
In the discussion section, we describe the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of
Bagansiapiapi, its function, its meaning for the people, and the possibilities of employing
the cultural heritage to build and construct the local cultural identity of Bagansiapiapi. The
qualitative approach is also used in the discussion in a manner that is flexible and open to
every possible effort for searching and finding answers.
2
CULTURAL HERITAGE OF BAGANSIAPIAPI
The data concerning the cultural heritage are divided into two groups, namely tangible and
intangible cultural heritage. The tangible cultural heritage consists of objects, such as buildings, monuments, temples, old houses, and other objects of historical importance. The intangible cultural heritage consists of cultural elements inherent in every ethnic group, which have
historical backgrounds and potentials to contribute to the local cultural identity.
2.1 Tangible cultural heritage
A total of 31 tangible cultural heritage sites are present in Rokan Hilir Regency, which
includes Bagansiapiapi. In 2012, the Balai Pelestarian Peninggalan Purbakala (the Office for
Preservation of Cultural Heritage, which is responsible for all historical and archeological
sites) in Batusangkar, West Sumatra, enlisted five sites in their inventory. This inventory was
made by the Batusangkar office, because the region is included in its working area.
The study concentrates only on historical objects around Bagansiapiapi, which were built
in different periods. There are remnants of temples built in the classical Hindu–Buddha
period, sacred tombs built in the Islamic sultanate period, buildings constructed in the Dutch
colonial period, and a pillbox built in the Japanese colonial period. However, our findings
show that monuments and buildings with historical values are predominantly of Chinese
origin. This is normal because the town of Bagansiapiapi was built and developed by the
ethnic Chinese community, who came from Songkhla, Thailand, in the late 18th century after
leaving their home in southern China (Surya Arfan, 2016).
The conditions of these cultural heritage objects differ from one another. The remnants of the
Hindu–Buddhist temples in Tanah Putih District, the Sintong temple, and Sidinginan site are
in bad shape. Both temples are practically nonexistent; there is only a pile of stones in Sintong,
remnants from what was a stupa in the olden days.1 The Sidinginan site is worse with only several
scattered old stones, which the local people claimed as the remnants of an old temple.
1. Information obtained from a 90-year-old local woman who claims to have seen the temple and its
stupa in her younger days.
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The cultural heritage objects from the Islamic sultanate period are in much better shape.
In fact, there are about seven sacred tombs in the area, but we only visited one as the others
are far from Bagansiapiapi. People come to pay their respect, and the tomb is in a very good
condition. According to the locals, the other tombs are also in good condition.
The colonial cultural heritage buildings are also in good shape mainly because they are
still functional and used as government offices and the official residence of the regent. Only
the piers of the dock at the old harbor are unrecognizable, and parts of them have become
the foundation of a mosque. Sedimentation has shifted the harbor approximately 4 km away
from the sea, and the old harbor is now located at the town center. The water treatment plant
(not in working condition) and the military dormitory (still functional but not well maintained) are other buildings that are in less good shape.
The Chinese cultural heritage buildings are mostly in very good shape and in full working
condition. There are seven small monuments bearing Chinese inscriptions in the town center,
the oldest temple or kelenteng Ing Hok Kiong, and other 77 kelentengs and the old house
of Kapitan, the leader of the Chinese community. Only the old house of the Kapitan is in a
very bad shape because the family that owns the house now cannot afford to renovate and
maintain it.
Not much is known about the pillbox from the Japanese colonial period. It is located in
Pulau Jemur, a small island near the port of Bagansiapiapi. There seems to be little interest in
this historical monument, and the locals rarely speak about the Japanese colonization.
On the basis of the findings, it is clear that the states of cultural heritage and historical
objects depend on people’s perspective and whether they have a meaning and serve the people
of Bagansiapiapi. The sacred tombs are equally important to the locals and the visitors; thus,
they are well maintained. The kelenteng is very functional, an integral part of the daily life
among the Chinese ethnic group, and very well maintained. The colonial buildings serve a
pragmatic purpose and have always been part of government maintenance task.
Clear policies on the part of the government about these sites and buildings would have
been beneficial. A detailed inventory would help to determine whether a monument/building/
tomb fulfills all the needs to be named as a cultural heritage object. The criteria should be
based on the objective conditions, local perspectives, and its meaning and purpose. Eventually, by involving all ethnic groups in these cultural heritage objects policies, people of Bagansiapiapi would be increasingly aware of their cultural heritage and likely work voluntarily to
preserve and revitalize their tangible cultural heritage objects.
2.2
Intangible cultural heritage
The intangible cultural heritage, as mentioned above, covers cultural elements inherent in
every community, which have historical backgrounds and potentials to contribute to the local
cultural identity. On the basis of this definition, the ritual of bakar tongkang is an intangible cultural heritage of the ethnic Chinese, which dominates the town of Bagansiapiapi,
mostly because the ritual is the biggest event in the town that attracts people from all parts
of the country and even from other countries. This is because the ritual of bakar tongkang,
which literally means “burning the boat”, is the most important ritual for the ethnic Chinese
originating from Bagansiapiapi. The ritual is a commemoration of the ancestors of the ethnic Chinese community, who landed on Bagansiapiapi, built and developed the town, and
pledged never to return to China. As proof of their pledge, they burned the tongkang or boat
that brought them to Bagansiapiapi. Thus, the ritual is organized every year to pay respect to
the ancestors and has become an integral part of the ethnic Chinese in Bagansiapiapi.
The ritual of bakar tongkang has been designated by the provincial government as one of
the five tourism icons of Riau Province. Consequently, the ritual becomes the town’s identity
and one of the local cultural identities. Other ethnic groups accept the fact and the decision
and participate in obtaining benefits from the festivities, which begin about a week before the
ritual. With the invasion of several visitors and tourists of different ethnicities, the locals try
to provide them daily necessities and thus have an additional source of income. Eventually,
all ethnic groups benefit from the ritual although it is an exclusive Chinese ritual.
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Other ethnic groups do not have any cultural trait comparable to the bakar tongkang, but
they do have a sense of their own cultural identity. The two major ethnic groups, namely the
Malay and the Javanese, have their own cultural organization to develop their arts and culture as well as educate their younger generation on their cultural identity.
The Malay ethnic group has their own rituals, which mostly serve religious and healing
purposes, including the Sei Mambang Deo-deo ritual organized in December, the Si Lancang
and Buyung Kayuang healing rituals, and the warding off misfortunes by reading certain
prayers known as Ratib, such as Ratib Biasa and Ratib Berjalan/Ratib Kelambai. However,
for all its originality, there is no ritual like the bakar tongkang among the rituals of the Malay
ethnic group. It should be noted that the Malay really preserve their dances and make efforts
to revitalize them by creating new dances based on old ones, such as several zapin dances. The
Malay group is the official art envoy of the Rokan Hilir Regency and represents the region in
many art festivals throughout the country and in international events.
The Javanese ethnic group focuses on artistic activities to preserve their cultural identity.
They do not practice any ritual and only perform Javanese art such as wayang and reog Ponorogo and a modern version of Javanese music called campursari. They have an organization
called the Hangudi Utomo with voluntarily membership with the purpose of preserving Javanese arts by performing and training the younger generation. They also perform on calls and
receive a sum, which they use to pay the artists and add to the organization’s fund made up
from the members’ contribution. It is clear that the Javanese is more concerned with performing arts, which they considered as their cultural identity.
The ethnic Chinese community also has their social organization, called Yayasan Multi
Marga, which actively organizes the ritual of bakar tongkang. This yayasan or foundation is
formed to forge cooperation between all families or margas in organizing any social activity,
most importantly the ritual of bakar tongkang. The foundation gathers its members and forms
the organizing committee aimed at preparing and executing the ritual, including managing
funds from donors. Almost all activities of the Chinese community are conducted within the
foundation, meaning that they are all recognized by the foundation.
The findings show that the observed ethnic groups have strong cultural identity and make
genuine efforts to maintain and even strengthen their cultural identity. In this regard, the
government has only to encourage these ethnic groups to continue their efforts, to realize a
strong cultural identity.
As for the town’s local cultural identity, it seems that the local government relies mostly
on the ritual of bakar tongkang as the local cultural identity of Bagansiapiapi. This is a good
policy considering the fact that the ritual has attracted many visitors and provided the inhabitants with a significant additional source of income. The question arises, however, whether
this policy could be accepted completely by the other ethnic groups. This is due to the fact
that the ritual is exclusively Chinese and it would be difficult for other ethnic groups to add
the ritual to their cultural identity and make it their own. It is no less difficult for the ethnic
Chinese themselves who have to compromise with the fact that their sacred ritual has been
designated as one of the five provincial tourism icons. This designation means that they have
to adapt the ritual to the concept of tourist attraction. So far, there has been no protest and
the government has asked other ethnic groups to participate in the procession of the boat
from the kelenteng Ing Hok Kiong to the burning grounds. The Javanese complies and they
are the only other ethnic group participating in the procession.
3
CONCLUSION
Using Stuart Hall’s concept of identity as being and identity as becoming, it seems that identity as becoming could be applied to raise awareness on cultural identity among the people
of Bagansiapiapi. It does not mean that they have no cultural identity. On the contrary, it is
because most of them have a strong sense of cultural identity. It is precisely because of their
sense of cultural identity as an ethnic group that they lack a local cultural identity as the
inhabitants of Bagansiapiapi. Thus, the concept of identity of becoming is practicable by
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socializing and communicating the history of Bagansiapiapi to the people, so that they will
feel that they “own” the history of their town, where they are born and raised.
Selecting the tangible cultural heritage objects is crucial because the people have to feel that
the objects “belong” to them and are part of their cultural identity. Consequently, a study
should be conducted to collect all data available on potential cultural heritage objects, so
that all ethnic groups will be represented by the objects. It would be ideal if the objects could
represent the local cultural identity of Bagansiapiapi as a whole.
As for intangible cultural heritage, efforts made to include them in the local cultural identity are much more challenging. Because intangible cultural heritage includes rituals and all
activities concerning concepts and perspectives, it is much more difficult to build and construct a common local cultural identity for all ethnic groups. The efforts made by the local
government to include other ethnic groups in the procession of bakar tongkang are appreciable; however, there may be other possibilities to develop. Some of the possibilities are to
organize an arts and culture festival during the week of the ritual of bakar tongkang and
provide each ethnic group with a stage where they could perform. Thus, there will be a type
of cultural exchange between the ethnic groups in Bagansiapiapi and there will be an understanding among them.
Another effort is to conduct a serious study on the ritual of bakar tongkang and the history
of Bagansiapiapi so that the historical facts become known to the people as a whole and there
would be one common version of the history of the town, which includes all ethnic groups.
Identity as becoming could be applied as the working concept for the people of Bagansiapiapi in an effort to raise their awareness of local cultural identity, preserve and revitalize their
cultural heritage, and improve their competitiveness in this globalized world.
REFERENCES
Anastasya, Y. (2008) Percampuran Budaya Melayu dan Cina Studi Kasus: Pemukiman di kota Bagansiapi-api dan Pulau Halang (Acculturation of Malay and Chinese Culture Case Study: Bagansiapiapi and Halang Island Housing Area). Depok, Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering,
Universitas Indonesia (unpublished bachelor thesis). Translation: Acculturation of Malay and Chinese Culture Case Study: Bagansiapi-api and Halang Island Settlements. Depok, Department of
Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Indonesia (unpublished bachelor thesis).
Didin, K. (2015) Revitalization and port master plan case study: Port of Bagansiapiapi. Article presented
at the 18th FTSPT International Symposium, Unila, Bandar Lampung on 28th August 2015.
Hall, S. (1990) Cultural identity and diaspora. In: Jonathan Rutherford (ed.). Identity, community, culture, difference. London, Lawrence & Wishart.
Koentjaraningrat. (1985) Pengantar Ilmu Antropologi. Jakarta, Aksara Baru. Translation: Introduction
to Anthropology. Jakarta, Aksara Baru.
Parsudi, S. (1986) Kebudayaan dan Pembangunan. Media IKA, 14, p. 2–19. Translation: Culture and
Development. Media IKA, 14, pp. 2–19.
Shanty, S. (2008) Pasang Surut Industri Perikanan Bagansiapiapi 1898–1936. Depok, History Department, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia (unpublished bachelor thesis). Translation: Ups
and Downs of Bagansiapiapi Fishery Industry 1898–1936. Depok, History Department, Faculty of
Humanities, Universitas Indonesia (unpublished bachelor thesis).
Syahrul. (2001) Konflik Etnis Cina dan Melayu Ditinjau dari Sosio-Kriminologi (Studi Kasus Konflik
di Bagansiapi-api Kecamatan Bangko Kabupaten Rokan Hilir Propinsi Riau Tahun 1998). Depok,
Program Studi Sosiologi, Pascasarjana, Fakultas Ilmu Sosial dan Ilmu Politik, Universitas Indonesia
(unpublished thesis). Translation: Conflict of Chinese and Malay Ethnics Reviewed from SocioCriminology (Conflict Case Study in Bagansiapi-api, Bangko Sub-District, Rokan Hilir Regency of
Riau Province in 1998). Depok, Sociology Study Programme, Master’s Degree, Faculty of Social and
Political Science, Universitas Indonesia (unpublished thesis).
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Preserving and maintaining traditional culture through interior
design: A case study of Torajan elements in a local restaurant
P. Salim
Bina Nusantara University, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Focusing on the application of Torajan ornaments in interior space, this
paper aims to discuss the roles of traditional Torajan decorative styles that have almost been
forgotten. Toraja has many decorative motifs that can be applied to interior, furniture and
exterior designs. In a typical local restaurant, the connection between art and tradition is
established through aesthetic elements that act functionally with their specific and unique
characteristics. There is much opportunity to develop them into new variations of ornaments.
The methods used in this study are content analysis, observation, interview and experimental
design with a hermeneutic approach supported by design and enriched by social, cultural
and psychological data. The results of this study show that it is important to raise awareness
in the community regarding the richness of Torajan culture, which can be applied in public
spaces.
Keywords:
1
Torajan culture, Torajan ornament, interior design, decorative styles
INTRODUCTION
Indonesia is an archipelago with various tribes and ethnicities. It is immensely rich in art and
culture, ranging from the west to the east of the archipelago. The value of its culture needs to
be appreciated and preserved and should be passed on to the next generation. Because of the
rapidly spreading Western culture in Indonesia, it is necessary to preserve its own unique culture. It has become common nowadays for a community to take pride in foreign culture and
disregard its own. By contrast, other countries are far more interested in Indonesian culture
than Indonesians are. There are even some neighbouring countries that claim some parts of
the Indonesian culture to be their own.
The Indonesian culture, which is a combination of various local cultures from Sabang all
the way to Merauke, is unique and diverse. It includes the art of traditional dances, ceremonies, traditional clothing and traditional food. Indonesia’s slogan on diversity is Bhinneka
Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity). Recently, tourists have become more interested in knowing
more about Bali Island, Yogyakarta, Surabaya and Bandung rather than other tourist destinations. However, there are still several equally captivating tribal cultures, one of which is
the Torajan culture. The Torajan is a tribe that resides in the northern mountains of South
Sulawesi, Indonesia, with an estimated population of 1 million people, 500 of whom still live
in Tana Toraja, North Toraja Regency and Mamasa.
The effort made by the government to preserve and develop the tradition and culture of
a specified area is reflected in the Decree of People’s Consultative Assembly of the Republic
of Indonesia No. IV/MPR/1999 regarding the social issues of the Indonesian culture. The
government plays an important role in preserving the culture; however, community support
is also inevitable in the process. Another effort made by the government is the registration of
batik in UNESCO as a cultural heritage belonging to Indonesia in order to prevent neighbouring countries claiming it to be theirs. Furthermore, performing traditional art, such as
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dances or exhibitions, in events conducted at the Indonesian embassies abroad can also promote the Indonesian culture globally.
As one of the cultural heritages that should be preserved, traditional decoration should be
developed as an element of interior design, both constructively and decoratively. The application of traditional decoration as an interior element often experiences change and development in terms of shapes, motifs, materials, manufacturing methods and colours.
Restaurants, a public space where people pay to sit and enjoy food, are considered as one
of the premises where traditional ornaments can be displayed. Restaurants are diverse in
appearance and services, including a wide variety of cuisines and service models ranging
from inexpensive fast food restaurants and cafeterias to mid-priced family restaurants and
high-priced luxury restaurants. Decorating a café, which is a simple and small restaurant
influenced by the Western culture, with traditional ornaments may be a challenge in the process of preserving local culture because of its small scope and cultural origin.
1.1
Purpose
In this study, we focus on the application of Tana Torajan ornaments in interior furniture
such as tables, chairs and cabinets, aiming at improving the local culture and introducing it
into society. Our main aim is to make foreigners attracted to the furniture. The purpose of
this study is to highlight the importance of preserving the Torajan culture in order to adapt
to modernisation and increase its popularity among people. Here, we will mainly focus on
analysing the diversity of Torajan carvings and the meanings of Torajan ornaments, which
will in turn allow the society to understand and eventually gain awareness of the existence of
Torajan ornaments in their surroundings.
2
METHODOLOGY
The methods used in this study are content analysis, observation, interview with Torajan
locals and experimental design with a hermeneutic approach supported by design, social cultural norm and psychological approaches. Literature review will also be conducted to serve
as the reference for this case study.
The studies were carried out in both Tana Toraja and Jakarta. Because of time constraint, the object of this study was analysed gradually. The first phase of this case study was
on the decorative ornaments of Tana Toraja currently displayed in Tator Café. We captured
all the ornaments, interpreted their meaning and analysed how those ornaments would revive
the value of Toraja. Data were collected through a field study via conducting interviews on
groups with sufficient data. The aim of the observation in Tator Café was to document the
decorations used in the restaurant. In addition to field study, literary data were analysed.
Books explaining the culture of Toraja were necessary to gain an insight into the Torajan
ornaments that would be applied to the interior furniture.
3
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Public space is a social space where people gather. It has also become something of a touchstone for critical theory with respect to social studies and urban design. This place is also
often misunderstood as a gathering place, which is an element of the larger concept of social
space.
Public space can be divided into several typologies (Carmona, et al., 2003, p.111). External
public space is defined as the public space outside the room that can be accessed by everyone
(public), such as city parks, squares and pedestrian paths. Internal public space, on the contrary, is a public facility run by the government that can be accessed by citizens freely without
any specific restrictions, such as post offices, offices, hospitals and service centres. The last
type of public space is external and internal ‘quasi’-public space, which is defined as public
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facilities that are usually managed by the private sector with restrictions or rules that citizens
must comply with, such as malls, discotheques and restaurants.
Zhang and Lawson (2009) used three categories of activities in public spaces. The first
category is an activity process carried out as a transition of two or more major activities and
typically moves from one place to another, for example, moving from home to the stall, where
consumption takes place. The second category is a physical contact, which takes place in the
form of interaction between two or more people who communicate directly. The last category
is a transitional activity, which is usually carried out by a person without any specific goal,
such as sitting and watching the scenery.
Culture can be defined in many ways. It can be observed through the reflection of a society’s ideas, values, attitudes and normative or expected patterns of behaviour. Culture is not
genetically inherited and cannot exist on its own; however, it is always shared by the members
of a society (Hall 1976, p. 16). Hofstede (1980, pp. 21–23) defined culture as ‘the collective
programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another’,
which is passed on from one generation to the other. Culture is ever-changing as each generation adds something of its own before passing it further on. It is common for a culture to be
both assumed and correct because it is the only one, or at least the first, to be learnt. Culture
is made of many complex elements, such as the system of religion, politics, languages, clothing, building architecture and art.
The Indonesian society should understand and claim the rights of the diverse culture of
the nation. Most activists are concerned and continue to strive for the maintenance of the
growing culture of Indonesia, whereas there are also some who are completely ignorant of
the issue. People should have the experience and knowledge of a culture in order to sense it.
The government can construct cultural centres for people who need information about the
culture. This study is an example of how to increase public awareness of an almost forgotten
culture.
In this era of globalisation, Indonesia has adopted many foreign cultures without filtering
them, and not all of them are positive. The current rapid growth of globalisation significantly
affects the acculturation process of the Indonesian culture. With high-tech information systems, people can easily get information about other cultures. Sometimes, this brings major
changes to the lifestyle of most Indonesians, as the attitudes of people may be influenced by
those foreign cultures. The invasion of foreign countries into Indonesia before its independence in 1945 had also brought foreign cultures to Indonesia. These foreign countries not only
have their spices and occupations, but also instilled their culture in Indonesia, which eventually influences the Indonesian culture. One example is the architecture of the Yogyakarta
palace, which was influenced by the Japanese (Laksmi, 2012). At present, the influence of the
Western culture is a result of modern technology and unlimited information flow.
Some neighbouring countries have even claimed the Indonesian culture as theirs, such as
Reog Ponorogo dance from East Java, gamelan music from Central Java, Ulos cloth from
North Sumatra and angklung music instrument from West Java. Indonesians should be
proud of having such great and rich cultural heritage by preserving it so that it can remain
Indonesian. The noble values of the culture and local identity need to be preserved in order
to mitigate the potential problem of being forgotten by future generations. The society should
have rights over the local culture by preserving and reviving its values, as well as introducing
it to the public.
Tana Toraja is located in the northern part of the South Sulawesi Province and situated
between Latimojong Mountain Range and Mount Reute Kambola. The name Toraja has
a Bugis origin which denotes different groups of people of the mountainous regions of the
northern part of the south peninsula, which have been discovered recently (Soertoto, 2003).
‘Toraja’ is derived from words of the coastal language: to means people and riaja means
uplands. This word was first used as an expression by lowlanders to refer to highlanders. The
Torajan indigenous belief system is polytheistic animism, called Aluk. In the Torajan society,
the funeral ritual is the most elaborate and expensive event; the richer and more powerful is
the individual, the more expensive the funeral is. In the Aluk religion, only nobles have the
right to have an extensive funeral.
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All Torajan houses have unique architecture. Torajan houses are boat-shaped with its two
ends resembling a bow. Torajan houses are compound buildings consisting of traditional
houses (Tongkonan) and rice storage buildings (Lumbung). The construction of Tongkonan
is a laborious work and is usually carried out with the help of the extended family. The
buildings are sculpted with ornaments of various shapes, which are painted with traditional
colour, mostly black and red. All of them contribute to the aesthetic value of the building
of Torajan house (Syahwandi, 1983). The Tongkonan is the centre of Torajan social life. The
rituals associated with the Tongkonan are important expressions of Torajan spiritual life;
therefore, all family members are impelled to participate, because symbolically, the Tongkonan represents links to their past, present and future.
Figure 1 shows the Tongkonan, a traditional house of the Torajan people. The roof is
curved and boat-shaped. It used to be a bamboo structure, but the Torajan people prefer to
use zinc nowadays. A row of water buffalo horns can also be found in front of the house. The
house serves as a place not only to sleep and cook but also to keep corpses. The name Tongkonan is derived from the word tongkon (meaning to sit together). A Tongkonan is divided
based on the level or role in society (the social stratification of Torajan society); the wealthier
people are, the larger their Tongkonan will be when they die. In front of the Tongkonan, a granary made of the bark of coconut tree with parts of its land casted can be found. In addition
to the granary, a variety of carvings, including a picture of chicken and sun and a symbol of
resolving the matter, can be found (Sumalyo, 2001).
One form of the beautiful Indonesian cultures that has to be explored is the Torajan carving. At present, Torajan sculptures are mostly found in tourist markets. Tourism has a positive
impact on the preservation of traditional culture in Toraja. Until the early 2000s, many Torajans made money by selling Torajan carvings or becoming an hotelier, a tour guide and so on.
Thus, when the number of tourists visiting Tana Toraja decreased, many locals moved to other
places, seeking for employment as miners or in the transportation industry (Adams, 2006). This
will eventually affect the preservation of the traditional Torajan culture if the situation prevails.
Torajan wood carvings are known for their regularity and order; furthermore, they are
abstract and geometric. Nature is often used as the basis of Torajan ornaments, because they
are full of abstraction and regular geometrics. Torajan ornaments have several meanings,
some of which are togetherness, brotherhood, wealth and position. In an effort to preserve
these ornaments, the Torajan society has decided to implement the elements of the Tongkongan, regardless of whether interior or exterior, as constructive and decorative elements. The
decoration used will become the basic form of a recurring pattern in a craft or art that completes the exterior of the Tongkongan. Each ornament used will have a hidden meaning in its
motifs. In Torajan wood carvings, each panel symbolises a good will. The motifs have various
symbols representing folklore, celestial objects, sacred animals and so forth.
All of Torajan ornaments have unique meanings, such as Ne’Limbonga (lake) representing
luck, Pa’ Tedong (buffalo head) representing prosperity, Pa’ Barre Alo (sun) representing pride,
Figure 1.
Tongkonan, house of Toraja.
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Pa’Ulu Karua representing hope, Pa’Bamboo Uai representing speed and Pa’Manik Manik
meaning jewellery (Bobbyn, 1979). A unique feature of Torajan sculptures and ornaments is
that they are dominated by various colours, mainly red, yellow, white and black. The colours
are made from natural ingredients that are blended with palm wine vinegar. Palm wine serves
as an adhesive for the colour to be attached and durable in the carving. The colours are not
randomly selected, and each one of them has a philosophical meaning. Red symbolises blood,
black symbolises death, white symbolises man of flesh and bone and yellow symbolises glory.
The pictures in Figure 2 show a round table and a four-seater dining table (90 cm × 90 cm)
at Tator Café implementing the motif of Torajan ornaments. This type of decoration resembles Neqlimbongan, which originates from one of their ancestors ‘Limbongan’ who was estimated to have lived 3000 years ago, while the word Neq means lake. Therefore, this motif can
be thought of as an infinite source of water and life. The motif is shaped like water in a whirlpool and interpreted as luck that shall come from all directions, just like springs converging
in lakes and providing happiness. The top of this dining table is significantly decorated with
small patterns of Torajan ornaments.
The pictures shown in Figure 3 are images of the cashier counter in Tator Café and its
backdrop with Torajan motifs on it. Each motif has its own meaning. This café is bold
enough to implement Torajan decorative elements, aiming to paint an image of Toraja itself
although it is worth noting that not all motifs are suitable to be used in a restaurant. Some
motifs such as the ones representing death and funerals would definitely be inappropriate for
restaurant use. Although visitors may not necessarily understand the meaning and significance of these motifs, it is necessary to avoid such inappropriateness, especially since history
and culture experts might notice these motifs.
Dining tables or furniture with motifs or local ornaments must be specially ordered and
custom made. With the lack of interest for furniture with local content on it, the role of
designers is now to better explore local cultures, in this case the Torajan culture, to be applied
to furniture. One perfect example is Tator Café located in several malls in Jakarta. Attracting
consumers, especially foreign markets, there is a possibility for a flow of trade.
Figure 2. Application of Torajan ornaments in Tator Café (1).
Figure 3.
Application of Torajan ornaments in Tator Café (2).
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Applying the ornaments as interior decoration in public space is an indirect way of reviving the culture of Toraja to the public. Being unique and rich in ornaments, the Torajan culture has the potential to be promoted to the global market, allowing it to gain more exposure.
As one of the tribes in Indonesia, Toraja is rich in ornaments with unique meanings. They
will be suitable and applicable as interior ornaments in public spaces. One of such spaces
is Tator Café with its soothing shades of Torajan ornaments representing the Torajan culture. Indonesians should start appreciating, understanding and reviving the culture of Toraja
before others can follow. By this way, it will be easier to promote the culture in other forms
of art in order to gain global recognition.
4
CONCLUSION
Public space is a common space involving humans as users. In this case, their background
is diverse in culture, economy, education and so on. Tator Café as a public space with the
application of decorative Torajan ornaments is one of the research objects in this study. The
interior elements such as floors, walls, ceilings and furniture, and other supporting elements,
such as employee uniform and accessories, are important in making visitors familiar with the
traditional Torajan culture.
Decorative Torajan ornaments are a cultural heritage of Indonesia, which should be
preserved. The motifs and colours existing in such ornaments contain a symbolic meaning
closely related to the Torajan religion. More attention should be devoted to the application
of those ornaments. Therefore, this becomes the guideline for the application in interior elements (floors, walls, ceilings and furniture) in order to avoid any violations of the existing
rules and meanings contained in each of those ornaments.
This study shows that modern society can be persuaded to be more aware of Indonesian tradition and culture, especially that of Toraja through interior ornaments. Through the
application of some ornaments that hold philosophical interpretation and their presentation
in an aesthetic manner, people can enhance their knowledge and understanding on the basis
of their experience and sensibility.
The application of Torajan ornaments with their meanings in the café can revive the local
atmosphere. This can become a significant part of the effort to revive the culture and introduce it to the visitors. By understanding the culture, people can enhance their aesthetic sensibility and make their experience as a method of revitalising the value of traditional culture.
Learning culture through art and design can influence the formation of human characteristics, including their sense and sensibility. Therefore, this study is intended to support modern society in order to increase their sensitivity and ability to appreciate the beauty of the
Torajan culture. It also can support modern society in understanding the almost-forgotten
Torajan culture, so that this preserved heritage can be known and recognised by both local
and global communities.
REFERENCES
Adams, K.M. (1995) Making-up the Toraja? The appropriation of tourism, anthropology, and museums
for politics in upland Sulawesi, Indonesia. Ethnology Journal, Vol.34./2, 143–153.
Adams, K.M. (2008) More than an ethnic market: Toraja art as identity negotiator. American
Ethnologist, Vol 25, No.3, Article 1, 327–351.
Carmona, et al. (2003) Public places—urban spaces, the dimension of urban design. New York:
Architectural Press.
Dimas. (2011) Analisis upaya melestarikan budaya (Analysis of efforts to preserve culture). Retrieved from:
http://dimaspratama11.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/analisis-upaya-melestarikan-budaya-bangsa/.
Hall, E.T. (1976) Beyond culture. New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday.
Hartanti, G. and Nediari, A. (2014) Pendokumentasian aplikasi ragam hias Toraja sebagai konservasi
budaya bangsa pada perancangan interior (Documenting application of Torajan decorative
ornaments as conservation of culture in interior design). Journal Humaniora, Vol 05/2, 32–40.
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Hofstede. G. (1991) Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. London: McGraw-Hill.
Kusuma, L. (2012) Pengaruh pandangan sosio-kultural Sultan Hamengkubuwana IX terhadap
eksistensi keraton Yogyakarta (The influence of socio-cultural view of Sultan Hamengkubuwana IX
of the existence of Yogyakarta Palace). Jurnal Masyarakat dan Kebudayaan Politik, Vol 25/1, 56–63.
Nanda, S. & Warms, R.L. (2013) Cultural anthropology. Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Nediari, A., Hartanti, G., Polniwati. (2014) Pengaplikasian ragam hias Toraja pada restoran di Jakarta
sebagai wujud pelestarian budaya Indonesia (The application of Torajan decorative ornaments in
restaurants in Jakarta as a preservation of Indonesian culture). Proceedings of Seminar Nasional Seni
Tradisi Universitas Trisakti, 527–538, 2014.
Sande, J.S. (2001) Toraja in carving. Ujung Pandang: Balai Penelitian Bahasa.
Soeroto, M. (2003) Toraja: Pustaka budaya dan arsitektur (Toraja: Art and Architecture). Jakarta: Balai
Pustaka.
Sumalyo, Y. (2001) Kosmologi dalam arsitektur Toraja (Cosmology in Torajan architecture). Jurnal
Dimensi Teknik Arsitektur, Vol 29.
Syafwandi, Soimun H.P., & Panannangan, M. (1993) Arsitektur tradisional Tana Toraja (The traditional
architecture of Tana Toraja). Jakarta: Depdikbud.
Tangdilintin, L.T., (1991) Tongkonan (rumah adat Toraja): Arsitektur dan ragam hias Tongkonan
(traditional house of Toraja): Architecture and Decorative Ornaments. Ujung Pandang: Yayasan
Lepongan Bulan Tana Toraja.
Tjong, M.L. (2014) Kajian kosmologi pada rumah tradisional suku Mamasa (The cosmological study of
traditional house of Mamasa ethnic group). Proceedings of Seminar Nasional Seni Tradisi Universitas
Trisakti, 192–207, 2014.
Toekio, S.M. (1990) Mengenal ragam hias Indonesia (Getting to know decorative ornaments in Indonesia).
Jakarta: Angkasa.
Zhang & Lawson. (2009) Meeting and greeting: activities in public outdoor spaces outside high-density
urban residential communities. Urban Design International, volume 14, 4, 207–214.
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KUSNO2017_Book.indb 920
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
The toponymy of the ancient port city of Gresik in the northern
coastal area of Java
Z. Muhatta & N. Soesanti
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: This study focuses on Gresik, an ancient port city on the northern coastal
area of the island of Java, which used to be well-known as a trading city and served as
the maritime axis of Nusantara (15th to 19th century AD). This research is conducted as
an interdisciplinary study to explore the toponymy from the standpoint of linguistics, in
collaboration with epigraphy (archaeology), philology (literature), maritime history, and
geography. Based on literature and theoretical studies, the research tries to answer this
question: “What is the relation between the names of places and the maritime culture of
an ancient port city in the northern coastal area of Java?” The objects of the study are
the names of places in the ancient port city of Gresik, including the archaeology and the
maritime socio-cultural landscapes between Demak and Surabaya, which are collected from
geographical maps, old inscriptions, and old manuscripts. The analysis focuses on history,
lexicon, morphology, and semantic structures of names of places within synchronic and diachronic perspectives, which is concluded with an assessment of the track record on toponymy. By interpreting the maritime culture of the past that built the marine network system
uniting the archipelago, Indonesia’s national identity will be reinforced and strengthened as
the future global maritime axis.
1
INTRODUCTION
Indonesia is a country whose majority of territory comprises of seas dotted with islands
(Lapian, 2008). The islands of Indonesia stretch on the tropical waters from the Indian
Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, and from Southeast Asia to Northern Australia. Indonesia has
a coastal line of approximately 81,000 kilometres in length, making it one of the countries
with the longest tropical coastlines in the world. The geographical location and the territorial
distribution composing of more than 17,000 islands around the equator have made Indonesia
an ideal harbour for traders from various countries, such as those from Europe, China, India,
and Africa. In the ancient time, Indonesia used to be known as Nusantara and was renowned
for its role as the maritime axis of the world (Vlekke, 2016).
The international trading centres along the northern coasts of Java were the ports of call
for foreign traders on their journeys across the Spice Routes and the Silk Road. These routes
made Nusantara the maritime axis because of its strategic location. Routes that traversed
Nusantara, namely the Spice Routes, the Europe-Asia trading routes along the southern parts
of Asia, were taken by traders of exotic commodities, such as pepper, clove, sandalwood, rice,
and textile. Spice traders from the eastern part of Nusantara brought ships loaded with spices
to harbours along the northern coasts of Java. Meanwhile, in the Silk Roads, the overland
trading routes in the north connected Europe, Central Asia, and China, and the popular commodities were silk and chinaware, such as plates, bowls, glasses, vases, and textiles from India.
During the Islamic expansion to the East, other Asian countries, such as Arabia, Iran,
Turkey, and the Moslem India also conducted trading activities in Java, resulting in the island
to be renowned as a hub frequently visited by foreign traders that came in large trading ships
(Reid, 2000: 29). These foreign traders’ visits resulted in the sprouting harbours along the
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northern coasts, which grew rapidly to become large port cities that also expanded as places
of settlement, kingdoms, religious activities, and other activities. The social pattern became
increasingly complex, and the harbours developed various cultural landscapes to meet the
growing needs of the people living in the harbour areas.
In the 15th century, Nusantara was widely known as an international trading centre. As
centres of trading activities conducted by foreign traders across the Spice Routes and the
Silk Road, cities along the northern coasts of Java were known as international harbours,
as referred to in the Portuguese book, Suma Oriental, written by Tomé Pires (1485 AD),
Chinese chronicles written by Ma Huan, and the Dutch state reports. This region became
ideal for ships due to the moderate waves of the sea, which enabled ships to access (Cortesao,
1990). Based on Tomé Pires’s notes (1515), rice crops became an attractive trading commodity in Java. Raffles also stated this fact in his book, The History of Java (2015).
This study falls under the Culture and Indigenous Studies. The approach of studying
names of places is known as toponymy, a branch of onomastics. Onomastics consists of two
branches: anthroponymy that focuses on human names, and toponymy that focuses on names
of places. Toponymy is related to the long history of human settlements. Humans indicate
memories of humans and places by names. Names of places constitute geographic identities
by using the local languages. Language and space form the identity of their speakers. Language is a vehicle for cultural background and supports the identity of its speakers. As stated
by Lauder and Lauder (2012), the function and the role of history in naming topographic
features are of major significance in the understanding of the local culture. The research is
studying the relatively new geographic names or the existing names that have existed for hundreds of years, and what the cultural and linguistic backgrounds are. As an interdisciplinary
study, this study was conducted with an etymological approach in examining the toponymy
in the northern coastal areas of Java from the linguistic point of view in collaboration with
epigraphy (archaeology), philology (literature), history, and geography.
The purpose of the study is to answer the question: “What is the relation between the place
names and the social culture of the ancient port city of Gresik in the northern coastal area of
Java?” To answer this main question, the names of places are examined with toponymy. Doing
a toponymy study in this area is important to uncover its social culture and identities. The
limitation of the study comprises areas that have been mentioned as the “Javanese Coastline”
by Denys Lombard, a leading French historian (1996: 37). This coastline area stretches along
the northern beaches from the west part of Cirebon to the east part of Surabaya. Lombard
uses the term “the northern coastal area of Java” following the limitation of the linguistically
geographic area of the Sundanese, the Javanese and the Madurese languages as suggested by
Tomé Pires. Pires divided these three language areas based on the cultural aspects; Java as a
“space” which is divided in three major cultural areas to indicate the geographical space. The
use of the term “the northern coast of Java” is in accordance with the margin of linguistically
geographic areas of the Javanese language users.
The role of Gresik as a big seaport is inseparable from the relation with other port cities,
such as Tuban, Sidhayu, Hujunggaluh, and Surabaya. However, Gresik apparently held a
major role as the international seaport. In the research on the inscriptions from the Airlangga era by Susanti (2010), it is indicated that the increasing economic progress had led
to an international development through the seas, as made evident by the foreigners who
settled and were taxed, who were known as warga kilalan (tax payers). They were the trade
representatives of India, Campa, Khmer, Mon (Remen), and Sri Lanka. Their activities were
also mentioned in the Chinese chronicles (Groeneveldt, 1960: 47). According to Ma Huan
(1433 AD), the Chinese sailor who made notes in the chronicles, Gresik was a new village
located approximately half-day journey towards east from Tuban, recorded as Ko-erh-shi
(Groeneveldt, 1964). Ma Huan described how Gresik started up in an abandoned plot of
land on a sandy seashore area, which was built as a port city. In 1350–1400 AD, people
from the central part of China (the Chinese sailors and traders) built new settlements in this
area. After 1400 AD, Gresik enjoyed a rapid growth, and when Ma Huan came to Gresik in
the same year, the city had become the best and most important port city (Djaenuderadjat,
2013: 207). In 1411 AD, the Chinese rulers in Gresik sent letters and presents to the Chinese
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Emperor. They were not the Chinese people who ruled Gresik, but the people who managed
the administrative area inhabited by the Chinese people (Rahardjo, 2002: 22).
This study uses the map of the current administration. Gresik Regency stretches in an area
of 1,191.25 square kilometres at the latitude 112°-113°E and longitude 7°-8°S geographic
coordinates. Its administrative regions are composed of 18 districts, 330 desa (villages), and
26 kelurahan (sub-districts). Districts (kecamatan) are divided into desa (villages) or kelurahan (urban communities); both desa and kelurahan are of similar levels, but desa has more
power in local matters than kelurahan.
The object of this study comprises the names of places of the villages in the ancient city,
including the archaeological, maritime, and socio-cultural landscapes of Gresik. From the
ancient port cities, various kinds of information can be obtained about the lives of the
communities pertaining to the sea that have contributed to the maritime culture. The term
maritime in this research is limited to any human activities in the sea or water that support
livelihood. The geographical location is as seen in the map in the next page.
Figure 1. Toponymy of the northern coastal area of Gresik, East Java.
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2
A BRIEF HISTORY OF GRESIK
In the early 11th century, Syech Maulana Malik Ibrahim brought and spread Islam in Gresik,
at the same period as Fatimah Binti Maimun. Meanwhile, Nyai Ageng Pinatih, a harbour mistress, adopted a baby from Blambangan, who later grew up and was known as Sunan Giri, the
authority of the Giri Kedaton kingdom (1487 AD). Sunan Giri had a position as a sunan or
wali (a preacher of Islam), and also served as the Sultan or Prabu (a government ruler), whereas
Syech Maulana Malik Ibrahim was the leader of kings and ministers (Poesponegoro, 1984).
In the 14th century, Gresik was also famous for its renowned Islam preacher, Sunan
Maulana Malik Ibrahim. Gresik became a centre for Islam in the north coast of Java, attracting people from the east, such as Maluku and Ternate, to study Islam. Gresik-Jaratan was
also well-known as the safest trading seaport in the Strait of Madura. The port of Gresik was
adjacent to the delta of Bengawan Solo (Solo River), a very fertile area producing rice, which
also facilitated trade and transport of these commodities to trading ships. Until the end of
the 16th century AD, the port city of Grisse (Gresik-Jaratan) was famous as the important
trading harbour of the Spice Routes (Meilink-Roelofs, 2016: 263).
The name Gresik is assumed to have been derived from a word in the ancient Javanese
language, gesik, which means “sand”. Gresik was initially under the power of the kingdom
of Majapahit. The name Gresik is also mentioned in several inscriptions; it was mentioned
for the first time in the inscription of Karangbogem or Trowulan VI, issued by Bhre Lasem in
1387 AD. The inscription described the people from Gresik (“hana ta kawulaningong saking
Gresik”) who were employed in Karangbogem, and about a stipulation on kawula, or slaves,
or redeemed people from Gresik at the palace.
Experts still debate the name Gresik. One opinion says that Gresik derived from the Arabic word qarra syai that means “to stick on something”. This object is assumed to be the
anchor of a ship cast overboard by the ship crew and sticks on the bottom of the sea as a sign
that the ship would moor. The name Gresik is also related to the Javanese word Giri-gisik
that literally means “hills at the beach”. Another meaning of the word Gresik is mentioned
in a literary work from the mid-19th century AD, Serat Centini, namely Giri-Gresik (Kusdi,
2014: 42). Another name, Tandes, was also once known, as used by the writer of the Chinese
chronicles as a substitute name for Gresik (Rouffaer, 1906: 178–198).
The toponymy and linguistic names of places used in this study are related to the language
used by the local people in the area. One media found to express human feelings as reflections
of the cultural and social aspects, as well as the geographical areas where human beings have
lived from the past is a village. Names of villages are footprints of progress toward human civilization and they indicate aspects of social, cultural, historical, and geographical information
about human livelihood. Hence, it can be concluded that language as a tool of communications
and e names of places given by humans are interrelated. Therefore, the linguistic analysis of
names of places has a major significance. The data used in this study constitutes names of villages located along the northern coasts, based on which linguistic and archaeological analyses
are made in relation to their locations in the geographical area (Lauder and Lauder, 2012).
After a bibliographical study of the District of Gresik, data collection of the place names was
conducted. The names used as the data for this study are those of the villages located along
the northern coasts of the District of Gresik. These names and the archaeological landscape
locations on maps (old mosques, old temples, and remains of ancient harbours) were collected
based on an ancient map made by De Graaf and Tomé Pires (1615), American Map Service
SB49–16 (Surabaya Sheet), BIG (Badan Informasi Geospatial), and Google Earth.
Two analysis was made in the data processing stage: the linguistic and archaeological
analyses. The linguistic analysis consists of morphological analysis and the meaning of
the names. The names of places are considered as lexicons, which have undergone through
two kinds of morphological analysis, i.e. word formation and morphophonemic processes.
Following Stageberg (2000) who stated that analysis of English words can be conducted by
tracing the ancient Latin and Greek dictionaries, this study considers the lexicons as originated from Javanese. In finding the etymology, the meaning of the base morphemes is found
by tracing the morphemes in the Old Javanese dictionaries. The names of places in East Java,
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particularly in Gresik, use regional or local language, namely the Javanese language and those
inherited from their ancestors as the Old Javanese language users. The analysis is described
in Table 1.
Table 1.
No.
1
Linguistic analysis of village names in the Northern Coastal areas of Java.
Name of
district
District of
Panceng
Name of
village
(Lexicon)
Morphological analysis
Word formation
Morphonemic
Dictionary meaning
Sidokumpul
Sido (V) +
kumpul (V)
–
Campurejo
Campur (N) +
raharjo (N)
rejo from
raharjo
Waru Lor
Waru (N) +
lor (Adj)
Daleg (V) +
an (suffix)
–
Ngemboh
ngemboh dari
nga (affix) +
imboh (V)
–
Banyuurip
Banyu (V)+
urip (V)
Pangkah (N) +
Kulon (Adj)
Pangkah (N) +
Wetan (Adj)
Randu (N) +
broto (Adj)
–
Bedanten
Bedah (V) +
seganten (N)
Tanjung
Widoro
Kramat
Tajung (N) +
Widoro (N)
Kramat (N)
Bedanten =
Bedah
+ seganten
–
Manyarejo
Manyar (N) + rejo –
(Adj)
Manyar
sidorukun
Manyar (N)+
sido (V) +
rukun (Adj)
–
Manyar
sidomukti
Manyar (N)+
sido (V) +
mukti (Adj)
–
Sukomulyo
Suko (V) +
mulyo (Adj)
Roomo (N)
–
Sido means “to become,”
kumpul means “to
gather”.
Campur means “a
combination” and rejo
means “prosperous”.
Waru is a name of a plant,
lor means “north”.
Daleg means “sitting,”
or “a place to sit
looking at the sea”.
Emboh means “to add,”
from the word imbuh,
with prefix ng that means
“to add” (something).
Banyu means “water,”
and urip means “life”.
Pangkah means “mud,”
and kulon means “west”.
Pangkah means “mud,”
and wetan means “east”.
Randu is another name of
kapok (a name of plant);
broto means “faithful,
meditation”.
Bedah means “slice,”
sedanten segoro means
“the sea”.
Tajung means “peninsula,”
widoro is a name of plant.
Kramat means “sacred,
honourable, respectful,
lofty”.
Manyar is a type of bird
that lives near water, and
rejo means “prosperous”.
Manyar is a type of bird
that lives near water, sido
means “to become,” and
rukun means “peaceful
and cohesive”.
Manyar is a type of bird
that lives near water, sido
means “to become,” and
mukti means “lofty”.
Suko means “to like,” and
mulyo means “lofty”.
Roomo means “hair”.
Dalegan
2
District of
Ujung
Pangkah
3
District of
Sidayu
4
District of
Bungah
5
District of
Manyar
Pangkah
Kulon
Pangkah
Wetan
Randubroto
Roomo
–
–
–
–
–
–
(Continued )
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Table 1.
No.
6
(Continued ).
Name
of district
District of
Gresik
Name
of village
(Lexicon)
Morphological analysis
Word formation
Morphonemic
Dictionary meaning
Tepen
Tepen (N)
–
Tlogopojok
Tlogo (N) +
pojok
–
Lumpur
Lumpur (N)
–
Kroman
Ke (prefix) +
room (N) +
an (suffix)
Ke (prefix) +
puter (N) +
an (suffix)
Pe + keling +
an
–
Tepi means “the edge,” and
tepian means “the edge
part”.
Tlogo means “lake,”
and pojok means
“corner”.
Lumpur means “soft and
moist clay”.
Karoman means “hair,”
the synonym of
parambutan.
Puter means “to rotate,”
kemuteran means “a
place to rotate”.
Keling is a term for
foreigners from the
Indian peninsula.
Bedil means “fire arms,”
and bedilan means
“shooting”.
Pulo means “island,” and
pancikan is derived from
the word pancik that
means “to climb” or
“to rise”.
Sido means “to become,”
and rukun means
“in agreement, peaceful”.
Kramat means “sacred,
honourable, respectful,
lofty.” Inggil means
“high”.
Indro means “king or god,”
or “to go”.
Karnag means “a coral
stone” or “a place to
wait,” kering means
“dry”.
Kemuteran
Pekelingan
–
Bedilan
Bedil (N) +
an (suffix)
–
Pulo
Pancikan
Pulo (N) +
Pancik (V) +
an (suffix)
–
Sidorukun
Sido (V) +
Rukun
(Suffix)
Kramat (N) +
inggil (Adj)
–
Kramatinggil
7
–
District of Indro
Kebomas
Karangkering
–
Indro (N or V)
–
Karang (N) +
kering (V)
–
Based on the linguistic analysis, a tendency is indicated in the use names of places where
there are lexicons constituting hydronym (names that contain words that denote an element
of water and its derivatives), e.g. saltwater (seganten/N), freshwater (banyu/N, tlogo/N), and
lexicons constituting non-hydronym (names that do not contain any words denoting an element of water and its derivatives), such as a lexicon of an original noun whose meaning
refers to the sea and its family, e.g. pangkah/N, lumpur/N, karang/N, pulo/N, and lexicons that
contain other elements, e.g. roomo (hair/N), rejo/Adj, sido/V.
3
TOPONYMY AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL LANDSCAPES
The archaeological method to study archaeological landscapes consists of observation,
description, and interpretation (Deetz, 1967). In addition, we used interview methods at the
926
KUSNO2017_Book.indb 926
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sites in Gresik. The presence of an ancient temple built long ago indicates the scope of activities the local people carried out with foreigners in this area. The existing legacies of the cultural landscapes indicate foreign influence of the Chinese sailors who built temples to perform
their worship according to the faith they brought from China, which also served as places for
their community. The Kiem Hien Kiong temple remains an ancient temple that maintains its
original use as a worship and social facility. Based on the information from the keeper, the
temple was built in 1125 AD; unfortunately, no evidence was available to prove this.
Furthermore, Gresik and its surroundings are home to ancient mosques that indicate the
influence of Islam and Arab culture. There are three ancient mosques in Gresik, namely the
Pasucinan mosque in the village of Giri, the Jami Gresik mosque that is located near the
public square, and the Maulana Malik Ibrahim mosque in the village of Gapuro (Sukolilo).
These old mosques are still actively in use until today as places of worship and pilgrimage
tour destinations - particularly because of the remaining ancient tombs, including the most
famous one at the Maulana Malik Ibrahim mosque, namely the tomb of Regent Pusponegoro, the first regent originating from the District of Gresik (1617 AD). Based on interviews
with the local inhabitants, this mosque is located about two kilometres from the seashore
(formerly built on the seashore near the port), but the coastal line moved forward despite the
sedimentation. In the olden days, there was no lighthouse to signal a land. Instead, the minaret of a mosque served as an aid to broadcast the call for prayers (adzan). This also indicates
the life in the maritime glory in the eastern part of the northern coast of Java.
4
CONCLUSION
Based on the study, it can be concluded that toponymy indicates the closeness of the local
people and the culture that have lived in the area. The proximity of the location to the sea is
indicated by names of places that can be categorized as hydronyms and non-hydronyms that
contain water as a marine element, showing the closeness of the inhabitants to the sea and
its marine surroundings as their identity. On the other hand, the non-hydronyms also contain
other elements of the sea, such as mud, island, and coral stones.
In addition to agriculture, the improvement of Indonesian national economy should also
be based on marine resources. However, various political considerations have had an impact
in the Indonesian maritime aspects. For quite a long time, Indonesia’s maritime potentials
lacked the attention of the government since more emphasis was placed on Indonesia as an
agricultural country. The northern coastal areas of Java have held vital roles in the national
economic activities. Various trades and other related activities conducted along the northern
coasts of Java have proved the greatness of this area as the world’s maritime axis back then.
To support maritime-based development in the future, the ancient maritime culture needs
to be studied by various other studies, since the understanding of the maritime culture of
the past may provide us vast insights that may lead to new findings or conclusions based
on the result of the studies. Based on this background, the directions of development in the
future should be emphasised not only on agricultural aspects, but also on the optimisation
of maritime potentials. By interpreting the maritime culture of the past that had built the
marine network system which united the archipelago, Indonesia’s national identity will be
reinforced and strengthened as the global maritime axis in the future. The result of study
could contribute to the revitalisation of seaport sites to strengthen the maritime potentials
and support the government’s attempts to develop tourism in Indonesia in the future.
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Deetz, J. (1967) Invitation to Archaeology. Garden City, NJ: Natural History Press [Doubleday] for the
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Bambu. Translation: Shipping and Commerce in Nusantara in 16th and 17th Centuries Jakarta: Komunitas Bambu.
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Mardiwarsito, L. (1990) Kamus Jawa Kuno Indonesia. Ende: Nusa Indah. Translation: Dictionary of
Indonesia’s Ancient Java Ende: Nusa Indah.
Meilink-Roelofz, M.A.P. (1962) Persaingan Eropa & Asia di Nusantara, Sejarah Perniagaan 1500–1680.
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Raffles, T.S. (2015) History of Java 1825. Trans. Hamonangan, ed. Jakarta: Penerbit Narasi.
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Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5
Author index
Abdurakhman, 83, 113, 687
Achdian, A. 749
Acikgenc, G.C. 181
Agus, H.F. 405
Agustina, H.N. 325
Akun, A. 337
Alkautsar, A. 361
Altiria, S. 413
Aminda, Y.J. 899
Amril, F. 623
Andjani, K. 133
Angjaya, S. 303
Ardiansyah, A. 509
Arivia, G. 119, 125, 161
Arkhi, C.M. 559
Aulia, M. 791
Ayesa, 819, 827, 835
Aziza, M. 819, 835
Azizi, N. 311
Gani, F. 173
Gunarwati, D.T. 761
Badry, A.I. 89
Baga, M. 259
Bagasworo, P.G. 371
Basuki, S. 503
Budianta, M. 213, 247, 259,
345, 405, 775
Budiman, M. 3, 271, 279,
285, 337, 389, 503
Buduroh, M. 517
Jinanto, D. 423
Jiwanda, J. 139
Junus, F.G. 785
Cahyani, E. 873
Christomy, T. 509, 645
Dwikartika, G. 161
Ekosiwi, E.K. 51
Elismawati, 437
Evita, L. 687
Fadeli, T.R. 725
Filia, 75
Fios, F. 119, 125
Hadi, R.P.S. 279
Hadinata, F. 59
Hamid, A.R. 681
Hapsarani, D. 253, 331, 345
Harapan, A.A. 907
Hidayat, R.S. 353
Hodijah, S. 397
Holil, M. 485
Hutagalung, D. 195
Ibrahim, I. 389
Ihwanny, R. 271
Indradjaja, A. 545
Irawan, Y. 105
Iskandar, M. 755
Izza, N.A. 567
Kabubu, R.D. 83
Kamuri, J.P. 37
Kanumayoso, B. 29
Khakam, G.A. 673
Kramadibrata, D. 457, 491
Kriswanto, A. 523
Kurnia, L. 167, 231,
761, 769
Kurnia, L.H. 239, 631
Kurniawan, A. 531
Kusno, A. 669
Kushartanti, B. 203, 811
Kusumastuti, S.N. 153
Laksman-Huntley, M. 785,
791
Laksmi, 843
Laksmi, N.K.P.A. 553
Limanta, L.S. 231
Limbong, P.F. 23
Liyanti, L. 465
Lubis, A.Y. 59, 89, 97, 133,
139, 195
Luli, Q.Q. 285
Lustanto, R. 161
Lu’lu, D. 445
Machmudi, Y. 473
Malik, N.J. 75, 881, 891
Mariani, L. 907
Mentari, G. 637
Moriyama, M. 481
Mufti, H.R. 29
Muhatta, Z. 921
Mukhaiyar, 437
Mulya, A.A.A. 755
Mulyajati, E. 881
Munandar, A.A. 567, 637,
661
Muta’ali, A. 413
Naupal, 431, 451
Ningsih, T.W.R. 819, 827,
835
Novietri, 811
Nurrochsyam, M.W. 51
Padiatra, A.M. 15
Polimpung, H.Y. 97
Prabowo, D.P. 865
Pranoto, B.E. 65
Prasetiyo, A. 381
Pratama, H.S. 37,
181, 717
Pudjiastuti, T. 23, 485, 497,
517, 609, 617, 653
Puspitorini, D. 523, 531, 601
Rahayu, A. 593
Rahman, A. 539
929
KUSNO2017_Book.indb 929
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Rahyono, F.X. 797, 819,
827, 835
Revianur, A. 577
Rifal, P. 741
Rizqika, M.K. 217
Rohman, S. 491
Romadon, R.R. 857
Roosman, L. 819
Salim, P. 913
Sandipungkas, A. 769
Saputra, K.H. 105
Sari, H.P. 317
Septiana, M. 851
Seran, A. 7
Setiawan, A. 15
Setyani, T.I. 609, 631
Setyaningrum, R.A. 253
Shanty, J.D. 775
Silalahi, R.M.P. 881, 891, 899
Siswantari, 145
Sodikin, M. 113
Soesanti, N. 921
Sudarmadji, W.P. 381
Suganda, S.P. 187
Suhardijanto, T. 361, 371
Suharjo, R.A. 617
Sukham, J.D. 331
Sunarti, L. 225, 733, 741
Suparta, I.M. 653
Suprihatin, C.T. 43, 325,
397
Susanti, N. 585, 593, 695
Susetyo-Salim, T.A. 851,
857, 865, 873
Suwidjana, I.N. 161
Syarif, J. 473
Tambunan, S.M.G. 291,
297, 303, 311, 805
Tangkilisan, Y.B. 709
Taqyuddin, 695
Tedjowasono, N.S. 673
Tjahjandari, L. 631
Tjahjani, J. 423
Triadnyani, I.G.A.A.M. 265
Utama, N.J. 733
Wahyudi, W.R. 545, 553,
559
Wardhani, M.K. 203
Wastono, A.T. 445
Wibowo, N.S. 431
Widhiasti, M.R. 247, 805
Widiawati, Y. 797
Wijayanti, L. 843
Wuri, D.M. 297
Yuliawati, S. 353
Yuwono, U. 75, 891, 899
930
KUSNO2017_Book.indb 930
11/17/2017 9:22:20 AM
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