Search

This paper is a feminist investigation into the beliefs and practices surrounding menstruation among traditional artisanal diamond mining women in the Muslim Banjar ethnic community in rural parts of South Kalimantan, Indonesia. Based on feminist ethnographic field methods, it investigates how these women interpret the religious and cultural restrictions in their everyday lives as miners, and how their beliefs influence their attitudes toward diamond mining. While the women have different economic and social backgrounds, and have experienced and experience menstruation differently, they are all involved in diamond mining. This article shows that, contrary to popular belief, menstrual blood is considered lucky in this traditional diamond mining community, and it considers the wider implications for a deeper understanding of gender in mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how young voters make political choices in the absence of adequate information about the candidates they will vote for. Under conditions of low information, voters often use whatever cues they see in the ballot paper to help them make decisions in a short time. This mental process is known as heuristics. Using online experimental methods with two-by-two factorial design, this study examines two forms of heuristics that young voters can use in their political decisions, namely, candidates' appearance and their academic degrees. The results show that only the candidates' academic attainment has a significant effect on the voting preferences of young voters. This academic degree primarily affects voters' intention to vote. However, neither academic titles nor beautiful faces have any effect on voters' willingness to recommend the candidates to others, engage in their campaigns, or contribute to their campaign finances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper compares evidence from the Philippines and Indonesia to examine the argument that the Philippines has a more unequal distribution of both agricultural land and household incomes than Indonesia. It is argued that the evidence from agricultural censuses and household surveys does not support this argument. Instead, the available evidence indicates that there has been a process of convergence in the distribution of land in the Philippines and Indonesia. The percentage of land in holdings over ten hectares has fallen in recent decades in the Philippines, while in Indonesia it may have increased. The cultivated area under large estates continues to grow in Indonesia mainly because of the growth of palm oil cultivation. Evidence on the distribution of household income and of land indicates that neither country has followed the Taiwan model of growth with equity in recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2010, Indonesia officially filled a complaint to the World Trade Organization (WTO) over a dispute regarding the US import ban on clove cigarettes. Despite the fierce exchange of arguments in the WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), in 2014, Indonesia and the US agreed to cease the formal pursuit and resolve trade disputes through signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) encompassing a more comprehensive trade partnership. This paper examines the reasons behind Indonesia's preference for settling the clove cigarette dispute by signing the MoU with the US, stemming from the Indonesian Government's perception of the shared benefits generated and WTO DSB's institutional weaknesses. The MoU also allows the Indonesian Government to advance its foreign policy agenda and its trade diplomacy objectives, offering broader sets of advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, the Chinese community in Indonesia has been stereotyped as exclusive of the 'indigenous' social group; hardworking and industrious but frugal; and apolitical or lacking nationalistic spirit towards their 'host country', Indonesia. This paper aims to review, interrogate and re-examine the relevance of such stereotypes twenty years after the fall of President Suharto in 1998. Drawing on fresh qualitative interview data collected in 2016 and early 2017, we critically examine the stereotypes of Chinese Indonesians' exclusiveness, their lack of nationalistic spirit and apolitical attitude, and we present a nuanced discussion of the complexity and evolution of the perceptions of non-Chinese towards the Chinese Indonesians in contemporary Indonesia. The study confirms the continuation of old stereotypes but also points out some changes in attitudes as a result of the post-1998 reform and liberalization of Chinese culture and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The much studied 1999 big bang of Indonesian government decentralization was, in the end, relatively muted and quickly undone in forestry. This paper assesses the big bang as it relates to forestry. It reviews the extensive body of literature that was produced in the years immediately after the big bang occurred, as well as siting it in the longer sweep of Indonesian forestry history. The paper finds that there has been a long-term centralizing tendency in forestry governance, with nation-building and assertion of power over resources in the periphery being key centralizing forces. However, there are valid reasons for decentralized forestry management, such as improving rural development and respecting traditional rights through more accountable and responsive institutional arrangements. It is suggested here that a number of changing factors in Indonesia and in forestry could provide opportunities for a more enduring decentralization in forestry. These include strengthening democratic institutions, a declining role for natural forests in wood production as plantations replace supplies, and a shift to forms of governance built on systems thinking. For these reasons, it is suggested that the promises of decentralized forest governance might be delivered, not as a central government-ordained big bang, but rather as a progressive, paradigmatic evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical writing on 'new town' developments on the edge of Asian cities emphasizes such negative effects as increased social segregation and exclusion, fragmentation of urban services, upward pressure on peri-urban land prices and loss of productive farmland. While not disputing such critical perspectives, this paper seeks to understand the position of one of Indonesia's pre-eminent developers and new town builders in the overall context of Indonesian development and the ongoing internationalization of real estate development in the region. The developer, known as Ciputra, has long been regarded as a pioneer in the development of Indonesia's real estate industry in general and new town development in particular. This paper examines how Ciputra's work as a developer intersects with the developmentalist goals and efforts of the Indonesian state and how many of these projects, which are commonly understood as exclusive enclaves, may be interpreted as a form of development which may be described as 'market modernism'. Pursuing this analysis, the paper then looks at Ciputra's efforts to internationalize this work and considers where it might fit with notions of national development elsewhere and how it may or may not engage with the transborder expansion of capitalist relations and the increasing commoditization of the Asian city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that recent inter-religious conflict in Indonesia highlights a need for the education system to address problems of religious intolerance through religious education and the religious culture in schools. The position of religion vis-à-vis the state and education indicates that such action is appropriate in the Indonesian context. The paper analyses approaches to inter-faith education and education for religious tolerance globally, and addresses some of the issues that arise. It then turns to Indonesia, outlining the curricula for religion as a school subject and recent changes in the education system. The ethnographic section of the paper examines how three exceptional private faith schools -- one Islamic and two Catholic -- in Yogyakarta and West Sumatra offer new ways of teaching inter-religious tolerance. The paper demonstrates how religious education in schools can foster inter-religious tolerance and understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste (1975-99), the Roman Catholic Church grew in importance to the East Timorese people. This is demonstrated by the large increase in Timorese affiliation to the Church: 25-30% of the populace were baptized Catholics in 1975 compared with over 90% in the 1990s. Various explanations have been offered for this growth, many of which identify 'extrinsic' factors such as the religious prescriptions of Indonesian law or the pressures of Islamization. While acknowledging the importance of these factors, this paper argues that certain intrinsic factors substantially influenced the identification of the Timorese experience of occupation with Catholic faith and solidarity. An understanding of these intrinsic factors can provide a more expansive understanding of Timorese culture, experience and history. Drawing on original research into the faith and experience of Timorese people during the occupation, the author explores the relationship between suffering, resistance and the Catholic faith of the Timorese in four areas: language; 'a spirituality of resistance'; martyrdom; and sanctuary and advocacy for the persecuted. The paper draws on the insights of French philosopher and literary critic, René Girard, regarding the importance of Christianity in the context of violence. Girard has argued for a particular understanding of the centrality of the victim in human culture and of how Christianity helps to reveal this centrality. Girard's perspective sheds light on how the Timorese came to terms with their experience of suffering and violence under Indonesian occupation through their identification with Jesus Christ and the Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the existence of Shi'ite women in Indonesia as a religious minority group. Although studies of numerous aspects of women's lives and organizations in an Indonesian context are increasing, there have been few on issues of religion and women, particularly on women from minority religious groups. It is only in the last few years that scholars have paid more attention to women's divisions of Muslim organizations, focusing mainly on Sunni Muslim women's organizations such as Aisyiyyah, Muslimat NU, Persistri and Al-Irsyad. However, information on gender and women's roles in minority religious groups is still hard to find. The paper fills this gap by working towards a better understanding of the position and the role of Shi'ite women in their Shi'ite community and within the Indonesian community in general. The subject of the study is Fathimiyyah, the women's division of Ikatan Jamaah Ahlul Bait Indonesia (IJABI, the Indonesian Council of Ahlul Bayt Associations), an Indonesian Shi'ite organization founded in 2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What makes a 'classic' in South East Asian studies? In addressing this question, the paper compares and contrasts the features of two books written in the late 1940s and early 1950s: Teodoro Agoncillo's The Revolt of the Masses and George Kahin's Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia. It examines the subject position of the authors and the politico-academic contexts in which their works were written, assessed and consumed. Specifically, the paper explores the following questions. To what extent did scholarly merit define a 'classic'? What features internal to particular area studies stimulated or impeded the making of a potential classic? What sort of political and academic architectures were conducive or unreceptive to potential candidates? In what ways, and to what extent, have the 'rules of the game' changed 60 years later? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of political parties in the parliamentary arena in Indonesia is in its infancy. This has led to various assumptions about the way parties act in the House of People's Representatives (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat, or DPR) that are based on scanty evidence and are heavily influenced by hostile attitudes to the DPR common in the media and the NGO community. The paper argues that, contrary to assertions that central party leaders exercise strict discipline over their members in parliament, coordination between party and caucuses, or fraksi, is weak, inconsistent and ad hoc. The paper concludes that this situation is facilitated by the eschewing of public votes through the process of decision making by 'consensus', a practice that is actually a vote by fraksi leaders to the exclusion of ordinary members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the regional network of the Indonesian chapter of Hizbut Tahrir (HT), a transnational Islamic group aiming to revive the Islamic Caliphate. Focusing on the chapter of HT in Indonesia, the paper highlights how Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) supports the activities of other HT chapters in the region and beyond. The key argument of the paper is that an understanding of HTI's transnational activism brings new insights to the current understanding of HT as a transnational movement. The author seeks to show the linkages between HTI and other HT chapters around the world and to analyse the implications of HTI's transnational activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the processes and outcomes of Indonesia's first ever direct local elections through an analysis of the 2006 mayoral election in Batam. The paper highlights and seeks to explain a paradox in contemporary Indonesia's local politics: that is, the weakening of political parties' influence in local political change at a time when political parties maintain a monopoly over the nomination of candidates for local government heads. The analysis shows that, instead of parties, party machines and party platforms, wealthy and politically influential local elites have come to dominate electoral competition for local government heads. The paper provides an understanding of how direct local elections have affected the political dynamics of Batam, which was an integral part of Soeharto's patronage system that upheld the New Order regime until 1998. Furthermore, the author suggests that analysing local political change can improve our understanding of Indonesia's political development more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nuaulu (Seram, Maluku, Indonesia) manage forest to provision sacred house building and ritual feasting through a system of protected areas (sin wesie), examined here in relation to sasi institutions and scare charms (matakau) that overlap in their functions. Sasi feature in wider debates about how customary practices might deliver conservation objectives. The paper analyses interconnections between these three forms of regulation in the context of deforestation, social change and the recent history of state management interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By exploring the sources of authority, the characteristics, the sociopolitical world, the roles and the relationships between village leaders, this paper shows that there have been only a few changes in local politics in western Madura, Indonesia, since the 1998 political reformation. In fact, despite the continual reformation processes, the circumstances of local politics in that area have remained relatively similar and have actually been characterized by continuity. There, local politics has been an arena of typical local leaders: the klebun (village heads), the kiai (religious leaders) and the blater (local strongmen). The struggle for influence within these village elites is centred not only on opportunities for private material benefits, but also on political competition, which is loosely organized, pragmatic and often mutually beneficial in nature. These village elites' continuous presence in the post-Suharto period is without doubt a reflection and a consequence of their constant influence over society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, financial cooperation within ASEAN Plus Three (APT) has made significant progress. It has covered bond market development, better access to financing, financial stabilization and capital market harmonization, and several initiatives have resulted in concrete programmes being implemented by the APT member countries (ASEAN states, China, South Korea and Japan). In the context of the changes taking place in the regional dynamic, this paper examines the role and involvement of Indonesian financial authorities towards the development of APT financial regionalism, focusing on issues related to regional liquidity arrangements and regional bond markets. The initial findings indicate that, in considering the potential benefits of warding off future economic shocks, there is a strong intention among Indonesian financial authorities to create a space in their national framework for regional liquidity arrangements. However, the authorities are unenthusiastic about the progress of regional governance on bond markets and, for that reason, are disinclined to transform their national regulatory space as it potentially hampers the Indonesian domestic market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have analysed media and communications in Indonesia by focusing on state control and resistance to it. Another approach emphasizes the press and society interacting. This paper analyses rumours spreading through East Java in October and November 1998, which held that 'ninjas' were targeting traditionalist Muslims, their leaders, preachers and the whole community. The author argues that these rumours developed through the interplay of the newspapers and local gossip. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religiosity education is an alternative to Catholic religious education in some Catholic schools in Yogyakarta. In religiosity education students learn to appreciate different religions. It was started in 1982 by the late Father Y.B. Mangunwijaya, and later developed by the Commission of Religious Education in the Diocese of Semarang (which includes Yogyakarta). This development took place at a time of tension for Christian schools, because, under the terms of a new law, they had to offer religious education specific to every student's religion. Religiosity education was successfully developed as a new curriculum, which met the criteria of multicultural education. Unfortunately, when the government Education Office in Yogyakarta did not accept religiosity education as an alternative to Catholic religious education, most Catholic schools withdrew from implementing it. The future of religiosity education in Yogyakarta was uncertain. However, this research shows that much Catholic religious education is currently undertaken in the same way as religiosity education, using the reflective pedagogy paradigm. So the spirit of religiosity education remains in these schools -- though without the actual term. The paper argues that the spirit of religiosity education should be maintained in Catholic schools in Yogyakarta in order to contribute to making Yogya a true 'city of tolerance'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the attitudes of high school students in Indonesia towards inter-ethnic and inter-religious socializing, courtship and marriage. It also explores how different personal characteristics and social conditions such as gender, ethnicity, type of school and community affect these attitudes. The basic findings come from a survey of more than 3,000 students in senior high schools in five provinces of Indonesia: Jakarta, Yogyakarta, West Sumatra, Central Kalimantan and Bali. Survey data were supplemented with data from interviews and focus group discussions with students and from participant observation in and around the same schools. The authors found that most students were positive about friendships with people of different ethnicities and different faiths. However, most students did not agree with inter-religious marriage, because they perceived that their religion forbad it. This research was part of a large team project examining how education can contribute to building a more tolerant and multicultural Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A majority of Jakarta's population resides in unregulated and densely populated settlements called kampung, with no access to utilities. The urban development policy of previous municipal governments focused strongly on modernization of the city to the neglect of the poor kampung population. The Kampung Improvement Programme, started in 1969, is considered a notable exception to this tendency. However, despite efforts to improve the conditions in kampung, the number of kampung dwellers is increasing. The governor of Jakarta aims to revitalize 350 kampung in his first term of office (by 2017). This paper investigates whether the land readjustment procedure that is applied in many countries may contribute to the realization of this ambition. The findings indicate that such is indeed the case and a pilot project is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic studies of local politics in post-Suharto Indonesia focus on the emergence of coalitions between parties and candidates, arguing that the entrenched and dominant role of political elites has effectively excluded non-elite interests from the electoral arena. The question, then, given the very real and serious obstacles to popular participation, is: what possibility is there for non-elite actors to engage in a meaningful way in electoral politics? One example of an attempt at such engagement can be found in the industrial city of Batam, where the local branch of the Federation of Indonesian Metalworkers Unions set up a purpose-specific structure to promote the political interests of its members in successive local executive and legislative elections. This paper argues that, despite the ultimate failure of the union's electoral experiments between 2004 and 2009, the process of 'learning by doing' embedded in them presents a significant challenge to analyses that discount the possibility of substantive popular participation in electoral politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the peace agreement has put an end to the 30-year-long civil conflict in the province of Aceh in Indonesia, poverty, parental loss, lack of opportunities and an old tradition have caused a growing number of Acehnese girls and boys to spend between three and ten years in residential Koranic schools [dayah or pesantren]. There, they process their experience of the conflict, be it direct or indirect. In this article, thanks to ethnographical data, the author explores this labour of transformation. An idea of resilience which is culturally based in local societies is analysed. Key issues are the difference between personal and social resilience, plus the transformations that a resilient process enhances in the very culture from which it stems. The dayah have proved very effective structures in facing the needs of the poorest Acehnese children. Nevertheless, the author argues, they tend to shape the children according to a general model that can create exclusion and crystallize pre-existing psychic suffering. This paper indicates that different visions of trauma and memory characterize different parts of the same society, and that selecting one or another is a political choice that is embedded in international policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international disarmament debate of the 1920s provided an important opportunity for the Netherlands to raise the international profile of its colonial interests. This paper examines how Dutch participants in the disarmament debate combined the long-lived Dutch principle of neutrality with the different geopolitical situation of the Dutch East Indies. It shows that (1) Dutch delegates did not strictly interpret and apply the principle of neutrality to their colony in the Pacific. This seems contrary to (2) the Dutch perception that the position in Europe was almost identical to the situation in the Pacific. The little attention paid to these different interests in the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies arguably developed from (3) a surprising naivety and provincialism concerning the geopolitical position of the Dutch East Indies. These three related conclusions illustrate the unfortunate composition of the delegations to the disarmament negotiations and the ignorance with which the Foreign Ministry intervened in colonial issues, arguably also indicating that Dutch colonial external relations and defence policy were ill-defined and not effectively adapted to the Pacific context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By exploring Islamic charitable clinics in Indonesia, this paper shows how community-based initiatives and zakat [Islamic charitable obligation] agencies have provided wider access to viable health services for destitute families in poor urban and rural areas. Zakat agencies, with their charitable clinics, have recently gained strong support from both society and the government. They have, for example, tried to bring a community response to the current social economic challenges through the revitalization of the zakat and Islamic charity practice. Low-priced, accessible and free medical assistance for poorer families and small economic enterprises provided by the zakat agencies reflect the endeavours of middle class Indonesian Muslims to translate Islamic discourse on social welfare in a more concrete way. The rise of Islamic charitable clinics, whose origins and motives can partly be linked to the Islamic discourse of the welfare of the ummah [the Islamic community], is without doubt a consequence of emerging interpretations of the meaning and function of Islamic aid in contemporary Indonesian Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the most important contributors to the study of Indonesia have observed that the concept of 'rakyat' [the people] has been central to the way Indonesians understand their nation. Yet until now there has been little attempt to consolidate and build on these observations by analysing the nuances and implications of understandings of the term 'rakyat'. In this paper, the author encourages the development of such research by critiquing its use in the period following the Second World War. The author analyses two key novels written by leading authors from opposing sides of a great cultural debate and shows that, regardless of the spiteful divide between left-wing and right-wing, the two authors viewed the rakyat as somewhat inferior. The rakyat was also seen as belonging to the village, but could transform into a violent yet manipulable throng in the city. Despite these pejorative implications, however, the rakyat was also key to the nation's aspirations. The author situates these developments in relation to a longer history of the term 'rakyat'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]