Southeast Asia: Table of Contents
Organizer and Chair: Andrew Causey, University of Texas, Austin
Discussant: Rita Smith Kipp, Kenyon College
Increasingly, Indonesians are feeling the pressures of living in a country driven by urges to modernize. National structures hope to inclucate them into one shared identity, while economic forces stimulate them to find new ways to enter both local and global markets. For many, there is the constant worry that the richness of Indonesia’s ethnic and cultural diversity will be subsumed by a more homogenous nation "community." Some respond to this worry by returning to the fundamental bases of their cultures, trying to preserve the old ways in spite of the strains of modern changes. Others, however, realize that to survive the current transformations, they must be innovative and persistent. Like the movement of traffic in any large Indonesian city, these individuals and groups slip around obstacles rather than confronting them. This panel is composed of four papers that exemplify some of the ways Indonesians have learned to collaborate with history while at the same time contesting it, and how they integrate innovations while maintaining cultural continuity. In all four cases, individuals have found ways to solve the difficult problems of conserving their past cultures as they construct contemporary identities.
Karl G. Heider, University of South Carolina
The Grand Valley Dani, one of the many Papuan peoples of the central highlands of Irian Jaya, are among the last ethnic groups to be brought into the Indonesian nation. In 1945 they were virtually unaware of the outside world. When the rest of the Indies gained independence in 1949, the Dutch held onto Netherlands New Guinea until its eventual transfer to Indonesia in 1962–3. In the 1960s the Indonesians, like the Dutch before them, were powerful, intrusive, but not particularly understandable facts of life.
By 1995, however, more than ten percent of the Grand Valley population was non-Dani from elsewhere in the Republic; most younger Dani spoke Indonesian; and many had become Christian. The events of 17 August 1995 reflected this particular Indonesianization. For the Dani themselves, these ceremonies were not so much the reworking of a past, but the creation of a past that was hardly theirs to begin with. For the other Indonesians living in the Dani region, there is real ambivalence about how to deal with the Dani: as real Indonesians or as definitive Other.
Juliet Lee, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
In contemporary Indonesia, history (sejarah) is not only a record of past events and persons but also a critical component in constructions of national identity. Indonesian nationalism seeks to integrate its disparate peoples through two key constructs: (1) that the nation is composed of distinct but internally homogeneous provinces; and (2) that each of these provinces possesses certain distinctive but comparable attributes, such as culture, language, and history. These histories, moreover, must didactically link the provinces to the nation by emphasizing the theme of united struggle (perjuangan) against Dutch colonialism. My paper explores tensions between identity and this history in the Ambon area of eastern Indonesia.
In 1950 separatist movement RMS (South Malukan Republic) tore Ambon into civil war. The Christian Ambonese who lead the movement hoped to stay under Dutch protection, while most Muslim Ambonese aligned themselves with the independent nation. When the RMS collapsed and Ambon became part of Indonesia, Muslim Ambonese were expected to put aside their differences with their former opponents and embrace a unitary Indonesian identity.
However, for some Muslim Ambonese, embracing this unity has meant negating their own sense of identity. This paper presents two intertwining stories told by Muslim Ambonese: a memory of unresolved violence from the RMS period, and an alternative history of the Ambonese hero Pattimura. These two accounts, while reclaiming a distinctly Muslim Ambonese identity according to the terms of Indonesian nationalist discourse, nevertheless subvert this discourse in representing an image of Ambonese society as violently and deeply divided.
Ward Keeler, University of Texas, Austin
Javanese officials, who make up a large portion of the Indonesian bureaucracy, look upon shadow plays as the acme of Javanese, indeed, Indonesian, culture. They see in it a bastion of Javanese values and a model of proper behavior for all Indonesians. Shadow puppeteers are happy to repeat official injunctions to "conserve Javanese culture" by promoting shadow plays. They speak of the need to attract young spectators in order to make sure that the art form continues to flourish and that younger Javanese remain aware of their cultural heritage. Three very popular puppeteers now mount performances predicated on the need to curry favor both among bureaucrats and young people. Highly competitive among themselves, these performers nevertheless opt for the same fundamental strategy in order to assure their popularity: they drain the tradition of narrative and musical complexity in order to make it accessible, fast-paced, and entertaining. The imitation of movies and television is self-conscious on the part of these puppeteers, and as of the mid-1990s it was very successful. Performances by top puppeteers were enormously popular. But the effacement of all ambiguity in the stories and the reliance on a pop tune musical repertoire make the genre reflect—rather than reflect upon—the Indonesian regime’s highly schematized and selective notion of what it means to conserve Javanese culture. In effect, conserving Javanese culture has come to mean maintaining outward forms while rendering them showy and neutral.
Andrew Causey, University of Texas, Austin
Tourism on Samosir Island (North Sumatra, Indonesia) has provided numerous business opportunities for Toba Batak wood carvers who have the tools and knowledge necessary to produce objects based on traditional forms and designs. Nevertheless, competition in the marketplace is intense, and carvers are always looking for ways to increase their sales to the often savvy and discriminating Western buyers. Some carvers make their money by selling in quantity: churning out inexpensive trinkets in only two or three styles. Others hope to obtain higher prices for unique objects created in dozens of uncommon, yet traditional, forms. The latter are constrained in their work because they lack antique prototypes to copy: so many old carvings were sold off by financially strapped Toba Bataks over the years that few, if any, remain in the area. Because of this, some carvers collect images of antique carvings (including drawings, photographs, publications, and photocopies) in folders that they store in their household cupboards under lock and key. This paper will discuss one Toba Batak carver and his folder of antique images—how he accumulates his secret images, and how he uses them to compete in the market of carved wood souvenirs.