Feelings at the Margins

This book integrates social anthropological, political, and historical perspectives on the emotional impact of marginalization, stigmatization and violence in present-day Indonesia. The authors' combined focus on regional particularities and universal dimensions of experiencing and dealing with social, economic and psychological adversities targets scholars who share regional interest in the archipelago and researchers concerned with theoretical aspects of the interplay between power asymmetries, agency, emotion and culture.

Birgitt Röttger-Rössler is Professor at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin. Thomas Stodulka works there as a Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow.

Introduction-The Emotional Make-up of Marginality and Stigma Birgitt Röttger-Rössler and Thomas Stodulka From the Dutch East India Company to the Republic of Indonesia: Marginality as colonial and post-colonial heritage With its almost 250 million inhabitants, the Republic of Indonesia is the world's most populous archipelago, which as a nation is only outnumbered by China, India and the United States of America. Indonesia consists of more than 17,000 islands that spread across the equator, of which only around 6,000 are inhabited. Some of these islands are just small spits of sand, while others are large and densely populated, like Sumatra and Java, the latter being the most populous island with around 130 million inhabitants. The archipelago comprises more than three hundred ethnic groups, over seven hundred spoken languages, and stands out due to its variety of autochthonous and world religions. This variety seems surprising at a first glance, considering that 90 percent of the population officially identify themselves as Muslim. Before many parts of what is now called "Indonesia" converted to Islam, mainly during the fifteenth century, Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms dominated the archipelago. There are still significant minority groups who adhere to these belief systems, like the Balinese or the Tengger in East Java. Protestants and Catholics comprise around eight percent of the population and are mostly located in Eastern Indonesia and in cities all over the archipelago. As a secular nation, political elites stress religious tolerance among believers of different faiths, but this attitude has significantly changed, at least in some parts of the archipelago. Religiously, ethnically, and socio-politically motivated atrocities in Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Java, Maluku, Sumatra, Papua and also the former province of East Timor (the now independent nation of Timor Leste) have seriously clouded the Indonesian ideal of archipelagic harmony. When considering the question of marginality, one has to keep in mind that beyond its religious, ethnic and societal diversities, which bear great potential for conflict, oppression and discrimination, Indonesia's extensive geography of over 5,000 kilometers from West to East (about the distance between the West coast of Portugal to the Ural mountain range in Russia) must also be taken into account. Moreover, what is today defined as "Indonesia" did not exist before the young nation's declaration of independence on August 17, 1945. The Dutch instigated the potential for geographic marginality from the onset of their colonial endeavor to construct the archipelago as a trade and commerce union called the Netherlands East India Company (Vickers 2005, 10). Batavia, present-day Jakarta, was founded in 1619 and became the center of the Dutch-Asian trade networks; it has remained the political, economic, and business center of the Republic of Indonesia until today. Dutch colonial indirect rule created a Javanese class of collaborators, who profited from Batavia's geographic centrality in a flourishing colonial trade, that weaved the so-called "outer islands" (a label given to the islands east of Java by the Dutch colonizers) into their continuously expanding self-understanding of Batavia as the center of the vast archipelago. Batavia's increasing commercial influence undermined the power of former political centers at the newly constructed geographic and commercial peripheries in the archipelago's eastern islands. This hegemony also manifested in Java's central role in the struggle for independence, when former political alliances with the Dutch colonizers were cut and turned against them in the wakening of a national consciousness. Japanese occupation during the Second World War, which ended Dutch rule, encouraged the previously suppressed Indonesian independence movement. Two days after the surrender of Japan in August 1945, Sukarno, an influential nationalist leader, declared independence and was appointed President. "Bung Karno" maintained his power base by balancing the opposing forces of the military and the PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia; Communist Party of Indonesia), which was supposedly the biggest communist party outside The Soviet Union and China. This policy, also described as NASAKOM: an acronym based on the Indonesian words NASionalisme (nationalism), Agama (religion), and KOMunisme (communism), kept the increasingly authoritarian President Sukarno in power until an attempted coup to kill leading army generals on September 30, 1965 was countered by the army. What followed was a nation-wide massacre against alleged communists during which the PKI was blamed for the coup and destroyed. During the subsequent years of institutionalized genocide, the head of the military, General Suharto, outmaneuvered the politically weakened Sukarno and was formally appointed president in March 1968. The introduction of the lingua franca Bahasa Indonesia as national language and Sukarno's declaration of the young nation's Pancasila ideology in 1945 marginalized local languages (Kuipers 2001) and customs (adat) in their aspiration of a shared national identity. Indonesia's national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, which translates as "Unity in Diversity" from Old Javanese, highlights both the nation's desire for unity and the high potential for separation and marginalization. The Pancasila ideology is deeply ingrained into the Indonesian constitution and the everyday lives of Indonesian citizens by means of state performances, public monuments, and decrees. The ideology is taught from the onset of children's schooling in national school curriculum and consists of five founding principles, namely: nationalism (kebangsaan), humanism (kemanusiaan), rule of the peo-ple (kerakyatan), social justice (keadilan sosial), and belief in one God (ketuhanan yang maha Esa). In the realm of neighborhood and community life, the philosophy of mutual respect and cooperation in achieving a collective goal (gotong royong) is highly emphasized. Indonesia's current striving to foster democracy and abolish corruption, collusion, and nepotism needs to be regarded in relation to the turn of events resulting from the era of Indonesia's second president Suharto, who ruled the country for over 30 years, from 1968 to 1998, in a rather absolutistic style. The president, his family, and their cronies (also referred to as the "Suharto-Clan" or "Suharto dan kronco-kronconya") monopolized political and economic power, administered foundations (yayasan), controlled the media, and staged tainted myths on Indonesia's history of nation-building. Regarding the nation's economic development plans, the government and its technocrats, who mostly held diplomas and degrees from overseas universities, intended to accelerate the national economy by attracting foreign investment and establishing a labor-intensive industrial production. This "New Order" (Orde Baru) was publicly promoted by the prospective rhetoric of "progress and development" (kemajuan dan pembangunan). Suharto promoted himself as the "father of development" and promised his children-the Indonesian citizens-a prosperous future if they followed his orders. Contrary to his predecessor Sukarno, Suharto targeted a reduction of the population growth rate in order to foster the nation's market economy. As early as 1968 he founded a national institute for family planning that promoted a policy of Dua anak cukup (Two children are enough) in nationwide propaganda campaigns that was part of an institutionalized State Ibuism (Suryakusuma 1996; Brenner 1998; Robinson 2007). The term can be translated as "state-mother-ism" or "wife-ism" in which the mother or wife (ibu) was discursively framed as follower and servant of the father (bapak). State Ibuism was supposed to discipline women and hierarchically position the mother below the father. Regarding its powerful social force, this national policy did not only pro...