Rebel with a Cause: Ahok and Charismatic Leadership in Indonesia

The representation of minority ethnic communities is an acute issue in many countries in East and Southeast Asia. In Muslim-majority Indonesia, the rise of Jakarta’s governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, nicknamed “Ahok”, was a surprising phenomenon given his ethnic and religious minority status as a Christian of Chinese descent. Even more surprising was his initial success as a politician despite a controversial style of communication that appears to contrast with prevailing cultural norms. We argue that the reason for Ahok’s unlikely rise to prominence lay in his ability to reshape the political narrative by shifting the focus of “Indonesian-ness” away from ethnic or religious identity to moral values based on transparency and integrity. Ethnicity and identity remain powerful forces in Indonesian politics, but we argue that Ahok has established a charismatic relationship with followers by positioning himself in opposition to some of the more pressing concerns in contemporary Indonesia.     

Decolonising Indonesia,Past and Present

ABSTRACT

In the pursuit of an “authentically Indonesian” nation-state, for decades Indonesians have denied the civil rights of fellow citizens for allegedly being less authentically Indonesian. A key to the longstanding efficacy of such exclusionary ethno-nationalism is the failure to recognise the trans-national solidarity that helped give birth to independent Indonesia. Such solidarity is best illustrated in the extraordinary case of the making in Australia of a documentary film, Indonesia Calling (1946). A starting point of this article is the proposition that Indonesia’s cultural politics of the past and its future is never free from a protracted battle over what the nation is allowed, or willing, or able to forget and remember from its past. Mere disclosure of Indonesia’s past history with its cosmopolitan features will not necessarily lead to changes for the better in contemporary Indonesia, especially if the new revelation runs counter to the interests of those in power. Nonetheless, no substantial and long-term change for the better is possible for Indonesia without serious, open, critical re-examination of the revolutionary making of the Republic, and due acknowledgment that inauthenticity, plurality and trans-national solidarity are the hallmarks of the process.     

Confronting Incel: exploring possible policy responses to misogynistic violent extremism

ABSTRACT

Sexually and socially frustrated ‘Incels’ have committed acts of violent extremism in North America and pose increasing threat to Australia and other industrialised settings. We consider policy responses to a form of misogynist violence that targets men and women indiscriminately. Provocatively, we advocate securitising Incel. We consider how securitisation need not only emerge from supportive framings in the media and public discourse, but can also be an active agent in creating them. We then engage with the appropriate responses. Reviewing the likely successful policy responses indicates the problematic nature of previous securitisation efforts. We argue that the best response is to try to understand and engage the antagonised other prior to radicalisation, and that this can be successfully enacted through ‘routine’ rather than ‘exceptional’ types of governance. However, securitisation remains a necessary first step in unlocking the resources and political will for tackling the threat that Incel poses.     

Problematic Conjugations: Women’s Agency,Marriage and Domestic Violence in Indonesia

Abstract:

This paper examines women’s experience of domestic violence within marriage in Makassar, South Sulawesi. It analyses the meaning of marriage for men and women, the roles of men and women within marriage, shifts in marriage practices – particularly the shift from arranged to “love” marriage – and unequal gender positions within marriage. We discuss some salient issues in the “margins of marriage” in Indonesia: polygyny and constructions of masculinity that condone the practice of polygyny/affairs, and attitudes towards divorce, particularly for women. We then examine women’s perception of the causes and triggers of domestic violence as revealed by fieldwork data, using the lens of women’s agency. Our findings are that women perceive that their expressions of agency – for instance in challenging men’s authority, moral righteousness and adequacy as breadwinners – are the most common triggers for male violence within marriage. Finally, we discuss the difficulty for women of escaping domestic violence, thereby getting some purchase on the relative capacity of women to resist, deflect or deal with the violence.     

“Destroy and Kill ‘the Left’”: Duterte on Communist Insurgency in the Philippines with a Reflection on the Case of Suharto’s Indonesia

This essay focuses on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s speech delivered in December 2018 regarding his intent to wipe out the communist elements in the country. It first provides a background on the fifty-year-long communist insurgency in the Philippines and the peace process under Duterte’s administration. It then historically reflects on the case of coordinated killings of communists in Indonesia during Suharto’s regime to examine whether Duterte’s plan of an “all-out war” and “strategic hamletization” mirrors the rhetoric and strategies carried out by the Indonesian military. The last section surveys the potential outcome of Duterte’s proclamation and less violent options for his administration in addressing the communist insurgency in the Philippines.     

The greening of Oscar Wilde: situating Ireland in the Wilde wars

The importance of Ireland to an understanding of Oscar Wilde has been the subject of contentious discussion in recent years. For one group of critics Wilde has been considered “a militant Irish republican”, an Irish “terrorist by another name”, whose literary practices resembled those of “guerrilla warfare”, an ardent Home Ruler and Parnellite, and committed Irish nationalist whose work is suffused with references to Ireland and the Irish Question, very influenced by his Irish background and political views, possibly shaped by a genuine interest in and awareness of Irish folklore and the Irish oral tradition, and deeply engaged with issues of Irish identity and culture. For an opposing set of critics Wilde should at best be considered a “reluctant” Irish patriot, who referenced his Irish “identity” only when it suited him commercially, was more interested in exploiting intellectual fashions and fads than making genuine political points, was a shallow thinker in most areas of life and certainly didn’t use his writing to pursue Irish nationalist issues, was probably more of a British imperialist than an Irish nationalist, knew precious little about Irish folklore or Irish oral traditions, and his works contain few if any references to Irish issues or themes. The differences between these two interpretive communities certainly seem quite large, and these differences have been emphasised in a disputatious manner which has shed more heat than light on the messy matter of Wilde’s national identity. In this article I want to begin to clear up some of the misunderstandings I think have crept into this critical dispute and suggest fruitful ways in which opposing critics can come together in if not harmony then perhaps a less acrimonious, more productive way.     

Austronesian aboriginality or the ritual organization of the state? A controversy on the political dimension of temple networks in early bali

Since early colonial times, Dutch government officials as well as anthropologists have made a distinction between what have been called “Bali Aga”, the allegedly aboriginal inhabitants of Bali (Indonesia), and those inhabitants associated with title‐bearing groups oriented towards royal courts and brahmana ritual specialists. While the former have been described as constituting a society characterized by equality and democracy, the latter have been portrayed as being almost the opposite. This article questions the basic assumptions about the “Bali Aga”, especially the role of their ritual networks focusing on regional temples. These have been interpreted as a demonstration of equality and of a bounded “Bali Aga” ethnicity. This article suggests a different interpretation, one in which the ritual networks are understood as basic segments, not restricted to the Bali Aga, in the ritual organization of the pre‐colonial Balinese state.     

From terrorism to ‘radicalization’ to ‘extremism’: counterterrorism imperative or loss of focus?

This article argues that there has been an increasing convergence of the discourses of terrorism, radicalization and, more lately, extremism in the UK and that this has caused counterterrorism to lose its focus. This is particularly evident in the counterterrorism emphasis on non‐violent but extremist ideology that is said to be ‘conducive’ to terrorism. Yet, terrorism is ineluctably about violence or the threat of violence; hence, if a non‐violent ideology is in and of itself culpable for terrorism in some way then it ceases to be non‐violent. The article argues that there should be a clearer distinction made between (non‐violent) extremism of thought and extremism of method because it is surely violence and the threat of violence (integral to terrorism) that should be the focus of counterterrorism. The concern is that counterterrorism has gone beyond its remit of countering terrorism and has ventured into the broader realm of tackling ideological threats to the state.     

Unintended consequences: an examination of Australia's ‘historic policy shift’ on East Timor

The Howard government's foreign policy objectives concerning East Timor remain the subject of intense historical debate. Given that some Indonesians harbour suspicions about Australia's role in East Timor's independence, it is important to reflect on Australia's diplomacy throughout this period. This article draws on 15 interviews with former politicians and officials—including Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer—to argue that in 1998, Australia's foreign policy was focused on supporting Indonesia's democratisation process and maintaining the bilateral relationship. It was only when Indonesia moved towards a ‘special status’ of autonomy for East Timor that Australia reconsidered its own position. Although rarely acknowledged, Australia's policy shift actually precipitated outcomes that it had sought to avoid. As such, Habibie's decision to allow self-determination in East Timor can only be viewed as an unintended consequence of Australian diplomacy—independence was never the objective of Australian foreign policy.     

Explaining Canada–US Differences in Attitudes Toward Crime and Justice: An Empirical Test of S.M. Lipset’s Account

Despite cultural similarities between Canada and the United States, some observers contend that significant differences remain in attitudes and values between the two countries. For example, Lipset has observed that “efforts to distinguish Canada and the United States almost invariably point to the greater respect for law and order and those who uphold it north of the border”. Lipset’s argument is that Canadian values are based on the nation’s founding principles of “Peace, Order and Good Government” while American values stem from the country’s revolutionary origins and are based on the values of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” We test Lipset’s observations, and those of some of his critics, using parallel surveys administered to university students in two institutions on either side of the Canada–US border. This is a very demanding test of his arguments so the supportive evidence we uncover for his arguments is significant.     

Of Peaceable Kingdoms and Lawless Frontiers: Exploring the Relationship between History,Mythology and Gun Culture in the North American West

The United States is more violent than Canada and it always has been. Even in the face of mass shootings, most Americans remain culturally and politically resistant to the sorts of gun control measures that have long existed in Canada. America’s unique gun culture is embedded in the history, imagery, and especially the mythology of the American frontier. Canada had its own frontier experience and has its own history of gun ownership, but it does not have a parallel gun culture. This article presents a comparative analysis of post-Civil War/post-Confederation frontier history and mythology, and examines the construction of contrasting cultural narratives of America’s “Wild West” and Canada’s “Mild West.” It suggests that US–Canadian differences in gun laws and gun culture—even in the borderlands region of Alberta/Montana—are better explained by the countries’ two different frontier mythologies than by their actual western histories.     

Intersections of Gender/Sex,Multiculturalism and Religion: Young Muslim Minority Women in Contemporary Bali

This article examines the experience of Muslim female students in high schools in Bali. Since the religion of the majority of the population of Bali is Balinese Hinduism, these young women are part of a Muslim minority – unusual in Indonesia. Data were obtained through interviews and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2010. Interviewees were mainly Muslim students, but teachers and Muslim parents were also consulted. Some of the students are a minority within a state senior high school, and some attend a private Islamic school in Denpasar. Interviewees identified choice of school and the wearing of the jilbab (Islamic head-scarf) as issues for them in their everyday lives. The Islamic school is (mis-)perceived as a morally safe environment by parents. The state school does not allow the wearing of the jilbab, showing the limits of multiculturalism in Bali. While the jilbab should express piety and morality, there is some hypocrisy among some young jilbab-wearing women. Some young women have internalised the Balinese objection to poor Muslim immigrants, and feel inferior when they wear the jilbab. The data suggest that their female sex/gender flags their unequal Muslim-minority status in ways that Muslim-minority men do not experience.     

Putting Religion into Multiculturalism: Conceptualising Religious Multiculturalism in Indonesia

This article examines the ways in which multiculturalism as a policy, discourse and practice has been conceptualised, implemented and applied in Indonesia. The post-Suharto democratisation process has allowed new space for the expression of previously oppressed identities. While literature on multiculturalism focuses mainly on ethnic and racial difference, this article endeavours to broaden the scope of the term to include religious difference, and evaluate the possibility of “religious multiculturalism”. It addresses the following questions: What are the different interpretations of multiculturalism? How is multiculturalism different from pluralism? How is multiculturalism understood and implemented in Indonesia? How is the Western discourse of multiculturalism different from Indonesian discourses of diversity (kebhinnekaan or kemajemukan), heterogeneity (keberagaman) and unity-in-diversity (Bhinneka Tunggal Ika)? And lastly, in what ways can the concept of multiculturalism be expanded to accommodate multi-religiosity?     

‘They Finally Found Out that We Really Are Men’: Violence,Non‐Violence and Black Manhood in the Civil Rights Era

This article explores how peaceful protest and armed resistance reflected and shaped certain gender identities in the southern US civil rights movement and the Black Power movement, and reveals much about the significance of violence for ‘marginalised masculinities’ within the African American freedom struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. In the Deep South, civil rights organisers found that their non‐violent strategy's connotations of effeminate submissiveness hampered attempts to win over black men to the movement's cause. Conversely, those African Americans who decided to use armed force to protect the movement against racist attacks were proud of their ability to defend themselves and their communities. A comparison of armed resistance efforts in southern civil rights campaigns with those of post‐1965 Black Power groups such as the Black Panther Party shows both commonalities and differences with regard to the inter‐relationship between self‐defence and gender. In the southern movement, the affirmation of manhood remained a by‐product of the physical imperative to protect black lives against racism. Among Black Power militants and their black nationalist precursors, self‐defence, while initially intended to stop police brutality and other racist oppression, ultimately became mainly a symbol of militant black manhood. The Black Power movement's affirmative message countered stereotypes of black male powerlessness and instilled a positive black identity into many activists, but the gendered discourse it produced also tended to perpetuate black women's subordination.     

“The impulse is cartographic”: Counter-Mapping Indonesia’s Resource Frontiers in the Context of Coloniality

Resource frontiers continue to expand globally across Indigenous lands as states and corporations enact forms of expropriation redolent of the formal colonial era for the sake of extraction. In the face of this expansion, the burden remains largely on frontline communities to defend their ecologies using the tools available to them. Across Indonesia’s resource frontiers, the “cartographic impulse” Edward Said once named to describe anticolonial struggles is apparent in the form of counter-mapping, which seeks to secure adat (customary) rights and defend Indigenous lands against extractivist expansion. This article revisits this practice and argues that the counter-map and its goals remain tenuous—mapping in its scalable form risks processing complex and multi-dimensional ways of relating to land into two-dimensional representations appropriate for a liberal property regime, while adat itself is a contingent and mutable legal goal. Ultimately, the article echoes emerging calls for the burden to be shifted away from frontline communities through the pursuit of just transitions to post-extractivism. Pemburuan sumber daya ke wilayah-wilayah baru yang masih kaya (resource frontiers) di tanah masyarakat adat semakin meluas secara global, seiring praktek-praktek perampasan berbau kolonial yang dilakukan oleh negara dan korporasi demi tujuan ekstraksi. Berhadapan dengan ekspansi ini, masyarakat di gugus depanlah yang menanggung beban terbesar untuk mempertahankan lingkungan hidup mereka, dengan menggunakan sarana yang tersedia bagi mereka. Di wilayah-wilayah baru ekstraksi sumber daya alam di Indonesia, apa yang pernah disebut Edward Said sebagai ‘cartographic impulse’ untuk menggambarkan perjuangan anti-kolonial terlihat jelas dalam bentuk counter-mapping, yang bertujuan untuk mempertahankan tanah-tanah adat dari ekspansi ekstravistik. Artikel ini hendak meninjau kembali praktek counter-mapping ini dan berargumen bahwa counter-map dan tujuan-tujuannya masih lemah– mapping dalam bentuk yang dapat diukur mengalami masalah dengan persoalan proses dan persoalan corak multidimensioanal dari hubungan dengan tanah dalam kaitan dengan representasi dua-dimensi yang hanya cocok dengan rezim kepemilikan liberal; sementara adat sendiri adalah tujuan legal yang sifatnya kontingen dan terbuka terhadap perubahan. Pada akhirnya artikel ini ikut menyuarakan seruan yang banyak muncul, bahwa beban harus dialihkan dari masyarakat frontline melalui usaha untuk transisi-transisi yang adil menuju post-extractivism.     

From Islamism to nationalism in Aceh,Indonesia

ABSTRACT. This article analyses a dramatic political transformation in Indonesia's Aceh province. In the 1950s, an Islamic rebellion (Darul Islam) aimed not to separate Aceh from Indonesia, but rather to make Indonesia an Islamic state. A successor movement from the 1970s was GAM, the Free Aceh Movement. GAM, however, was essentially secular‐nationalist in orientation, sought Aceh's complete independence and did not espouse formal Islamic goals. The transformation is explained by various factors, but the key argument concerns the relationship between Islam and nationalism. The defeat of Darul Islam had caused Aceh's Islamic leaders to focus on what they could achieve in Aceh alone, ultimately giving rise to Acehnese nationalism and the secessionist goal. However, Islam remained a point of commonality with, rather than difference from, majority‐Muslim Indonesia. The logic of nationalist identity construction and differentiation thus caused Aceh's separatist leaders, despite being personally devout, to increasingly downplay Islamic symbols and ideology.     

Sovereignty in the North Moluccas: Historical Transformations

The re-establishment of the Sultanates of Ternate and Tidore (North Moluccas) in the wake of the political decentralization in Indonesia was accompanied in 1999 by violent confrontations of Muslims and Christians, in which the Sultans reactivated their “traditional” sovereign claims on their former overseas dependencies in Halmahera. This article examines the representations and ritual exchanges, in terms of which from the mid-nineteenth century onwards sovereignty used to be conceptualized and enacted in the societies concerned. Focusing on the monetary dimensions of these models of sovereignty and tributary relations, it analyzes the interventions that were implemented successively by the Sultanate of Ternate, the Dutch Colonial Government and missionaries of the Dutch Reformed Protestant Church. It is argued that these interventions eventually resulted in transformations of the diarchically structured and cosmologically authorized models of sovereignty into religiously grounded claims at universal sovereignty, thus paving the way for inter-religious violence.     

From a Politics of Conviction to a Politics of Interest? The Changing Ontologics of Youth Politics in India and Nicaragua

There exists a longstanding association between youth and revolution, partly due to the assumption that the politics of the former are inherently “prefigurative” in nature. Youth politics can often actually be quite conservative, however, as can be observed in contemporary Nicaragua, where rather than attempting to “change the world” in the way that previous militant youth generations were famously associated with, current Sandinista youth activists engage primarily in forms of neo‐patrimonial clientelism. At the same time, the evolving experience of everyday political action by university educated youth in Uttar Pradesh, India highlights how economic endeavours can, under certain circumstances, become a form of politics, often of a more transformative variety than classic forms of collective mobilization. The comparison of Nicaragua and India thus highlights the critical importance of considering the wider environment within which youth mobilize and take action in order to understand how and why particular political “ontologics” emerge.     

Terror and Territory

Abstract: While geographical aspects of the “war on terror” have received extensive discussion, the specifically territorial aspects have been less well explored. This article engages with the relation between territory and terror through three main angles. First, the relation between terrorist training camps and the absence of sovereign power over territory in particular places is examined through a broadening of Agamben's notion of a “space of exception”. Second, the portrayal of al‐Qaeda and militant Islam more generally as a deterritorialised organisation is interrogated, noting the territorial aspects of its operations. Third, the territorial responses are studied, particularly looking at the way the international legal term of territorial integrity, with its dual meanings of territorial preservation and territorial sovereignty is under increased threat. This is illustrated with a study of Afghanistan and Iraq and particularly through an analysis of the 2006 war in Lebanon.     

Territorializing spatial data: Controlling land through One Map projects in Indonesia and Myanmar

Once confined to paper, national cartographic projects increasingly play out through spatial data infrastructures such as software programs and smartphones. Across the Global South, foreign donor-funded digital platforms emphasize transparency, accountability and data sharing while echoing colonial projects that consolidated state-based territorial knowledge. This article brings political geography scholarship on state and counter-mapping together with new work on the political ecology of data to highlight a contemporary dimension of territorialization, one in which state actors seek to consolidate and authorize national geospatial information onto digital platforms. We call attention to the role of data infrastructures in contemporary resource control, arguing that territorializing data both extends state territorialization onto digital platforms and, paradoxically, provides new avenues for non-state actors to claim land. Drawing on interviews, document review, and long-term fieldwork, we compare the origins, institutionalization and realization of Indonesia and Myanmar's ‘One Map’ projects. Both projects aimed to create a government-managed online spatial data platform, building on national mapping and management traditions while responding to new international incentives, such as climate change mitigation in Indonesia and good democratic governance in Myanmar. While both projects encountered technical difficulties and evolved during implementation, different national histories and political trajectories resulted in the embrace and expansion of the program in Indonesia but reluctant participation and eventual crisis in Myanmar. Together, these cases show how spatial data infrastructures can both extend state control over space and offer opportunities for contesting or reimagining land and nation, even as such infrastructures remain embedded in local power relations.