Gerry Van Klinken Perang Kota Kecil Kekerasan Komu
Gerry Van Klinken Perang Kota Kecil Kekerasan Komu
Gerry Van Klinken Perang Kota Kecil Kekerasan Komu
2 (Oktober 2009)
various ethnic groups with various kinship systems makes it necessary for
her to also discuss the position of women in the Indonesian tradition. This
distinguishes three different kinship systems: patrilineal, matrilineal, and
bilinieal. However, this seems to me to be the main weakness of this book. For
example, her argument that a suggestion a woman makes in a family meeting
in a patrilineal system is of no importance (p. 14). This statement indirectly
indicates that in a patrilineal system a woman’s position is not equal to that of
a man; this is in opposition to the outcome of anthropological research, such
as that of De Josselin de Jong whose socio-cultural evolutionary approach has
influenced Cora Vreede-De Stuers.
Despite the limitations mentioned above, Ruth Indah Rahayu, a researcher
at the Lingkar Tutur Perempuan, Indonesian Social History Institute who
provided the introduction to the Indonesian edition, states that this book
adds to our knowledge about the history of Indonesian women movement
through an anthropological study. The content and study method of this book
indicate that it is intended for readers who are interested in gender studies,
especially in Indonesia.
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Gerry van Klinken, Perang kota kecil: kekerasan komunal dan demokratisasi di
Indonesia. Translated by Bernard Hidayat. Jakarta: KITLV-Jakarta dan Yayasan
Obor Indonesia, 2007, xxii + 287 pp. [Originally published as Communal
violence and democratization in Indonesia: small town war. London and New York:
Routledge, 2007.] ISBN 978-979-461-652-9. Price: IDR 55,000 (soft cover).
to Makassar (South Sulawesi). About the same time, that is at the end of 1998
and in early 1999, other occurrences of communal violence happened in the
two other regions.
One was in Sambas, where the local Malay people drove the Madurese
out of their territory by. Another was in Poso, Central Sulawesi, where the
Muslims were fighting against Christians. This continued for a year. At
end of 1999, in North Maluku, 400 km. from Ambon, two cases of violence
occurred between Muslims and Christians, and between Muslims. After that,
in February 2001, another case of violence erupted in Central Kalimantan,
which was patterned like the one in West Kalimantan, where the local Dayaks
attacked the Madurese who lived in Sampit, a coastal town. In general, the
duration of these six incidents of violence turned from weeks into years.
Between 1990-2003, they have caused hundreds to thousands of deaths, and
tens even hundreds of thousands were displaced. First, the incidents took place
at the district level, and later expanded to the provincial level. The violence
was communal, and involved segments of society that brought in ethnicity
and/or religion, and less explicitly class gaps into the conflicts, but they were
not against the government.
The conception of the political consensus of the “Pancasila” ideology, has
failed and Van Klinken points to the increase in the presence of the issue of
disintegration in the public discourse. All of a sudden, the word “disintegration”
appeared in the news in June 1998, only a few days after the May riots, which
set in motion President Soeharto’s downfall. Subsequently, there was a trend
among the public against the idea of disintegration and chaos, and in favor of a
substitute, even though it emerged locally, in the alternative idea of nationhood.
The idea of “Putra Daerah” or “Local People” was elevated to express the
identity of local ethnicities throughout the post-1998 period. Van Klinken has
researched this local social construction in places where cases of violence took
place. He especially paid attention to the relations between the local institutions,
the roles of the local elites, political parties, churches, mosque organizations,
non-governmental organizations, and pressure groups in the society that helped
to mobilize the masses to go out to rally in the streets.
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M.C. Ricklefs, Polarising Javanese Society; Islamic and other visions (c. 1830-1930).
Leiden: KITLV Press, 2007, xviii + 297 pp. ISBN 978-90-6718-276-8. Price: EUR
22.50 (soft cover).