Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

IDENTITY POLITICS OF INDONESIA’S NEW RICH 165
THE NEW MIDDLE CLASS: TOWARDS A
BOURGEOIS HEGEMONY?
The notorious conceptual confusion over the term ‘middle class’ has been widely
recognised and well documented, and permits no easy resolution. 6 Here, the term
is used primarily because its Indonesian equivalent, kelas menengah, has been
central in contemporary discourse, referring to a segment of the new rich. We
employ the problematic term in the popular sense, variously referring to the welleducated,
economically better-off urbanites, with structural occupations ranging
widely from the petty bourgeoisie to intellectuals, artists, middle-ranking
bureaucrats and managerial or technical professionals. More often than not, these
people use the term kelas menengah to identify themselves. Significantly, as
elsewhere, the middle class in Indonesia has been described as the main agent of
contemporary consumer culture and lifestyle. Such a broad and culturalist
description can be seriously problematic, but for our purposes it will suffice.
It is impossible to discuss the growth of the Indonesian new middle class in
isolation from those designated with other categories of the country’s new rich
(Muslims, Chinese or Westerners). Partly this is due to the fact that actual
individuals shift between, or belong to more than one of, these categories, and
partly to the fact that the formation of one category has implications for the others.
Nevertheless, the new middle class is not always reducible to these alternative
categories and needs to be considered separately.
One major characteristic of the new middle class that distinguishes this category
from other groups identified among the new rich is its highly cosmopolitan outlook
and activities. While cosmopolitanism denationalises, de-ethnicitises and
secularises social categories, in practice it also frequently reinforces class
structuration. As Yoon (1991:128) observes, Indonesia’s economic dynamics are
revitalising ‘a new capitalist class’. Strong cosmopolitanism alone, if not class
formation, has made a fundamental impact on the previously entrenched
imagination of social groupings in terms of such categories as East/West, Muslim,
women or indigenous Indonesians. It is important to stress, however, that while a
cosmopolitan consumer culture is of primary significance in this recasting of social
imagination, it is more than merely about class politics. 7
The formation of a new middle-class identity and the parallel establishment of a
capitalist hegemony in contemporary Indonesia operate on several fronts. First,
through intellectual debates, there is a fairly overt advocacy of liberalism, pro-market
sentiment and private property. Secondly, of equal importance, the state has
enacted a series of economic measures, both token and sincere, to redress
grievances over the alarming economic imbalance in financial assistance, loans
and corporate partnerships. Thirdly, and more curiously, is the recently popular
and unprecedented trend among top business figures to read poetry and sing
popular songs specifically prepared for performance in serious public gatherings.
Yoon (1991) has already recorded a fairly detailed history of the first two of
these developments in the period up to 1990. More than updating the