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

190 CULTURAL TENSIONS IN RURAL INDONESIA
their independence through norms, rituals and symbols strikingly similar to those
cherished in London, Paris, Washington and Moscow. But this was always done with
some local flavour. What has been called the ‘New Priyayi’ (new nobility) in
Indonesia refers to the emergence of a Western-educated middle class during the
1930s and 1940s (Frederick 1989). These nationalist intellectuals became leaders
of the Indonesian revolution, and the culture-builders of the new nation (that
European invention). Some read Dale Carnegie or Karl Marx, and many spoke
perfect Dutch. But they marked themselves off from European politicians by
talking about resurrecting the grand Majapahit state, and by seeking to find a
cultural essence that could unite all Indonesians. And not only in Indonesia. The
first sentences in Vietnam’s Declaration of Independence in 1945 were direct
translations from the American Declaration of Independence and the French
Declaration of Man and the Citizen. But President Ho Chi Minh singled himself out
by wearing the simple clothes of a Tonkinese peasant. The independence rally was
organised in a way bearing striking resemblance to the Grande Federation of Paris
in 1790, with the addition of microphones and automobiles, but Ho Chi Minh read
out his speech under a parasol reminiscent of the ones which used to shield the
Vietnamese emperor’s mandarins from excessive sunshine. 1
All culture-builders, but especially the new rich, must relate not only to their
modernity and where they are going to, but also to where they come from and what
they carry with them. When we investigate the emergence of the new rich, who can
perhaps be described as oriented upwards, outwards and onwards, we must also be
sensitive to their history and what they have retained. Many of the new rich we
discuss in this volume are ‘class travellers’ with a background under very different
social and cultural conditions. These people, mainly of lower middle-class or upper
working-class background, have in the fast-expanding economies found the
opportunity to climb their way through the class system. They have made the
perilous move away from the peasantry or proletariat into the petty bourgeoisie,
displaying lifestyles which they often lack the means or social skills to sustain. The
new in the ‘new rich’ thus relates to their social position, more than their wealth. We
are witnessing the development of a new and global value system in which social
positions are no longer determined by seniority and descent, and morals no longer
by position and the maintenance of order. It is this process that I will refer to in this
chapter as ‘modernity’, a transition away from intimacy and community, towards
disembeddedness and individualism.
But the new rich cannot adopt a Western way of living without reference to a
social and cultural context. Although the new rich sometimes isolate themselves in
their fancy mansions, and eagerly display their new values and habits, they do so in
a social and cultural community in which modern values are not always normative.
The lifestyles of the new rich are often under fire, particularly away from the
shopping centres and discothèques of the metropolis. It is a little-noted fact in the
globalisation literature that most people still live outside the major cities. Southeast
Asia has a relatively low degree of large-city urbanisation, and during the last
decade of economic growth, the countryside has to a large extent absorbed the