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

HANS ANTLÖV 203
cosmopolitan Bandung or Jakarta and who now refuse to return to rural
Sariendah. To make things more complicated, some subordinates argue that they
must break away from the traditional patterns of hierarchy and dependency.
Alternatively, some new rich simply do not want to discard existing social relations
and the spirit of communality, because traditional authority, patronage and
restrictions on conflict work to their advantage.
In short, we cannot in Indonesia find a clear division between the modern and
the traditional or between the rich and the poor. Rather we find a mixture of
modernity, globality and community that repudiates any such dichotomies. When
we hear of ‘community’ we should not think of tradition only; when we hear of
‘global influence’ we should not think of modernity only. Both have been
remoulded, revised, even blended together in their localised encounter with the
Indonesian reality. In curious ways, the result is a mix of old and new, traditional
and modern, local and national, community and state. The state has adopted both
modernity and community, while the village maintains the community spirit along
with its obligations towards the state.
There are in all communities certain norms and manners that people are
expected to subscribe to. Not even in the fancy suburbs of Jakarta (or New York)
can people live totally separated from such values. A village in Java is sustained
through a joint ideology of labour-sharing and intimacy. If a villager does not
maintain the appearance of being a good neighbour and kinsman, there are
several cultural and ideological mechanisms through which people react. Some of
the new rich who have achieved their wealth fast and spend it on personal
consumption, or who have isolated themselves from the rest of the community, are
put under negative community sanction.
Within a polity of affinity and community spirit, pretension and privacy among
peers are strictly condemned. If the wealth of a household suddenly increases, if
the family evades rules of generosity, or if people boast and brag, various forms of
negative sanction are at hand. One penalising sanction is to withhold the daily
gestures of neighbourly respect, to speak rudely, and not to invite the arrogant
person to various social events. Another common sanction is to condemn
unpopular people for being un-Islamic. The Islamic way of achieving wealth,
according to villagers, is to work hard and diligently. Without work, nobody can
become rich. But people say that a number of families in Sariendah have become
rich without any work. They are allegedly involved in what is called ‘black magic’
(ilmu hitam). To account for their wealth, but also to sanction their uncommunal
manners, people say that these OKB families have entered a spiritual treaty with a
wild boar. In exchange for prosperity in this life, the new rich family is said to have
promised a spirit the regular sacrifice of a child at Mount Ciremay outside Cirebon.
When family members die, their souls must be offered to the spirit, and they may
themselves become boars. This prac tice is well known in Indonesia and known as
munjung among the Sundanese. It is not the practice of munjung as such that
bothers people, but the new rich’s lack of correct appearance and their moderen
attitude. Only the rich, and especially the newly rich, are accused of munjung.