lost in mall

V E R H A N D E L I N G E N
VA N H E T KO N I N K L I J K I N S T I T U U T
VOOR TAAL-, LAND- EN VOLKENKUNDE

255

lizzy van leeuwen

LOST IN MALL
An ethnography of middle-class
Jakarta in the 1990s

KITLV Press
Leiden
2011
Published by:
KITLV Press
Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
(Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies)
P.O. Box 9515
2300 RA Leiden
The Netherlands
website: www.kitlv.nl
e-mail: kitlvpress@kitlv.nl

KITLV is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of

Arts and Sciences (KNAW)

Cover: Creja ontwerpen, Leiderdorp

ISBN 978 90 6718 311 6

© 2011 Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without per-
mission from the copyright owner.

Printed in the Netherlands

 Contents

preface vii

acknowledgments ix

introduction 1

I bintarese cosmologies 29

II scenes of suburban family life 67

III ‘bring boldoot!’ – mayhem, misery and the middle class 119

IV celebrating civil society in the shopping malls 153

V climate control, class and the nation 197

VI tear gas for christmas 231

conclusion 261

glossary and abbreviations 269

bibliography 275

index 291
 Preface

I am not really surprised to hear from friends in Jakarta that Aburizal

Bakrie will be a frontrunner in the next presidential election, due to be
held in 2014. Bakrie is a notorious business tycoon and latter-day politi-
cian; he and his family prospered greatly under Suharto’s reign and in
2010, his net worth was calculated at US$ 2.5 billion and is still growing.
Who would have expected the old guard to vanish, reform or repent?
As its members are shrewdly making their political comebacks, reform-
ist politics in Indonesia will suffer a temporary setback. Suharto was
inspired and instructed by colonial rule and, just as in the Netherlands,
it takes a few generations to overcome this experience.

vii
 Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research for
funding the project during the period 1999-2003. I am grateful for the
unwavering support that Professor Frances Gouda has given me during
this long-term enterprise. I much appreciate Dr Eveline Buchheim’s
critical and editorial comments and Dr Klarijn Anderson-Loven’s final
editing of my manuscript.

ix
x


Introduction

Since my first trip to Indonesia, in 1988, my distant relatives in Jakarta

have been eager to take me to festive occasions that could potentially
enhance their social standing. Over the years, I have accompanied them
to wedding parties, circumcision festivities, birthday celebrations, house-
warmings and the occasional funeral, always dressed up in accordance
with the expert insight of my aunties. Gradually, as I stopped feeling like
a mere party trophy, I became interested in the peculiar, formal style of
these social gatherings: the strict protocol, the solemn format, the small
made-up traditions and rituals, and the puzzling absence of any sign of
gaiety. In the early 1990s, as parties given by upmarket Jakartans became
more and more elaborate, I decided to benefit from my experiences by
incorporating them into my master’s thesis in cultural anthropology at
the University of Amsterdam. My fieldwork, conducted in 1994 among
Jakarta’s upper middle classes and millionaires, resulted in an account
of the ‘air-conditioned’ lifestyles and environments of the so-called New
Rich, as they evolved against the rigidifying background of New Order
rule (Van Leeuwen 1997a). Acclaim for this publication came largely
from long since retired Indies colonials, several of whom wrote to assure
me that ‘back in the 1930s, things were exactly the same in Batavia’. I
took these intimations for granted at the time.
A striking phenomenon during my 1994 fieldwork was the repeated
denial of several very affluent informants that they belonged to the
better-off section of society. At that time discussing the Indonesian
social strata was a popular pastime among the New Rich, whose work-
ing knowledge of Anglo-American sociology was often impressive.
Nevertheless, they claimed that they, as well as their family and friends,
were ‘just middle class, perhaps slightly above’. I was intrigued by these
middle-class aspirations of the conspicuously wealthy. Did they consider
‘the middle class’ as their community from which they did not want to
alienate themselves? I speculated that assuming a middle-class identity
was a pragmatic matter involving both safety and moral status. After all,
|  Lost in mall

the Indonesian ‘new middle class’ was believed, by foreign observers as

well as by itself, to play a crucial role in demokratisasi, ‘democratization’,
a topic of much discussion during the last decade of President Suharto’s
authoritarian regime. Over the years, the much-used term demokratisasi
had acquired new connotations, in particular during reformasi times, af-
ter the stepping down of Suharto in May 1998. Its use became part of
popular culture, as happened with the term reformasi itself. For example,
reformasi lent its name to a fried-rice dish, nasi reformasi (reformasi-style rice),
which was commonly available from road side stalls.1 Meanwhile, intel-
lectuals appearing on television talk shows began showing a preference
for discussing ‘civil society’ and ‘good governance’ as foci of political
change, possibly inspired by the thriving Indonesian seminar industry.2
In the years after my fieldwork, I regularly stayed for longer periods
in Jakarta. Friends, relatives and acquaintances had started moving to the
new suburbs and satellite cities of Jabotabek.3 Most ended up in Bintaro
Jaya, a vast urban real estate development area southwest of the city.
After I had overcome my initial aversion to visiting these brand-new, mo-
notonous middle-class ‘reservations’, I became fascinated by the newly
developed forms of social life and settlement to be found there, which,
at face value, were full of interesting paradoxes, anachronisms and con-
tradictions. In the context of an apparently superior form of Indonesian
modernity, other realities and needs were sometimes stubbornly pursued
by people who visibly did not belong to the middle class.
After the shocking events of May 1998, discussing social strata,
politics and the future of the Indonesian nation with the previously
thoroughly depoliticized Bintaro residents often left me somewhat be-
wildered. For some of these informants, the idea of democracy seemed
to be an imagined future in which everyone in Indonesia was entitled
to have two servants. In 1999, on the day before the general elections,
I asked a young, live-in pembantu (help, or housemaid) in my Bintaro
neighbourhood if she intended to vote. She answered shyly that as yet
1 Former President Suharto was forced, after a 32-year term of authoritarian and profitable rule,
to hand over his position to Vice President Habibie after prolonged unrest and revolt. The following
reformasi was a transitional period in which a more transparent and democratic and less corrupt political
system was expected to gain momentum. Nasi reformasi literally translates as ‘reform rice’.
2 In the mid 1990s, seminar, upscale meetings that were generally held in luxurious hotels or resorts
charging considerable admission fees, became increasingly popular. They often featured foreign guest
speakers on subjects such as business administration and democratization. Later the concept of seminar
became a popular concept all over Indonesia.
3 Jabotabek is a conurbation consisting of Jakarta, Bogor, Tangerang and Bekasi.

2
 Introduction |

she had received no instructions on the matter from her (young and
educated) mistress. In the suburbs, ‘democracy’ was occasionally felt to
be threatening ancient class customs. One of my neighbours informed
me that an elderly lady living down the street had enquired, weeping,
whether demokratisasi meant that ‘she had to allow her servants to sit on
chairs from now on’. She had almost suffered a stroke (strok) that morning
after catching a servant sitting in an armchair whilst watching television.
By then, my local experiences had given me a better grasp of the
ambiguity in which the new middle-class suburbanites lived; an ambigu-
ity caused, for all I knew, by a silent awareness of unclear social change.
They seemed to experience their suburbs as interconnected islands of
perfect normality, and as sites characterized above all else by the absence
of the authoritarian state. Yet it often appeared as if the residents had
somehow internalized the New Order steady state. It reminded me of
John Pemberton’s description of the New Order’s modus operandi: the
‘relatively muted form of terror that may become culture: the repression
of fear that customarily secures, over time, an appearance of normal
life’ (Pemberton 1994:8). I recalled this phrase again one morning in
September 1999, during the unsettling week in which the atrocities on
East Timor climaxed,4 when I found an enormous, red-and-white span-
duk (banner) on an abandoned lot just around the corner of my sleepy
Bintaro street. It announced: ‘Together by way of aerobics – we fight
drugs – at 7 a.m.’ I felt this fakta baru, this ‘novelty’, to be connected with
the awful things happening on East Timor. How? Why? By whom? And
was this the ‘appearance of normal life’ pursued by the middle class?
Similar questions and apprehensions had long before convinced me
to focus my research on such tacit manifestations of suburban middle-
class life: on configurations of objects, on spatial arrangements and ma-
nipulations, on minor daily practices and routines, on whispers, sighs and
undertones. By taking this approach during my research, I had to adopt
the vernacular used by the middle class to define the common people
who make up the majority of Indonesian society: their ‘underclass’ or
rakyat, wong cilik, massa. Among the experienced as well as the aspiring
middle class, the underclass was not referred to as such. This was in
contrast to an eagerness to mention self-acknowledging terms such as
4 On August 30, a referendum was held in which the vast majority of the population of East Timor
stated its preference for independence from Indonesia. Afterwards, violent clashes broke out, instigated
by pro-Indonesia militias.

3
|  Lost in mall

‘middle class’; ‘middle middle class’; ‘upper middle class’; ‘kelas menengah’
(middle class); ‘middle group’; ‘orang eksekutip’ (executive people); ‘keluarga
eksekutip’ (executive families) and sometimes the pejorative ‘orang kaya baru’
(or OKB: ‘the new rich’, implying ‘vulgar new rich’).
Despite these self-descriptions, or perhaps because of them, the
middle classes became ‘lost in mall’ in the 1990s. They were thrilled by
newly formed consumption practices even as they worried about losing
their economic footing. In the shopping mall, where supposedly ‘nothing
happens’, they could feel comfortably lost in the sense of freedom from
outdoor anxieties, intoxicated as they were by new expectations. There
was also the risk of feeling hopelessly unanchored among bewildering
new practices, objects and possibilities. The shopping mall was clearly
in the same spatial category as the new suburb, the theme park and the
shiny Kijang van, which was the vehicle favoured by the middle class
because it offered a clear middle-class identity to people who seemed to
share a latent ambivalence about their social position.5
The suburb turned out to be an ideal place to study important issues
in Indonesian society such as democratization, expectations of civil society,
middle-class consciousness and modern consumerism. Given my interest
in contemporary political cultures in Indonesia, I chose the suburb as the
obvious site for investigating two core questions: how and where is the
realm of the political expressed in modern suburban life? Who defines the
realm of the political in the closing days of the Orde Baru (New Order)?
My extended answer to these enquiries requires an exploration of the
socio-scientific literature devoted to the Indonesian middle class, especially
as regards modernization, political context and ‘lifestyles’. In turn, this ex-
ploration raises new questions regarding the ontology, history and agency
of the middle class. What characterizes the contemporary Indonesian
middle class or classes? Is the middle class indeed a ‘class without history’
and without origins? Is it ‘new’, as is generally assumed? And what can be
said about the political agency, if any, of the middle class? The rise of the
middle class is rooted in late-colonial socio-cultural and political entangle-
ments and is therefore linked to the early development of the modern
Indonesian state. Middle-class relations to the state have a significant un-

5 Because a van offered space to an extended family (or to a whole village), it could be negatively as-
sociated with a tribal lifestyle. A sedan was, on the contrary, regarded as the perfect vehicle for a middle-
class nuclear family. A Kijang offered both room and middleclassness; the ‘Volkswagen of Indonesia’, as
it was called by a former Kijang owner.

4
 Introduction |

dercurrent of peculiar traits and reciprocalities, which an analysis entirely

based on politico-economic assumptions would not reveal. My focus is
therefore on the various manifestations of ‘middleclassness’ in suburban
surroundings and on its contact zones with other spheres in society, as a
way of exploring emerging categories of the political in Indonesia.

paradigms of modernization

Modernization theory, which draws a causal connection between eco-

nomic development and democratization, has assigned a crucial role in
political and social transformation in Indonesia since the late 1950s to
the middle class. Support for this argument continued to run through the
academic literature until the late 1990s (Berger 1997:335). Since middle-
class political agency is one of my leading themes, modernization theory
and its local appropriation remain relevant to my study. However, the
question of who exactly comprised this ‘Indonesian middle class’, even
after the emergence of the ‘new middle class’ in the early 1980s, turned
out to be troublesome for most authors (Tanter and Young 1990b:17).
One of the earliest mentions of the supportive role of a middle class
vis-à-vis the idea of progress as understood by the early nationalist move-
ment, was made by W.F. Wertheim (1956) in his seminal work Indonesian
society in transition. In the early 1930s, nationalists attempted to create an
indigenous middle class as an economic project, with the aim of engender-
ing an indigenous, autonomous economy, pursued for instance by the es-
tablishment of a bank and the founding of several cooperatives (Wertheim
1956:73). Wertheim made a sharp distinction between nationalist ‘indig-
enous activity in the economic field’ and nationalist ‘autonomous cultural
activity’, such as language building and the founding of national schools.
In the late 1950s, the modernity of the middle class was understood by
social scientists in terms of an inevitable process of economic moderniza-
tion. This was in contrast to a new ontological condition marked by a
self-reflexivity that made members of the middle classes realize that, as ex-
ponents of the locally modern (moderen) and bearers of a new ‘Indonesian
sense of change’ (Vickers 1996:5), they were the ones that embodied ‘the
middle class’. These understandings often made certain key notions, such
as ‘the modern’ and ‘the middle class’, easily interchangeable.
Doubts about the universalist claims of modernization theory came

5
|  Lost in mall

to the fore in the late 1960s. In his essay Modernizing Indonesian politics,
William Liddle (1973) presented the new phenomenon of the ‘secu-
lar modernizing intellectual’, who has outspoken ideas on the subject
of ‘modernization’ and commits himself to imposing this concept on
policymakers. These ideas, elaborating on a perceived fight between
the ‘forces of tradition’ and the ‘forces for modernization’, formed the
cornerstones of a programme to reform society, including its political
system. Liddle identified these ‘secular modernizing intellectuals’ as typi-
cal representatives of the urban middle and upper classes. Although in
1970 Liddle got his assessment of the eventual influence of this group
dramatically wrong, he did acknowledge the early ideological make-up
of the incipient New Order and the role of the ‘uncritical and perhaps
oversimplified understanding of Western social science concepts of mo-
dernity and of the process of modernization’. As to the modernizing ef-
fects of education, Liddle (1973:199) remarked that the limited scope of
the Indonesian educational system together with the ‘traditional’ aspects
of Indonesian culture made it likely ‘that the next several generations will
be at least as bound up in ethnic, cultural, religious, and regional group-
ings as the present elite has been’. He saw a causal relationship between
‘the hothouse culture and social isolation’ of the urban middle classes
and the particular form that the vision of modernity had assumed in
Indonesia. He observed, for instance, the lack of knowledge among the
middle class about the life of ordinary villagers and noted their fears of
the ‘destructive potential of the “masses”’ (Liddle 1973:199-200). This
essay on the drawbacks of political modernization was remarkable in its
early disclosure of the ways in which the New Order inspired middle-
class discourse on ‘modernization’ as a vehicle for social exclusion.
The presumptive role of the middle class in processes of democ-
ratization and redistribution of wealth has evolved considerably over
the last few decades. A recent example of shifting views on ‘the Asian
middle classes’ may be found in Mario Rutten’s (2003) Azië van binnen en
buiten (Asia from within and without), which mentions, without reference
to empirical data, ‘their brutal indifference or even ruthlessness vis-à-vis
those who are considered of lower social standing’ (Rutten 2003:18).
What is missing here is the possibility of diverse, pluriform or ambiguous
attitudes among different or contradictory middle classes in Asia, which
some reflection on the different historical roots of these categories might
have provided. Rutten suggests a ‘reversion’ of classical modernization

6
 Introduction |

theory: instead of being the heroes of development, the Asian middle

classes are the villains of globalization. Interestingly, Hilmar Farid
(2005:174) recognized a recent relapse into modernization theory in the
short-lived interest of many intellectuals in issues such as good gover-
nance, modern political ethics and ‘civilized society’ as a reaction to ‘new
and unpredicted [violent] trends’ after the collapse of the centralized
New Order state. However, since scholarly attention during the last de-
cades has largely shifted from the adaptability of modernization theory
to the ‘new middle class’ as a relevant new political entity, a discussion of
the representative proponents of this approach is now in order.

the political significance of the new middle class

By the 1970s, the axioms of modernization theory had mostly failed to ex-
plain the prolonged absence of modernity and democracy in Indonesia.6
The order-and-stability politics of the New Order regime had visibly
fostered the rapid development of a new middle class in the early 1980s,
and social scientists focused on this new phenomenon as a possible major
agent of political change with regard to the authoritarian state. This was
a matter of applying conflicting theoretical frameworks. In the volume
The politics of middle class Indonesia (Tanter and Young 1990a), virtually
all the contributions showed confusion about this ‘discovery’ of ‘a new
class-based element in Indonesian society’ and about how to define and
fit in the ‘new middle class’ in dominant paradigms on class formation.
The essays also contradicted one another in their assessments and expec-
tations of political change as a consequence of the ‘new middle class’.
This collection, which ushered in a decade of repeated discoveries of
new Southeast Asian middle or ‘consumer’ classes, was still primarily in-
terested in the political consequences and significance of the emergence
of a new and substantial middle class. The focus of later volumes also
appeared to be on their outward appearance. The front cover of Robison
and Goodman’s 1995 volume The new rich in Asia; Mobile phones, McDonald’s
and middle-class revolution presented the image of an Asian girl using a
mobile phone as an icon of affluent, Asian modernity. The old questions
6 Berger 1997:324. The late-1970s concept of patrimonialism, based on revised modernization
theory, attempted to explain Indonesia’s adherence to authoritarian rule as a not-yet-modernized and
adapted tradition.

7
|  Lost in mall

about the political significance of the middle class definitely seemed to

have given way to a new interest in their way of life. However, the girl
with the mobile phone was mysteriously absent between the covers of the
book, and hardly any of the contributions gave further attention to actual
lifestyles and world views. This volume, the first issue of a Routledge se-
ries called ‘The New Rich in Asia’, did not equalize the term New Rich
with ‘new middle classes’, but instead attempted to distinguish between
new ‘professional’ middle classes and the new urban bourgeoisie. The
preference for a Marxian frame of reference, instead of a more socio-
culturally oriented conceptual framework, clearly reflected co-editor
Richard Robison’s inclination to situate the emergence and significance
of the Asian New Rich within a discourse of political economy. The
emphasis of the study was on the detailed structural layout of various so-
cieties, in order to compare them as distinguished cases of ‘self-evidently
capitalist transition’. Although Robison’s (1995:84-97) discussion of the
New Rich in Indonesia and its eight subcategories should have led to
identifying ‘the internal structure of these new classes’, the overall effect
of this flawed categorization was confusing.7 Robison (1995:98) claimed
that the new middle classes were important because their new social con-
text implied a change in the accountability of the state. The newness of
their social context was, however, nowhere explained or illustrated, apart
from a footnote stating that ‘there are now seven shopping malls. […] The
demand is clearly there. Pondok Indah Mall attracts 200,000 visitors each
week’ (Robison 1995:99).
The emergence of this ‘new social context’ coincided, in the mid-
1980s, with an increasing scholarly interest in the concept of civil society
as a panacea against inequality between state and society. This coinci-
dence led to a renewed emphasis on the importance of middle-class’
‘leadership’ on the road to civil society, without serious reflection on the
problematic nature of the concept of ‘middle class’ as a useful tool of
political theory (Berger 1997:326; Farid 2005:174). Surprisingly, these
studies often mentioned and deplored the lack of empirical knowledge
of the middle classes, but never led to a comprehensive anthropological

7 Robison distinguishes the middle class; the upper middle class; the populist lower middle class; the
bourgeoisie; the indigenous petty bourgeoisie; the big bourgeoisie: the Chinese conglomerates; the larger
indigenous capitalists; the family. It is significant that during my fieldwork, between 1994 and 2001, I met
several middle-class individuals who revelled at such class categorizations of their society and who turned
out to be astute, self-styled practitioners of this type of sociology. See Robison 1995:51.

8
 Introduction |

research agenda. Only a few field studies of the actual lives of members
of the middle class have been conducted or proposed since the 1950s,
but they are crucial to understanding my idea of middleclassness.

middleclassness as a new suburban lifestyle

Hildred Geertz (1936:35) was one of the very first anthropologists to

perform fieldwork among the Indonesian urban middle class, and she
was one of the first to make a clear distinction between middlclassness
as an (urban) social status, and therefore a cultural categorical construct,
and middleclassness in strictly economic terms, and therefore a statistical
category. In her analysis of urban social structure in the 1950s, it is striking
that what she qualifies as ‘the one pole of the cultural dimension, a single
cultural pattern […] called “the Indonesian metropolitan superculture”’
of the urban elite, comprises many of the present-day status symbols of
the middle classes: ‘the acquisition of higher education, facility with for-
eign languages, travel experience abroad, and Western luxury goods such
as automobiles’.8 This metropolitan superculture comprised a coherent
lifestyle and as such offered several divergent (including ethnic) frames of
identification for newcomers. Most urban middle-class members identified
themselves as pegawai (employee) and aspired to become a member of the
metropolitan subculture. Geertz (1963:37) recognized this tendency to
aspire as a crucial inclination of the middle class. Geertz’s call to devote
empirical study to the developing urban middle class was not given heed,
which is not surprising because of the early ‘annexing’ of the field of socio-
structural studies by political scientists, who showed a preference for the
so-called elite analysis and the ‘village study’ (Philpott 2000:61). Detailed
knowledge of middle-class daily life, concerns and cultural and political
orientation during these decades is therefore only available through novels,
printed media, diaries and other forms of personal documentation.
Economic historian Howard Dick (1985) did not perform anthropo-
logical field studies, but he was one of the discoverers of the ‘new middle
class’ of the New Order era. In his influential essay The rise of a middle class
and the changing concept of equity in Indonesia; An interpretation, Dick examined
8 At the other pole, ‘a large variety of traditional ethnic ways of life’ was to be found. Metropolitism
and ethnicism apparently excluded one another, in contrast with the present-day situation (H. Geertz
1963:35).

9
|  Lost in mall

the possibility that redistribution of wealth could become a point of in-

terest for the new middle class. The most important contribution to the
study of Indonesian middle classes has been his clear-cut description of
lifestyles and attitudes as the most salient markers of urban middleclass-
ness, not only in Jakarta, but also as evolving in the national culture by
way of education and the powerful mass media. Dick (1985:61) argued
that the emergence of an urban middle class boiled down to a ‘crucial
new element in contemporary Indonesia’, although its roots went back as
far as the 1920s.9 The ‘newness’ of the new middle classes was identified
in the display of their material aspirations, sometimes leading to the no-
torious phenomenon of ‘conspicuous consumption’. Membership of the
middle class was thus defined by social behaviour, ‘reflecting what may be
described as the privatization of the means of consumption’: the refusal to
lend possessions such as consumer durables to one’s neighbours, which was
in sharp contrast with the old, communal ways of the kampung.10
Dick’s emphasis on lifestyle as a significant quality of the middle class
had a potentially liberating effect on studies of Indonesian class formation,
which had previously been dominated by musings on the comparability of
Western and Asian processes of capitalist industrialization and economic
development (Berger 1997). Definitions of the middle class were generally
sought in reference to their relation to production. However, an approach
that relates them to the production of cultural capital (that is, ‘lifestyle’) or,
as advocated by Joel Kahn (1991:56), an approach that locates them in
reference to processes of modern state formation (both in the colonial and
the postcolonial era), offers a more fertile perspective, because cultural as
well as historical contexts can then be properly addressed.
In 2000, a new volume in the series ‘The New Rich in Asia’ was
published, entitled Consumption in Asia; Lifestyle and identities, edited by Chua
Beng Huat. It came too early to comment productively on the immediate
impact of the ‘burst’ of the bubble – the Asian financial and economic
crisis – and too late to offer a current picture of, or challenging approach
to, a peculiar Asian consumption phenomenon. The volume’s main goal
was to provide a balance between a cultural-studies approach – ‘con-
9 Dick (1985:75-6) also considered those that since 1960 had been called the ‘elite’ as being middle
class in nature, and stated that social scientists’ focus on the elite seems to have blinded them to this fact.
10 A changed attitude towards the sharing of possessions and wealth seems to lie at the heart of
Indonesian middleclassness, as is observed by Siegel 1998b:83, who wrote that conflict had not played
an important role in developing class identities in Indonesia. Siegel sees class largely as ‘the result of
undesired distinctions in the body of the nation’.

10
 Introduction |

sumption purely as a form of identity politics’ – and a more politically

oriented, socio-economic and quantitative analysis of local consump-
tion practices and conditions. In a contribution based on field studies in
Padang and Yogyakarta, the anthropologist Solvay Gerke discussed the
social significance of the Indonesian ‘new middle class’ in relation to the
context of the role of the state and its representatives. Gerke’s curiosity
pivots around the question of who ‘really’ belongs to the new middle class
and who only ‘pretends’ to belong to it, resulting in a quest for ‘authentic’
consumers instead of ‘symbolic’ ones. Even with hindsight her conclusion
relies awkwardly on classical modernization theory, as is illustrated by her
expectations for the forthcoming democratization. Gerke states that the
‘shape of the middle class that will undoubtedly emerge subsequentially
[adhering] more closely to the class-formation process found elsewhere in
the capitalist world and the consumption pattern will, hopefully, be more
substantively real than imaginary and hollow’ (Gerke 2000:155).
A very different approach to the middle classes is embodied in
anthropologist Saya Shiraishi’s (1997) study Young heroes; The Indonesian
family in politics. Shiraishi describes the 1980s workings of New Order
ideology in young middle-class children, and evinces a sensitivity towards
the regime’s socio-psychological mechanisms in the instilling of fear,
respect and awe, and towards the (manipulated) constitution of desired
social relationships at a micro-level. Although criticized for making over-
interpretations and contrived links, her eclectic approach, postcolonial
awareness and curiosity as to the details of actual, lived middle-class
Jakartan daily life, mark her work as exceptional (see also Henley 1997).
This limited survey of scholarly research suggests that Indonesian
middle classes have for decades been subject to social and political sci-
entists’ grand and less grand theories. Furthermore, middle-class studies
are, as we have seen, often accompanied by ample reflections upon the
lack of empirical data. Although this vacuum regarding significant quan-
titative and qualitative knowledge about the middle classes is apparently
acknowledged, this has not led to a general methodological and theoreti-
cal prudence vis-à-vis complex questions of definition and demarcation.
Characterizations of the middle classes as groupings of peculiar, selfish
and greedy consumption ‘champions’ are, in other words, rife. Scholarly
tendencies to caricature the middle classes were apparently connected with
the picturesque appearance of the ‘new’ middle classes in the late 1980s.
This sensational emergence, ‘the middle class revolution’, also caused a

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|  Lost in mall

renewed belief in mainstream modernization theory among Asianists,

because the rise of these classes was linked to what was regarded as an
increasingly dynamic, regional and industrial development. In order to as-
sess the significance of these ‘new’ groups to processes of political renewal
and liberalization, they needed to be repeatedly dissected and scrutinized
in regard to their economic potential and connections to the state.
At this point I need to bring back to mind my core questions: how
and where is the realm of the political expressed in modern Jabotabek
suburban life? Who are involved in the process of defining and adjust-
ing the realm of the political? Since I expect the suburban middle class
to be predominantly involved in these expressions and processes, I need
to formulate operational research questions based on current and useful
theoretical concepts regarding the middle class. In the next section, I
will discuss a few major obstacles vis-à-vis socio-scientific research on the
middle classes that have already been acknowledged, before identifying
three contested and interrelated main issues regarding the middle class
that will lead to useful research questions.

recurrent and complex problems

The lack of agreement on the theoretical nature of the term ‘middle class’
has guaranteed, over the years, a plethora of research methods and ap-
proaches. In summary, I present a recent and convenient identification by
political scientist Ariel Heryanto (2003) of a few of the most frequent and
persistent problematic views in recent studies of the middle class. Ariel
Heryanto, discussing the role of middle-class public intellectuals con-
cerning processes of democratization, regards these views as ‘common
drawbacks’ in discussions about the Indonesian middle classes. His first
difficulty concerns the presumed objectivity with which the term ‘middle
classes’ is applied by social scientists, as if they constitute ‘objective and
empirical entities that exist independently of the theoretical constructions
of the observers’ (Ariel Heryanto 2003:25). He doubts the contribution
of quantitative measurements, as well as more empirical and qualitative
descriptions of middle classes and their lifestyles, to a real understanding
of what he calls their ‘nature’ (unfortunately without further explanation).
Ariel Heryanto (2003:26) deems the possibility of equating individuals,
lifestyles and cultural tastes with qualities of middleclassness in an ‘es-

12
 Introduction |

sentialist’ and ‘ahistorical’ manner misleading, because he claims that

middle classes are, in the final analysis, an arguably conceptual construct.
Another difficulty he has concerns the insufficiently recognized plurality
of the middle classes, especially where this leads to a neglect of contradic-
tory elements within them. He states that ‘there can be progressive middle
classes as well as very conservative, opportunistic or apathetic ones in the
same nation-state for various reasons that are historically specific’, all the
more when taking into consideration that the ‘complex dynamics of de-
mocratization […] can be as plural as the middle classes’ (Ariel Heryanto
2003:26). As to the assessed political impact of the middle classes, Ariel
Heryanto concludes that in the case of Indonesia, their projected glori-
ous role vis-à-vis democratization had been disparaged from the start by
a wide and diverse field of Indonesianists (see Berger 1997 for a different
view). The significance of middle-class politics had been further doubted
largely because of their relatively small size, their assumed dependency
on state patronage and their presumed general tendency towards being
opportunistic and selfish. These assumptions add up to the notion that
‘Indonesia’s industrialization does not mimic Europe’s experience (as if it
should)’ (Ariel Heryanto 2003:26). A final reason for an unjust dismissal
of middle-class politics is seen by Ariel Heryanto to have been brought
forward where the rise of Asian middle classes has been wrongly com-
pared to the emergence of the European bourgeoisie at the time.
Although I agree with this summary of obstacles in the literature on,
and study of, the middle classes, I do not share Ariel Heryanto’s distrust
of ethnographic research as a helpful device in understanding the middle
classes. On the contrary, I hold that certain key notions on the middle
class can only be explored by ‘classic’ field studies. It is significant that
Ariel Heryanto too, despite his analysis, is eventually unable to produce a
fitting, clear-cut definition of the term ‘middle class’, instead referring to
their ‘nature’. After repeatedly stating that no single term such as ‘middle
classes’ can possibly represent a tangible, clearly bound and unchanging
entity, he falls back on what is essentially an empirical lifestyle criterion.
This criterion is brought forward in a positive way, thereby neglecting
the inconvenient ambiguity of terms such as ‘urban residence’, ‘modern
occupations and education’ and ‘cultural tastes’ in an Indonesian (Java-
based) context, where urbanity, modernity and lifestyle are all contested
concepts with a long and confusing history. Local investigation, for in-
stance in Bintaro Jaya, into these notions could produce surprising results.

13
|  Lost in mall

Participating in the apparently monotonous (‘nothing happens’), but

highly charged activities that characterize middle-class daily life seems a
more promising approach when trying to make sense of the political in
modern Indonesia than accumulating economic statistics, formulating
definitions and/or gaping at ‘conspicuous consumption’ from a distance.
Fleeting concepts such as ‘aspiration’ are, after all, hard to quantify.
From this survey of literature, a cluster of interrelated themes can be
derived regarding the middle class as a social phenomenon in itself, as
well as regarding tendencies in scholarly approaches. A point of debate
that has occurred very frequently concerns the problematic contours of
the Indonesian middle class. Who are they, if not a socio-scientific rei-
fication? What qualifies the Indonesian middle classes and how are we
to find an agreement on the (also contested) nature of this qualification?
Many authors have wrestled with these questions, specifically those who
have concentrated on the emergence of the ‘new’ middle classes. Neither
the refined enumerations of socio-economic (sub)classes, as performed
by Robison, nor the bifurcated quest for ‘real’ middle-class consumers
while discounting the ‘symbolic’ ones, as proposed by Gerke, have led to
satisfying insights into this obscure matter. Dick’s suggestion that ‘lifestyle
and attitudes’ are the most salient markers of urban ‘middleclassness’
promise to be the most fruitful approach, although these markers are also
among the most fleeting criteria by which to assess the middle class. They
open, anyhow, the possibility of participant observation as the main
research method, which ideally involves a close watch of middle-class
people’s daily life, concerns and preoccupations.
Another important and closely related issue is the asserted ‘newness’
of the Indonesian middle classes. Are they indeed a novelty, a ‘class
without a history’? What are the origins of their apparently uncompli-
cated, consensual and senang (comfortable) modernity?11 What are the
social and cultural roots of their characteristic, conspicuous suburban-
ity? Although Geertz and Shiraishi both acknowledged a certain urban-
based cultural heritage that informed the respective forms of middle-
classness with which they dealt, basic questions regarding socio-cultural
origins have in general been overlooked.
The last major question concerns the alleged political agency of the
middle classes, which for most authors is to some degree connected to
11 J. Saravanamuttu uses this qualification in his description of the Malaysian middle classes (Kahn
1996:19).

14
 Introduction |

the paradigm of classic modernization theory. However, outcomes differ

considerably. Wertheim mentioned a significant early variant, namely the
economic and cultural aspirations of the 1930s nationalists, which were
inspired by the idea that a firm middle class would eventually crystallize
into a nation. Liddle stood apart in his 1970 assertion that moderniza-
tion would lead to increasing social exclusion. Ariel Heryanto, in a recent
contribution, showed a moderate optimism vis-à-vis the democratizing
and liberating role of some parts of the ‘plural’ middle classes. This typi-
cal plurality of opinions reflects the apparently unclear political agency
of the (new) middle classes. This approach contrasts sharply with the
rough divide of Indonesian society into ‘middle class’ and ‘underclass’,
in which middle-class agency can simply be summarized as ‘keeping them
out’.12 Here, agency defines the middle class. However, the hermeneutic
question as to how middle-class agency should be discerned is not prop-
erly addressed. Is it what the middle class does in the public realm, or
how it behaves in private? Is agency – ‘middleclassness at work’ – operat-
ing in an active or in a passive mode? From this mountain of inextricably
bound-up questions and drawbacks, I have extracted three ‘classic’ and
major problematic themes regarding the Indonesian middle classes: their
unclear and shifting contours, their apparently non-existent origins and
their contested agency. These will be addressed in more detail in the next
section and throughout the book.
From the start of this project in 1994 onwards, I was convinced
that intermittent and long-term participation in, and observation of,
middle-class life would offer the best chances of (a beginning of) insight
regarding my chosen themes. A relatively recent and vast suburb such as
Bintaro Jaya embodied the ideal mainstream middle-class environment
in every respect. The nearness of relatives, friends and acquaintances,
as well as my job as a foreign correspondent in the last year of my field
research (1999), when I became an autonomous and nondescript settled
Bintaro resident myself, made it finally alluring to regard myself as a
‘complete participant’ – occasionally to the detriment of my project
(Hammersley and Atkinson 1983:93). My fieldnotes (made between 1994
and 2000) form the main ethnographic source of this study.13

12 See the work of Siegel, for instance his A new criminal type in Jakarta (1998a).
13 My collection of circa 1,500 fieldwork photos, taken between 1990 and 2000, unfortunately went
missing from the ASSR office in October 2002.

15
|  Lost in mall

what makes the middle classes middle class?

From the three ‘objective’ standards of middleclassness that were of-

fered by Ariel Heryanto, education is certainly the most significant and
recognizable. This is reflected in its outspoken importance to the mem-
bers of the middle classes among whom I lived, who considered formal
education, preferably abroad, as a crucial condition of their own, their
children’s and their class life: as a state of being. Members of the middle
class recognized each other often by and through forms and appearances
of education (in the sense of a commodified good; its actual materiality
was never discussed and seemed to be of no interest at all) and educa-
tion made the most obvious subject of polite talk to strangers. Series
of photos depicting the graduation ceremonies of preferably all family
members (significantly, not the diplomas) were to be found on the typical
middle-class living room wall, as a token of the family’s major heirloom.
The concept of (formal) education, in short, seems largely to shape the
main, tangible contours of the middle class. It appears to be the common
denominator among middle-class status symbols. It is therefore interesting
to assess this typical quest for ‘education’ and its meaning in the context
of wider society.
James Ockey (2001) emphasized that in Thailand, education is
conceived of as being both the key marker of Thai middleclassness
and the key factor to ‘understanding’ the concept of democracy. This
phenomenon – democracy as a ‘learned project’ for the middle class – is
all the more poignant in Indonesia, with its long and peculiar history of
uneven access to educational facilities.14 From the start of independence,
understandings of modernization theory have helped to solidify a con-
nection between the educated in society and national development. Ariel
Heryanto (2003:29) explains certain elements of the ‘myth of intellectual
[middle-class] activism’ as follows:

Unlike members of the ruling bloc, intellectuals must maintain some dis-
tance – at least in their public appearance – from the most powerful and
wealthy social groups in their societies. The degree of their credibility
and authority depends on some meaningful detachment from activities

14 During colonial times, acknowledged forms of higher education for the colonials had been made
available only in the Netherlands, which protected the elite and obstructed colonial autonomy. In the 1930s,
nationalist ideologues regarded mass education as a crucial factor in the building of an Indonesian nation.

16
 Introduction |

that appear to primarily generate material and non-material rewards.

[…] However, […] like everyone else, intellectuals in post-colonies are
not necessarily wary of gaining wealth and power. What distinguishes
them most from the rest is the necessity of a general claim and the rec-
ognition of their commitment to the pursuance of truth, justice, ethics or
beauty above all else. [...] Thus, there is always an inherent need to deny
their privileged status, self-interest or desire for recognition, and occa-
sionally misrecognition of their secret desire for power and wealth.

According to Ariel Heryanto, this long-lasting myth, embodied in ‘the

university student, academic, and journalist-activist’ has over time been
conducive to ‘voluntary struggle, sacrifices and martyrs’ for democrati-
zation, helped by expansive capitalist industrialization. Education ap-
pears, in a more general sense, to be connected with restraint, and with
a commitment to immaterial gains instead of worldly possessions and
wealth. It is a token of refined control over oneself and one’s greediness,
and this is reflected in ideas harboured by Indonesian society about the
shamefulness of poverty. James Siegel (1998b:80-1) has expressed this
link between social stratification and self-control much to the point:

The Indonesian middle class is not merely wealthier than the underclass;
it is almost comfortable with its wealth; it does not feel it will be devoured
by it. The lower classes, by contrast, are often suspicious of the effects
of ownership of wealth while still finding it attractive. Those who can
refrain from taking [here: looting] easily available market goods merit the
title ‘middle class’. Those who cannot may or may not still live in a tradi-
tional ambiance; whether or not this is the case, in Indonesia today they
are sometimes identified as the massa and sometimes ‘the people’. […] In
Europe, conflict between classes shaped class identity; in Indonesia, by contrast, class
is largely the result of undesired distinctions within the body of the nation. Conflict
has not played a large part in developing class identities, rather attitudes
toward wealth are a central point of differentiation.15

What the underclass lacks in the first place is education, because educa-
tion is seen as civilizing and indispensable to personal development. The
‘effects’ of education – wealth on the one hand and moral decency (such

15 My italics.

17
|  Lost in mall

as self-control) on the other – have conflated in the idea of civilization

as a project of development: the underclass is not yet civilized because it
needs to be educated first. Lack of education also explains the inability
of the underclass to ‘understand’ democracy, which leaves the latter
almost ‘naturally’ in the hands of the middle class. In this context it is
striking that even Ariel Heryanto, when seeking effective challenges to
Indonesian authoritarianism, does not mention a possible role for the
lower classes in this struggle at all. In his call for a more incremental
process of democratization (‘democratic dispositions that grow in every-
day consciousness, discourses and practices […] will provide a crucial
foundation for a larger movement. […] [I]n such an event, former
organization or leadership is less necessary’), a far echo can be heard
of the doctrine that connects the educated and national development
(Ariel Heryanto 2003:51). By focusing on campuses, meeting rooms and
journalists’ offices – typical ‘middle-class intellectual’ sites – as obvious
breeding grounds for democratization, emphasis is laid on an intellectual
approach to democratic practice. This often comes down to a preoc-
cupation with verbal and scholarly methods and proceedings, leading
to ‘correct’ ways of disputing, decision making and opinion forming.
Democracy is also often regarded in the media as a ‘learned project’, and
democratization should be first of all understood as a form of education,
or so it seems. This understanding of the middle class as the ‘civilized’
and ‘educated’ class – an emic approach, tied to local definitions of
‘middle class’ – proved to be a fruitful concept, especially in the recently
built suburbs where the self-appointed middle class could celebrate its
new-found class consciousness as a project of ‘development’ – in the
national sense, as well as in a more personal way. In other words, in this
study the contours of middleclassness will be drawn by members of the
middle class whose primary self-identity (‘middleclassness’) includes the
troubling insecurity of new middle classes about who properly belongs
and who does not. The Jabotabek suburbs and satellite cities offer a
vast and interesting arena for various new civil-social practices, indoors
as well as outdoors. Moreover, the fact that a major part of the local
population regarded and experienced their suburbs as spaces where no
state intervention need be expected – where an absence of the state ap-
peared to be realized, seemed to noticeably enhance their sense of civil-
society-in-the-making. The shared and tacit understanding of those who
were not yet to be admitted to this suburban ‘civil society’, as well as the

18
 Introduction |

connected emergence of newly engineered exclusion mechanisms and

technologies, form a recurring theme in this book.

what are the origins of the middle class?

As previously indicated, I am interested in the fairly self-conscious

process of the production of Indonesian middleclassness. Dealing with
the issue of middle-class consciousness first of all implies looking at
the conditions under which middle-class groups come to articulate
and practice one or more of the discourses which are ascribed to them
(Kahn 1996:18). As we have seen, a basic discourse among these groups
is the one based upon the ‘newness’ of the middle classes, their lack of
origins and historical roots. Closely related to the latter is the important
discourse on the emergence of civil society. The present-day interest in
civil society as one of the key concepts of contemporary Indonesian po-
litical thought is related to late 1980s realizations concerning strong state
versus weak society, especially in the realms of economy and politics. In
the democratic movements of Eastern Europe, Indonesian intellectuals
perceived a ‘kind of alternative paradigm’ that could enable them to
empower society (Wolters n.y.). Since then, a largely intellectual discourse
on civil society has developed in mass media such as national newspapers
and television, and is regularly highlighted by seminars, and stimulated
by NGOs. In contrast to recent developments in Latin America and
Eastern Europe, the marked protagonists of this debate in Indonesia are
clearly the middle strata of society. Thus, instead of a religious or trade-
union-based mass movement, a middle-class discourse on civil society
developed, largely for itself and about itself, which I expected to have
certain reflections on the practices of public and private social life in
the suburbs. My first days of living in Jabotabek were therefore marked
by a strong curiosity regarding the atypical way in which middle-class
suburbanites dealt with several ‘universal’ and ‘implicit’ institutions of
civil society, such as the paired concepts of private and public space,
the family and the collectivity, and concepts of the modern meaning
of the temporal. I also wanted to find out how they handled civil-social
concepts such as citizenship or individual freedom and responsibility
(Giddens 1991). Throughout my stay in Bintaro I explored how social
life in general was actually organized in the new suburbs, and how these

19
|  Lost in mall

arrangements could affect the development of a local public sphere. For

me, exploring this social life ‘simply’ meant participating, for almost a
year, in daily suburban life: living in a row house, visiting friends and
family, working as a foreign correspondent, being stuck in traffic jams,
working out in the local gym, and shopping for groceries and hanging
out in the nearby mall. Indeed, ‘what better object of study than the
middle class? For here the participation is real, and not that play at par-
ticipation that has traditionally been called field work’ (Kahn 1996:18).
The nature of this kind of participation kept reminding me of
Partha Chatterjee’s remarks about the European origins of civil society’s
‘universal’ institutions as ‘forms of the modern state […] imported into
these [colonized] countries through the agencies of colonial rule’. The
institutions of civil society, ‘in the forms in which they had arisen in
Europe, also make their appearance in the colonies precisely to create a
public domain for the legitimization of colonial rule’, resulting in a ‘civil
society of subjects’ instead of citizens (Chatterjee 1990:130). Although
Chatterjee focuses his argument on the forging of new national (Indian)
identities by the colonized while they forgo ‘bourgeois civil-social insti-
tutions’, his emphasis on the historical and colonial context in which
certain understandings of civil society have been introduced to colonized
society seemed a fertile point of reference during my stay in the suburbs.
Such a point of reference was much needed, since divisions of space, for
instance, often seemed blurred or neglected, in the sense that distinctions
between the private and the public were often unclear.
In addition to ‘space’, other common entities such as ‘time’ or ‘per-
son’ also appeared to defy universal understanding. Inside middle-class
homes, family relationships sometimes – subtly or severely – resisted
‘modern’ redefinitions. Finally, the blurring of ‘citizenship’ and what
must have been new, imagined (or survived?) forms of subjecthood, along
with yet bigger themes such as ‘the national’ and ‘the cosmopolitan’, all
formed initially confusing and puzzling irregularities of daily life, which
could be encountered in shopping malls and on parking places, on
crossings and toll roads. Chatterjee’s explanation of the roots of Indian
nationalism sketches a rejection of imported (British) civil-social institu-
tions in order to construct a different narrative, in a cultural domain, to
create a sovereign territory of the nation to which the colonial state has
no entry. The rhetoric here is ‘of love, kinship, austerity, sacrifice […] in
fact anti-modernist, anti-individualist, even anti-capitalist’ (Chatterjee

20
 Introduction |

1990:131). Although some members of the Dutch-educated vanguard

of Indonesian nationalism likewise fostered anti-Enlightenment views
and romanticized pre-colonial village life, a large majority of the nation-
alists embraced Enlightenment philosophy and the idea of progress.16
They shared the ‘civil’ narrative: they accepted imported principles and
aspects of public organization and civil society (‘organizational novelties’
according to Benedict Anderson); these were regarded, if at all, as con-
sequential upon the Enlightenment and could be easily associated with
conditions and requirements of modernity.17 Ideas of modernity (the
moderen) and of progress (kemajuan) have been articulated from the very
start of the nationalist movement, and education in particular became a
vehicle for nationalism (Vickers 1996:15). Just like the introduction and
‘domestication’ of Dutch-European civil-social institutions, subsequent
nationalist reform initiatives had the greatest impact on the (sub)urban
areas, which were in the main populated by Indo-Europeans of diverging
social standing, but also by many priyayi (high-ranking native officials). It
is here, in the early, urban domains of a domesticated but imported civil
society, that continuities vis-à-vis the present-day middle class may have
found their roots. An important point of departure for this study is there-
fore the interim acknowledgement that the nature of the Indonesian
middle class is a postcolonial theme still to be explored.

what does the middle class bring about?

Closely related to the latter issue is the highly problematic final theme:
the contested political agency of the present middle classes. Joel Kahn
(1996:24-5) has, for Malaysia, suggested that the rise of the new middle
classes might have as much if not more to do with the emergence of the
modern state than with capitalist development per se – a suggestion that,
given the relevance of the context of postcolonial state formation, is
equally valid for Indonesia’s middle classes. A similar argument was giv-
en by Siegel (2002), who explained class formation as related to processes
16 Berger 1997:341. These and similar views, linked to organicist ideas about society, have largely been
developed by Dutch legal scholars studying adat (customary law).
17 Notwithstanding the 1910s formation by early nationalists of a committee that propagated the ‘re-
construction of Javanese Culture’, expressing a desire to restore Javanese social values as advocated in their
Dutch-language monthly journal Wederopbouw (Reconstruction) (Shiraishi 1997:82). These forms (commit-
tee, monthly journal) were typical of Dutch (colonial) civil society during that time (Anderson 1990:244).

21
|  Lost in mall

of early nation building. Kahn’s implied argument that there is (thus) no

reason why the Malaysian middle class should be expected to articulate
‘enlightened’, universalist ideals, such as democracy, is important. He
arrives at this point by qualifying the current and celebrated middle-
class debate on Malaysian ‘cultural diversity’ as an ethnic discourse,
which mainly expresses the middle-class concept that Malaysians differ
from one another in radical ways. The ‘constructedness’ of culture and
cultural diversity implies that its middle -lass advocates – the academics
and, for that matter, the middle class itself – can be ‘just as “ethnic” as
anybody else’ (Kahn 1996:28). What Kahn suggests here is that the mid-
dle class believes itself to differ ‘radically’, that is, in an economic sense,
from the rest of Malaysian society – middleclassness defined as a new
found ethnicity. That is why there is no reason at all to expect the middle
class to ‘belong’ to such a thing as a democratically minded vanguard,
although a few of its members will of course articulate democratic ide-
als – or even ‘support Marxism’ (Kahn 1996:28).
Although the Indonesian middle-class public debate has not lately been
wrapped up in topics regarding ‘cultural diversity’, there are neverthe-
less broad and interesting similarities with the Malaysian situation as
analysed by Kahn. In the first place, there is a strong conviction among
intellectuals, academics and journalists that the key to a democratic fu-
ture must be found somewhere among the new middle classes, especially
the intellectuals. Secondly, and in connection with these assumptions, a
prolonged middle-class discourse can be discerned of which the central
theme is not ‘cultural diversity’ but pembangunan, a crucial New Order
term comprising hegemonic notions of ‘development’ and ‘progress’.
Over recent decades, the ‘national’ concept of pembangunan has been all
but internalized by the middle classes, who feel their personal outlook on
life and their lifestyle – organized around the core concept of education
– to be much reflected in the idea of steady development and progress.
Nevertheless, this middle-class discourse on pembangunan amounts to be-
ing an ethnic discourse as much as the Malaysian one on cultural diver-
sity. It functions largely, or so it seems, to organize a deeply felt class dis-
tinction between the ‘not yet’ educated part of the population and their
‘enlightened’, developed, modern middle-class counterparts. This is also
reflected in the public discourse on ‘civil society’ and ‘good governance’,
along with its frequent use of new or untranslated Anglo-American po-
litical terms, thereby making basic political debates rather abstract and

22
 Introduction |

opaque instead of simple and at grassroots level. The main focus of the
public Indonesian political debate is largely on the educated classes.
In contrast, there are relatively few publicly voiced expectations or
ideas – outspoken or more tentative – concerning the role or contribu-
tion of the broad masses vis-à-vis democratization processes, apart from
various Islamist popular movements. This situation actually bears resem-
blance to representations of democracy and its participants in Thailand,
as we have seen with Ockey. There, the Thai lower classes have been his-
toriographically erased from what are understood by the middle classes
as ‘pro-democracy uprisings’, because, according to the middle classes,
the masses do not understand or value democracy. Ockey (2001:329)
regards the strong and persistent adherence to modernization theory in
Southeast Asia as an explanation for this typical distrust, because it was
modernization theory that provided the academic legitimation for the
connection between the middle class and democracy. He seems impa-
tient with latter-day modifications of modernization theory:

In the new variant, the middle class brings about civil society, which then
leads to democracy. Ironically, the relationship between civil society and
democracy was earlier used to explain democratic transitions in Latin
America and Eastern Europe, where civil society meant mass-based or-
ganizations like labour unions and the Catholic church. In the Southeast
Asian variant, the lower classes disappear from the theory.18

Ockey (2001:332) argues that through their attitudes, the Thai middle
classes have turned democracy into ‘an élitist middle-class ideology’ and
‘élite political practice’, and that ‘they employ democracy as a crucial
marker for distinguishing themselves from the poor’.
It lies well beyond the scope and nature of this book to make valid as-
sumptions about, or analyses of, clear-cut, well-considered political agen-
cies and strategies of any Indonesian middle class. Nevertheless, my ex-
ploration of middle-class arrangements, manoeuvres and manifestations
of as well as in (semi-)public space, while using Kahn’s concept of the
middle class as a self-appointed ethnic category, should be understood as
an anthropological contribution to clearing this field. Consequentially, a
basic curiosity as to how a shared sense of ‘differing radically’ is and can
18 Ockey 2001:330. Ockey points out that candidates who wish to run for the House or the Senate
elections must have a university degree, according to the new (1997) constitution.

23
|  Lost in mall

be enacted in various unobtrusive aspects of everyday suburban life, has

been a leading theme during my field research. In the final analysis, my
book attempts to contribute to the study of contemporary political cul-
tures in Indonesia, which is most obviously reflected in my core questions
as formulated earlier in this introduction: how and where is the realm of
the political expressed in modern suburban life? Who are involved in the
process of defining and adjusting the realm of the political?
My study of the middle class is emphatically not a comparative proj-
ect. My theoretical approach, which regards the middle-class configura-
tion as interwoven with late- and postcolonial state formation, combined
with my (longitudinal and participatory) empirical method rather com-
plicates a meaningful and systematic comparison with the outcomes of
studies of middle classes elsewhere in Asia. This is especially the case
since anthropological studies on this subject are unfortunately still scarce,
probably for reasons similar to the ones I have previously discussed.

outline of the book

Although all chapters of this book are based on the common theme of
middle-class suburban life during the late 1990s, with prolonged partici-
pation and observation as their primary sources, they show dimensions
of everyday life that vary considerably in style and form. The resulting
structure offers, however, a systematic study of its subject. Together, the
chapters aim to ‘penetrate’ middle-class life from the hard outer shell –
its suburban, newly built spatial surroundings – to the vague and indefi-
nite cluster of convictions, domains of knowledge and received ideas that
together form something like the inner life of middle-class society: ideas
of and for the middle class. In the process, this centripetal move passes
the stages of, respectively, actual everyday life in the suburbs, the sudden
disturbance of this everyday life and the anxieties it reflects, and the
implicit social and spatial engineering needed to define and preserve the
idea of the middle class and the (re)production of the ‘nothing happens’-
culture. The final chapter offers tentative hints vis-à-vis the historical
trajectory of middle-class culture.
In the first chapter, ‘Bintarese cosmologies’, I introduce the reader
to Bintaro Jaya, a modern suburb that was conceived in the late 1970s.
Its design is sketched, as well as its facilities and traffic regulation, and its

24
 Introduction |

exchanges with the surrounding kampung (here: urbanized villages), hid-

den behind high fences and walls. Bintaro Jaya, I argue, can be described
as a fantasy island of modernity to its residents, where nothing major is
expected to happen. The chapter reveals the ambivalence of the middle-
class suburban residents vis-à-vis the gradual ‘Indonesianization’ of their
formerly state-of-the-art surroundings: the advancing informality, multi-
functionality, diversity and density in general, largely obscuring the spatial
and the imagined gap between the middle- and underclass. The Bintaro
residents wanted something to show – an impeccable, ‘cool’ and ‘global
middle-class’ looking residential area – but at the same time they wanted
to feel surrounded by helpful ‘kin’: their underclass fellow nationals, on the
condition that the latter knew their proper place. To turn away completely
from the underclass in the context of extensive suburban living would be
a reckless act, since a lack of controlled exchange would increase its im-
minent menace. A similar, but more subtle ambiguity also emerged: the
simultaneous absence and presence of the New Order state in Bintaro.
Although the constructed environment almost deliberately showed no vis-
ible trace of the regular Orde Baru paraphernalia, the spirit of the regime
proved to be omnipresent, as reflected in the homogeneous ‘nothing hap-
pens’ culture of the suburb.19
Chapter II, ‘Scenes of suburban family life’, offers various daily-life
experiences of several members of an extended Bintaro-based family
that I have been acquainted with since 1994. How does it feel for these
people to live in Bintaro? In these ethnographic vignettes, New Order
ideology appears to offer the main frame of referential knowledge that
guided my protagonists through everyday life. Combined with other,
interwoven (and sometimes conflicting) resources, such as ethnic and
cultural paradigms and recent as well as ‘matured’ understandings of
modernity, a strong inclination towards approved New Order ideas on
family, marriage and the proper place of women, bapak (fathers/leaders),
politics, education, consumption culture and good society in general be-
came apparent. Prolonged political repression turns out, in daily life, to
be translated into a perpetual fear by several members of the extended
Wiyanto family: of being secretly drugged in a bar and raped, among the
many other fears of the young Sonya; of the house being burgled and
vandalized, by businessman and part-time family man Budi; of finding
19 Although virtually all modern suburbs share varying degrees of this ‘nothing happens’-culture, the
Jabotabek suburbs were positively defined by it.

25
|  Lost in mall

herself suddenly abandoned and divorced, by the latter’s ambivalent wife

Sissy; and of becoming victims of the all-destroying massa (the entire
Wiyanto family). However, shared understandings of ‘nothing happens’
offer the keynote feel for everyday life. The act of escaping political vio-
lence, for instance, turns out to be tacitly transformed into a prolonged
and well-deserved family holiday abroad.
Chapter III, ‘“Bring Boldoot!”– Mayhem, misery and the middle
class’, focuses on disaster. An account is given of the confusing and trou-
bling events of May 1998, when Jakarta became a war zone overnight,
and of the dealings of the middle class with Krismon, the long term mon-
etary, political and social crisis that started in 1997.20 How did members
of the middle class experience this menacing social turbulence and mob
violence after decades of ‘nothing happens’? How was a suburb such as
Bintaro involved in the turmoil? For once, a crisis could not be pushed
aside or hushed up by the middle class; it had to be discussed, now that is
was out in the open. As a consequence, the middle class chose consump-
tion culture as a vehicle for expressing its thoughts and experiences during
the mayhem. Ongoing consumption culture – in the form of continued
commodification and commercialization, marketing, buying and selling –
offered an obvious, tried and tested way of communication during event-
ful times. The New Order state had, from its early years, been successful
in promoting consumption culture among its middle class, as a crucial
part of its ideology of development. Continuing consumption culture
therefore meant approaching the state of ‘nothing happens’ as closely as
possible. The core self-identity of the middle class as educated consumers
as opposed to the scavenging underclass was preserved.
Chapter IV, ‘Celebrating civil society in the shopping malls’, offers a
further elaboration on the theme of distinction and exclusion. The rapid
proliferation of shopping malls in Jabotabek in the 1990s and the gradual
transformation of malls into ‘social centres’ or even cradles of civil so-
ciety, which are virtually inaccessible to the underclass, are investigated.
How are these places perceived in Jabotabek society and the mass media?
How and when do people visit these malls? What happens inside? Malls
seemed to have developed into middle-class town squares, protected by

20 Krismon is an acronym of krisis moneter, ‘monetary crisis’, words that frequently turned up in In-
donesian newspapers midway through 1997. When these words, which were meaningless for most In-
donesian people, became associated with the increasing political, economic and social slump, the term
Krismon was soon born.

26
 Introduction |

the army and therefore the New Order state. The eventual result is a
rejection, by both the middle class and the state, of the people who are
associated with the underclass; they are regarded as a kind of unwanted
ethnic entity. This possibly means a rejection of the general idea of the
Indonesian nation, now that the underclass, as a manifestation of com-
munal life and primordial society, does not fit in anymore. Civil institu-
tions such as the ‘citizen’, and the distinction between the private domain
and the public – imported during late-colonial times – seem to have no
clear definition or meaning in Indonesia’s postcolonial context. Although
these concepts are universally and sometimes fiercely contested, it seems
as though nobody cares in the Jabotabek suburbs. This theme is still
further elaborated in Chapter V, ‘Climate control, class and the nation’,
which describes how air conditioning constitutes a supreme instrument of
middle-class politics’. Contemporary middle-class urban life is practically
constructed within the social limits of air conditioning. The social context
of artificial climate regulation is recognized as a new and unobtrusive
arena of making a social difference. Air conditioning not only alters social
relations radically; eventually it alters middle-class bodily awareness by a
subtle, sometimes lifelong physical inscription, leading to what seems to
be an alienation from ‘the local’ or ‘the national’. For the middle class
the scope of this phenomenon seems such that they are weaned from the
tropical aspect of Indonesian life and the Indonesian body in order to be-
long to a virtual community consisting of supranational, air-conditioned
‘cool’ middle-class people, without any form of substratum. The ques-
tion of where and when the discursive conditions of this highly symbolic
‘change of climate’ have been conceived, leads back to the era of late-
colonial change, when political articulation was repressed and a dominant
discourse concerning the ‘degenerating’ tropics developed.
The final chapter, ‘Tear gas for Christmas’, explores how middle-
class concepts of violence, apparently tending to understand violence
as a merely instrumental notion, are embodied and expressed in the
discourse of daily life. How is violence discussed, imagined, hushed up,
joked about and commented on? In order to seek an explanation of what
seems like a remarkably pragmatic and hardly moralistic concept, I chose
an almost entirely speculative approach, inspired by previous findings
and suppositions. Is there a connection here with long-standing urban
practices, with hidden (sub)urban ‘traditions’ of forgotten social catego-
ries that went unnoticed for decades? Is there such a thing as a ‘concep-

27
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tual legacy’ of the late-colonial marginalization of Indo-European social

categories and how can we find out? These questions lead to a tentative
consideration of why the perception of violence among the middle class
appears to be an uncomfortable match of pragmatics and morality.

28
 I

Bintarese cosmologies

introduction

Shortly after the violent riots of May 1998, a new style of fence became
fashionable in the suburb of Bintaro Jaya, one of the new ‘tropical gar-
den cities’ in the western part of the vast conurbation of Greater Jakarta
known as ‘Jabotabek’. In the more affluent neighbourhoods of Bintaro,
residents artfully installed barbed wire in the shape of ornamental flow-
ers and leaves.1 Local craftsmen soon started to specialize in this phe-
nomenon. One of these artisans, named Amin, noted that ‘[t]here are
many who want the ends of wires to be shaped like bunga duri (flower
thorns). They believe that this model will scare people off their property.’2
Welding companies offered specially designed fortified gates, which were
known by the code name pintu reformasi (reformasi gates).3 Meanwhile, in the
less affluent parts of Bintaro, owners of the more modest houses topped
their forbidding walls with potsherds and sharp fragments of broken
bottles – a cheaper way of dealing with the pervasive feelings of insecurity
that had recently become an obsession in the garden city.4
Safety had been a major concern in the layout of Bintaro ever since
it was built in the late 1970s. From the first time I drove through its main
streets a decade and a half later, I was constantly aware of the high, grey,
concrete walls that lined the neighbourhoods. These walls separated the
new urban developments from the old, semi-rural settlements, not only in

1 In the most affluent quarters people lived in closed-off compounds and thus felt less need for safety
fencing.
2 The Jakarta Post, 18-5-1999.
3 Tempo, 17-5-1999.
4 Later, ‘supernatural fence services’ (pagar gaib) would enter the Jakartan security market. These ser-
vices, available via the internet (www.pengobatan.com), supposedly protect office buildings and private
houses against black magic (Tanesia 2004).
|  Lost in mall

A site of connection in Bintaro Jaya

Bintaro, but all over the recently built outskirts of Jakarta. Looking more
closely at these walls in the oldest sektor of Bintaro, near to the city, I could
often spot large holes drilled at strategic points close to the ground. From
time to time dark-skinned people emerged from these holes and hopped
onto ramshackle old city buses, or set up ‘informal’ business along the
main roads. These people were called penduduk asli, ‘original dwellers’, in
the neutral parlance of city planners and real estate developers, and they
lived in kampung: old, shadowy, heterogeneous settlements hidden behind
those convenient grey walls. The residents of Bintaro, I came to under-
stand, believed that these ‘pre-modern’ housing arrangements and the cor-
responding way of life would spoil the suburban view. More importantly,
easy access to the realestat premises would invite insecurity and a lack of
safety. Middle-class Bintarese residents called the ‘original dwellers’ simply
kampung people – kampung to be understood here as a typical amalgam
of slum dwellers, pastoral workers and people who were generally back-
ward.5 After living for a while in Bintaro I gathered that these kampung
people were preferably not mentioned at all by the middle classes or orang

5 Kampung are ‘rural’ urban villages and the basic form of urban settlement in Indonesia, often con-
taining varying socio-economic classes. According to Frederick (1983:358), ‘[k]ampung […] were not
simple atavisms of pre-or non-urban settlements; they had grown up and developed in a specifically
urban context, drawing from it much of their basic character’.

30
 I Bintarese cosmologies |

eksekutip – the ‘executive people’, as the middle classes came to be addressed

firstly by advertisement agencies, then by themselves, and finally by the
kampung inhabitants. Orang komplek vs orang kampung was another much-
used dichotomy. Not acknowledging the kampung residents was difficult
in the older parts of Bintaro such as Sektor I and to a lesser extent Sektor
II, where once lush green lawns, brilliantly coloured flower beds and shrub
borders had recently been given over to goats and chickens, small informal
stores and repair shops, stocks of coconuts and spare tyres, snack counters
and ojek (motorcycle taxi) stops. Kampung people constantly criss-crossed
the little public gardens, much to the silent annoyance of residents of the
semi-gated communities in the newer parts of Bintaro, who retreated into
their walled compound homes. The kampung people were clearly not as
easy to contain and confine as initially predicted on the planning maps of
suburban city developers. In Sektor I and II, parts of the concrete walls
between the two zones had not only been penetrated, but torn down al-
together to make way for narrow dirt roads that eventually connected the
two formerly separate social worlds.6 I discovered that the kampung also
contained a few rather large and decorated brick houses, although they
looked a bit seedy. Doctors and dentists lived there. In fact, there was a
wide variety of architecture in the kampung: from simple bamboo shacks
and small concrete ‘cottages’ to old-fashioned urban villas, each surround-
ed by its own yard. In Sektor I and II, all thinkable forms of traffic had to
compete for space, just like decades before in the city centre: push carts,
becak, mopeds, minibuses, air-conditioned buses and sedans. These major
roads were originally designed to accommodate exclusively ‘modern’ traf-
fic, according to the complaints of Bintarese residents. At night, stretches
of these roads were used by banci (male transvestite) sex workers, who
informed me that practically all of their clients lived in the surrounding
kampung behind the concrete walls. For them, the situation was perfect,
since they could settle their transactions comfortably close to home but
hidden in the lush gardens and shrubs along the roads.
The social engineering enacted by way of fences, barriers, walls, gut-
ters and railings that formed a major part of the urban cultural discourse
6 This brought back to mind an earlier experience with the ‘annexing’ of ‘public space’ in a new
suburb in Bekasi: the gradual removal of inconvenient speed humps (polisi tidur, ‘sleeping policemen’) by
becak (bike taxi) drivers, using tiny hammers. Another example of this autonomy vis-à-vis ‘public space’
was the existence of 150 or so ‘unauthorized’ railway crossings in the city. People opened gaps in fences
alongside the tracks and created cement crossings to use as shortcuts in their neighbourhoods (The Jakarta
Post, 3-3-2003).

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|  Lost in mall

of the New Order, was largely inherited from the regime’s predecessor, the
Dutch late-colonial state.7 As I observed in Bintaro from 1994 to 2002, this
‘hardware’ form of social engineering began to fail and worlds that were
intended to exist separately started to become connected. I took notes on
the reactions and the responses of the Bintarese, for whom, according to
John Pemberton (1994:7), an ‘ambiguous, interiorized form of repression
makes the apparent normality of everyday life conceivable, desirable’.
Now that the actual walls were torn down, what did the Bintaro residents
make of their walled-in, fellow suburban dwellers, so close in physical
distance and yet imagined to live light years away, especially since the start
of reformasi? Were the kampung people regarded as dangerous, possibly
criminal intruders, or as convenient, part-time handymen and assistants? It
was not yet clear to me whether they were threatening ‘the apparent nor-
mality of everyday life’, or whether they were considered as a self-evident
and necessary part of it. I also wondered how the Bintarese perceived
their spatial surroundings: what they made of the straight and empty,
almost treeless streets that reflected the white mid-day heat in merciless
waves, where no breeze arrived and where servants in wide, long skirts
rode on rickety mountain bikes, sometimes dragging along a pedigreed
dog on a leash. I had to ponder the fact that many Bintarese spent much
of each morning and evening in traffic, often stuck for an hour or more
without even leaving their own sektor. I was also curious to know what the
Bintarese themselves made of the place and its connection with the social
and political upheavals that Indonesia was experiencing at the time. The
reason that they all so desperately wanted to live in a garden city, just like
their compatriots in Balikpapan, Padang, Den Pasar or so many other
Indonesian cities, appeared to derive from the garden city’s capacity to es-
tablish middleclassness, and thus membership of a largely undefined layer
of society: that of accomplished, recognized, registered fellow members
of modern society. This suburban lifestyle included new aspects in the re-
lationship between masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents and
children, and residents and visitors. For most married women, for example,
the role of devoted housewife – part of the typical middle-class idiom and

7 See Kusno 2000:120-43. A telling example of this colonial-style ‘social engineering’ was reflected
in an article in De Locomotief – a Java-based newspaper – about the imminent ‘deterioration’ of a local,
busy city square: ‘Indeed, it is a good measure of our assistant resident, Sir Peereboom, to have the place
completely encircled with barbed wire and to leave only two tiny openings at the corners, so the lazy
natives cannot criss-cross the place any longer to avoid fatigue’ (De Locomotief, 17-1-1910).

32
 I Bintarese cosmologies |

New Order familial ideology – entailed much ambivalence (Sears 1996;

Sen 1998b). More than a third of Bintarese women had college degrees
and could therefore foster career ambitions.8 For these women, middle-
class life without servants was inconceivable, in the same way as married
life without children was not an option. All this, combined with the fact
that most Bintaro houses were quite modest in size, produced lifestyles with
significant inner contradictions.
Meanwhile Bintaro’s semi-gated compounds and closed-off quarters
did not encourage civil relationships between neighbours, or the existence
of ‘spatial communities’, at least according to Jakarta’s Public Social
Cultural Development Plan of 1994-2005, which found that social inte-
gration among the middle classes was generally better implemented by
occupational affiliation than by participation in neighbourhoods or other
spatial affiliations (Susanto 1999:111). The families that I befriended, most
of whom resided in Sektor IIIA and Sektor IX, reflected this outcome:
upper-class families of entrepreneurs and investors in Sektor IX were
much more interested in community building than salarymen from Sektor
IIIA who retreated into their row houses as soon as they were home and
were even reluctant to have a chat over the fence. Nevertheless, their re-
spective perceptions of ‘public space’ and its cultural appropriation were
similar. In the first place, Bintarese wanted to feel secure in their garden
city, which was mostly not a matter of inclusion but of exclusion. When
residents compared their respective sektor, they invariably mentioned stan-
dards of safety and security. Their sense of place was so indistinguishable
from an anxiety regarding ‘security’ that it was difficult to discover what
other elements formed that sense of place and what made the ‘garden city
experience’ so sought after among urban Indonesians.
How did it feel to live in Bintaro? How did the families experience their
existence as residents of one of ‘Indonesia’s sources of pride and hope for
the future’, in a ‘model of efficient, creative and environmentally sensi-
tive development in Indonesia’, in an ‘elite, clean, fresh environment’?9
One clue may be found in the dazzling rhetoric beloved by city planners
and real estate developers and embraced by prospective dwellers of this
still-incomplete suburb – indeed, such phrases have taken on the status
of slogans in Bintaro. ‘Real estate’ does not have a suitable translation
in Indonesian, but there was much talk about realestat. The newest parts
8 Data survey warga Kota Taman Bintaro Jaya 1999.
9 PT Jaya Real Property company profile.

33
|  Lost in mall

of residential Bintaro, models of efficient, creative and environmentally

sensitive private estate development, felt like shop windows, theatre stages
or film sets, at least at first glance and compared to the rest of Indonesia.
There was no place for something as old-fashioned as the New Order
state in Bintaro, at least in the outer appearance of Bintaro. The good
old Indonesian state, with its inevitable signboards, monuments, heroic
statues, flags and banners, was nowhere to be found, nor was there a
trace of the police, the military or any officialdom.10 The exception was
party time among the seriously well-to-do in the uptown parts of Bintaro,
when military officers with red or pink berets doubled as private security
personnel, an immediately recognized status symbol.11 The obligatory
signboards, notices and reference placards of New Order officialdom
seemed, in certain sektor, to be replaced by numerous, colourful spanduk,
announcing all kinds of formal and informal business. The ‘real’ feel of
Bintaro, the sense of place experienced by long-time residents, is for an
anthropologist a matter of speculation at best, even after countless days
and nights with local acquaintances and neighbours in front of the televi-
sion, hours in traffic jams, repeated night time explorations on the streets,
numerous wanderings through the shopping malls and supermarkets and
many aerobic workout sessions in the all-female fitness clubs. Still, the
Bintarese sense of place seemed to be characterized as much by desire as
by fear, apparently as a result of that ‘interiorized form of repression’. At
times it resembled a shared phantasmagoria of normal, modern, decent
life in normal, modern, decent surroundings, and of being truly and ut-
terly middle class, orang eksekutip, no matter what the size of your income.
It was about being entirely safe, regardless of civil wars, revolutions, kill-
ings, upheaval and mischief ‘out there’ in the rest of Indonesia.
Bintaro Jaya’s outer appearance resembled suburban developments
anywhere else in the world. Just like a McDonalds hamburger or a bottle
of Coke, this type of suburb is an example of a mass-produced identi-
cal manifestation of the ‘globalization of culture’ – a standardized form
that supplies living conditions (Hannerz 1992). Writing about ‘fortified
enclaves’ – suburban real estate developments in ‘global’ cities – Teresa
Caldeira (1996:308) summed up the basic characteristics shared by these
‘private properties for collective use’: they are physically isolated, turned
10 In sharp contrast, distant and isolated settlements in for instance northern Kalimantan generally
showed dozens of state-related signboards and reference boards.
11 The individual beret colours referred to distinguished elite troops.

34
 I Bintarese cosmologies |

inwards and not facing the street and they are controlled by armed
guards and security systems that enforce rules of inclusion and exclusion.
As such – as a global form – the new suburb is also subject to people’s
need to create new, local meanings of this form, by interpreting, reinter-
preting and transforming global points of departure. In this process, the
Bintarese were inspired by notions not only of contemporary ‘Western’
images, but also of an imagined colonial past that accommodated their
immediate personal histories as citizens in Suharto’s Orde Baru, as well
as their strong desire to feel enak (comfortable, relaxed).
The often total reclusion of families in the name of ‘security’ led to
neglect and deterioration of ‘public space’, and a reduction in community
building. The Bintarese manner of living a suburban life, including the
interpretation or perception of physical environs, reflected many under-
lying codes that together embodied an imagined middle-class haven: not
just security, but modernity, normality and predictability. Nonetheless,
spatial facts complicated matters: an overly literal interpretation of ‘safety’
turned friendly homes into unattractive urban fortresses and ‘plain’ streets
into empty battlefields. Exclusion of unwanted kampung people led to
the ‘spontaneous’ erection of walls and barbed-wire barricades that often
divided neighbourhoods and obstructed traffic flows. Meanwhile, both
Bintarese and kampung people invented provisional solutions and clever
tricks to circumvent these daily nuisances. They built convenient little
bamboo bridges, they drilled holes in walls, they organized private-public
transport stops and they started little shops or snack bars in strategic
places. In one brand-new neighbourhood, a collective vigilance com-
mittee (ronda) was organized by kampung and eksekutip people together,
although the latter were apparently wary of including the former. These
‘informal’ measures were most perceptible in Sektor I and II, which were
the oldest parts of Bintaro, near to the city – an area that eventually began
to look like the rest of Indonesia again. Here, many of the row houses
along the main roads as well as in the compounds saw their carports, ga-
rages or front rooms turned into little shops or businesses such as beauty
parlours, pet shops, day-care facilities, food counters or, apparently much
in demand, miniature ‘education centres’.12 All erected spanduk for pub-
licity purposes. Although it was whispered that these shops were mainly
‘Chinese’ initiatives, in Sektor III and other areas I knew several pribumi
12 In Bintaro, there were a host of courses in mathematics, ‘computer’, English, and ‘the Art of Learn-
ing’ in general.

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(as some indigenous Indonesians call themselves) who also succeeded in

this form of small-scale entrepreneurship.13
The reintroduction of the ruko (combined house and shop; from rumah,
‘house’, and toko, ‘shop’), the tried-and-tested method of doing retail busi-
ness in Indonesia, showed that the modern suburb is not resistant to
‘localization’. Although it is an axiom that the urbanization of Southeast
Asian cities such as Jakarta cannot be studied as a separate, ‘Asian’ or
‘Eastern’ phenomenon because these towns show clear evidence of con-
verging with Western patterns of urbanization, it must be acknowledged
that phenomena such as the ruko challenge such universalisms (Dick and
Rimmer 1998). To regard the Jakartan suburbs as mere ‘bundlings’ of ‘ur-
ban elements’ such as ‘the home’, ‘the shop’, ‘restaurants’ and ‘schools’,
all ‘familiar and common to the Western city’, is a simplification of a
suburban reality that needs careful and lengthy observation. Imported
models of urban design are interpreted and expressed in unique ways at
the local level, and need due recognition and explanation.14

modern mythology and architecture

Even before reaching the exit roads that led to the newest southern and
southwestern suburbs of Jakarta, visitors could see huge, colourful roadside
billboards depicting palm trees, flowers, a smiling sun, red roofs and happy
young faces. ‘Healthy Town, Garden City – Come and Live in Bintaro
Jaya!’ they advertised, and: ‘Flower City – A Happy Fresh Life For You’,
or: ‘Health and Safety in Bintaro’. These slogans elaborated the myth, ac-
cording to Caldeira (1996:309), of what developers called ‘a new concept
of residence’ based on the articulation of images of security, isolation,
homogeneity, facilities and services, although in the case of Bintaro, health
seemed to be the crucial bonus.15 These billboards and advertisements
presented ‘the image of islands to which one can return every day, in order
to escape from the city and its deteriorated environment and to encounter

13 Forms of middle-class informal business were to be found in all sektor, although in the more posh
neighbourhoods it was not considered stylish to advertise.
14 See Dick and Rimmer 1998:231; Cowherd 2000. Extensive surveys in two large new suburbs in
Jabotabek by Harald Leisch (2000) shows that only a small minority of the suburban residents can afford
the facilities offered by developers, such as golf courses, sports clubs and hospitals. Their symbolic mean-
ing nevertheless remains significant.
15 Caldeira’s research project deals with Sao Paulo’s suburbs.

36
 I Bintarese cosmologies |

an exclusive world of pleasure among peers’ (Caldeira 1996:309). Once

within the borders of Bintaro proper, marked by an ornamental gate
built from white pillars, the lively billboards appeared again, now recom-
mending newly developed sektor of the suburb. Sektor I, the oldest part of
Bintaro, which is situated close to the city’s southwestern border, was the
first materialization of the dream of Bapak (sir; father) Ir. Ciputra, founder
of Bintaro and present president commissioner of PT Jaya Real Property.
He was the developer of this vast and modern garden city, offering housing
and facilities to tens of thousands of commuter families that had recently
found themselves belonging to Indonesia’s new middle classes. The myth
of the origin of Bintaro was carefully preserved by employees of PT Jaya
Real Property and by the pioneer inhabitants of Sektor I:

One day in the year of 1976, Bapak Ir. Ciputra was driving around the
area of what later came to be Sektor I, together with a friend who had
just purchased a plot of land in the vicinity. By a sudden streak of intuisi
(intuition) Bapak Ir. Ciputra became aware of the fantastic possibilities
of the location as a site for the development of a new satellite town for
commuters. He sensed the place was cocok (tallying in every respect). The
prospective garden city would offer its inhabitants ample relief from stres
(stress). It would offer quality living in a natural setting. Bapak Ir. Ciputra
succeeded in seizing the needed licenses to obtain the land, at first for
only 100 hectares, later for 2,321 hectares,16 and he compensated the
original settlers without any interference from the government – he was
assisted in that by a Special Task Force from PT Jaya Real Property. No
force had ever to be used, and settlers that were not yet (belum) willing to
clear their land would be protected against trespassing by the placing of
concrete walls. In 1979, the actual development of Sektor I took off.17

When the surrounding old kampung still dominated the landscape, the
entire area must have been quite bucolic. The roads that led from the city
outskirts to Sektor I – modest, narrow and meandering village roads that
for decades only had to accommodate slow forms of traffic – could still
accommodate thousands of extra vehicles in the morning and evening
rush hours. The housing projects were designed in the usual perumahan
16 In 1999, Bintaro Jaya encompassed 1,700 hectares.
17 Interview with Ibu Erika and Bapak Budiawan, corporate secretary and manager of PT Jaya Real
Property, respectively.

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(housing complex) style. Huge, white, pillared, fenced-off and triumphant-

looking urban villas lined the main roads, hiding the rows of more modest
models of this peculiar Indonesian building style in the interior of the
blocks. Tiny public gardens, manicured little lawns with unusual species
of flowers and lines of young palm trees fulfilled the promise of the gar-
den city concept, although this followed the razing of thousands of huge,
ancient shadow and fruit trees that had protected and fed the inhabitants
of the now-cleared kampung. The 1980s and 1990s saw a gradual but
steadfast expansion of these building complexes, impeded only now and
again by unwilling residents of the kampung, which resulted in a rather
motley ground plan of Bintaro Jaya. During these decades, Indonesian
consumer confidence rose to previously unknown heights. The country
was recognized as one of Asia’s ‘tigers’ and in the early 1990s the gross
domestic product saw an average annual growth of 5% (Hill 1996:5).
Jakarta had the fastest development rate of all the country’s regions in the
early 1990s, with an annual economic growth rate of 8.6%. About 60%
of all the money in the country was estimated to circulate in Jakarta.18 In
Jakarta, conspicuous consumption became fashionable with new, self-ap-
pointed members of these middle classes (Wardhana and Barus 1999; Van
Leeuwen 1997a) spending money on unusual ‘hobbies’ such as collecting
antique cars or exclusive apartments, weekly shopping trips to Singapore
and long weekends on Bali. They represented a model of consumption for
thousands of hopefuls, who pacified themselves with new, more modest
forms and interpretations of consumption, thereby counting themselves
and each other as belonging to the middle class as well. The label had, in
the 1980s and 1990s, become a trope for everything in the realm of the
social that was agreeable and modern, yet unobtrusive in a political sense:
a trope of being ideologically neutral. To many Indonesians, the term
‘middle class’ represented a safe haven, a space where one could partake
in social life without reference to the many ideological classifications that
Indonesian society had endured since the early 1950s, such as Nasakom19
or Pancasila – the latter referring to the specifically Indonesian version of
democracy (see also Chapter II).20

18 Dorléans 2000:257. The city’s per capita average income in 1993 was Rp 3.3 million (US$ 1,473),
well above the national level of Rp 1.36 million (Dorléans 2000:257).
19 From nasionalis, agama, komunis, ‘nationalism, religion, communism’.
20 Vatikiotis 1998:95. See also Anderson 1990. Pancasila and Nasakom are examples of ideological
frameworks that served as models for society in recent decades.

38
 I Bintarese cosmologies |

The strong desire of Indonesians to ‘belong’ socially resulted from

decades of relentless ideological projections on their society by the state
(Anderson 1983; Shiraishi 1997). As early as the colonial period, the state
propagated the false idea of a native society composed of pristine adat
(customary law) communities and homogeneous ethnic groups, which
was followed by a fixation on the desa (village) as the focus and basic unit
of Indonesian communal life. In the post-revolutionary years, society was
projected as an amalgam of various aliran, a kind of world view ‘streams’
(C. Geertz 1976). Finally, the last days of the Orde Baru saw the promo-
tion of a kind of middleclassness that many Indonesians could use to locate
themselves socially. During the 1980s, the unrivalled success of the New
Order economic policy and the larger context of Suharto’s masterplan for
Indonesian society shaped the necessary conditions in which an ideological
mass conversion to middleclassness could take place (Ramadhan 1991).
Both the socio-economic breadth and the culturally idiosyncratic
narrowness of the term ‘middle class’ expressed themselves in the physi-
cal layout of the ‘self-contained new satellite townships’ in the Jabotabek
area, where 32 million inhabitants were expected by 2015, almost double
the number that lived there in 2000.21 These new residential zones
were a new kind of ‘environmental’ consumer product, because they
were expected to satisfy recent and not-so-recent standards concerning
proper and modern housing accommodation. The spatial structure of
the new housing areas was strongly inspired by ‘Western’ blueprints,
such as the particular concept of gated communities, the separation of
housing and commercial areas and the centrality of the golf course in
the most expensive neighbourhoods, resulting in a strict uniformity. A
ring road usually connected monotonous housing areas and commercial
districts. Imported architectural styles and housingpark designs referred
to imagined ‘exotic’ parts of the world, which served as fantasy models
or dreamscapes for certain neighbourhoods, such as ‘Mediteranean’,
‘Boston’, ‘Kyoto Park’ or ‘Sevilla’. They were reflected in the colours of
the building and ornaments on the facades. The construction of most
of the houses was more or less according to the same blueprints, and
21 Dorléans 2000:249. According to Dick and Rimmer 1998, projects approved or under construc-
tion in 1997 in West and South Jakarta included Teluk Naga; Bumi Serpong Damai (BSD); Kota Baru
Tigaraksa; Citra Raya; Lippo Karawaci; Bintaro Jaya; Gading Serpong; Kota Modern; Alam Sutera;
Bukit Jonggol Asri; Bukit Sentul; Citra Indah; Kota Wisata; Telaga Kahuripan; Taman Metropolitan. In
total they took in up 62,820 hectares. Dorléans (2000:249) states that in the 1980s, 80% of all new formal
housing units in the suburbs went to residents of Jakarta (about 900,000 persons).

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houses therefore differed mainly in size. All house models only seemed
to exist architecturally as a frontage, because both the sides and the back
consisted of blind walls of smooth, grey concrete, as if the houses had
only two dimensions instead of three. While this design made each house
resemble a sort of display window, it was largely a practical matter, since
eventually all of the houses would be attached to one another side by
side, using land as economically as possible, but also offering residents
the safety of a fortress-like setting. ‘Architecture’ limited itself to the front
of the house, making it look like a display window. This possibly explains
why ‘size’ seemed a more important feature than ‘architecture’ in the
suburbs. The ‘town manager’ of Lippo Karawaci, a new town west of
Jakarta, explained the global outlook of the Jabotabek suburbs as follows:

Today, clients want to be international, because of their extensive trav-

els to Europe and the US. They are also highly influenced by television.
They aren’t too keen on ethnic architecture. [… ] They want the Medi-
terranean style, Los Angeles style and Beverly Hills style. Our marketing
people have been successful in identifying the market and we are very
sure of what they want.22

Other ‘dreamscapes’ where residences were greatly in demand included

Kota Wisata (south of Jakarta) and Kota Legenda (east of Jakarta).
The layout of Kota Wisata (Tourism City), a 1000-hectares develop-
ment launched in 1997, strongly resembled a theme park, including its
facilities and spectacular highlights. The basic idea was that inhabitants
could take a tour around the world and visit the great cities of the West,
enjoying exciting cosmopolitan sights without having to leave their own
neighbourhoods.23 The essential ‘Monaco’, ‘Amsterdam’, ‘Den Haag’,
‘Kyoto’, ‘Paris’, ‘Madrid’ or ‘Florence’ were all to be found within the
confines of their corresponding gated community, depicted by an array
of miniature landmarks or fantasy monuments. These cities were also
represented in the town centre of Kota Wisata. This place comprised
a theme park about an imagined West and included several residential

22 The Jakarta Post, 19-3-1995, cited in Cowherd 2000.

23 Suggesting a cosmopolitanan inclination by mentioning foreign capitals was already fashionable as
early as in 1917, when the king of Karangasem (Bali) celebrated the arrival of the Governor General
by giving the various pavillions in his palace names such as ‘Paris’, ‘Amsterdam’ and ‘Berlin’ (Schulte
Nordholt 1997:17).

40
 I Bintarese cosmologies |

areas, without a clear separation between the two.24 The 2000-hectares

development built east of Jakarta in 1994, known as Kota Legenda
(Legend City), suggested a great colonial past – an ‘American colonial’
past, that is – combined with a programme of ecological (ekosistem)
concerns, hence its nickname Environment City. An advertisement that
the developers ran in Bisnis Indonesia in 1995 boasted Kota Legenda’s
‘re-cycling concept, the interconnected waterway system and the waste
water treatment plant’. In the centre of the full-colour ad was a gilded
rococo frame surrounding a painting of a very lush landscape includ-
ing two large neo-colonial mansions. In the foreground, a sexy young
woman dressed in white was playing golf with an elderly ‘executive’-style
man under huge shadow trees. A calm blue river – not yellowish-brown,
which is the usual colour – meandered through the park-like landscape,
and a speedboat was just passing by. This dreamscape brought together
various improbable elements of an imagined past and an imagined West.
In the better parts of Bintaro Jaya, the local architecture was in-
spired by colonial times with a preference for early-nineteenth-century
ornamental detail, such as pillars, arches, stairs, canopies, porticoes and
fountains, all in a kind of ‘imperial’ or ‘neo-classical’ style. An important
architectural motto was ‘the bigger, the better; the more, the better’. The
typical resident started out by buying or renting a miniature three-room
‘palace’ with a single tiny pillar. As his fortune grew, he would build the
same house on a grander scale: fourteen rooms, with four or five tall
pillars, a big fountain, additional stairs and extra porticoes. Scale was a
major part of gengsi (prestige).
Buying and selling suburban homes took place in small outlets in local
shopping malls, where they could be purchased in the same manner as
donuts or refrigerators, as just another consumer good. For instance, one
of these outlets belonging to PT Jaya Property in Plaza Slipi ran a ‘Buy a
House, Get One Free’ offer in 1997, and later offered a ‘complimentary
29'' TV-set’ with every purchase. Another popular deal encouraged buyers
to ‘Pay only Rp 500,000 [US$ 175]) and move into your new house today’.
During this period, many shopping malls boasted pretty, red-uniformed
young ladies showing photos and drawings of houses that seemed mainly
composed of ornaments – little roofs, pillars and cupolas – while the pro-
spective customers, often nervous young couples, sat in comfortable chairs

24 This setting reflected the twelve-cities-in-thirteen-days trips taken by Indonesian tourists in Europe.

41
‘Tipe Peacock’ and ‘Tipe Parrot’: two middle-range house designs as
advertised by PT Jaya Real Property, Bintaro Jaya
 I Bintarese cosmologies |

and examined neat piles of brochures outlining financing schemes. The

same scene, but on a grander scale, could be found in the offices of real
estate firms: their luxurious offices were equipped with indoor fountains
amid scale models of houses and complete neighbourhoods, including
golf courses and palm trees. Real estate firms also advertised using hot-air
balloons with the company’s name and witty slogans such as ‘House For
Sail’ tied, as if with lengthy umbilical cords, to the office building.25 These
real estate offices sometimes stood in undeveloped, red-soil fields, such as
in Lippo Karawaci, west of Jakarta, where all local kampung had been
cleared but building activities were yet to take off. When the financial
crisis set in towards the end of 1997, these activities suddenly came to a
complete standstill all over Jabotabek, leaving half-finished office towers
prey to the tropical elements.
The smallest houses to be found on the real estate market were a
mere 21 square metres or even smaller. Since the early 1990s a ministe-
rial decree had obliged real estate developers who were building on plots
bigger than ten hectares to build five of these ‘very small’ or low-cost
houses for every single expensive house or three medium-cost houses that
they built. (Dorléans 2000:259). It was common knowledge that these
regulations were quite easy to circumvent for most developers, using
formal as well as informal methods. When low-cost houses were actually
built, they were often in unattractive and isolated spots, or they were built
in such an extravagant style that they became comparatively expensive
and thus unaffordable (Leisch 2000:4). The French geographer Bernard
Dorléans (2000:258) estimated that in 1997, 30% of the population of
Jakarta could afford to live in a private residential development.
The residential units in the suburbs were ‘global forms’ in the sense
that they were quite similar to Western examples, even though they were
subject to processes of re-interpretation or localization that produced
new, local meanings. The same applied to the interior architecture of
these units, in which the partitioning of space expressed both indigenous
lifestyles and cosmopolitan or global influences. A careful study of the
floor plans of several types of home, including those found in the 1994
brochure produced by PT Cahyabangun Intiraya, a Jakartan real estate
company advertising the Pandan Valley development south of Jakarta,

25 See Schulte Nordholt 1997. This pun refers to the floating nature of these estates, as if surrounded
by water.

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offers insight into the ‘ideal’ domestic arrangement of the suburban

dweller. The proposed houses shown in these plans were available in
eight sizes, from 42 square metres (tipe merah or ‘red’) to 260 square me-
tres (tipe turkis or ‘turquoise’). In the brochure, the ‘growth’ from tipe merah
to tipe turkis was almost suggested to be an organic one; if only time had
its way, everyone would eventually end up in tipe turkis, or so it seemed.
The ground plan of the tipe merah home, which cost Rp 50 million
(US$ 17,500) included a carport but no servants’ quarters. The bath-
room had no shower or bath, but a simple bak mandi (square cement
water container), and there was a standard toilet bowl. Apparently more
important to the aspiring middle classes than a servant’s room was the
ruang tamu, the semi-public front room, which took up at least a quarter
of the available floor space, where visitors were formally received, and
where no television was ever to be found. The tipe merah houses were
themselves quite small, but lot sizes of 105 square metres allowed for
expansion if the owner’s financial circumstances changed – it was easier
to build an annex for a servant than to construct a new ruang tamu.
Bigger houses in Pandan Valley – averaging 60 square metres – had
bigger ruang tamu and garages, but the size of the servant’s quarters stayed
the same. This space was, according to ‘ancient’ custom, often nothing
more than an improvised shelter built on or against outer walls of a
house and separated from the owners by a door that was locked each
night. The size of the servant’s quarters was the same in all models, a
tight 4 square metres. The servant’s bathroom featured a ceramic hole in
the floor instead of a toilet bowl. Houses of 90 square metres, classified
as hijau (green) had two proper bathrooms, one of which was equipped
with a tub and a washbasin. Tipe biru (blue) houses, which were 120
square metres, offered a garage as well as a carport. The next size up,
tipe nila (purple), at 150 square metres, had a shower in the second bath-
room, as well as an upper floor. Tipe magenta, (magenta), at 200 square
metres, offered real luxury: a garage for two cars (at 28 square metres
it was seven times as big as the servant’s room), a pantri (display kitchen)
as well as the dapur (the ‘wet’ kitchen, which was in any case part of the
servant’s quarters) and three bathrooms. The biggest house, tipe turkis,
which sold for Rp 256 million (US$ 90,000) in 1994, offered all of these
amenities on an even larger scale, with the servant’s room taking up 6
square metres, although that was probably meant to house two people.
The design of the pantri was significant because it signalled a more

44
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committed type of consumerism. Ordinary or ‘wet’ kitchens (dapur) were

dark, uncomfortable and sometimes dirty spaces. If there was a sink, it
was a crude cement construction with a single tap. Servants were often
expected to cook on the floor, which was thought to enhance the taste
of traditional Indonesian food. The strong and persistent smells during
preparation were impossible to restrict to the dapur. The kampungan (in
the sense of ‘primitive’) association of these unstoppable smells could be
mitigated by the presence of a pantri, as a showcase of modernity and
affluence: the pantri was usually situated between the living room and
the dapur, as a kind of culinary buffer zone.26 While refrigerators, often
two of them and equipped with locks, were located in the living room,
the pantri might include gadgets like a microwave oven, a rice-cooker, a
modern stove or grill, toasters, a blender and various minor items such as
electric knives, all of them immaculately clean and polished. The pantri
gadgets were generally covered with co-ordinating covers of frilled cloth,
all belonging to a set. There was a very strict distinction between these
gadgets and the ‘traditional’ tools that were used in the dapur; they were
thought to belong to different worlds. Traditional and smelly food was
prepared in great quantities in the dapur by a servant, using traditional
utensils on a simple stove, whereas the place for Western (fast) food was
the pantri, where it could be heated in the microwave oven by individual
family members. A pantri, in short, suggested the arrival of comfortable
consumerism and modernity; the pantri was where cosmopolitan choices
could be made and was therefore off-limits for the servants. In the cheaper
house models, pantri were often very tiny, which emphasized their merely
symbolic function in the household, just like the ruang tamu. People also
created improvised pantri in their houses by rearranging their furniture,
which I was informed suggested a modern outlook on the household and
life. Distinction or gengsi seemed also to be expressed by the interior of
the bathroom. ‘Primitive’ squatting holes in the floor, for example, were
a far cry from the jacuzzis that could be found as a standard in certain
upmarket projects. It was remarkable that in all the bathrooms of Pandan
Valley, a washbasin and bak mandi were never installed in the same room,
although their function was completely different. This can be explained
by the unfavourable connotation of the bak mandi with ‘primitivism’ and
the washbasin with colonial and thus upper-class preferences. The socially
26 See Sen 1998b. This particular kitchen configuration – ‘modernity’ versus ‘tradition’ – reflects the
fact that the kitchen used to be the borderline defining line between East and West in late-colonial homes.

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inferior position of the pembantu (servant) was expressed by their exclusion

from using toilet bowls. These objects were ‘not yet’ within their reach,
just as they were far removed from having white ceramic floor tiles, an
emblem of modernity, in their room. Thus, although the size, number
and configuration of the ‘master’ bathrooms changed as the houses got
more expensive, the servant’s bathroom stayed the same – excluded, as
it were, from pembangunan (development) and the need for private space,
which was exclusively regarded as a matter of modernity.
The inner space of the garden city homes also revealed the modern
attitudes of their inhabitants, who wanted to be able to choose between
‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ solutions, features and styles regarding cook-
ing methods, personal hygiene, receiving guests and dealings with ser-
vants. Rather than describing this attitude just as a form of hybridity or
ambiguity, as Cowherd (2000) suggests, it is more realistic to recognize
the pragmatic way in which the Bintarese eventually took account of
their environment, both indoors and outdoors, as a way of giving new
meanings to forms and styles that seemed universal in their symbolism.
Fear was not experienced so much as a hindrance, but rather as a circum-
stance, an example of which can be seen in the craze for the ornamental
barbed wire. Another example can be found in the Pandan Valley bro-
chure, which neatly presented a matrix of stylized emblems showing the
twelve special facilities this real estate park had on offer: ‘health care’,
‘education’, ‘electricity’, ‘playground’, ‘security’, ‘paved roads’, ‘tennis
lawn’, ‘swimming pool’, ‘water pump’, ‘telephone’, ‘green areas’ and
‘dish antenna’. The uncomplicated way in which the developers linked
essentials such as ‘electricity’, ‘telephone’ and ‘water pump’ with more
fashionable amenities like ‘swimming pool’, ‘security’ and ‘tennis lawn’
shows the same pragmatic view of the environment which is found in
the ground plans themselves: this suburban cosmology often exhibited
an ability to resolve conflicting demands.

a monument for the middle class

Starting with the development of Sektor VII, advertisements for Bintaro

Jaya’s newest neighbourhoods placed a new emphasis on garden city ide-
als. They clearly reflected that American and Australian suburbs, and
not old colonial designs, had been the town planners’ standard model.

46
 I Bintarese cosmologies |

A Romawi-style gate in Bintaro Jaya

Remarkable landscaping directly correlated with the more luxurious and

architecturally varied villas, the golf courses, tennis parks and the generally
exclusive appearance of the neighbourhoods. Rare, imported Thai palm
trees, young, unusual trees with colourful blossoms, neat flower borders
and spacious green squares abounded. Nevertheless, the general impres-
sion of these sektor was not very green or garden-like, due to the wide,
naked avenues and the preference for alun-alun resembling vast and empty
square lawns.27 All the huge old trees had been razed as part of the devel-
opment process. In contrast, just over the grey concrete walls that entirely
lined the horizon waved the tops of tall bamboo bushes, tamarinds, coco-
nut palms and countless other tall shadow and fruit trees of the kampung.
The sektor greenery needed, of course, time to develop into a lush setting.
For the time being, other features attracted the residents’ and visitors’
attention. In Sektor VIII, the Romawi or ‘Roman’ style dominated the
public sphere in the form of high, white arches and ‘eroded’ classical
columns topped with clocks and statues of winged lions. On one street
corner, a white, half-circular staircase led to an apparently redundant
portico, pendopo-style,28 half-hiding a miniature Colosseum. Inspired
27 Alun-alun are traditional village squares consisting of vast lawns, often situated in front of palaces.
28 A pendopo, originating from Java, consists of a decorated roof held up by pillars and is used for
gatherings.

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house owners followed suit, placing ‘broken’ columns, busts of Caesar

or little versions of the Arc de Triomphe on their front lawns. There
was even a Romawi monument situated on the major roundabout that
bordered Sektor IX. It was a large, confusing construction, consisting of
sculptured columns of varying heights, placed at random on an elevated
circular platform and joined by winged leopards, ‘odalisque’ statues,
shelled arches, and a central pillar crowned with huge two-sided clocks
that soon came to a standstill. It was quite a spacious structure, sur-
rounded by a multilevelled, circular lane. After making enquiries I found
out that it had been designed by Pak Muso, an old artist, at the invita-
tion of PT Jaya Real Property. Inhabitants of the nearby kampung took
pictures of each other in front of the central, clock-crowned column.
The overwhelming, larger-than-life ‘classical’ pretence of it provided an
association with a bizarre form of modern art. The construction had
all the trappings of a monumen (monument), although not one celebrat-
ing the struggle for independence or the unity of the nation, but clearly
celebrating the triumph of middleclassness. Not by coincidence, the site
was the only place in Bintaro where direct and unmistakable measures
were taken against kampung residents. Soon after the completion of
the Romawi construction, hundreds of kampung people began hanging
out there every Saturday night, arriving on motorbikes, by angkot (public
minibus) and on foot. They used the Romawi premises as recreational
space. In time, it developed into a very lively affair, with food stalls, teen-
agers playing guitar, chatting women tending their sleeping babies, play-
ing children and kretek (clove tobacco) smoking card players. Flirtatious
adolescents took short, noisy rides on their mopeds to show off. Elderly
women could be seen de-licing each other. Just once a week, the place
smelled of spicy food, exhaust fumes, kretek and durian, deep into the
night. The relaxed atmosphere of the place resembled exactly the area
of Merdeka Square, around Monas (Monumen Nasional), the gigantic
national-monument square in Jakarta, an image of great ideological sig-
nificance and power, where every Saturday night for decades thousands
of common Jakartans enjoyed the same kind of entertainment.29
This Saturday night development wasn’t met with the Sektor IX-XII

29 See Lindsey 1993:172. Considering Monas as a ‘national pusaka’ (heirloom), he remarks that ‘it is
not surprising to see it reproduced in public locations’. For many Jakartans, the vast empty space around
Monas offers room for recreation, since the city has virtually no public parks. Monuments and recreation
have thus lately become associated themes.

48
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residents’ enthusiasm. The Bintarese, who had to steer their air-condi-

tioned, tinted sedans and Kijang vans around the monument on their way
to and back from the shopping mall, were shockingly confronted with,
and sometimes reminded of a way of living they favourably described as
tradisional, when they referred to forms of massage, herbal medicine or
certain foodstuffs. Mostly, however, they referred to it as backward and
unhygienic – a lifestyle that should stay hidden behind the high concrete
walls. The desacralization of their Romawi statues was translated into a
lament about the appalling, unhygienic manners of the kampung people,
because Bintarese told each other that the amount of filth and litter that
was left behind by ‘them’ every Sunday morning disgraced the neigh-
bourhood. Another hushed-up concern was the belief that prostitution,
gambling and drug-trafficking were also taking place around the Romawi
monument. Finally, after several months, the circular space was suddenly
enclosed with a high iron fence, leaving only one narrow opening at the
front. PT Jaya Real Property had apparently decided to call a halt to the
gatherings.30 No food stalls or mopeds could enter the premises any lon-
ger, and the attraction of the place as a recreational spot was immediately
lost. The ‘Roman Marbles’ were thus saved from the primitives, as one
winking Bintarese informed me. Bintaro residents never called the Romawi
statues a monument, but the annoying weekly presence of kampung peo-
ple, who had immediately recognized the place as such, revealed the true
nature of this taman rekreasi (playground) by its Saturday night ‘sacrilege’.

getting in and out of the neighbourhood

When I lived in Bintaro, I resided in Jalan (street) Mandar XXI, very close
to Jalan Mandar Raya (main street). Bintaro’s street system, in which main
thoroughfares named after trees, flowers or birds are surrounded by a grid
of dozens of irregularly numbered side streets and little lanes, is a compli-
cated one. This system, often leading to a frustrating search for someone’s
house, had been in use for decades in the suburbs. In the neat little street
where I lived for almost a year, and where I paid numerous visits through-
out the 1990s, the houses revealed, at face value, a great deal about their
30 The management of and control over various sektor in the suburbs is initially the responsibility of
the real estate developer. After an agreed number of years, (parts of) the management and control de-
volve to the municipality.

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inhabitants. In 1999, one in every seven houses was lacking occupants.

The former residents of these houses had been evicted or had had to sell
their property overnight, because the economic crisis was still being felt.
Within four or five weeks of becoming empty the first signs of neglect and
decay, due to the tropical environment, would show themselves: brown
and black smudges on the white walls, thick layers of rotten or dried leaves
in the front yard, piles of free publicity material and papers, crumbling
facades and various animal nests. During that time, the houses that were
occupied were often painted purple or apple-green, a sign that young
families lived there. They were inspired to redesign their homes by new
suburbs such as Kota Wisata or Taman Mediteranean, where ‘fun’ colours
and forms abounded. Some new houses were designed in foreign architec-
tural styles: Mandar XXI had a green-and-yellow-coloured, woodcarved
‘Boston’ style mansion and a modest, brand-new, peach-coloured ‘Italian’
palace with stained-glass windows and little round balconies. The ‘Boston’
residents had probably been educated in the States. A few mysterious
houses were completely hidden behind high fences of opaque plastic mate-
rial. Their occupants never showed themselves, not even when they drove
their cars with tinted windows through the neighbourhood. For a short
stretch Jalan Mandar XXI ran parallel to the busy Bintaro main arterial
road, named Jalan Mandar Raya, which prompted the neighbours to close
off their street at one end with an unmoveable barrier that was garlanded
by plenty of barbed wire. This resulted in an unexpected cul-de-sac after
entering the slightly meandering, quiet street from the main arterial road.
Main streets were generally associated with unspecified danger and it was
felt by the residents that Mandar XXI was much too open to penetration.
Posko (pos koordinasi, ‘coordination posts’), tiny wooden cubicles that offered
a shady, narrow seat to the satpam, private and uniformed security person-
nel (satuan pengamanan, ‘security unit’), were to be found at both ends of the
street. At one end they handled barriers and mercilessly questioned any
potential intruder into Jalan Mandar XXI. ‘Whom are you visiting?’ they
would ask before lifting the main street barrier. Sometimes they refused
passage when a name was wrongly pronounced or said with too much
hesitation. They flatly refused to lift the barrier for pedestrians, and every
time I left my street to walk to the supermarket or the fitness club, or to
stroll about a little, I had to bend at the knees to pass under. Since I was
virtually the only inhabitant of the street who ever walked to and from the
main road, there was no question at all of changing the barrier’s standard

50
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position a little bit for me. The satpam in charge told me straight away that
this was, at any rate, technically impossible. The other pedestrians that
entered our street from the main road, early every morning and early every
evening, were all peddlers and hawkers. A significant part of their admit-
tance ‘ritual’ consisted of their bowing under the barrier, even though
they were carrying their merchandise on their shoulders. Of course I was
wrong, I realized later, to insist on doing my shopping on foot, or taking
a stroll along the dangerous main road. The local code held that strolls
should be taken in the safe haven of the neighbourhood with its expensive
and top-heavy security system, and during the very early morning or at the
end of the afternoon, wearing the appropriate leisure clothes. For shop-
ping one used a car, however close the supermarket might be. The satpam
felt responsible for anything that might happen on the street or in the front
yards. They continually patrolled on a very old Dutch ladies’ bike and a
discarded mountainbike, armed with clubs and walkie-talkies, making a
lot of noise, and they were generally recognized as lord and master of the
street, both day and night. Their authority must have partly been due to
their continuity, because our street, in contrast, saw a continuous change in
residents, resulting in much suspicion, gossip and disorientation among the
neighbours. Our satpam mostly originated from the adjoining kampung,
which helped to bridge the gap between the two neighbourhoods and
avoid possible tension.
The way the satpam operated was by no means the same in every sektor
of Bintaro. In a certain part of Sektor IX, the satpam had a more relaxed
and easy-going attitude towards their duties, although this neighbourhood
– quite seriously called ‘River Park Hills’ by its inhabitants, inspired by
overseas travel and television series – was a very wealthy and luxurious,
thus potentially vulnerable complex. It consisted of a few dozen brand-
new, big urban villas, with modest but luxurious gardens. The sloping,
straight streets were wide, bare, empty and oven-like during daytime, and
all gardens and greenery were private property, except for some withered
palm trees. It was remarkable that none of these villas was enclosed by
walls; they all had friendly-looking low fences or hedges bordering their
property. ‘River Park’ was a tiny, rather isolated community-in-the-mak-
ing, consisting of young and middle-aged businessmen and their families,
all well-traveled. Among one another these people did not regard their re-
ligion or ethnic background as an issue (they took pains to convince me of
this) except, apparently, as a source of entertainment and culinary delight

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during lavish parties and other festivities. Their orientation towards inter-
national standards while preserving their ‘traditional’ background, their
gold Rolex watches, their collections of vintage cars and their collective
barbecue parties all united them as an imagined community or, rather, a
special interest group. Their satpam occupied a fairly large and new brick
building, completely furnished and including a telephone, a television, a
fan and a closed-circuit video control screen. They were a friendly bunch
of young men in bright, crisp uniforms, and they had a new moped at
their disposal as well as lots of snacks. They lived in various settlements
and kampung in the vicinity. Just a few months before the May 1998 riots
broke out, the politically hypersensitive little ‘River Park’ community de-
cided to have a new gate built: a grand structure of brick and steel with
an obtrusive lock and a video camera on top. It looked impenetrable and
awe-inspiring. During daytime, one of the high steel doors was always
open. The barrier that one subsequently had to pass was a rather short
model, so the arriving pedestrian was not unduly inconvenienced. On
the contrary, the satpam on duty performed a respectful salute by raising
his hand to his forehead – he was taught to act this way, I later learned.
Every time inhabitants entered or left their compound, their car was sa-
luted in this military way. The volunteer supervising the satpam of River
Park, who lived on the corner of the central Jalan Kenari and who had
only recently been put in charge, was proud of the degree of discipline
among ‘his’ boys. They performed their duties in an exemplary manner,
he often remarked. Only the telephone bill was causing problems, which
would be over soon thanks to the installation of a lock. The ‘River Park’
satpam clearly enjoyed their easy occupation. The neighbourhood was a
compound, surrounded by high concrete walls, which meant that there
was only one gate, and a fortified one at that, to watch over. Because
the compound was on the outskirts of the sektor, far away from the main
arterial road, there was hardly any traffic from hawkers and peddlers or
other unwanted elements. What passed through during the daytime were
mostly expensive cars and mountainbike-riding servants. At nightfall, the
barred entrance doors were shut and locked.
However, during major Muslim feasts, the satpam often became agi-
tated. The rear of the compound was lined by a towering concrete wall,
behind which a large and very old kampung was situated. Recently, on the
road leading to the ‘River Park’ gate and just in front of it, a big impres-
sive mosque had been erected. The mosque authorities had been success-

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ful in obliging the ‘River Park’ representee (or Pak RT) to formalize the
usual passage hole in the concrete back wall into a tiny, metal door with a
lock that could only be opened by the satpam.31 This tiny improvised door
brought to mind the miniature ‘informal’ doors which, until the latter half
of the nineteenth century, were often to be found in the back walls of
Batavian colonial mansions. These doors provided discreet access to native
(grand)mothers of well-married daughters, to and from their kampung.32
The little back door of ‘River Park’ was only open on special holidays,
when the kampung population wanted to visit the big new mosque instead
of their modest one, and crossing the compound meant a short cut from
the kampung to the mosque. On these special days, the satpam were quite
nervous, due to the incessant stream of kampung inhabitants that passed
the entrance gate in both directions. The open door in the back wall was,
of course, also a source of unrest. Although the kampung people were
under strict orders to keep to the main road, they still had to be overseen
in case of disobedience. Ever since this arrangement was made, the afore-
mentioned satpam supervisor informed me, he had had to bring down the
water level of his fishpond, just bordering the River Parkmain road. He
was very worried that the kampung people would swiftly scoop out his rare
Japanese koi carp from the water during their march home and eat them
for dinner. On one such Muslim feast day, I undertook to enter ‘River Park’
from the kampung side. Facing the high wall, I first had to climb several
narrow, crumbling stairs, because the kampung site was on a lower level.
The actual door opening was so narrow and low that I had to pass through
sideways, with my head bent. The tiny battered door, which was left ajar,
was made out of dark-green, rusty metal. I went a few crabwise steps down
again and a completely different, hotter, more glaring and angular world
came into my view: ‘River Park Hills’, with a vista of the tall ornamental
entrance gate down the straight, sloping road, and the big mosque a little
further away. The contrast, or opposition, between the almost royal front
entrance gate and the rusty joke of a back door was also to be found, al-
though in modest form, in Jalan Mandar XXI, my residence for almost a
year. The inhabitants of Mandar XXI also aspired to a safe and enclosed

31 Pak RT is the elected chairman of the rukun tetangga, an obligatory (official) neighbourhood repre-
sentation (his wife is called Bu RT).
32 The important symbolical role of ‘tiny doors’ in colonial society is reflected in the story ‘Vivere
Pericolosamente’ (1958) by the Indo author Vincent Mahieu (or Tjalie Robinsion – both are pseudonyms
of Jan Boon).

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feeling, instead of facing the possibility of danger penetrating both ends

of their street. By ‘closing’ their street at one end, using barbed wire, wood
blocks and a fixed barrier, they rather symbolically shaped a ‘compound’,
with a single entrance at the other end. However, the new cul-de-sac-
situation in the area between the new barrier and the main arterial road
caused some unforeseen side effects. Because traffic came to a standstill
here, the whole area, bordering a small, well-kept lawn, became an area
of perceived ‘timelessness’ because of the wasteland status it had suddenly
acquired. As the busy main arterial road was so near, this tiny piece of
perceived no-man’s-land was soon occupied by a small warung (a minus-
cule, improvised shop selling cigarettes, noodles, soap, and so on), several
chickens and two or three waiting ojek drivers. At dusk, several kaki lima
(moving foodstall) owners also judged the place a good commercial spot,
and a few days later a small white goat, tied to a pole, joined the picture. A
newspaper stall and fruit sellers completed the new cosy little community.
The Mandar XXI residents’ reaction to this development was initially
quite mixed. Some of them were angry and irritated by the ‘anarchy’ of
the arrangements, and they feared the litter and mess that were usually
associated with the informal business of kampung people. However, most
of the households soon began patronizing these services which were, after
all, so conveniently located – they no longer had to leave their ‘compound’
to find a bite of ketoprak, tahu goreng or other street delicacies. Furthermore,
they could now easily send their servants on errands by ojek, or they could
purchase cigarettes or a newspaper during their late-afternoon strolls. The
little lawn next to the barrier, with a tiny forlorn-looking sculpture in the
centre, was never much appreciated by the residents. Coconut sellers be-
gan to store part of their stock on the lawn; later, during the kite season,
they were joined by kite sellers. The tiny sculpture served as their seat. On
the compound side of the fixed, barbed-wired barrier, Jalan Mandar XXI
was unchanged. The street was mostly deserted after nightfall except for
the satpam, and no one sat on the front porch to enjoy the cool fragrant
evening air. The only people to be seen outside after dark were female
servants, who sat in little clusters on the curb, chatting, singing and flirt-
ing with the satpam. Their masters were all gathered inside in front of the
television, snacking while they watched soap-operas whose blaring sounds
could often be heard on the street. Indeed, by standing still for a moment
in front of a house and catching the main theme tune, one could detect
which show was currently favoured in the household, a long-distance form

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of communication between the neighbours. The inhabitants of this street

rarely met or saw one another, since they mostly went about their street in
tinted cars. Only a few of them took strolls every now and then – servants
walked the dogs. When they got home from their jobs in the city, after
having been caught in the daily traffic jam for hours, they hurriedly left
their Kijang vans in the car park and disappeared into their houses, leav-
ing only the loud clicking sounds of the locks on the rolling front gate, the
car and the front door being closed. After seven p.m., not a soul was to be
seen. Curtains were closed, if indeed they had been open at all, and every
window in every house was heavily barred. The inhabitants virtually never
invited neighbours for a chat or a drink, although on Saturdays they might
have a chat over the fence. How can one explain this contrast with the
lively social exchanges of ‘River Park Hills’? The latter’s residents seemed
somehow more generally at ease, as if they had devotedly copied a lifestyle
that they had learned from an American suburban soap opera. They as-
sumed that sociability was a cosmopolitan virtue, and they felt proud to
elevate themselves above narrow-minded ‘primordialism’ in the form of
ethnic and religious prejudice. They marvelled at having a dark-skinned
foreigner among their residents, ‘Indian Robbie’, an unmarried soap op-
era actor, who was a regular at all social gatherings. Of course, what they
shared and what the Mandar XXI residents missed was wealth, a comfort-
able lifestyle, and being few in numbers. The ‘Hillies’ had all been around
the world, and this gave them a feeling of comfort and solidarity.
Early in 1998, I asked an elderly Indo33 resident of the street I was
considering moving to what kind of neighbourhood Mandar XXI, He
told me shortly: ‘Ten Chinese families.’ This form of assessment was often
made by people who saw themselves as pribumi. Living in a neighbourhood
‘dominated’ by Indonesians of Chinese descent was generally deemed
undesirable. Most Mandar residents wanted to know the exact details
of all their neighbours’ occupations, religions and descent – information
that was freely supplied by our Pak RT, who literally oversaw every move
in the street. One had to stay friends with him, because he was in charge
of issuing important documents and co-signing letters to and from the
bureaucracy. Zainul, Pak RT of Mandar XXI, was a relaxed, middle-aged
entrepreneur and former Heineken-beer salesman in Abu Dhabi, who
joined the satpam for mountain bike rides, dressed in expensive white sports
33 An Indo is a person of mixed Indonesian and white descent; during colonial times this usually
meant of European and Indonesian descent.

55
One of Bintaro’s improvised gates
 I Bintarese cosmologies |

gear. He lived in the biggest house, an ‘urban villa’, and, as he told me,
functioned from the start as the main channel of communication between
the Mandar XXI residents, aside from the servants. A few weeks after his
election, he had set up a very succesful mie goreng (fried noodles) stall as a
side business on the little lawn around the corner from our street, border-
ing or joining the new informal commercial community, and employing
several impoverished relatives. He was the only resident with a real public
presence, and every early night he walked or rode up and down the streets
calling to his neighbours coming home from work, sometimes in a pre-
sumptuous manner. His was a life of relative leisure, and he often talked to
me about his old plan to work in Holland as a cook in a Chinese restaurant
in Zaandam. As he had no business in the city centre, he was never caught
in the horrible traffic jams that made the good life in Bintaro so taxing. In a
subtle way, he had convinced all his neighbours that he could have chosen
to live, for instance, in River Park. However, there he would have had to
pose as an equal among equals. In Mandar XXI, he was duly recognized
as bapak: the boss, entitled to old-fangled authority and control.

the bintarese burden

Daily trips to and from the city occupied a good deal of the residents’
time and energy. It was not only the time actually spent stuck in traf-
fic jams, but also the time given to systematic daily deliberations about
routes, points and times of departure, new jalan tikus (‘mouse roads’,
semi-secret short cuts), pick-up places and good spots to make illegal,
but undisturbed U-turns. An unforeseen garden city side effect was that
along the many inadequate routes between Bintaro and the city numer-
ous people tried to make a living out of the incessant streams of luxury
cars and vans. They sold food, bottled water, pets or goods such as tissues;
they collected money for building mosques, they begged, they offered sex
or amusement or they stole exterior car parts. Gangs of intimidating
head-scarfed teen entrepreneurs known as polisi cepek (hundred-cent po-
lice) ‘accommodated’ traffic flow by blocking the bridges and crossings
until they were paid Rp 100 (1.5 dollar cent). Opening the driver’s side
window in order to pay caused female drivers a lot of worry, because of
the unwanted exposure to the outside world.
This informal economic activity of the garden city caused extra

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delays, but the Bintarese generally refrained from complaining about it,
perhaps because from the safe and cool perspective of their twice-locked,
air-conditioned cars they experienced it as a distraction from the boredom
of the commute. Traffic police seldom interfered along these routes; all
was left to the interplay of the individual drivers, who sometimes really
had to struggle to reach their offices or to get home in the evening. Every
now and then, one was confronted with a fellow-driver who had gone ber-
serk from impatience, and who suddenly plunged his car onto an empty
piece of road, usually without any grave consequences. Traffic incidents
along these routes were mainly of little consequence, due to average
speeds being as low as eight miles per hour. The commute was neverthe-
less considered a slightly dangerous, yet boring affair. During an average
evening rush hour the journey from Blok M, the southern city centre, to
the Bintaro Plaza Mal consumed two hours, even more when it rained,
compared with only twenty minutes just a few hours later, when the roads
were empty. The morning rush hour, when school traffic formed a bottle-
neck within the borders of Bintaro Jaya itself, could be even longer. Since
the start of zaman reformasi (reformasi period), with its daily demo (demonstra-
tions), rallies, protests, crackdowns and occasional bombings in the city,
traffic jams had become much worse, which bothered the residents of
Bintaro more than the violence and political instability.34
The introduction of the mobile phone at the beginning of the 1990s
changed the experience of traffic in the garden city, as drivers began ob-
sessively comparing their progress on the road. Even non-commuters or
drivers with no significant appointments or schedules began to indulge.
For business people, the daily waste of time became less acute, for busi-
ness deals could be discussed from the car, while housewives on the road
instructed their servants, parents drilled their children and friends ex-
changed gossip. The general feeling of safety and snugness in the car was
markedly enhanced, and traffic jams became an important part of regu-
lar social life. For most of the Bintarese, the arrival of the mobile phone
turned the car’s interior into an extension of their living room during the
weekends. The favourite weekend pastime for most Bintarese families was
visiting shopping malls in distant parts of the city, including partaking in
the endless traffic jams that covered the whole metropolitan region on
Sunday afternoons. Being stuck in a traffic jam on Sunday was regarded

34 The Far Eastern Economic Review, 26-10-2000.

58
 I Bintarese cosmologies |

as a typical family thing; it was considered a shared form of family fun.

The car was shiny and often had tinted windows; it was a cool, fragrant,
secure place from which the world could be explored. From the car,
people enjoyed comparing notes about traffic jams with family members
heading for other ‘exotic’ shopping malls, caught in equally ‘exotic’ traffic
jams and also clutching their fun-coloured himpun (handset). Sometimes
drivers tried to find new routes in order to escape the clogged roads, only
to become lost in the midst of vast areas of flat red earth where kampung
had recently been flattened. The desolate flatness and emptiness of the
land suggested that these areas had forever been infertile, neglected waste-
land without a trace of human history or memory.
The cars themselves were, both back and front, adorned with co-
lourful stickers recalling family outings – WaterBoom Lippo Cikarang, Lippo
Supermal, Taman Safari Cikeurup – or announcing sentiments like I ♥ Muslim
Family. A typical Bintaro family car, washed and polished by a male ser-
vant and pre-cooled before the Sunday trip to the mall, exploded with
ornamentation. Frilly ‘car waste’ bins hung up on the car seats; strong
fruity air deodorizers (stroberi and apel were favourites); tiny, frilly pillows
apparently stemming from the nursery35; an indispensable guilded or
plastic-jewelled tissue box; a special rack for coins near the driving wheel;
and a religious symbol such as a tiny crucifix (rarely seen after 1998) or
an Islamic amulet hanging from the front mirror,. Stun guns, clubs or tear
gas cannisters were stored on the car floor, while the car’s double-locked
doors were only opened upon arrival at the shopping mall’s parking lot.
Such was the concern with safety that the tiniest opening of a car window
resulted in panicky screams from the children. The Sunday evening traffic
jams near the elevated Tanah Kusir grounds, the huge graveyard in South
Jakarta, allowed the observer to see strings of thousands of little yellow
lights that converged in the distance, near the major Bintaro point of
entry. On these Sunday nights, the journey home could take up to three
hours for a family, but there was no sense of frustration. The atmosphere
in the dark, waiting cars, all similar, all heading home, was of an intense
intimacy: soft, romantic singalong tunes were usually played and whis-
pered conversations were held, in order not to disturb sleeping passengers.

35 Children’s design – for instance the use of funny animal and balloon prints, lively colours and child-
ish texts – was regarded as suitable for ‘grown-up’ material culture as well. In the same vein, Christmas
decoration and design were used all year round by Christian Indonesians, for all kinds of objects in the
home and the car.

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Children played with each other’s or their parents’ mobile phones. People
felt surrounded by many of the same kind. The awareness of total safety
in the car was almost palpable. I had a strong impression that the Bintaro
residents did not experience Sunday night traffic jams as such; rather, they
felt part of a convoy. Consequently, the driver bore a huge responsibility,
not only for his family in the car, but also for the hundreds of cars that
slowly preceded and followed him. During the trip home, the car locks
were checked several times and fast food from the mall was handed out
in styrofoam boxes: doughnuts, hamburgers, kentuki (Kentucky) fried
chicken, French fries or fried noodles. Parents also used the occasion to
instruct their teenage children in how to manage the stream of beggars
and hawkers, with an etiquette as carefully modulated as that required
when the children addressed grandparents or cousins. It was ‘not fair’, I
was informed by such a parent, to just ignore a beggar waiting next to
the car window. Rather, the children were taught to wave the left hand,
without looking up from their comic book, to make clear that nothing
was forthcoming. The beggar would thus ‘not lose precious time’ and
move on. In the same style teenagers were taught to bargain with snack-
peddlers, or to address parking assistants or polisi cepek – all from the car’s
interior. When the car finally reached Bintaro’s entrance gate and traffic
became much smoother, the passengers suddenly began to attend to the
outside surrounding world, pointing out to each other houses that were
for sale, newly opened fancy restaurants or suddenly deserted mansions.
Driving through the sektor of their residence, sleeping children and adults
were gingerly woken up. A servant ran to open the rolling gate for the car,
and as soon as the family had left the car and had gathered again in front
of the television, the servant started swiftly to unload the car and to carry
the shopping bags and boxes from the explored shopping malls and fast
food courts into the house.
Meanwhile, the half-completed bridges and tunnels that formed part
of the planned six-lane toll road between Bintaro and the city showed
the first signs of decay, as the ready flattened trajectory of the proposed
route slowly became wasteland. The unexpected fall of Ratu Tol (toll
queen) ‘Tutut’, owner of virtually all toll enterprises in Indonesia, and
the economic crisis had brought construction to a halt. Many taxi drivers
and some Bintarese deplored therefore Suharto’s stepping down from
presidency –‘Tutut’ was his eldest daughter – and longed for pre-reformasi
times, when development was still going strong.

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the romawi monument revisited

Not very far away from the aborted toll road, the fortified Romawi monu-
ment, meanwhile, showed no signs of decay, damage or defamation
other than its two frozen clocks, which were permanently out of order
– one face showed ten to four, while the other showed five past eleven.
This unintentional monument to middleclassness not only denied time
itself, but with no inscription, memorial text or dedication, the structure
showed a remarkable but not fortuitous similarity to the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier, as described by Benedict Anderson (1991:9) in his
Imagined communities:

The public ceremonial reverence accorded these monuments precisely be-

cause they are either deliberately empty or no one knows who lies inside
them, has no true precedents in earlier times. To feel the force of this mo-
dernity one has only to imagine the general reaction to the busybody who
‘discovered’ the Unknown Soldier’s name or insisted on filling the ceno-
taph with some real bones. Sacrilege of a strange, contemporary kind!

The Romawi monument was obviously not intended as an official monu-

ment, no doubt because of the weariness of the Bintarese with nationalist
symbols such as the flag, the national hymn, the several classifications of
the revolutionary heroes and their commemoration days. Indonesians in
general associate these symbols with the realm of a certain form of ‘not-
yet-modernity’: the old-fashioned realm of the inert New Order state,
which for decades had made its paternalistic authority inescapable even at
the most intimate level of community: the family (Shiraishi 1997).36 The
average Bintarese sought to shun the state, which seemed possible, at least
in the physical sense, in their garden city. For them, the state also encom-
passed the realm of the not-yet-modern Indonesians, such as the Papuas,
peasants and kampung people, the imagined underclass, who fittingly
found their recreation on Saturday nights near national monuments like
Monas. Decades of unrelenting symbolic nationalist pressure must have
left their traces in the semiotic perception of the daily environment. The
unconscious grammar of understanding space sometimes simply asked
for monuments, such as in Bintaro’s newest sektor. The triumph of the

36 Belum, or ‘not yet’, is a polite phrase used to avoid negation.

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impeccable design of Sektor VIII begged for a monument at its big-

gest, most perfect crossroads. What the Romawi statues shared with the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was the imagining of an ‘immemorial
past’ and ‘limitless future’ (Anderson 1991:9), although, in Bintaro, not
of the nation, but of calm, orderly normal middle-class life; in fact, of
an apparent absence of the state. Although the Indonesian state had, at
its onset, firmly associated itself with the arrival of modernization, its
contemporary middle-class offspring judged its idea of modernity and
the New Order state as two incompatible concepts, as I gathered from
the countless sneering side remarks about the perceived performance of
the latter. The Bintaro residents’ monument was, besides a monument
for middleclassness, also a monument to the absence of the state. The
design of the Romawi statues – a postmodern-looking structure of pillars,
arches and steps, topped with out-of-order clocks – was not a reference to
the popular early bourgeois colonial ornamentation but to its predeces-
sor, the ‘Classical’ epoch: an imaginary realm that was so far removed
from the here and now of Bintaro that its state of depoliticization could
be taken for granted. The inevitable clocks on top – an ornament from
colonial times, when every major crossroads in the archipel was linked to
modernity by public clocks – served as a reference to timelessness rather
than to anything contemporary. They were certainly far removed in
atmosphere from the long-term, state-induced obsession with disiplin of
many Indonesians.37 Interpretations of the popularity of neo-classicist
architecture during the New Order period that claim that it was its ‘im-
perialism’ that appealed to the new elite, rather miss the point. It is the
colonial connotation that makes this style so sought after and eksklusif. The
same acquired taste was on display in the upmarket parts of Bintaro in the
form of ‘colonial’ furniture, the preference for old-fashioned Dutch candy
such as Haagse Hopjes, horn-rimmed glasses, sepia-coloured photographs
and many other aspects of colonial material culture.38
In these newest sektor of Bintaro, the ‘absence of the state’ ran parallel
to what I perceived as an ‘absence of architecture’, for the constructed
environment in these quarters resembled an uneasy assemblage of ele-
ments from a shop window, a theme park and a theatre stage. Many of
these buildings were indeed ‘assembled’ by contractors, instead of de-
signed by architects, a significant observation according to art historian
37 ‘Disiplin Nasional’ is a state slogan commonly seen on banners, stickers, posters and wall paintings.
38 On New Order architecture see Lindsey 1993 and Kusno 2000.

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Abidin Kusno (1998:550):

During the New Order, the symbolic representation of architecture be-

came politically significant. It is therefore most usefully understood in
the process of the formation of the political cultures of the New Order.
Architecture, which in Indonesia is not necessarily controlled by a central
authority, provides a commentary on issues that are central to the forma-
tion of the ruling regime, such as histories, national culture and identity,
‘tradition’, ‘development’, and stability.

The replacement of architecture by the mere cloning of global devel-

opments, design formulas and planning styles, in Bintaro and all over
Jabotabek, can indeed be understood as a powerful statement of stability,
an issue that was crucial to the formation of the New Order state. An im-
age of the Jabotabek suburbs as interconnected islands, phenomenologi-
cally outside the realm of the New Order state but ideologically inside
it, seems therefore adequate. It reflects an ambiguity that infected almost
all aspects of suburban life.

epilogue

The Romawi monument embodied a sense of triumphant stability, even

after it had been fenced in, and it succeeded in its role as a tangible
symbol of middleclassness. But in other, more central parts of Jabotabek
ambivalence had eventually infected urban life considerably. By the end
of 2002, Merdeka Square in Central Jakarta, which for decades had
accommodated thousands of underclass people every Saturday night
as their prime spot for recreation, had been completely encircled with
a three-metre high decorative fence, making it virtually impenetrable to
street vendors, mobs and traffic.39 It seemed as if the spirit of the new
suburbs was overtaking the city, instead of the other way around. Access
to the square was only possible by four controlled entrance gates, and
parking tariffs were as high as in shopping malls. The fence, which cost
US$ 965,000, was the creation of Sutiyoso, city governor of Jakarta, who
intended to turn Merdeka Square back into a public park with recreation
39 According to the Urban Poor Consortium, more than 2,000 vendors used to operate in the park.
About 1,350 of them had to relocate (The Jakarta Post, 12-12-2002).

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centres and sport fields, as was originally intended […] We will develop
Merdeka Square like Victoria Park in Hong Kong, where people, includ-
ing children, can play in the park.40
As with the Romawi monument in Bintaro, however, the main effect
of this enclosing or ‘privatization’ of space, was that the city’s poor were
deprived of their sole recreational area. Sutiyoso further intended to
build soccer fields, a jogging track and a food plaza on the square and
also intended to release spotted deer from the elevated and cool Bogor
Palace grounds, where these animals were introduced from overseas by
a Dutch Governor General centuries ago.41 The latter plan was much
criticized and a public debate followed. Merdeka Square was ‘too noisy
a place for the sensitive animals’.42 Plans were therefore made to build
yet another fence, between two and three metres high, to separate visitors
from the deer, ‘because it is important for the deer to feel secure’.43 Still,
the middle classes worried about whether their apparently favourite pets,
the living remnants of colonial splendour, would survive traffic noise, the
proximity of humans and hot weather. Less ink was spilled over the loss
of recreational facilities for the underclass.
Outwardly, Bintaro Jaya was a sophisticated but ambiguous cultural
construct, a host of locally interpreted global cultural forms and connota-
tions, combined with half-remembered, half-concocted and unconscious
notions from the past which resulted in a sprawl of almost identical, but
often volatile residential areas. The residents of the Jabotabek suburbs
imagined themselves to have escaped the predicament of the New Order
state: its backwardness, inefficiency, provincialism, control, corruption,
officialdom, abuse of power, its ‘bad quality’ and all things kuno (archaic)
in general. However, their depoliticized suburban archipelago was, as
Schulte Nordholt (1997:29) has remarked about similar private-public
spaces, ‘of course firmly framed within the protective power of the New
Order’. In the parts of the Jabotabek suburbs that were developed first,
spatial discipline seemed to have lessened as time went by. Green areas,
asphalt, concrete and other structures had been deliberately demolished
or altered to conform to persistent local needs, by both residents and
‘original dwellers’. The result of these interventions, which apparently

40 The Jakarta Post, 12-12-2002.

41 The Bogor Palace is the residential country house of the Indonesian president.
42 The Jakarta Post, 17-12-2002.
43 The Jakarta Post, 13-12-2002.

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satisfied everyone concerned, was the well-known quasi-chaotic, untidy

and lively scene found in cities all over Indonesia. Pragmatism super-
seded prestige in these earliest neighbourhoods, as may happen in other
sektor as well. The more recently developed, still ‘modern’ suburbs and
satellite towns, which have their own indispensable categories of knowl-
edge and experience, also have much to tell about the state of middle-
classness in Indonesia. What kind of everyday lives were lived in these
sektor? Conceiving oneself as being a modern person, and presenting
oneself in one’s outward appearance as experienced in crucial aspects of
modernity, was a very salient and important assignment of everyday life
in these neighbourhoods. It was also a confusing assignment, for it was
by no means clear which or whose ‘modernity’ should be recognized as
valid. As Adrian Vickers has argued, the notion of the moderen was, as
a rule, received in a cultural climate in which local precedents of, and
experiences with, processes of translation and finding similarities were
common. According to Vickers (1996:5-6),

moderen is a trope for a whole series of historical transformations, from

the level of the self to the level of state development. The moderen may be
taken as a form of Euramerican modernity, in that the sense of the moderen
came out of the experiences of colonialism and imperialism. But to see it
simply as a variation on a theme is to marginalize Southeast Asia as com-
ing to modernity in a late and derivative manner. It tells us nothing about
what it meant for Southeast Asians, for Indonesians […] to be moderen.

Notions of the moderen and also the modern – forms of locally interpre-
tated modernity versus global manifestations of modernity – played a
considerable role in shaping contemporary suburban lifestyles. They led
to ambiguously as well as ingenuously constructed assessments of self
and others as ‘modern’ persons, ‘modernity’ being the cultural para-
digm of the Jabotabek suburb. ‘Modernity’ however seemed in itself a
rather restricted concept, and I gradually learned to interpret this term
as a mere social classifier. The vernacular meaning of ‘modernity’ in
Indonesia’s deeply depoliticized society, where class struggle and class
difference were nonexistent concepts, resulted in categories framing the
‘modern’ versus the ‘backward’. To call oneself ‘modern’ largely meant
informing the world of one’s social position: having access to ‘modernity’
meant that one belonged to the middle class. To demonstrate knowledge

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of ‘modernity’, often symbolized by ‘being educated’, was of course cru-

cial in this perspective but, in the inner life of the suburb, references to
‘modernity’ occasionally led to confusion and misunderstandings.
Other categories of knowledge were of course relied upon as well.
Many families claimed an ethnic identity, apparently in order to ‘colour’
their communal life, to have a ritual calendar and a traditional style for
major life events at one’s disposal, and to be able to refer to ‘our adat’.
People of uncertain or (mixed) Chinese descent, for instance, often
claimed an imagined Balinese ethnicity; Balinese culture was thought of
as ‘safe’ and ‘open’ to outsiders. Mixed couples combined their respective
ethnic backgrounds in a pragmatic way or they chose to adhere strictly
to one of the partner’s’ ‘traditions’, when religion was involved. These
ethnic identities functioned as frames of knowledge, as they offered pre-
ferred structures in which to operate or make decisions. Ethnic identities
were also subject to play and interference, being beloved gadgets of
modern middle-class suburbanites. The hidden and ambiguous sources
of knowledge that inspire Jabotabek suburban life is the theme of the
next chapter, in which the example is followed of the anthropologist
Fredrik Barth. Barth (1993:287), exploring knowledge traditions on Bali,
suggested tracing people’s concerns about everyday life, in order to learn
more about local knowledge. He argued that in these concerns, a par-
ticular and significantly restricted range of questions can be recognized.
Although participants can disagree on them, ‘they provide parameters
for the reality people are variously constructing’. Barth held that it is
indispensable to be attuned to these concerns of everyday life in order to
be able to interpret everyday practice along with participants, and to join
them in their sense of the reality in which they move – hence the need
for a closer look at the struggles, hopes and fears of some suburbanites.

66
 II

Scenes of suburban family life

introduction

The following four vignettes of mainstream upmarket Bintaro life in the

1990s are drawn from the experiences of a large family, originally from
Malang in East Java, with both Catholic and Muslim members. I will
call them the Wiyantos. During the 1960s and 1970s parts of this family,
as well as life-long servants, long-time intimates and various in-laws, left
the big family house and moved to Jakarta. While some came to take
advantage of opportunities in business or education, or for personal rea-
sons such as marriage, the simple need to stay together was also at work.
By the 1990s, this extended family group had become fragmented into
neat little nuclear households spread throughout the Jabotabek suburbs,
although their bapak’s modern, one-storey mansion near the city centre
functioned as their centre of gravity. I first came into contact with the
Wiyantos in 1994, when the main protagonists in my account, a couple
named Budi and Sissy, still lived under what they described as some-
what ‘awkward’ circumstances. During the later 1990s their prospects
improved remarkably, which I witnessed during the many lengthy visits I
paid them in Jakarta and occasionally in Malang, and the few short visits
they paid me in Amsterdam.
In 1994, under the tutelage of Budi and Sissy, I soon established
a rather intimate relationship with the wider Wiyanto family, more or
less on the same footing as the diverse associates I mentioned above.
Throughout the subsequent years, therefore, my presence in the fam-
ily was assumed and most of the time was unobtrusive. My personal
background was of great help, because my looks, my manners and food
preferences, my local relatives and my familiarity with certain Indonesian
practices of daily life all helped the Wiyantos to accept me as a kind of
|  Lost in mall

Indo – in their understanding of this hybrid term as an Indonesian of

mixed white and Asian descent. This also exposed me to the clamorous
but good-natured jesting of several aunts, uncles and children. That sta-
tus turned out to be most valuable, since my role was neutral or passive
enough to avoid becoming caught up in the family’s frequent imbroglios,
and yet intimate enough with the family to understand these conflicts.
Meanwhile, the fact that I gradually learned to deconstruct, under-
stand and predict these family entanglements, and finally had to restrain
myself from participating in them, clearly showed to me the veracity of
Fredric Barth’s adagium as referred to at the end of the former chapter.
He specifically stressed the indispensability to anthropologists of being
attuned to daily-life concerns ‘in order to be able to interpret everyday
practice along with participants, and to join them in their sense of the re-
ality in which they move’ (Barth1993:287). The interplay of local knowl-
edge and local concerns indeed started to make sense to me after pro-
longed stages of intimate cohabitation with the Wiyantos. Many of the
more pervasive concerns that I traced among the Wiyanto family mem-
bers also showed themselves, sometimes in penetrating form, among the
other suburban families that I became acquainted with during the 1990s.
They pacified my initial and recurrent concerns that it was possible the
‘case’ of the Wiyanto family did not meet standards of objectivity and
representation. I stopped worrying about this issue altogether when I
came to realize how well embedded this family turned out to be in wider
suburban social networks, and not just in some narrow Catholic or East
Javanese circles. A final remark about the important subject of research
ethics seems essential now that intimate aspects of a family’s private life
are about to be divulged to the public. I believe that exposure of the
lifestyle details and personal history of a middle-class family such as the
Wiyantos has to be treated with stringent scrutiny and care, because of
their vulnerability to being traced and recognized. This is all the more
so when these details are presented in a more or less integrated narra-
tive. At the same time, many of these details of indoor middle-class life
are significant and interwoven, extremely insightful in relation to the
sociocultural category under exploration, and therefore indispensable in
an ethnographic account. By leaving out bits and pieces of mainstream
information, and by doctoring various insignificant details, I have tried
to avoid both pitfalls. The following offers a condensed but largely truth-
ful portrayal of the Wiyanto family during Jakarta’s roaring late 1990s.

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 II  Scenes of suburban family life  |

seeing off the wiyantos

Towards the end of May 1999, a much-anticipated ceremony took place

at the 1970s family home of the Wiyantos, close to busy Matraman and
the Jakartan city centre. This ceremony, which related to a planned family
holiday, would be the very last one to be held at the old, familiar address;
a few weeks afterwards the old couple and their youngest, unmarried
daughter were to move to a more modest, newly built urban villa in a lush
part of Bintaro Jaya, where four of their daughters were already residing
with their families. The eight or so servants, all from the region of Malang,
East Java, where the Wiyantos originated from, would, for the time being,
stay behind in the abandoned house. Only one of the drivers and two girl
servants were to come along to Taman Mawar (Rose Garden).
Mr Wiyanto, a former pemuda (young revolutionary), had retired
from a prominent position in the Armed Forces rather early in life, after
which his second career as a timber baron had brought him fortune
in the early 1970s.1 In his dark study there were a number of framed
photos of Wiyanto, shaking hands and sitting back with former presi-
dents Soekarno and Suharto, respectively. In 1962, Wiyanto had quite
suddenly converted from Islam to Catholicism, for reasons that his chil-
dren indicated not to know. His siblings had remained Muslims, which
turned out not to pose problems after all, because in due course they
came to share all assorted religious festivities as one big family. Wiyanto’s
ten children – nine girls and one boy – were brought up strictly in the
Catholic faith, as well as in a particular East Javanese calendar of rituals,
ceremonies and habits, seemingly without any troubling interference.
Mrs Wiyanto saw keenly to that. The old couple – both stemming from
upper-middle-class families of civil servants or priyayi – sometimes spoke
to one another in rather archaic Dutch. In recent years the health of Mr
Wiyanto had deteriorated rapidly after a couple of strokes, combined
with worsening diabetes. The focus of this once powerful and shrewd
businessman had narrowed to just one concern: the future of his sixteen
grandchildren plus that of his youngest daughter, twenty-nine year old
‘naughty’ Sonya. For almost two years, Mr Wiyanto, affectionately called
‘Opapi’ by the family, had been planning his very last wish: a trip to Eropa
dan Mediteranean (Europe and the Mediterranean) in the company of his
1 In the 1960s, high-ranking military officers were occasionally offered timber concessions upon re-
tirement.

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A gold-rimmed clock, a keepsake from the Wiyantos’

golden wedding anniversary party, 1998

wife and numerous offspring.2

Could there be a better time for this trip than the end of May 1999?
In fact I understood the trip to be a leisurely but timely escape from what
were perceived as dangerous times and surroundings. On 7 June, general
elections or Pemilu (Pemilihan Umum) were to take place in Indonesia,
causing a great deal of unrest and feelings of insecurity among the popu-
lation. The campaign period (19 May to 4 June) promised to be more
violent than ever before, and many people who could afford to left the
country. Newspapers and magazines were writing matter-of-factly about
the eksodus that was taking place.3 Parents were accommodated by the
fact that schools extended their holidays, covering the whole campaign
and election period. Although measures were taken to prevent outbursts
of violence during the campaign, such as a careful avoidance of the risk
of two political parties’ supporters confronting each other, many city
dwellers did not feel safe at all. The 1999 elections offered hope to no
2 The term ‘Mediteranean’ was first launched as a fancy, suburban architectural decorative style by
American real estate developers.
3 For instance Tempo, 11/17-5-1999.

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 II  Scenes of suburban family life  |

less than 48 parties, who promised entirely different campaign scenes

and, especially in Jakarta, a drastically changed field of forces, although
not everyone seemed aware of this. There had already been occasions,
for instance, in which furious members of the urban poor had turned
against Golkar campaigners, because this time they had not received
any monetary gifts from them, which was contrary to their previous
campaign experiences (Golkar being former President Suharto’s election
machine) (Van Dijk 2001:434). The atmosphere in town at the end of
May was full of expectation, hope as well as dread.
Although Mr Wiyanto’s trip was clearly in the spirit of, and simulta-
neous to, the eksodus of many Indonesians – largely of Chinese descent
– nobody in the family referred or even alluded to the political circum-
stances when discussing their holiday.4 Much was made of Opapi’s bad
health and the ‘now or never’ character of the planned journey – it
should all be understood as a kind of upacara (ceremony), a solemn, ritual
show of respect for his last wish.5 The rush of violence against Catholics
and Christians in December 1998 had indeed had an unsettling influ-
ence on most of the family members, particularly on the children. Tisna
for instance, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Sissy, Opapi’s seventh
child, had recently started panicking when the doors weren’t immediate-
ly locked by her father after entering the car: ‘Kunci, kunci!’ (Lock, lock!),
she would shriek from the back seat, clutching her mobile phone between
her fragile knees. Since January her fourteen-year-old brother Ugo had
been having driving lessons with his father, who expected emergency
situations to occur and sudden moves to have to be made any day – as the
latter told me quite frankly. Ugo, meanwhile, seemed very excited about
this swift promotion into adult status.
The Wiyanto offspring had removed the little plastic crucifixes and
Madonnas which used to dangle at the windscreens of all their expensive
cars and Kijang vans. Various models of stun guns and tear gas canisters,
and in one case a baseball bat, had taken their place – initially all well hid-
den under the car seats, but later quite exposed on and between the seats.
The family declined to attend Saturday night church services, though an

4 The Novotel Menado, a hotel in Manado – where the political situation was deemed relatively safe
compared to Jabotabek – even advertised with a special ‘exodus rate’, targeting Jakartan residents; Tempo,
17-5-1999.
5 In upper-middle-class circles it was considered unseemly to associate one’s motives or acts openly
with wider political risks, developments or conditions.

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innocent pretext was always used, even within the family circle. Escaping
Pemilu, with its uncertainties, irregularities and volatility, seemed to all
a sensible project for the extended Wiyanto family. For instance, second
daughter Marni, married to handsome Ongky, a very wealthy orthopaedic
surgeon of Chinese descent, was really eager to leave the country. From
the start of her late but lucrative marriage she had anyhow spent most
time of the year abroad – shopping in Singapore, Los Angeles or Geneva
and holidaying in Hawaii or Belgium – having completely lost touch with
‘Indonesia’, as she herself had lately declared to me. The recent outbreak
of violence against Indonesians of Chinese descent in May 1998 had given
her semi-permanent absence from the close family circle a sound legitimi-
zation. Her sisters had started loud whispers that Marni had become ‘too
Chinese’, suggesting by this that she had become vulgar, money-crazed
and snobbish, without knowing her proper place. She didn’t seem to care
about her peculiar position within the family, and neither did she seem to
care about the financial and other problems that some of her sisters had
recently been confronted with. The only thing the obese Marni wanted
was to ‘get away’, to new luxury resorts and spas, and to unexplored shop-
ping centres all over the world, while Ongky just wanted to play golf. The
only reason they joined the extended family for this trip appeared to be
that Opapi’s last wish had to be respected above all.
Marni’s lot had been the opposite of that of her eldest sister Yulia,
a paediatrician, who had married early in life and had soon been aban-
doned by her adulterous husband, with two young children to take
care of by herself. He had just disappeared, unannounced, from their
lives one day. Yulia had remained single after the divorce, stick-thin,
chain-smoking Dunhill cigarettes and from time to time adopting small
children on a temporary basis from the hospital where she worked. Her
shy, twenty-year-old daughter Ratna had almost finished medical school
and she was expected to marry soon – her mother’s hope for the future.
For Yulia and her offspring the trip was something to look forward to
because their standard of living had been rather poor. Of course she had
been ‘helped’ by her parents to maintain a certain lifestyle and to educate
the children. Travelling abroad had, however, been no part of the deal,
although her children had occasionally been invited to join their cousins
for trips to Europe or the States.
Fourth daughter Sleasy and her husband Heng, who was of Chinese
descent, also felt happy to leave. Although they lived in the lush outskirts

72
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of Bandung, close to their shoe factory, and no immediate threat in the

form of city mobs were expected to materialize over there, they seemed
relieved to be able to escape it all. Their weak spot consisted of their
three very fat, hopelessly spoilt small children who all looked, according
to Budi, remarkably Chinese. While lazy and somewhat slatternly Sleasy
persisted in presenting her marriage as an everlasting romance, Heng took
care to present himself as a hard-working, successful entrepreneur. Their
‘modern’ children’s shoe factory – financed by his father-in-law, Sleasy be-
ing the latter’s favourite – was his big pride in life.6 One day, in his eager-
ness to show me all the details of the state-of-the-art production process,
he had mistakenly opened the door to an oblong, cramped space where
about fifteen boys – all about ten years old, with shaven heads and stupe-
fied stares – were seated on the floor, glueing soles to unfinished shoes.
The atmosphere in the non-airconditioned room was sickening, as was
the miserable scene in its totality. Realizing his mistake, Heng quickly ex-
plained: ‘They’re not working for me – they work for their fathers!’ When
I anxiously related this event to Budi later the same day, he exclaimed with
carefully modulated pathos: ‘Children are human beings! They ought to
be in school! That Heng is a swine…’ Sleasy later snapped at me that since
I was in Indonesia, I had to accept that things were done differently here.
Third daughter Sandra, a fashion gadget designer, married to ami-
able engineer Dodi, who lived in yet another modest part of Bintaro
with their two handsome teenage children, presented at face value an
ideal middle-class suburban family. They were all looking forward hap-
pily to their holiday. The only dissonance was Sandra’s habit of drink-
ing large quantities of Cointreau during Catholic holidays, though only
at home. Drinking liquor was not among the Wiyanto family’s way of
living because, although they were a ‘converted’ family, they stuck to
Javanese customs, such as not eating pork, no use of alcoholic beverages
and respecting rituals such as male circumcision and performing ritual
fasting. They also were not too keen on pet dogs, contrary to most local
Catholics.

6 I was initially surprised by the remarkable differences in the generosity that the Wiyanto parents
showed towards their children. Only later did I understand that this posed no problem within the fam-
ily circle. See H. Geertz (1961:4): ‘The manipulability of kin ties in practice is related to the nature of
the [Javanese] kinship system itself – its minimizing of differentiation, the absence of kin-based social
groups, and, further, the weakness, vagueness, and limited number of its jural norms, the duties and
rights between kin. Even between parents and children, kinship obligations and rights are given a fairly
wide latitude of individual interpretation.’

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Fourth daughter Susi, a loud and eager, tall, somewhat clownish

woman, was hooked on menthol cigarettes. She lived in a very tiny house
in Bintaro – a kind of miniature row house – bought with a little help
from her parents because her retired husband Adri, an ex-cameraman,
was not exactly rich. Before she had finally married Adri, at thirty-six,
Susi had been engaged to a ‘guy’ that had kept her guessing for twelve
years. Straight after her tardy wedding, they set forth to produce a
child, Wina, a clever and cunning fat little girl. Adri and Susi shared the
management of a vague ‘company’, which seemed to be a concoction
designed to keep them in the busy atmosphere of modern Jakartans –
their one-room office was in one of Opapi’s prestigious Kebayoran Baru
buildings.7 Most days they stayed at home, however, together with seven-
year-old despotic Wina, her suster, or nanny, who still spoon-fed Wina
every meal, a blaring super-wide-screen television and two servants.
Susi was fond of wearing lots of gold-plated jewellery, which filled the
cramped house with even more noise. She was considered ‘saved by the
bell’ by her sisters on the one hand, but on the other hand regarded as
a loser; her house was so small that it could only hold one visiting family
at a time. The address in Bintaro Sektor IIIa was acceptable, however,
and sickly Adri was deemed a very sympathetic and knowledgeable per-
son. For them, the trip was a godsend. Susi would take by far the most
snapshots and remember the price of every single item she bought on the
entire trip for months afterwards.
Erwin, the only son of the old couple and also known as nomor tiga,
‘number three’, kept a low profile in the family, living in an authentic
old mansion in a very posh and leafy lane in Kebayoran Baru. He never
seemed to work, but he was very wealthy. He was married to Diana, a
tall, beautiful, paper-white and taciturn daughter of a deceased two-star
general, and they had two lovely, intelligent little girls. Erwin, who sport-
ed a tiny moustache, had a distinguished air of bapak-to-be. He never
spoke, ate a lot, smoked little cigars and just took everything in before
he went off for his napping routine after lunch or dinner. I knew he was
fond of playing golf and toying with his gold Rolex watches. He once
surprised me by asking whether my religion allowed me to eat pigeon.
Sammi and Sonya, the two youngest daughters, were as different
from one another as sisters could be. Sammi had been a diligent student
7 Kebayoran Baru is a lush, well-to-do area in South Jakarta with mixed residential and business
quarters, developed shortly after WW II.

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 II  Scenes of suburban family life  |

who had earned a degree in biochemistry in Paris before, following five

years of toilsome family negotiations, she had triumphantly married
the – Moluccan and Protestant – love of her life. They had secretly lived
together in Paris for years. In contrast, Sonya had wasted three hundred
thousand dollars in nine years, according to a brother-in-law’s rough
calculation, ‘doing drugs and nightlife’ first in Tokyo, then in Wichita,
Kansas. When she finally arrived home after spending five years at a
Wichita university that mainly educated Asians, it turned out that Sonya
was hardly capable of speaking any English at all. For that matter, she
had not passed even one exam. Sonya appeared to be irritated most of
the time, called herself ‘frustrated’ and was full of envy of her sisters,
who had a lighter skin complexion. Her father was reluctant to shower
her with money any longer, and initially had even refused to buy her a
mobile phone on her homecoming. While industrious Sammi had had
three children in three years in her new, small-sized Bintaro row house,
Sonya had not been capable of either finding a job or a husband, causing
a great deal of worry to her parents. Once she entrusted me with a newly
developed strategy to marry her homosexual brother-in-law by the name
of Manneke, so he could go on living his hidden private life and she
could go on ‘clubbing’ and ‘triping’ every night without being bothered.
Sissy, the fifth daughter and the one I have always been closest to
since our meeting in 1994, had married Budi, the high-school boy-next-
door, after getting pregnant at the age of eighteen. In spite of this rather
frivolous start to married life, Sissy had developed into a serious and
hard-working mother, housewife and homemaker, bringing all of the
household tricks, teachings and lessons of her Dutch-trained mother into
practice. Sissy, besides being very religious, was ambitious in her quest
to be an ideal housewife. Her two children, Tisna and Ugo, were con-
tinuously fussed over and were sometimes hand-fed little titbits of food,
although they were teenagers. Sissy brought them self-prepared ‘hot’
lunches at school every day, which meant that she had to drive for four
hours through hectic Jakarta traffic, from eleven a.m. until three p.m.,
once they came to live in Sektor IX, the posh, remote part of Bintaro, in
the neighbourhood that was nicknamed ‘Beverly Hills’ by its residents.
She considered this lunch service simply a mother’s duty. Sissy’s marriage
to Budi was a very intense and fluctuating relationship. Budi, who was
considered an eccentric by his family and in-laws, had spent the first four
years of their marriage in England in order to complete his education.

75
A household object in the elder Wiyanto home
 II  Scenes of suburban family life  |

It seemed as if this temporary separation still had an unsettling effect on

their partnership. Budi’s outspoken resentment of his parents-in-law, an
exceptional thing considering Javanese family relations, took its toll as
well. Although disliking one’s parents-in-law was a common occurrence,
one had to act in an extremely respectful manner towards them.8 Budi
kept fashionable dogs as pets, much to Sissy’s chagrin. Furthermore,
there seemed to be an eternal rift between husband and wife about the
respective class standing of their families. Budi thought the Wiyantos to
be too tribal, vulgar and primitive, and Sissy found Budi’s family aloof,
introvert and class-conscious – in short, sombong (arrogant). This silent
discontent eventually burst out every year during the Christmas season,
when Budi opted for quiet quality time with his nuclear family ‘around
their own Christmas tree’ (that is, in front of their own television), while
Sissy wanted them to join the twenty or so members of her extended
family in an exclusive holiday resort for a four-day get together: non-
stop snacking and gossiping in front of the television, surrounded by
children, servants, a plastic Christmas tree, ashtrays and piles of dirty
plates. Usually the couple ended up not speaking to each other for three
or four weeks around New Year’s Eve.9 Twice, when things really got
out of hand, Budi had purchased yet another dog in February, to un-
derscore his anger. Luckily, both families-in-law were quite wealthy, so
inequality in this respect did not pose a problem to the stubborn couple.
In fact Budi happened to get along well with his sisters-in-law and their
husbands, so their joint outings during the remainder of the year were
often quite successful.
Everyone expected him to participate in Opapi’s around-the-world
trip without a second thought. To skip a four-day-splash to make your
point was one thing, but to refuse a first-class three-week trip to Eropa
dan Mediteranean, all paid for by Opapi, was quite another. However, to
Sissy’s great distress, Budi stubbornly refused to come along, claiming
that business kept him tied to Jakarta. Furthermore, he disclosed to me
that he did not want to raise suspicions that he was a ‘coward’, ‘escaping’
Jakarta during Pemilu, exclaiming that ‘I’m no goddamn Chinese!’ After

8 See H. Geertz 1961:27-8. Budi was challenging rules of conduct under the pretext of considering
them kuno, or ‘old-fashioned’. Such risky behaviour worried Sissy.
9 This technique of silent avoidance, called satru, is a standard Javanese way of handling quarrels
between husband and wife (H. Geertz 1961:136). Budi and Sissy often used me instead of their children
as a go-between during these satru periods.

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shedding lots of tears, long, whispered phone calls and much mediation,
the family cooed him into a promise that he would join them for the
last leg of their trip, somewhere along their itinerary of Paris-Lourdes-
Rome-Athens-Istanbul-Cairo-Luxor-Eilat-Haifa. In the travel agency’s
brochure, which I had found among the mess in Sonya’s room, a printed
guarantee promised that every lunch and dinner during the organized
trip was to be served in a local Chinese restaurant. Another ‘hard’
guarantee concerned the visiting of only ‘major top attractions’, such as
Disneyland, the Vatican, the Acropolis and the Wailing Wall.
Finally, one clammy Saturday night at the end of May, all thirty-two
members of the Wiyanto family came together to have an upacara, a
Javanese ceremony. Old Mrs Wiyanto had eagerly explained to me, in
Dutch: ‘When grandparents have fifteen grandchildren, they are sup-
posed to give them money, you know. But I already have sixteen!’ In the
Wiyanto case, the thirteen parents and one childless daughter were sup-
posed to receive monetary gifts as well – the cash was intended as pocket
money for the trip. This undoubtedly explained the tense and expectant
atmosphere in the huge, dark living room of the old couple’s house,
where the vast dining table was already covered with fragrant dishes,
casseroles and cakes. Yet nobody showed any interest in the food – not
this time. The children were nervous and noisy and the grown-ups kept
smoking and making shrill jokes. Sissy, wearing glasses, was tying colour-
ful strings to little bamboo sticks, together with ‘Mami’, Mrs Wiyanto. In
a deep armchair, from which he could hardly emerge, frail Opapi, wear-
ing striped pajamas, suddenly put on his heavy, black-rimmed glasses
and, in a weak voice, asked all the grandchildren to leave the room for a
while. Behind his chair his suster, dressed in white, stood erect as if keep-
ing guard. Opapi then started reading what his children called a rapat, a
formal speech, albeit barely audible. It was a lengthy speech with many
figures, about insurance, hard times, cash flow and company results.
Meanwhile, the audience was not paying much attention to his words.
Some family members were giggling, others were whispering in their
mobile phones and I saw Budi playfully pulling at Sammi’s hair. Sandra
was making notes, also wearing glasses. Industrious Sissy was now cutting
yellow ribbons. She really seemed to be in her element, enjoying the fam-
ily closeness and the obvious importance and significance of their meet-
ing. Budi, suddenly standing close, whispered to me in English: ‘The trip
will cost him more than two hundred thousand US dollars. But the boss

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has many, many times more money.’ Finally, the grandchildren, some
on the verge of hysteria, were called in again. The general mood of the
parents appeared somewhat relieved by now. All children and grown-ups
then prepared to make a kind of procession past their grandparents or
parents, both of whom were by now seated elegantly in the deep plush
armchairs. Opapi, still wearing his glasses, was holding a little toy whip in
his hand. Everyone was first having his or her feet smeared with a yellow
paste of ginger and kencur root by Mami, after which Opapi gave them a
playful lash with his fancy little whip. Round and round they went, three
times in all, holding on to a big circular rope with one hand. One by one,
during the last round, they kissed Opapi on the cheek and all thirty of
them were handed a white envelope containing two thousand US dollars.
In a small side room, the oldest grandchildren collapsed out of sheer ex-
citement. As a conclusion to the upacara, Mami started to throw handfuls
of petals and coins in the air from a big copper bowl for the grandchil-
dren to grab: whoever got the most coins would become the wealthiest in
the future. Some of the grown-ups participated uninhibited in this ritual
as well – Budi, shrieking with laughter, grabbed by far most of the coins.
Yulia’s two temporarily adopted children, three-year-old Hendra and his
two-year-old sister Titi, the Batak as they were called by the Wiyantos in
reference to their ethnic origin, had meanwhile been hiding under the
big dinner table, invisible to everyone. They were paralysed by fear and
anxiety because of the big crowd of loud and unknown people.
During the whole occasion, Sissy kept looking dismal. When I asked
her whether she was happy with her pocket money and if she was look-
ing forward to their trip, she answered: ‘Not really. I have no friend. I
can’t go out by myself. I guess I’ll be bored.’ Before the family started
having their buffet supper – eating and talking money being the two
essential parts of all their gatherings, whenever and wherever – Sleasy
volunteered a lengthy, improvised prayer, again with figures, sums and
percentages, but also containing warnings about being selfish and greedy.
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut all the time, apparently seeking holy
inspiration. All Wiyantos crossed themselves before, finally, heaping their
plates with their beloved, exquisite East Javanese food.
The next day, when they were packed and ready to go, I joined Budi
and Sissy in their latest vintage Mercedes – Budi was a collector. We set
off to the airport in a heavy rainstorm, while Sissy was having stomach
cramps of nervousness. After swiftly changing into a taxi because the

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car broke down, we joined the family in the International Departures

Terminal. They were all, including the children, behaving with an un-
precedented discipline, sitting or standing around quietly. Opapi was
napping in his wheelchair. Erwin and Ongky, both experienced inter-
national travellers had dressed like tourists, wearing bermudas, T-shirts
and cameras. Dodi and Adri were dressed in a more businesslike manner,
wearing dark suits with tie. Heng looked ‘sporty’ in golf clothes, com-
bined with heavy gold jewellery and a white cap – he was thought to be
an OKB by some of his in-laws. They all thus reflected the ambiguous
character of their trip.
The ladies had been confused about their appearance as well: while
Sissy was dressed in a dowdy, ill-fitting green lady’s suit with gold but-
tons, made by their seamstress, Sammi was sporting a pair of jeans and
an oversized T-shirt and Etty had put on a suede jacket, a lot of gold
jewellery and jogging pants. Marni had donned exactly the same ill-
fitting formal suit as Sissy, albeit in yellow, thereby showing, just as Sissy
was, that she was partaking in an upacara: Opapi’s last wish. Suster had an
enormous black leather money belt tied around the waist of her white
uniform. She was guarding a pile of white cardboard boxes containing
preserved nasi gudek, a typical Javanese rice dish, all set aside for Opapi,
who wore a black cap with the word OPAPI embroidered on it in gold;
his standard headdress for the trip, as the later photos would show.
When the time to say goodbye finally arrived, a koneksi (acquaintance)
of Heng – a plain clothed member of the Air Force Intelijens (Intelligence)
– piloted a delighted Budi and me silently past satpam, Airport Tax, se-
curity checks and Immigration, without anybody asking questions. The
family party had already followed the usual exit routine. We said goodbye
at the gate, where the Wiyantos, without showing any excitement, antici-
pation or emotion, embarked on their cleverly combined upacara, holiday
trip and escape journey.

intermezzo: pemilu, 7 june 1999, somewhere in

bintaro…

In the little, recently built upmarket neighbourhood of ‘Beverly Hills’,

in Bintaro Sektor IX, the local organizational committee led by Pak RT
Agus had been determined to make the much-anticipated pesta demokrasi,

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election day (literally ‘festival of democracy’, a New Order term), a

real success. From the start, residents of the recently developed gated
compound ‘Beverly Hills’ had been united in their efforts to constitute a
community, regardless of their various religious and ethnic backgrounds
(‘We don’t want any primordialisme here’, as one resident had once ex-
plained to me). Their wealth was their common ground; perhaps more
specifically, the shared way in which they regarded and assessed their
wealth. For instance, they continued to underscore their aversion to
‘Pondok Indah’ styles of display. Pondok Indah – a posh neighbourhood
almost bordering Bintaro – was notorious in ‘Beverly’ because of its vul-
garity, bad architecture and general OKB-ness. ‘Beverly’ residents were
proud of having collectors of rare vintage motorbikes among them, with
which they could show their good taste and their refined preferences.
The ‘Beverly Hills’ ladies had interesting hobbies, such as collective
excursions to authentic ‘traditional’ markets; they cultivated cactuses
and collected old photos and furniture from colonial times. All residents
considered themselves and each other as normal middle-class people, on
a par with middle-class people from, say, the Perth or Boston suburbs, or
wherever they had completed their education. They relished their cos-
mopolitan outlook on life more than anything else. Pemilu now offered
another chance of community building. Only two residents’ families had
fled abroad to reduce security risks.
The Pemilu committee had erected a colourful party tent filled with
pink plastic folding chairs, which functioned as a festive waiting room, and
they had provided enough snacks and refreshments in iceboxes for the
two hundred or so voters they expected. The tent was placed in the main
avenue, Jalan Kenari Raya, in front of the satpam’s recently renovated Pos
Keamanan (security post), next to the residents’ brand new, high entrance
gate with the steel-barred doors. The gate was adorned with palm trees in
decorated pots for the occasion. All nine satpam on duty that day had as-
sembled in front of their ‘office’ to keep a close watch on the proceedings
at the polling station. With folded arms or seated on their mopeds, they
looked somewhat apprehensive in their impeccable uniforms. The two
polling booths – shining, bright blue plastic hermetic-looking construc-
tions on the black asphalt road – were rather far away from the party tent
and the polling station. Their appearance seemed therefore a bit ominous,
as if something unspeakable was taking place inside. On a table in the
polling station, all election paraphernalia were laid out: a megaphone, an

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inkpot with permanent ink, small plastic Aqua cups containing drinking
water and various felt-tipped pens and hand-made signboards. During the
day, wealthy-looking, middle-aged couples in casual clothes sauntered in
and out of the tent, to eventually take their place in the shade among the
others: servants, drivers and gardeners for whom ‘Beverly’ offered tempo-
rary jobs and shelter. During the slow voting proceedings, the two groups
only seemed to differ conspicuously in the way they underwent their ‘ink-
baptism’: servants almost thrust their index finger in the inkpot, whereas
the official residents were very careful in dipping only the tips of their little
fingers in the unknown black liquid. The atmosphere in the waiting tent
was intended to be relaxed and informal, but due to the behaviour of the
people there, which was almost too polite and too considerate, the tension
was inescapable. They hardly spoke to each other. Their behaviour was
reflected in the disciplined industriousness of the members of the polling
station: young serious persons in crisp white shirts, who were diligently
counting all day, crossing out numbers and going through instructions.
Everything seemed to proceed according to official rules: slow, scrupulous
and fair. Pak RT Agus, an elderly, authoritative retired businessman acted
as the one in charge, as bapak for today. When, however, a dispute devel-
oped in the afternoon because seven residents had registered elsewhere
but intended to vote in ‘Beverly Hills’, things went wrong. After Pak RT
had indulgently given permission to his neighbours to vote anyway, the
young, merely female students of the polling station, who were actually
authorized to decide, dared to contradict his decision and, in conclusion
to long shy whisperings, finally denied the shocked residents their ballot
papers. In front of a considerable and assorted audience, Pak RT Agus
therefore lost face beyond repair. This caused him to have fruitless mo-
bile phone conversations with koneksi for the remainder of the day, trying
to ‘arrange’ something for his perplexed people – mobile in one hand,
megaphone in the other.
At the end of the day, after closing time, several male residents of
‘Beverly Hills’ – accompanied by their ever-ready handymen in leatherette
jackets, mittens and black caps, having parked their mopeds in neat rows
– came together, to witness the counting of the votes. A few servants and
drivers, plus the satpam, took part in the audience as well. They were now
all seated on pink plastic chairs, in the open air. The initial proceedings
were reminiscent of a ceremony: the combination of quiet tension, sup-
pressed nervousness and the rather clumsy manipulation of piles of papers

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and forms. Things had to start anew over and over again. Finally, when
the counting began, the residents, adorned with horn-rimmed glasses,
gold Rolex watches, expensive designer T-shirts and mobile phones, began
cheering at every vote for Megawati’s PDI-P and, after a while, started
yelling ‘Jackpot-jackpot!’ When after a while the first Golkar-vote was made
public, a loud protest ensued, causing visible unrest among the satpam.
The mood became more jubilant and rowdy with every PDI-P vote
counted, while PAN supporters only cheered modestly when their votes
were announced.10 After a while, when it became clear that PDI-P would
win locally, residents started yelling ‘Merah Kenari! Merah total!’ (‘Kenari is
red Kenari! Totally red!’, red being the PDI-P colour) and ‘Pro Mega! Pro
reformasi!’ Servants and other non-eksekutip people merely remained silent.
Contrary to the situation in the waiting tent, the seating was not socially
mixed during the counting, but according to class and occupation: ser-
vants, residents and handymen formed little clusters in front of the school
board on which the score was kept. Pak RT had disappeared unnoticed,
while the satpam were looking on rather gloomily. When the election results
for ‘River Park Hills’ were made public – 89 PDI-P, 78 PAN and 27 Golkar
votes being the main scores – a strange thing happened. There was no
triumphant cheering or yelling, no applause nor discussion whatsoever.
Instead, a silence suddenly descended on Jalan Kenari Raya and then ev-
eryone just dispersed quietly and distractedly, as if at the end of a wayang
performance. There was simply no comment at all, a sheer ‘absence of
climax’, as Clifford Geertz (1973:403) has called a similar situation – as if
the day-long event had been no more than a fleeting ritual spectacle. The
residents of ‘Beverly Hills’ apparently considered discussing political events
such as general election results neither modern nor civilized.

the lifestyle of sonya – an orde baru-baby’s

fulfilment

Coming home after nine years abroad was an ordeal for Sonya, who
at 29 was the Wiyanto’s youngest daughter. A friendly, petite yet rather
nondescript and timid-looking girl, she complained for months about the
‘culture shock’ she continued to experience, once she was back home in
10 PAN, Partai Amanat Nasional – Amien Rais’ political organization – catered to young, urban,
Muslim intellectuals.

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Jakarta. Whenever I prodded her to be more precise about her discom-

forts during our irregular get-togethers, she made a waving movement
with her cigarette-holding hand and just muttered: ‘Oh… Indonesia…
you know…’ The first few months, she never got up and dressed before
4 p.m. – she just smoked incessantly, drank coffee and hung around in
her room, with unwashed hair and face, wearing a crumpled and torn
Wichita University T-shirt, watching television while the air conditioning
blasted at full power. Her sisters were forever furious with her ‘sluttish-
ness’ and with what they regarded as her overly leisurely outlook on life.
‘She tries to go out every night, dancing, tripping… she is so spoilt!’ Sissy
complained. Sonya’s father disapproved of her going out by herself at
night; Sonya had to adjust, after nine years of freedom, to the rules of her
parents’ home again. That was probably why she ended up inviting me
to go ‘nightclubbing’ with her from time to time. She considered me, an
outsider, to be an ally against the strangers that her family had become.
The first occasion that I spent time with her was a Christmas 1998
family trip to Taman Safari, a hill resort near the Puncak Pass. By then
Taman Safari was a very popular destination for Bintaro families. The
place resembled a giant children’s theme park: everywhere there were
larger-than-life animal sculptures in bright colours, and fish ponds with
ducks and gigantic red carp; little electric fun trains toured the place
all day long. Children and adults only had to hop on for a merry ride
through the animal-fairyland, over little ‘wooden’ bridges made of
concrete, past cement trees and artificial grottoes. Small cottages stood
in clusters, housing big and small families. There were security officers
everywhere in fancy uniforms, walkie-talkies in hand. During that par-
ticular Christmas season, the gate to the resort resembled the entrance to
an impenetrable fortress, with tall wooden barricades wrapped in razor-
sharp wire in front of the locked steel gates. The place was packed with
Chinese families who were forced to stay indoors all day by the torrents
of rain and continuously dark skies. Only during the noisy collective
breakfast sessions in the Safari Hall did families meet each other.
From the start of our stay Sonya kept whispering to me that she was
‘totally bored’ with the arrangements – all the Safari discotheques being
temporarily closed, on strict orders from the local Muslim clerics due to
the fasting month, Puasa. Without anything to distract her, Sonya spent
all her time lying in front of the television, snacking and smoking, just as
her married sisters did. However, one morning she called me and invited

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me to come along to the sauna: she wanted to escape from the family,
since they were all together in only two bungalows and were criticizing
her all the time. Only ‘Chinesianized’ Marni had rented a separate bun-
galow for herself and Ongky, where she keenly guarded her privacy. The
few servants, suster and drivers who had been selected to accompany the
family, spent the nights nearby in parked Kijang vans. These arrange-
ments did not, however, keep the servants in their place.
There had been a bit of an event that morning at our bungalow,
because Budi had witnessed an unidentified servant seating herself in
one of the two easy master’s chairs, out on the porch. ‘Who is she?’ he
kept asking around. ‘Does anybody know this person? To whom does she
belong?’ Other members of the family were less interested, and all the
brothers-in-law, as well as Budi, simply retired to one of the bedrooms
to start their all-day poker session. Rain was pouring down heavily for
hours at a stretch and the atmosphere, in and outside the bungalows,
was gloomy. Armed with an umbrella, I picked up Sonya from the other
bungalow. Inside, bits of food were scattered all over the place, just as in
the one where I was residing; dishes and boxes with left-over doughnuts,
cake, Chicken Nanking, Fuyung Hai, Supermie, nasi timbel, ikan asin,
yoghurt, nastar cookies, roti pisang and corn-on-the-cob covered the floor
and the furniture. For two days now, the general conversation had been
focused on the various foodstuffs that kept being brought in by red-uni-
formed waiters. Mobile phone conversations were thus largely restricted
to the other bungalow, a few metres away from ours.
In the sauna, Sonya told me endearing stories about her college life
in America. She had been a member of a group of carefree Indonesian
students in Wichita who, heavily sponsored by their parents, had enjoyed
life to the full until Krismon had spoilt it for most of them. Like Sonya,
they were called back to Jakarta, although in Sonya’s case it was not a
sudden lack of money that had caused her departure, but the rising anxi-
ety of her parents. These Wichita-based students really ‘digged’ their
life of ‘partying’, ‘triping’ and ‘doing drugs’, Sonya informed me, partly
speaking in English. After she felt more at ease with me, she suddenly
confided to me that she ‘had made it with a Russian guy’. After a minute
of watching me intently, she added: ’And also with a black guy. We lived
together for a while.’
Clearly Sonya was trying to convince me that she was completely
different from her sisters. As the youngest child, born on her father’s

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birthday, she was spoilt and treated as a princess by her dad – she was
simply the anak bungsu, the youngest, ‘traditionally’ spoilt child. That was
why, she explained to me, her jealous sister Susi had beaten and other-
wise mistreated her. This started when she was fourteen years old – her
parents were staying in the United States at that time. After yet another
black eye, she eventually went to live with her brother Erwin to escape
Susi; after a few years, she departed for Tokyo. She realized that her
sisters regarded her as a sinful and eccentric good-for-nothing, but she
couldn’t care less, she said, because they were not open-minded. She had
forgiven Susi, but she was not close to anyone in the family now. With her
mother she experienced a generation gap. Yes, she was fully aware that
she had to get married soon in order to satisfy her parents. Otherwise,
her parents would get sick from disappointment and shame and her
sisters would blame all that on her. The only problem was, she was not
ready for marriage, or so she told me. ‘I’m much too busy finding out
who I am, you know’, she kept repeating.
Sonya was apparently also still in shock about her ‘abduction’ from
Wichita, although she would not discuss this humiliating episode with
me out of embarrassment. Her brother-in-law Budi had told me earlier
that year – before I got to know Sissy – that he had recently been sent
by his father-in-law to the United States on what he called a ‘mission im-
possible’. Sonya had somehow managed to accumulate so much of her
parents’ money over the years, that she was able to live quite indepen-
dently. After a series of summonses had proven ineffective, someone had
to go there and pick her up. She had done an unspeakable thing – for
eighteen months she had turned a deaf ear to her parents’ call and she
had refused to return home. So someone simply had to go to the States
and bring her home. Because of their strained relationship, Budi had
been amazed that Opapi had selected him for this assignment. The job
should have gone to Opapi’s only son, Erwin, but he spoke no English.11
At first Budi had refused, but after being visited by his pleading sisters-in-
law he had changed his mind. He told me, in a businesslike manner, that
he had agreed on the basis of a US$ 20,000 allowance for the complete
trip and no further fees – realizing that his position in the Wiyanto family
would radically change for the better if he was successful. After several
11 Furthermore, Erwin and his father exercised avoidance and restraint with each other. ‘A man who
needs a young man to help him […] is more likely to turn to a son-in-law than to one of his own sons’
(H. Geertz 1961:121).

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unpleasant confrontations with Sonya in Wichita (‘If I were you, I’d have
been twice a doctor and three times an engineer’) she finally gave in and,
very reluctantly, embarked for Jakarta – for good. This was probably
why soft-spoken Sonya regularly remarked that she ‘hated’ Budi and
that she feared his brusqueness. Her badly planned revenge on him – on
the night of the family’s departure for their Eropa dan Mediteranean trip –
eventually jeopardized my standing in the Wiyanto family. That night,
while Budi and I were waving goodbye to the travellers at the gate, Sonya
shouted loudly to us, at the very last moment: ‘And you two have much
fun together tonight!’ Sissy’s face turned white from shock and I heard a
suppressed giggle. Budi was beside himself with anger. I saw little of him
in the two weeks before he departed to join them in Cairo – where the
couple had a big row – and my relationship with Sissy remained strained
for months afterwards. Such was the destructive effect of Sonya’s words.
On New Year’s Eve, shortly before midnight, Sonya and I went out for
a stroll through the Taman Safari resort. There was no single celebration
planned and the place was dark and quiet. I wanted to walk to the main
street of the village, through the heavily secured entrance gate, and see
what was going on over there. I expected Sonya to be as eager for a festive
atmosphere as I was, but she appeared reluctant to accompany me to the
main gate. The security officers at the gate simply forbade me to go out;
they claimed that it was too dangerous for us to be outside the resort and
they formally refused to take any responsibility. When I insisted on cross-
ing the street just to take a look, Sonya cried out after me: ‘Please don’t,
please come back!’ To my surprise, Sonya looked terrified. ‘Where do you
want to go to? There’s nothing at all over there, come back quick! Please!’
she implored. She, as well as the security officers, apparently perceived the
surroundings as ultimately dangerous, inhabited as they largely were by
poor, rural and pious people. Finally, Sonya all but pulled me back into
the Safari resort, among the stillness of the concrete wildlife. I’d just had
time to spot some excited youngsters on the street, playing with firecrack-
ers in the slow traffic, and several local satpam patrolling.
Back in Taman Safari, nobody was celebrating New Year’s Eve.
Instead of fireworks, partying or music, the streets were empty and most
of the bungalows were dark. After paying tribute to Opapi and Mami in
their beds at midnight – a ‘Javanese kiss’ (blowing air past their cheeks)
– everybody in our bungalows went to sleep, with this time an almost
audible ‘absence of climax’. The sisters and their children had been

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watching the movie Dancing with wolves on television, in between snacking,

napping and smoking. The men had been playing poker all night.
Back in Jakarta, a few weeks later, Sonya one night invited me to ac-
company her to a ‘tribal gathering’ party in Bengkel Nightpark, a trendy
discotheque close to Jalan Sudirman, the main North-South arterial
road. In a ‘jungle environment’ with an ‘ethnic ambience’, ‘distant drums
calling again’ – all according to the invitation flyer – we were to experi-
ence ‘cybertribal visuals’, ‘uv art’, ‘crazy electronica’ and ‘face painting’.
But first we spent some time in Sonya’s large, messy bedroom. We lay on
her enormous bed and watched an episode of a sinetron, a soap opera.
This sinetron, Air mata Ibu (A mother’s tears), was a local production; as
usual, Indo actors played at least half of the characters. According to
Sonya, they were simply all more beautiful than ‘real’ Indonesians and
much nicer to look at. When the programme was over, Sonya showed
me a couple of shiny purple and orange hairpieces: ‘Cute stuff… from
the States! Only two bucks apiece… hang on…’, she called out enthusi-
astically as she went on showing me several nylon ‘sixties’ second-hand
blouses and dresses. ‘All from the States – one buck only!’ While she
finally started to make up her face and get dressed, she complained that
her life had become a real struggle over the last months. She now as-
sisted Susi in her production business, without getting paid, but it was
all very boring. I knew that business was down and that she was playing
Solitaire on her desktop computer all day long. She wanted to do drugs,
but she could not find a place to do it, she told me. Her daddy would
not let her have a mobile phone. Sometimes she borrowed an apartment
from a friend to have sex. When Sonya referred to ‘sex’, it was in much
the same way as she referred to ‘education’, ‘fun’ and ‘doing drugs’: as
if pointing to empty signifiers from a faraway realm of hearsay.12 It was
then that Sonya informed me of her secret agreement with Manneke,
her homosexual brother-in-law, to marry each other and be free forever
on a matrimonial basis. But they had to work it all out first – I was to tell
no one. Meanwhile, she said, Manneke was the only one in the whole
family who understood her and who shared her desire for freedom.
12 In the 1980s, Alison Murray (1991:123) wrote that Indonesian society has had become increasingly
‘sexualized’ and ‘commodified’, most obviously among the wealthier classes, ‘whose preoccupation with
sex and consumerism has blurred the distinctions between “good” and “bad” paths; these are overdeter-
mined by a “truth” based on image and appearance’. Sonya, who left Indonesia in 1989 as a teenager,
was an anachronistic figure upon her return in 1998, completely ignorant of ‘politics’ and ‘human rights’
as middle-class preoccupations.

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Banners announcing various private businesses across the street from

an elementary school gate in Bintaro, 1999

Sonya’s dressing table and her bathroom shelves were covered with pots
and jars, all containing expensive-looking whitening creams. Sonya was
quite obsessed with her complexion, which she still considered too dark,
even after years of bleaching. She was continuously experimenting with
bleaching creams and methods and she had a habit of comparing the
colour of her skin automatically with that of others. When I urged her
to speed up a little that night, while she was meticulously applying make-
up to her face, she told me in a mocking voice: ‘But I don’t have your
white-skin bonus!’
On our way to Bengkel Nightpark, Sonya, driving her Kijang van
while smoking, remarked that the roads were strangely empty for the
time of night. I knew that this was due to people’s fears of riots and the
still reigning Muslim fast. ‘Where is everybody… you know, they are
all having fun on Bali and we’re here, boring ourselves to death…’ she
complained. She had never been to Bali, she murmured, and now she
lacked the money. Then she asked me carefully whether it would be bet-
ter for us to go to the discotheque Tanamur, ‘to have fun’. Tanamur had
been a notorious place among the better-off Jakartans for decades. It was
a famous pick-up scene, where expat bule (white person) could choose a
local girl of their liking without fuss. Women usually received ‘presents’

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afterwards in return for their sexual favours. Since the place was visited
by young Jakartans from all social levels, girls from higher circles, like
Sonya, also ran the risk of being approached by lustful bule – a thought
that terrified all Wiyanto family members. Budi and Sissy had made it
clear to me that I was never to accompany Sonya to Tanamur, that ‘meat
market’. In fact, I had just visited Tanamur a couple of weeks before and
had found the place flooded with girls from poor families, who saw in
this gentle form of prostitution a way of getting their goodies now that
Krismon had robbed them of their jobs.
Sonya appeared so eager to go to Tanamur that I agreed to accom-
pany her there instead of to the ‘tribal gathering’, which from the start
had seemed more of a teenage affair. Sonya was delighted. Her one big
ambition was to marry a bule and to live abroad for the rest of her life.
Although I tried to explain to Sonya that Tanamur was not a good place
for her to find a future husband, she would not hear of it. She fancied
just doing it with a bule anyway, she told me, driving carefully through
red traffic lights in order to escape the gangs that specialized in raiding
waiting cars at night. Sissy told me that she was always afraid, even dur-
ing daytime, in Tanah Abang, which was the old, downtown district in
which Tanamur was situated. Women ran the risk of ill treatment and
rape when alone on the streets. On the wall of a building, as it hap-
pened, I had just spotted the graffiti words laoet majat (sea of corpses) in
huge black dripping letters and spelled in the old style. We arrived at the
club and Sonya parked her Kijang van, paid the parking attendant in
the hope that he would protect the vehicle from the sinister characters
gathered there, and we wrestled our way inside through the crowd that
was hanging around at the entrance.
Once inside the club, surrounded by loud music, semi-darkness and
half-naked bodies, Sonya’s self-possessed attitude dissolved quickly and
she became quite nervous. She did not dare to show herself on the
crowded dance floor without me around and she kept her drink, gin-and-
tonic, scrupulously covered with a coaster. ‘You know why I am doing this?
It’s because they try to put pills into your drink, so you become drugged
and they can rape you! You should always cover your drink!’ Then she
rambled on, telling me about her culture shock that still lingered on. She
kept repeating: ‘My parents just don’t understand me’ and ‘I need my own
space to be myself ’. Halfway through her second drink of gin-and-tonic,
she suddenly ordered a glass of tequila, salt and lemon, and threw it all

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down in one gulp with a taut face. ‘Sorry, I just had to do that’, she apolo-
gized to me afterwards. I realized that this was what she meant by ‘doing
drugs’. When a little later that night I made a silly joke about Viagra pills,
it turned out, surprisingly, that Sonya had never heard of these before, and
an explanation left her in stunned disbelief. The fact that Sonya never read
newspapers and had lived in a social and cultural bell jar for half a decade
or more only explained her ignorance partly.
On our way home, Sonya started to complain about the amorous pref-
erences of white men. I was aware of the fact that not a single bule had paid
any attention to Sonya in Tanamur. ‘I just don’t understand why bule always
choose dark-skinned girls with pembantu faces! Always! But why?’ Although
Sonya was unhappy with her skin complexion, she had in fact a relatively
light complexion compared to many other Indonsians, which apparently
made her think that bule would prefer her to ‘dark girls’. However, it was
obvious that she was considered to be not pretty enough. She was simply
not a stunning beauty, like almost all of the ‘black’ Tanamur lower-class
girls. Sonya seemed not to understand that her complexion, good manners
and upper-middle-class background formed no guarantee in discotheque
matters of seduction and attraction. Since she was raised with the idea
and the experience that all goodies in life automatically crossed her path
and not a lower-class person’s, it was hard for her to make a distinction
between the various types of ‘goodies’. After a short silence, she declared
that she would, in fact, prefer to marry an Indonesian man: ‘But they are
too damned picky’. Sonya realized that, in her social circle, being beautiful
(in this case including being very light-skinned) was generally regarded as
the most important asset for a woman and that she had a problem in this
regard. She asked me straight out whether I could find her a husband in
Holland. When I expressed doubt about such a venture, she asked me if I
could get her a Dutch passport anyway. She hated Indonesia, she wanted
to get away, she could not feel at home here anymore, she complained.
She told me that she had sometimes been miserable in the States, because
her sisters never sent her photos of their wedding parties and their babies.
They had been angry because she never showed up for their ceremonies.
But surely they could have understood why she had not been able to come
over? They knew she had to attend classes all the time? That she could not
just miss out on her education?
What struck me during these conversations with Sonya, was that
she never mentioned the details of her ‘education’: what in fact she had

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learned, why she had chosen certain topics and what she had wanted to
achieve. For her, ‘education’ was a state of being, or a place to be, and
not a way of accomplishing things. She had been in Tokyo and Wichita,
Kansas these nine years simply for her ‘education’, full stop. The fact that
she had not obtained a degree or the notion that she had possibly ‘wast-
ed’ a lot of money did not seem to bother her at all. My questions about
the ins and outs of her education were consequently all waved aside.
The next day, Sonya was giving me a ride to an address in town
when we got stuck in a small-sized traffic jam, because a demo (demon-
stration) was going on. ‘Wouldn’t you like to be one of them?’ I asked
her, pointing at the yelling students with their red headscarves, banners
and megaphones. She answered calmly: ‘Just for now, I’m really too busy
finding out who I am’. She clearly used this stale women’s lib formula
as a personal slogan, slogans being the well-known, essential vehicle for
public expression during her entire life as an Orde Baru-baby. The New
Order cultural definition of youth has been formulated as follows:

Youths are immature, and therefore their voice does not count. But they
are wild, and their […] lust and heat can be unleashed, because they are
immature and do not know self-restraint. They need to be watched care-
fully and guided from behind if necessary. (Shiraishi 1997:157.)

Sonya went on to tell me that she had really had enough of the beggars,
kids and so-called musicians who showed up beside her car whenever
she was in a traffic jam. She always gave them Rp 100 (1,5 dollar cent)
‘like everyone else. If you don’t, they’ll beat you up or they’ll steal or
destroy your side view mirrors.’ Later that year, Budi told me that Sonya
had started a business in one of the empty garages of her father’s office
building. Since the building’s location was off the main road, the setting
was not favourable for Sonya’s new enterprise: a warung tenda, she called
it, although it was now more than a year after the tent-craze had died
down.13 According to the disdainful Budi, there had never been much
of a clientele in what was in fact an ordinary canteen. Now Sonya’s
management of the place meant employing three young people to do

13 Warung tenda or kafe tenda, ‘tent restaurants’, became fashionable during Krismon. VIP’s who had lost
their jobs started to open trendy and exclusive roadside tent restaurants in posh neighbourhoods in order
to keep making money. At first an upper-class phenomenon, numerous so-called kafe tenda were later
opened by ‘common people’ all over town, resulting in the loss of their exclusive appeal to the happy few.

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the shopping, the waiting and the cooking, while she kept an eye on the
finances. When I visited her in Susi’s one-room office in the same build-
ing, she was in a sombre mood. Interrupting a game of Solitaire on her
computer, she told me that she had wanted to close the business down
and give ‘her’ people one extra month’s salary (Rp 130,000 or US$ 15)
as a bonus. Her sisters, though, had forced her to keep the place open.
‘This is Indonesia’, she muttered, ‘everybody is meddling in your affairs’.
During our conversation it turned out that her sisters had considerable fi-
nancial interests in Sonya’s warung tenda. ‘Business is business’, she sighed,
before she focused her attention on the screen again. A few weeks later,
the deserted warung tenda closed down and the garage was turned into
a storeroom for some of the old couple’s spare furniture before being
given over to a broken-down, vintage Mercedes belonging to Budi. After
that, Sonya opened a boutique selling lady’s dancing shoes in the garage.
The shoes were produced in Sleasy and Heng’s factory and Sandra had
designed the shop’s smart interior. No investment, except for a modest
shop window and a few spotlights, had to be considered, because Sonya
was serving as a full-time sales lady. It all sounded marvellous and was
just in time for the Salsa craze that raged through Jakarta’s nightlife that
season. The last time I visited Sonya in her boutique, before I went back
home that year, I found her playing Solitaire on her old computer, which
she had moved from the office upstairs to a corner of her shop. There
were no customers around, despite the beautiful and exclusive shoes that
were attractively displayed. But who needed customers anyway? Sonya
seemed to have readjusted to her Jakartan surroundings at last. Although
she looked bored, sleepy and sullen, she did not complain once about
her current lifestyle. She told me that she hardly ever went out at night
anymore because she did not have enough money to spend. By the way,
she went on, her dad had given her a Motorola mobile phone for her
birthday. She showed me her precious new handset, suddenly as happy
as a child. In the mornings she drove from Bintaro together with Susi or
with Pak Hardi, their driver. At night she returned to her parents’ place
in Susi’s car, or sometimes with Budi. ‘Next year, I’ll be thirty!’ she ex-
claimed when we said goodbye. ‘Will you be around? I will be so lonely
without you’, she went on, playfully pretending sadness. ‘We can go to
Tanamur together when it is my birthday… I can go wherever I like!’

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keeping up with sissy and budi

My first meeting with Sissy and her husband Budi took place in 1994,
when Catholic koneksi of a distant aunt of mine had eventually led me
to Sissy’s mother-in-law, who recommended the Wiyantos’ family home
in Jakarta. My aim at that time was to find a suitable upper-middle-class
family who were willing to take me indekos, or as a boarder, for a few
months. Bu Buwono had told me that in order to study authentic Javanese
kebudayaan (culture), I really had to stay in a Catholic family home.
In the Wiyantos’ big, unattractive mansion, built at the beginning of
the 1970s, close to Matraman, I experienced my first negotiations with
Sissy, about the weekly cost of lodging at their place (see Van Leeuwen
1997a). Although she acted demure and modest and pretended to be
ignorant about these kind of affairs, Sissy, after long deliberations, firmly
set the price at a level high enough to act as a deterrent. This surprised
me, because I knew that all household expenses – there were more than
twenty-two people living in the house, including servants – were met by
the old couple, and especially because Budi, who had been educated
abroad, was looking forward to having a foreign guest in their home.
Only much later did I come to understand that my stay in the seedy
Wiyanto house had become one of Sissy’s little side businesses and that
my weekly payments formed part of her private income.
During the following weeks I developed an intense relationship with
the couple, who both, each in their own way, started to utter complaints
about the conditions in which they and their two children had to live in
the family mansion. Sissy was constantly cleaning up and dusting the
patios and interior rooms, which were exposed to dust and a soot-like
substance from the nearby motorway, which had been developed not
long after the completion of the building. She did not enjoy this kind
of menial work, she confessed to me, and she longed to have her own
place somewhere quiet, like in Bintaro. Budi turned out to be bitter and
frustrated about the way in which he was employed in his father-in-law’s
timber business, where he ‘worked for free’, as he called it. Over the
course of years, the couple’s aspirations regarding housing and profes-
sional conditions were more than satisfied, largely thanks to the eco-
nomic crisis. In 1996 Budi started his own business enterprise producing
garden furniture and the couple soon moved to Bintaro, first to a modest
neighbourhood, and then in 1998 to a royal urban villa in ‘Beverly Hills’.

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When I visited the couple’s first house in Bintaro for the first time in
1997, a terrible thing had just happened. Budi’s most valuable pet bird,
a very rare, ink-black giant cockatoo that was caught especially for him
in Papua, had escaped from his chain in the front yard. He had ended
up in a nearby kampung and had been shot by locals. One of Budi’s col-
lecting hobbies was the purchasing of rare, deviant or precious animals, a
hobby that was shared by many upper-middle-class people. Although the
craze at the time appeared to be collecting albino animals, Budi stuck to
rare, sometimes almost extinct birds, for which he paid millions of rupi-
ah.14 He kept several cockatoos, pigeons and other species in his garage,
feeding them all different diets. The loss of the giant bird filled Budi
with sadness and rage for days. He checked things out in the kampung
immediately, accompanied by a satpam, but came back empty-handed.
‘Those primitives! Those bastards!’ he swore softly. He was sure that the
kampung locals were going to feast on the mysterious bird later that day.
Luckily, Budi had also recently purchased a pedigree Alsatian puppy for
the children, which now served as a welcome distraction.
Sissy was involved in several new projects as well, now that she had
succeeded in escaping the scrutiny of her parents. Apart from signing up
for a training course for Catholic playgroup teachers, she had invested
her money in buying up an old, ramshackle Mikrolet (minibus) and in the
municipal permit to exploit a city line. She would employ her no-good
brother-in-law Harry as line manager and she calculated that she herself
would rake in Rp 30,000 (US$ 3.50) each week; she had also purchased
a kiosk for Harry’s wife with the same intention. Harry was one of Budi’s
younger brothers who was a school drop-out, and who lived from hand
to mouth, despite the fact that he was married and had a child. Later I
met his shy wife Yuni, a very dark-skinned Moluccan girl who was ‘still’
Protestant according to Sissy; she sometimes lived for weeks on end at her
parents-in-law’s house, along with their child, where she was treated as a
special kind of servant. Budi had successfully kept the existence of Harry
and Yuni a secret from me for years, just as his mother had done. It was
Sissy who kept me updated on awkward family entanglements on Budi’s
side, such as the case of ‘Harry’ or of the homosexual brother Manneke.
Budi considered it his job to keep me informed on Sissy’s family.

14 Buyers were willing to pay US$ 800 for an albino python (The Jakarta Post, 13-8-1999).

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One surprising facet of their new life in Bintaro as a nuclear fam-

ily turned out to be Sissy’s submissive attitude when she served food to
Budi at their table. Budi was behaving as a kind of pater familias now,
as a serious bapak; he wanted to be served by Sissy without her uttering
a word, at all times of the day and night. He refused even to put sambal,
hot sauce, on his plate himself. Sissy emphatically explained to me later
that this was part of ‘Javanese culture’; the role of the wife was to serve
her husband without being told to; she had to guess all his desires. Sissy,
a fierce person and at least as bossy as her husband, accepted this role
apparently without protest. Budi also insisted that she did the biggest
part of the daily cooking and not the pembantu, because it now belonged
to Sissy’s new, proper role. Consequently, in the future, when there was a
marital fight, Budi would refuse to eat food prepared by Sissy and would
withdraw to his ‘study’ with a sulky face and a bowl of Indomie, instant
noodles, prepared by a servant. The annual Christmas rows, which were
to aggrandize later, stemmed from these times, along with the troubles
with servants and the ongoing unrest about the purchasing of yet more
pet dogs for the household. Apart from these minor difficulties, life had
greatly improved for Sissy and Budi. After fourteen years of marriage,
they at last felt berdikari, ‘self-sufficient’, and important. Budi felt comfort-
able with his new role as head of the family, finally being bapak, and with
his blooming business. Sissy felt comfortable with her own household
and with her very own choice of household objects, with which she had
surrounded herself. For her, it seemed as if a new material world had
opened up, a world that, by the way, consisted mainly of a variety of
pastel-tinted plastics. The fact that Sissy now had to sit in traffic jams for
at least four hours almost every day to bring her children hot lunches at
their exclusive Catholic school in which the children ‘simply had to stay
enrolled’, did not bother her at all: it made her feel important. Budi sum-
marized his newfound happiness in the repeated solemn statement that
he ‘was now finally able to play soccer with his son on the street in front
of their own house’. The couple only stayed at this memorable place for
eighteen months. They moved on to a much bigger and posher place in
Bintaro Sektor IX at the end of 1997. According to Budi, Krismon had
made him a rich man overnight, being in the export business, so he could
easily afford a bigger house. However, according to Sissy’s whispered in-
formation a few months later, it was Budi’s mother who had bought the
house as an extra investment and the couple were just renting it from her.

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The house was so big that Budi soon confessed he often felt lost in the
first few weeks of their stay. The couple had filled the L-shaped ground
floor with two sets of couches and armchairs, two fridges, a super-screen
television and a host of side tables, but the naked white ceramic tiles still
gave off a feeling of wide, unexplored space. Budi displayed a vintage
motorcycle next to one of the couches, but neither this nor a newly
purchased electric organ had a very intimate effect. One day, a third
suite of a couch and chairs, cramped together and all covered in white
sheets, was placed in the middle of the living room, taking up all of the
central space. Now the room looked overstuffed, much to Sissy’s anger.
The furniture turned out to be Budi’s mother’s and it was to be stored
there for several months, giving backbone to Sissy’s whispers about the
true ownership of the house. Ugo, a tall, fat thirteen-year-old who had
recently been circumcised, had certainly benefited from his parents’ rise
in status. He now had his own air-conditioned ‘relax room’ upstairs, with
a huge water bed, television, laser disc and audio set, a PlayStation and a
bookcase with hundreds of cheap Japanese cartoons, full of fantasy vio-
lence. Besides this room, he had a room with a normal bed and a desk to
do his homework. Ugo demanded the male servants to play football with
him whenever he felt like it, but Ugo never ran to stop the ball. When
it got into the smelly sewer next to the house, Ugo would make a short
authoritative movement with his hand to make the servant fetch the ball
from the muddy dregs, and it had to be washed before Ugo would touch
it again. He also trained the male servants to serve him bowls of Indomie
in style in his ‘relax room’: on a tray, a clean bottle of sambal sauce on
the side, a folded cloth over the shoulder and with the tray held up high
in the air on one hand, just as in a fancy restaurant. Neither Sissy nor
Budi frowned upon this behaviour; on the contrary, they encouraged
this patronizing style in their young son. While Budi gave Ugo his first
driving lessons and taught him gambling with cards, Sissy started drilling
the children in regard to their family relationships and the various styles
of address (‘Mas15 Bob, you have to call him Mas Bob because he is a
nephew from aunt Roswita and she is related to…’ – whispered instruc-
tions such as these could be heard every evening in between phone calls
and TV commercials). Sissy saw Ugo’s training of the servants as a part
of his transition into adulthood. Since I had caught Ugo in the act of
15 The term ‘Mas’ is used to refer to a man who is of the same age as the speaker, or a man who is
considered unmarried.

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peeing in a perfumed, elegant wash basin in the corridor, and since he

had openly stolen underwear from one of my bags, relations between us
had turned sour. One night, well into Krismon, all the family members
were gathered to have dinner together for the first time in weeks. At the
request of Sissy, who wanted to make up with Budi at the end of one of
their prolonged Christmas-season fights, I had prepared a ‘real Dutch
meal’: a Dutch-style steak, green beans with nutmeg and fried potatoes
– all prepared with real romboter (butter), to Sissy’s delight. ‘You must be
rich in Holland to eat this type of food everyday’ was Ugo’s comment,
while he picked up his steak with his fingers and dangled it in front of
the nose of Jack, the now grown-up Alsatian. I seemed to be the only one
present who was enraged by the boy’s behaviour. This went on for quite a
while, but after a look from his mother, who had noticed my indignation,
he finally put his steak back on his plate. Without having eaten much,
he then went upstairs to his relax room. Later that night, he ordered his
mother to go to the nearby McDrive and bring him fast food. Ugo de-
veloped a habit of ordering two main dishes, such as two pizzas and two
desserts, whenever he was taken to a restaurant. His parents were proud
and happy because of his appetite. Ugo became an avid fast-food eater,
and consumed everything to the last crumb.
Despite the fact that Sissy’s old rusty Mikrolet still wasn’t up and
running, she purchased a second one that was in even worse condition
soon after their move to ‘Beverly Hills’. I was surprised, because the two
ramshackle, dented minibuses – partly without tyres – were very much
out of keeping with their posh new neighbourhood. They were both
conspicuously parked next to their manicured lawn, on the ‘public’ road.
Budi was quite mad about these tainted tokens of his wife’s down-to-
earth entrepreneurship, but could not say much because of his mother’s
furniture parked in their living room – Sissy’s stumbling block. Budi
knew that general opinion in ‘Beverly Hills’ maintained that other, older
parts of Bintaro had been going to the dogs because some inhabitants
(‘Chinese’) could not suppress their innate tendency to start all kinds of
little businesses on their lawns and in their car ports. But Sissy did not
mind at all. After a while a third Mikrolet appeared, as wreck-like as its
counterparts and parked around the corner, in front of an unoccupied
villa. Six months later all three suddenly disappeared; after a year had
gone by, Sissy told me that her Mikrolet were soon going to operate and
that she would be financially able to visit the Jakarta Skin Center. By

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then Sissy had cancelled her playschool training programme and started
a haphazard catering service for her neighbours, much to Budi’s cha-
grin. He refused to eat this food, which was ‘prepared for others in my
kitchen’. On catering days, he also refused to eat food cooked by the
pembantu and often went hungry at night. One afternoon, to pacify his
angry mood once more, Sissy took me to the birthday party of Budi’s
older brother’s daughter, Nita, who had just turned two years of age.
The celebration took part in a McDonald’s restaurant in Bekasi, at the
other end of town; an endless drive, blocked several times by demo. In
the car, Sissy explained to me that Budi’s mother could not be present
at her granddaughter’s party, because she had to stay home and pray
Noveen, a special kind of Catholic prayer. Apparently the health of Rosa,
Budi’s youngest sister, was still causing worry to the old lady. Rosa had
been pregnant for almost nine months when in February 1998, she and
a colleague, both employed at a prominent notary’s practice, had to visit
President Suharto’s home in order to settle a legal transaction. After do-
ing business, the old man had put his hand on Rosa’s belly and advised
her in a fatherly way to take good care of this young Indonesian-to-be.
Two days later, Rosa had given birth to a still-born daughter. Budi, still
shocked, had related this story to me when he picked me up from the
airport a few weeks afterwards, and I never heard any family member
make allusions to this dramatic episode ever after. But Rosa’s health,
especially her capacity to conceive again, had turned out to be a silent
source of anxiety to both her mother and her husband. When Rosa did
get pregnant again, her husband Arief, a young engineer who had been
educated abroad, started skipping lunch every day16 during her entire
pregnancy, in order to beseech a safe delivery.
Still in the car, Sissy warned me that in fact only very few members of
Budi’s family would come over to the birthday celebration, because ‘they
are not really interested in their family, like with us… and they think it is
too far away’. But she expected Budi to join us later. In the McDonald’s
Party Room, many little children were present, all dressed up as puppets,
with their mothers and a few fathers, mainly from Nita’s suburb neigh-
bourhood. We were received by a staff lady with a microphone, who was
immediately recognized by Sissy as the protokol, a kind of mistress of the
ceremony. The celebration turned out to be a very disciplined affair. The

16 Monday and Thursday are traditional Javanese fasting days.

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children, all adorned with McDonald’s party hats, were drilled on the
spot to perform games and plays, accompanied by loud children’s dangdut
music, popular Islamic rock. Parents just sat and watched silently, seated
in rows. Little Nita, dressed in pink silk and seated in a high baby chair,
behaved as a miniature queen, shaking hands and gracefully receiving
presents. She was a serene and controlled centre of attention. Apart
from these guests, many suster were also around, who could be easily
recognized by their darker skin, stooped posture and spotless white or
pink uniforms. They did not receive food and drinks like the guests, but
instead had to help the little ones consume their birthday cake, French
fries and ‘McRendangburger’, a localized hamburger. After a last disci-
plined play called ‘TV-show’, in which the protokol’s sharp and amplified
voice seemed to be the only human sound that was uttered, Sissy inter-
vened and led the guests in a long Catholic prayer, using the protokol’s
microphone. First she had tenderly folded Nita’s little hands in the right
manner. Eventually, the protokol instructed the children in how to properly
thank Nita and her parents for the party, after which the standard group
pictures were quickly taken. Within five minutes, the McDonald’s Party
Room was completely empty.
With their move to ‘Beverly Hills’, Sissy’s difficulties with her servants
had also seriously taken off. In her first Bintaro house, she had enjoyed
the help of an old pembantu, whom she had borrowed from her mother.
Bu Keke had been with the Wiyanto family for decades, so Sissy had
no trouble at all with instructions or training. However, a few months
before their next move, Bu Keke was entitled to go back to her kampung
of origin near Malang, to enjoy her retirement, all arranged by the
Wiyantos. Sissy’s mother could not do without any more of her remain-
ing well-trained servants, so Sissy had to begin seeking for help herself.
She finally found a young man by the name of Us and a teenager named
Saimun, both hailing from Central Java and willing to be employed as
servants. Saimun, who was soon recognized by the family as the more
intelligent one, was trained by Sissy, while Budi took care of Us, the
‘slow’ one. First Budi taught Us how to wash his vintage Mercedes cars,
a daily early-morning task, and how to take care of the two dogs and the
pet birds. Us also had to carry Budi’s briefcase to his car every morning,
walking in front of clean-shaven Budi in a kind of semi-formal parade.
When Budi had finally gone in the morning, Us would change out of
his white, freshly ironed shirt and do some ‘real’, menial work, such as

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scrubbing floors or sweeping stairways. He also had to keep the modest

garden in order.
Us and Saimun shared a small, cramped room adjoining the garage,
without windows, but with a nice view of the neighbourhood when they
had their door open and when the garage doors were not closed. Inside,
they had a radio, an ashtray, a small fan, two rolled-up sleeping mats and
a pile of cardboard boxes. They could watch television in the spacious
servant’s or ‘wet’ kitchen.17 This kitchen was stacked with the special
plastic servant furniture that had become popular during the 1990s.
The servant’s television, usually placed on the ironing board, was tiny,
however, with a restricted choice of channels and a weak signal. Only the
female servant employed at the time cared to watch TV at night, seated
on a low plastic stool; the boys preferred to hang around outdoors.
After a while Us proved to be equal to his tasks, despite his initial
slowness. Budi then started to develop further plans for him, because he
wanted to promote Us to become his private driver. He could probably
also be taught, according to Budi, to settle minor financial tasks.18 Us
had left a wife and two children behind in his desa in Central Java. One
day I asked Budi who, since their move, had an air of being a model
modern family man, if he pitied Us who could only be with his fam-
ily for two weeks in a year. Budi assured me immediately that Us was
much better off here in Bintaro and that he really enjoyed being with
their family and ‘could still feel young’. Us certainly enjoyed taking care
of and walking the dogs on his rusty mountain bike. He was not at all
afraid of the big animals, like most pembantu, and spent most of his time
with the pets, the shiny cars and the garden, in his calm, relaxed man-
ner. At night, the servants from the neighbourhood met one another on
the deserted ‘Beverly Hills’ streets, now fragrant and cool, to smoke, play
chess, gossip and flirt or softly sing and play guitar. The official residents
always stayed inside, in front of their TV-screens, instead of enjoying the
cool night air, just as they did in my own Mandar XXI neighbourhood.
Saimun’s training by Sissy was also a success at first. She taught him
how to take care of the laundry and how to do the more complicated
cleaning tasks, like doing the bedrooms – she always cleaned the bath-

17 See Chapter I.
18 Monthly energy, water, telephone and internet bills are not ususally paid by transferring money by
written order, but by sending personal assistants to the queues in the relevant offices. Since paying this
way is very time-consuming, inhabitants are forced to employ third parties to settle the accounts.

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rooms herself. Tisna, the couple’s daughter who was almost seventeen
now, was especially satisfied with his accomplishments. ‘He is very dili-
gent’, she assured me in English, ‘and he is rather clever’. Saimun could
lay the table, keep the kitchen in order and prepare and serve hot drinks
and bowls of Indomie when no female servants were around. After a year,
however, trouble started to occur. Budi had decided that Sissy would give
Us his driving lessons, which would start when Us had returned from his
yearly visit to his family for Lebaran, the feast at the end of the Muslim
fast. During this time, Sissy had also employed an elderly lady to function
as a cook. She hailed from Sunda, so Sissy had to teach her to prepare the
East Javanese food that was preferred at their table, starting from scratch.
She turned out not to be a very keen student and after some time this
made Sissy irritated and nervous. The woman was ‘stupid’, she told me
after a while. Sissy’s now impatient and strict manner of instruction also
had an effect on Us’s driving lessons. He began to look unhappy and with-
drawn and Budi feared that one morning they would find Us gone. They
had specifically planned to start driving lessons after Lebaran, because
this was seen as the major moment when servants left masters, simply not
returning after their holiday leave. During Krismon, it became very hard
to find qualified servants in Jakarta, because a great number of them had
returned to their villages to join in the highly profitable, export-oriented
handicrafts that now flourished in certain parts of the countryside.
One day on the road, I witnessed how Sissy’s drawbacks as a driving
instructor were causing problems. Us was in the driver’s seat of Sissy’s
luxury Volvo, next to Ugo, while Sissy, sitting between Tisna and me,
issued instructions from the back. We had a long and complicated itiner-
ary ahead of us, taking us through crowded parts of the city. Sissy was
continuously giving advice and admonishments to Us, who was very
nervous. First we had to go to Kuningan, to the offices of the major
lady’s magazine Femina, where Tisna as a new subscriber had to fetch
her ‘doorprize’. I became rather nervous myself, since Ugo, who was
seated in front of me, was constantly playing with a stun gun, ‘executing’
passers-by and making sudden, forceful movements. When Sissy noticed
my unrest, she told me that she had just started a small side business in
stun guns and tear gas canisters, together with a friend. She had already
sold almost their entire stock to her friends and family. She fetched the
thing from Ugo’s hands, warning him that the batteries would run low,
meanwhile instructing Us. By now, the latter had started perspiring heav-

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ily, despite the air conditioning. I had the impression that it was all too
much – his lack of experience at the wheel of an expensive car, the traf-
fic jams, the antics of Ugo next to him and the constant orders from the
back seat. Sissy mercilessly sent him criss-crossing all over Femina’s half-
filled parking lot, before he finally could take a rest, and I saw his dark
forearm tremble as he laid it on the lowered side window. After waiting
for more than an hour in Femina’s canteen we set off again.19 During our
final drive home, Us, who had spent more than four hours driving, took
a turn too sharply and we suddenly heard a loud bang from the back of
the car. To my surprise, Sissy went on giving instructions, in full control
of herself, pretending that nothing had happened. Only the children
showed any agitation. Back home, when alone with me, Sissy burst out
with complaints about Us, Budi, the children and other culprits, saying
that she had had to endure this kind of hardship now for thirteen years.
Sissy seemed to become nervous about the future of her marriage.
Soon the children would leave home for their advanced education, mak-
ing her position quasi-redundant, and Budi was not yet forty. Although in
between their annual quarrels they were devoted partners, who shared a
lot of interests, material progress and a remarkable sense of humour, Sissy
realized that her position was, by definition, the weaker one. Although she
certainly cherished her own qualities as a housewife – she was for instance
the only one among her sisters who was capable of mastering the multiple
economies of Jakarta, knowing the exact worth of anything, anytime,
anyplace, with anyone – she had started to worry. Sissy was used to the
continuous stories of unfaithful or runaway Jakartan husbands, and she
feared ending up just like her divorced sister Yulia.
Meanwhile, Sissy continued to have complicated problems with her
servants. Even her mother could not help her to solve them through
lengthy sessions of whispered Javanese in the dapur. To Budi’s rage, Us
escaped the place half a year later. For the main housework and the
cooking, Sissy only wanted to hire elderly ladies, probably with Ugo’s
and Budi’s presence in mind, but they all proved to be too ‘stubborn’,
‘clumsy’ or ‘stupid’. As a consequence, she did much of the housework
herself and tired herself out. She therefore looked forward greatly to the

19 During this waiting session I discovered a price list on a wall of the empty Femina canteen, listing
the prices of ‘kopi/teh, ayam asli, kue kering, gaz air mata’ (coffee/tea, fried chicken, biscuits, tear gas). In the
lavatory I found boxes with hundreds of opened and unopened confidential reader’s letters from all over
Indonesia, obviously intended for public enjoyment.

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Mediteranean holiday trip, her dad’s ‘last wish’, until Budi declared that he
would not join the party.
Budi was bothered by more general premonitions and fears concern-
ing the topic of servants. When he finally set out to join his spouse in
Cairo, halfway through their trip, I accompanied him to the airport to
see him off. In the car, Budi was sick with worry about having to leave his
house, pets and cars behind. ‘Please take good care of my house, Lizzy,
keep a close watch please, check everything twice a day!’ he begged me,
although he knew I would not stay in his place during his absence – I
had my own Bintaro row house to take care of by then. Us and Saimun
were the ones that were supposed to watch over his house and posses-
sions for at least seven days. Then Budi began to sing Saimun’s praises.
Saimun was so intelligent, Budi told me, that he planned to enroll him
in a vocational school to become a mechanic. At the very least Saimun
was entitled to an education and a future, Budi repeated again and again
– as if he, by a small-scale mission civilatrice, beseeched the house spirits
in charge to leave his place alone for this time. I gathered that the real
reason behind his reluctance to join the family on the trip was his appar-
ent inability to leave his house, cars and possessions behind.
When I went to his place the next day to pick up some food, I found
Us smoking a kretek (clove) cigarette in Budi’s specially imported leather
easy chair, in the ‘ultimate-relax’ position, with the wide-screen televi-
sion blaring. Saimun was off to the Bintaro Plaza Mal, Us informed me,
meeting friends. As I soon gathered, they both enjoyed their unprec-
edented freedom tremendously.

intermezzo: tamankafe

During the family’s absence in the early summer of 1999, I decided to

explore as yet unknown parts of Bintaro, in the newest sektor. Not far
from Budi’s sektor I discovered a kind of open-air jazz club that seemed
to be based on rather shifting conditions – on and in between plots of
land that were supposed to have been developed before Krismon took
off. The place was rather large, contained several bars, was encircled with
bamboo hedges and had a professional-looking stage floor. It was called
‘Tamankafe’ and jazz performances were held twice a week, under the
stars in the cool night air. At first, I found the place rather ‘un-Bintarese’.

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In this suburb, it was generally perceived that one risked one’s life by be-
ing in a public space after dark. But then I discovered the existence of a
kind of ‘arty scene’ in Bintaro, a rather young bunch of successful trendy
artists, cartoonists and musicians, all from upper-middle-class families. It
later turned out that Budi was determined to have nothing at all to do
with these people and their outlets, because he thought that they down-
graded the appearance of ‘Beverly Hills’ and because he felt superior
towards these ‘youngsters’. He refused to come to Tamankafe and forbade
Sissy to accompany me, but his younger brother did not listen to him and
joined me at the club several times. Tamankafe’s weekly jam-session night
was visited by fairly good jazz musicians, who all turned out to be Bintaro-
based. These young people were family men, employed as consultants,
engineers or lawyers during daytime, but several of them had been
trained at famous conservatoires abroad. I made the acquaintance of a
percussionist who called himself ‘Hans’, a young hypermarket manager,
whose real name was Indra. He had baptized himself Hans because that
name was more modern, as he told me when we met for the first time. His
handsome family lived just one sektor away from mine, and they enjoyed e-
mailing me every day for a week or so. When I ventured to pay a surprise
visit to their place a few weeks later, I found their row house to be empty
and the garden a mess. The neighbours told me that they knew nothing
about the family’s whereabouts. Hans never sent me an e-mail again.

love and senam sek

After a few weeks the family returned from their long trip, all of them
looking darker and skinnier then when they left, and we resumed our re-
lations. I started to visit them all regularly again, joining them for parties
and outings, shopping trips and formal visits. Occasionally, they would
come to see me in my row house. Early one Tuesday morning, Sissy and
I were expected to meet a cleric of a Catholic institute in South Jakarta.
According to Budi’s mother, the parish was in need of volunteers to help
setting up a programme for the relief of drug-addicted eksekutip muda,
youngsters from affluent families. Both Sissy and I were interested in
learning more about this initiative. When we arrived at the institute, we
had to wait for an hour, after which a priest informed us that the project
was suspended because the cleric in charge had had a heart attack the

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day before. Back in the car, we decided to go to the Bintaro Plaza Mal
and have a fresh fruit juice before going home again.
At the juice bar, Sissy and I first discussed the latest episode of our
favourite soap opera Cinta (Love), a first-class Indonesian production in
which many present-day problematic issues were assembled into riveting
drama: a beautiful, overeducated wife, light-skinned and with very short
hair; an overly beautiful pembantu, dark-skinned and with very long hair;
a despotic and cruel mother with a konde, the ominous ‘traditional’ hair
bun; a cold and calculating father; an impotent and sick husband; and,
the centre of all interest, an adopted little boy called ‘Doni’, adored
by the major protagonists who all claimed custody of him. The main
theme of this very popular soap series focused on the eternal incompat-
ibility of parental love and erotic love, or kinship and affiliation. The
story was set in comfortable upper-middle-class circles, which made
identification with themes and protagonists all the easier for people like
Sissy and her sisters. After speculating about future story lines of Cinta
over a glass of jus wortel, carrot juice, Sissy started to update me on the
latest ‘soap’ in Budi’s family, with visible glee. Two weeks before Budi’s
mother, who had just returned from Mass, had received a phone call
from an unknown woman from Bandung who had asked her: ‘Ooooh…
is this Mummy?’ It turned out that no-good son Harry had run away to
Bandung, impregnated a girl and then married her in an Islamic office.
Before taking off, he had taken three million rupiah (US$ 350) and one
of Budi’s mobile phones. He had also sold off all the new spare parts for
Sissy’s Mikrolet. Harry’s wife Yuni had only received the bad news two
days ago and Budi’s mother was at her wits’ end. Sissy warned me that
I had to pretend not to know anything about these hilarious events. As a
matter of fact, nobody was to know, even Budi’s younger brothers were
not supposed to know. ‘You see’, she went on, ‘Harry has always been a
good-for-nothing. He used to take hand grenades to high school and steal
the keys of his boarding school’s front door. His parents don’t know how
to handle him anymore.’
Budi’s brothers often caused trouble in the family. I knew that the
youngest brother Manneke, who was assumed to be a homosexual, had
been easier to handle than Harry. Since reaching adolescence, Manneke
had just been continuously sent abroad by his parents. The last time I saw
him in Jakarta, it was on the same day that he had arrived from Europe.
He had had his hair dyed orange and he would soon be on his way to

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Hungary again, to assist an embassy staff member. This was all arranged
by his mother, who did not want to risk the boy being at home for too
long. Sissy did not expect Harry to return to Cempaka Putih – his par-
ents’ Jakartan place of residence – for at least a year. ‘It is such a strange
family’, she remarked, ‘they are like a bunch of strangers. They are not
like my family at all and that is why Budi gets so full of envy sometimes.’
Back in the car, Sissy informed me cheerfully that next week, there would
be reformasi in ‘Beverly Hills’. The functioning Pak RT and Bu RT were
so lazy and had caused so much dissatisfaction that the ‘Beverly’ residents
had informally decided that one of them, Pak Tatang, should be the new
Pak RT for one year. From now on, all households would take turns in
supplying leadership. They would have a big barbecue party next week to
celebrate this reformasi. ‘By the way’, Sissy went on, ‘Budi is going to func-
tion as Pak Maman’s new deputy for security matters’. The only problem
was that the old Bu RT refused to hand over the arisan (club meeting)
accounts. They would therefore have to start over with the books and, of
course, Sissy had volunteered to be in charge of this.
I had got to know Pak Tatang a few weeks before, while looking for
Budi in the quiet streets of ‘Beverly’. Pak Tatang, a senior business man,
was a fervent collector of both vintage Harley motorbikes and Mercedes
cars, whereas Budi ‘only’ collected vintage Mercedes cars: the pre-war
motorbike on display in the living room was his only one. Pak Tatang
addressed his children in English, had a very beautiful, sexily veiled wife
and was greatly admired by Budi, who liked to hang around at Tatang’s
premises. Pak Tatang’s wife was the one responsible for Sissy’s catering
business, because she had gathered soon after their arrival that Sissy, by
way of her Dutch-trained mother, had easy access to all kinds of colonial
Indisch recipes. She had encouraged Sissy to teach her pembantu to prepare
posh classics such as macaronischotel and kaastengel, a cheese pastry, to the
neighbourhood’s delight – bringing the exclusive Jakarta Skin Center a
little further within Sissy’s reach.
A few weeks later, when I returned from a weekend out of town,
Sissy invited me to come over right away for the first RT ladies’ arisan in
months. I hurried over and was received by eight or nine friendly ladies
between thirty and fifty years of age. I recognized several of them from
visits I had made with Sissy some time before to their informal home
businesses. Bu Ditha, for instance, rented out all sizes of decorative
plants from her garage, while Bu Sas ran a home-based day-care centre

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for autistic children. Bu Rosa had recently convinced Sissy to join her in
selling cheap, pocket-sized Koran computers with alarm clock, compass,
chanting and text display – as a novelty it was a tremendous success.
The theme of this arisan was senam sek (sexual gymnastics), introduced
by Bu Madu, Sissy’s immediate neighbour, who was always firmly veiled
when I met her on the street. Now she was barefoot, wearing loose-fitting
garments, lots of gold jewellery and a pair of heavy glasses. A glossy,
transparent shawl barely covered her hair. She was in the middle of a
demonstration of sexual gymnastics, making rotating movements with
her lower body parts, while reading instructions aloud. Madu quickly
handed me a few copies of illustrative material: schematic drawings of
interlocked vaginas and penises, complete with arrows and shadings. Bu
Madu had used a red felt-tip pen herself to add a few arrows and to indi-
cate ‘G-spot’ on the copies. Sissy, while industriously making notes in her
arisan notebook and also wearing glasses, whispered to me that Bu Madu
was following an expensive senam sek course at Martha Tilaar’s, a famous
and prestigious Jakartan cosmetics firm. Bu Madu just wanted to share
her new knowledge, Sissy said. After demonstrating a few auspicious
positions for sexual intercourse, Bu Madu enthusiastically delivered a
lecture, interlarded with many English terms, on forms of female orgasm
and the matching ways of masturbation, again making demonstrating
movements with her hand through her pants. All ladies were silently tak-
ing notes. Bu Madu, seated on a barstool, finished her lecture by suggest-
ing newly learned seduction tricks, such as rubbing certain parts of the
body with saliva. Sissy offered more tea, lemonade and slices of pink and
green pastry, after which a few ladies had to say goodbye, because their
children or husbands were coming home. The remaining ladies soon
began to giggle loudly and have some fun. They showed each other their
specially obtained or secret beauty products, fetching them from their
designer’s hand bags, such as Breast Builder Cream, a bottle with expen-
sive Japanese capsules which would help them to stay ‘forever young’,
exotic jamu (traditional medicine) from Kalimantan to keep the vagina
tight after giving birth and a spray can against fat legs. After displaying
and pointing out their various ‘improved’ body parts, like liposuctioned
bellies, whitened skin and straightened noses, the women began compar-
ing notes on the Jakarta Skin Center. They all soon agreed on the best
employee, ‘Sudharmono’s [a former vice-president] daughter’. Then a
lively discussion arose on the various suntik (injections): Kollagen or silikon?

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At what price, how many to have at one treatment and when to ask for
a discount? Sissy told her neighbours about her mother-in-law who had
lost twenty pounds in eight weeks, thanks to consulting a dukun (tradi-
tional curer-sorcerer) who specialized in slimming ilmu (magical science).
He was supposed to live somewhere in North Jakarta, but her mother-
in-law was rather vague about his name and whereabouts; Sissy was sure
that Ma wanted to keep him to herself. The meeting ended on a hilarious
note, with some ladies making mock sexual movements accompanied by
the loud Salsa music they knew so much about. As we said goodbye, Bu
Madu promised us she would immediately pass on any new knowledge
she acquired at Martha Tilaar’s. After instructing the servant in what to
do with the left-over sweets, the ever-thoughtful Sissy told me that she
had videotaped an episode of Cinta that I had missed during my holiday.
Would I care to watch it now? She herself would watch another sinetron
in her bedroom, whilst waiting for Budi to come home.

epilogue

When I visited the Wiyanto family once more in December 2002, it al-
most seemed as if nothing at all had changed during the last few years.
All family members that I met welcomed me gracefully and they behaved
and looked as if nothing had happened. But several remarkable things
had taken place. Sonya was, on her thirty-first birthday, married off to a
‘guy’ from East Java whom her parents had selected using their Catholic
connections. He was an unemployed lawyer, ten years her senior. She
had only seen him once before they had set off for the altar. Sonya
seemed just as unhappy as she had been before. She did not like the ‘guy’
at all, she told me, but her parents were old now and of course she did
not want to hurt them. The young couple lived in her parents’ house in
Taman Mawar and her new husband functioned as the manager of her
still empty dancing-shoe shop, where Sonya still worked as a sales lady.
Susi’s husband, sympathetic Adri, had slowly died of kidney trouble,
and Ratna, Yulia’s 22-year-old daughter and the eldest grandchild of
the Wiyantos, who had just finished medical school, had gotten pregnant
and, after a lot of hassle, married the child’s father. But, according to a
gleeful Budi, this new husband had made yet another girl pregnant and
on second thoughts had preferred to live with this latest wife.

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In Budi and Sissy’s household, much had happened. After learning

about an extramarital affair that Budi had had, an outraged Sissy had
soon succeeded in secretly getting pregnant again, after almost twenty
years adhering to Dua Anak Cukup! (Two Children Is Enough) the famous
New Order family planning slogan. Budi had been so furious, Sissy told
me later, that it had taken months before he was capable of picking up
his new baby boy. However, Sissy and Budi both seemed happy now. The
two older children had left the house and were students living indekos in
Depok near the university. The young parents were enjoying their freshly
re-started family life in a subdued manner. All dogs had meanwhile
died. Us had suddenly returned from his desa one morning and now
functioned exclusively as Budi’s driver, with a freshly ironed white shirt
every day. But finally, international market tendencies had quite suddenly
turned against Budi; he was almost declared bankrupt and had had to
dismantle his business. He and Sissy were soon forced to sell everything
they owned and to move again, to another, very modest part of Bintaro.
Like many other failed, educated entrepreneurs of recent years, Budi
had set out to build himself a political career, to no avail. Eventually he
gave up looking for a new position, preferring to stay home. Now it was
Sissy’s turn to try to make a living, travelling the length of Jakarta every
day selling provision-based insurance policies. The Jakartan Skin Center
was again out of reach for her and now looked to stay that way.

categories of knowledge and suburban eclecticism

In this chapter I have introduced Barth’s notion of everyday-life con-

cerns as valuable parameters for the reality in which people move. Next,
I set out to explore some of the concerns that I found the most salient
among the people whom I have come to know in the Jabotabek suburbs.
In the four vignettes presented, a contextualized and ‘lived’ reflection of
such concerns is, I presume, sufficiently recognizable. Barth (1993:347)
enquired: ‘If people are indeed troubled by such concerns as […] formu-
lated, what will they find that the major available traditions of knowledge
have to offer them to articulate and support the saliency of these con-
cerns?’ That question assumes that knowledge will be embraced when
it seems relevant to the concerns of daily life; when it helps to address
these concerns in a successful way. This interaction between categories

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of knowledge and everyday-life concerns led to practices and under-

standings that made life in the suburbs meaningful and important to the
residents. I occasionally found these particular concerns so inescapable
in Bintarese social interaction that, as in the case of Barth (1993:346),
they ‘invaded my own life and became my concerns while living there’.
The most important and pervasive concerns that I discerned, con-
tained a general, deeply rooted fear of, and insecurity about, the future in
the widest sense: an immediate fear of ‘losing all’, of imminent disaster;
a widely spread distrust of unknown people, ‘persons to whom one has
not yet been introduced’. I also detected an apparent need to talk con-
tinuously about money; an urge to be ‘normal middle-class people’; and
an urge to assess one’s own position vis-à-vis ‘Javanese ways’ – one’s own
cultural hinterland.20 These simultaneously held concerns led to lifestyles
in which ambiguity and creativity were often important characteristics.
Many middle-class Jabotabek residents proved to be masters in the im-
promptu juggling of ‘authentic’ and ‘invented’ knowledge traditions, the
‘modern predicament’, actual experiences and urgent or future needs,
and this only occasionally led to unhappy entanglements.
A recurrent problem turned out to be the general insecurity regarding
the validity of the applied categories of knowledge, reflected in massive
confusion and distrust about the nature of ‘knowledge’ or ‘information’.
Nobody seemed to know what kind of knowledge tradition or category
was adequate in certain situations, or whose knowledge was superior,
when or where. When I, for example, offered a glass of Diet Coke to
an elderly relative in my Bintaro home, he refused to drink it, claiming
that it was not real Coke (lemonade brands other than Coca Cola were
often regarded as inferior). His curious wife, once she had overcome her
embarrassment, did not know whom to turn to for truth: I, a Westerner,
was supposed to be an example of modernity and consumer culture,
but her tyrant husband had been the neighbourhood expert in modern
commodities and fads for decades. We ended up in awkward confusion
– tasting the stuff had not given any clues to the couple and somehow I
could not make my point, realizing that authenticity as a concept offered
no way out.21

20 Similar concerns occupied other suburban families, regarding the correct observation of for in-
stance Menadonese, Sundanese or Minangkabau adat.
21 The use of artificial sweeteners instead of sugar was often regarded as an inferior and cheap way
of producing food.

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In much the same style, servants, being ‘not yet’ educated people,
were not supposed to vote according to their employers, because they
still lacked proper ‘knowledge’. A well-educated complete stranger once
asked me out of the blue what the exact fare of the trip from Canberra
to New York cost, as if any random Westerner could be counted on as a
representative of ‘knowledge’. ‘Knowledge’ itself thus turned out to be an
ambiguous and sometimes contested entity and it seemed significant that
conversations or situations that threatened to derail because of this am-
biguity often were ‘restored’ by the subject of money. Stating or assessing
the price of things, mentioning sums of money and, generally, broaching
the subject of financial value appeared to be a kind of common ground in
everyone’s reach, because it was common knowledge that in this modern
world, everything came at a price, in rupiah, but preferably in US dol-
lar. Hence the statement of an elderly servant of an acquaintance, who
informed me, without any preamble, of the price of a large bottle of
drinking water in Cairo. In this way she probably assured me not of any
pretended cosmopolitanism, but of her good common sense.
Leaving aside these confusing experiences, it should also be noted
that the most important corresponding categories of knowledge, catego-
ries which legitimized the experienced concerns and, in their turn, were
legitimized by those concerns, overlapped and interacted considerably.
They can however be largely identified as follows:

A vast, complex and detailed body of knowledge which I summarize as

New Order indoctrination.22 This body of knowledge was partly uncon-
scious in nature, routinized practices as a form of hidden grammar, as
it was largely a result of an early-in-life ideological training based on
the so-called Pancasila (see Chapter I). Pancasila is Indonesia’s national
philosophy, a concept of and for the nation designed by first president
Soekarno, which denaturalized into a concept of state surveillance short-
ly after his successor Suharto came into power. Some dominant tenden-
cies in New Order society were a general avoidance and fear of ‘politics’
in the widest sense; a firmly held belief in ‘progress’ and ‘development’
in a national and personal sense which endorsed local concepts of mo-
dernity and modernization; a celebration of the idea of the family as a
model for the nation and ‘Javanese cultural tradition’ as a model for the

22 See Chapter III for a more elaborated exposition of New Order ideology.

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state. A particular feature of this category of knowledge was an amazing

adequacy in handling ‘vacuums’ and ‘voids’, such as those in the national
language: knowing when to speak and when to be silent; to acknowledge
superiority and authority and to be deferential when it counts (Shiraishi
1997; Vatikiotis 1998; Pemberton 1994). The New Order’s relentless ref-
erence to ‘Javanese cultural tradition’ not only obscured all manifestation
of ‘politics’, it also created a perpetual uncertainty regarding the scope
of this ‘tradition’, hence the ‘vacuums’ and ‘voids’. Pemberton (1994:11)
argued that this ‘haunting sense of incompleteness so pervasive in the
New Order cultural discourse has the effect, then, of motivating […] a
constant rearticulation of things cultural, in an attempt to make up for
what may have been left out in the process of recovering “tradition”.’

An ethnically inspired category of knowledge which is recognized as ‘Ja-

vanese adat’. Apart from the ubiquitous associations of ‘Javanese tradi-
tion’ with the design of the New Order state, ethnic or, perhaps better,
‘adat’ traditions had become an important axis of orientation for middle-
class people, which can be explained by their need for stability among the
insecure and floating surroundings and meanings illustrated above.23 In
fact, the salience of this ‘knowledge’ is an effect of New Order ideology.
‘Ethnic traditions’ paradoxically offer ways of being modern as well, for
example in expanding existing repertoires of materiality, and thus promot-
ing consumerism. Ethnic or ‘cultural’ traditions – either invented or not
– offered the legitimacy of the New Order state, meanwhile often securing
status claims and claims of ‘normality’. For instance, the important and
frequent evoking of rukun, according to Hildred Geertz (1961:4) ‘an ideal
standard for social relationships, meaning harmony, co-operation, unity of
effort, minimization of conflicts’, in family life or other potentially politi-
cally charged social situations not only evaded operationalization of the
concept of ‘normality’, but simultaneously depoliticized social conflict. As
Pemberton (1994:9) has also pointed out, the self-conscious concern with
what constitutes ‘authentic Javanese culture’ and with the preservation at
all costs of ‘tradition’, successfully operates to efface the social activism of
the late 1940s to the mid 1960s – as if ‘nothing happened’.

Local and personal interpretations of modernity. The lived experience of

modern ‘institutions’ such as consumerism and (contested) individualism
23 Adat is usually translated as ‘custom(s)’. See Pemberton 1994:46, 200-2.

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offered a host of new meanings which were salient in the processes of

interpreting and constructing daily life. Individual and group dilemmas
were regularly solved by way of helpful interpretations of, or references
to, ‘modern ways’ instead of ‘tradition’. ‘Modernity’ thus offered a solid
category of knowledge which is appropriated for individual interpreta-
tions. It mainly came to the fore in the construction of self-image, for
instance in the creation of the ‘underclass’ as consisting of ‘not-yet-mod-
ern’ people, people who were masih bodoh (still ignorant).

Diverging categories of knowledge can resonate and help make lives

become meaningful and full of purpose, but occasionally they seem
to oppose and contradict each other. Instances of these contradictions
can be found in all Bintaro lives sketched above, of which Sonya’s life
experience – wholly coinciding with the New Order’s era of blossoming
– appears the most exemplary in this respect. Sonya’s lifestyle before her
return to Jakarta seemed to embody the ultimate freedom: as a young
‘student’, she spent thousands of dollars in foreign countries and she suc-
cessfully shirked her duties as a Javanese daughter by moving to Tokyo
when she was twenty. In fact, she had not been under her parents’ con-
trol for the majority of her life, since, as a teenager, she had lived in her
brother’s or sister’s home. Furthermore, she preferred to give an image
of herself as a ‘wild’, experimenting youngster, for whom modernity was
no issue: a wealthy perek (perempuan eksperimen, ‘experimenting girl’). She
fancied her ‘drug’ taking habits and her various other ‘habits’, her crav-
ing for ‘doing it’ and her idea of being in tune with the young, reckless
and rich of the world, a truly cosmopolitan outlook. At the same time
she was terribly afraid of being poisoned and raped. She wanted me to
know that she had gone all the way by ‘doing it with a black guy’, thereby
appearing to have broken a taboo – having sex with her social inferior,
somebody almost out of the realm of humanity. I was quite familiar with
Sonya’s obsession with colour and with her ideas of dark-skinned girls
as bordering on ‘human trash’. As far as Sonya was concerned, she was
brought up, in the 1970s and 1980s, to take whatever she fancied, and
she believed that free spending and consuming was what ‘education’ was
all about. She considered herself suave and cosmopolitan in this respect
as well, purchasing second-hand clothes in America, while her sister Sissy
preferred to have her outfits made by hand by a seamstress, in an old-
fashioned reluctance to wear anything blancon (ready-made).

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Sonya, however, knew perfectly well that after her ‘education’, she
was in for an arranged marriage if she did not find a suitable candidate
herself soon enough, and she realized that her lack of beauty and wit
were not helping her in this respect. She knew that her parents could
play at being modern – they had modernized their religion, converting to
Catholicism; they had provided all their children with education abroad
and they lived cosmopolitan lives – being meanwhile immersed in priyayi
Javaneseness, adhering to codes and rules that would never budge. Her
arranged marriage to a perfect stranger was therefore not a disappoint-
ment to her, nor the bringing into line of a maverick for her parents.
Sonya’s life had been fully according to the outline: ‘education’ first,
a Catholic East Javanese marriage afterwards. For Sonya, it all made
perfect, albeit frustrating sense, for she was used to distinguishing the
scopes of the different and conflicting narratives that unfolded in her life
with an eclecticism that was part and parcel of many suburbanites’ lives.
Sonya knew instinctively that ‘modernity’ in her life allowed her to take
drugs, ‘hang out’ with ‘guys’, wear purple hairpieces and have an ‘edu-
cation’, but did not grant her autonomy as a person. Being modern for
Sonya came down, using Vickers’ (1996:7) words, ‘to hav[ing] something
to show for it and [it] is linked to advancing one’s social status’. It did
not help her overcome her huge fears of all kinds of social danger, which
reminded me of Javanese fears of ghosts. Just as it was for her parents,
being modern for her was related to cultural style, and to playing with
signs of modernity, whether objects, practices, phrasings or ideas.
The same can be said of the Bintaro hypermarket manager’s act of
renaming himself, in order to ‘modernize’. Renaming ceremonies are
a Javanese way of seeking a change in a person’s course in life; after
surviving dangerous illnesses children are often renamed Slamet (mean-
ing health), for instance (see H. Geertz 1976:48) By renaming himself
‘Hans’, Indra used a traditional Javanese method of making himself
modern, the name ‘Hans’ probably having connotations with Germany,
powerful engineer Habibie and aircraft technology, all referring to im-
ages of modernity and/or modernization.24 Another example is Sissy’s
mother-in-law turning to a dukun in order to lose weight, presuming that
he has mystic knowledge about slimming – by all means a ‘modern’
24 Before Habibie became vice president he was seen by many Indonesians as the country’s leading
technological innovator. As a prominent aviation engineer educated in Germany, he was revered by
young people as a great modernizer.

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preoccupation in Indonesia. Sissy and her friends obviously thought this

method to be much more effective than joining a Weight Watchers’ club.
It was not that fasting posed a problem for Ma: fasting was performed on
Thursdays in order to implore a safe delivery at the end of her daugh-
ter’s pregnancy – a popular Javanese way of bringing about things (her
daughter was also taken to the best hospital in town, for that matter).
A more complex case of mixing old knowledge categories and mod-
ern style was Budi’s awkward reaction when I, in a shocked state, told
him about the child labour that I had witnessed in his brother-in-law’s
shoe factory. His deliberate statement that children were human beings
too, who were supposed to be at school, showed a certain experimental
audacity – as if he had to convince himself while speaking the formula.
For him, it was apparently not that obvious that all young people were
‘children’ and should be ‘in school’ and that he needed to be opinion-
ated on this subject; this probably depended on their parents’ social class.
For me, suburban Jabotabek modernity found a supreme expression
in the arisan of Sissy’s neighbourhood ladies on ‘sexual gymnastics’. This
gathering certainly did not reflect a modern discourse on women’s liber-
ated sexuality, although the ladies freely discussed modern issues such as
G-spots, orgasms and various ‘feminist’ expedients. Their essential sub-
ject was being good mistresses, in order to be satisfying, healthy wives in
stable marriages. According to Hildred Geertz (1961:128), Javanese atti-
tudes toward sexuality maintain that ‘sexual intercourse is not considered
to have moral significance’, and it was clear that these ladies had no inhi-
bitions at all regarding this ‘natural’ subject; even Sissy’s strong Catholic
faith had no effect on her eager diligence to learn more about the latest
in the traditional art of seduction. However, the arisan resembled in no
way an empowering self-help group, because it was not its members’ au-
tonomy as a sexual person that was at stake, but their role as a fulfilling
spouse. The arisan’s local modernity was reflected in its contemporary
and cosmopolitan connection to modern gadgets, symbols and signs, all
originating from a less ‘innocent’, because emancipatory sexual realm.
The neighbourhood ladies’ eclecticism evinced a pragmatic and creative
entanglement of categories of knowledge, reflecting a duly experienced
sense of modernity. They consequently succeeded in combining their
New Order state assignment of being proper, dutiful wives, confined
within the family, with the commodities and idiom of sexually liber-
ated and emancipated Western women, all within a traditional Javanese

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framework.25 These and other fragments and details of everyday sub-

urban life revealed the grid of the New Order state’s guidelines and
concerns – building on firm late-colonial foundations – as the central
source of knowledge in middle class society. With it, the source of fear
and anxiety is unveiled simultaneously. The New Order state’s concerns
seemed, in an overwhelming sense, to be adopted by the middle class. As
the work of Benedict Anderson and James Siegel especially reflected, the
paramount fear of social disruption and the ultimate loss of peace and
order (rust en orde), instilled by the New Order state, should be understood
as the dominant perception of reality of Indonesian established society.
According to Siegel,
The fear of revolutionary force was shared even by those who sup-
ported it. This fear of powerful disruption lodged inside Indonesia gave
rise to the phantom of mobs, criminals and communists […] Suharto
kept the revolution alive by establishing himself as the keeper of order.
Without unmasking this dimension of Indonesian history, there is little
chance of demystifying the phantoms of the New Order or the place
of violence in Indonesian political assumptions. (Siegel 2002:199-229.)
A similar approach is offered in the work of Pemberton, which inves-
tigates the state of ‘nothing happens’ (‘“normal life” […] [a] distinctly
New Order state of idealized absence in which nothing […] appears to
happen’) as the preferred Indonesian state of being, established in the
1980s (Pemberton 1994:7). As is clear from Pemberton’s book and some
of the scenes of suburban life presented above, actual social change is,
even in the slightest form, regarded as a direct assault on stability, order
and personal security. Even the thought of it seemed to be a transgres-
sion into powerful metaphysics. That is why Budi, panicking on his way
to the airport in his Mercedes car about the safety of his abandoned
home, invoked social change – an oath to promote his servant into the
middle class by giving him an education – as a sufficient method of
exorcizing danger, indeed a ‘privatized’ mission civilisatrice. What happens
if this carefully arranged and imagined order is toppled? How do the
middle classes perceive actual loss, setbacks, destruction and crime? How
do they cope with misfortune and disaster?

25 On the New Order state’s position vis-à-vis the social position of women see Sen 1998a, 1998b.

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 III

‘Bring Boldoot!’ – Mayhem, misery and the middle class

On 14 May 1998,1 I became nervous, like so many others, about the

fate of my relatives and friends in faraway Jakarta.2 In Amsterdam,
I continuously checked my e-mail and watched television news pro-
grammes, but images of burning buildings and mayhem on the streets,
combined with obscure and contradicting reports, only made me more
anxious. When I called Sissy’s home number, she burst forth about her
situation: ‘The red Mercedes is sheltered in my neighbour’s carport,
the cream-and-black Mercedes was moved to my parents’ garage this
morning and the maroon one is, thank God, still with the dealer… The
white one and my Volvo have been covered with rags and sheets by Bu
Keke!’ Her voice sounded agitated and as if she was on the brink of
collapse. It was only after repeated questioning that she finally told me
that Tisna had not come home from school that afternoon – Sissy had
of course not been able to pick her up – and that Budi had sneaked
of to the Glodok area where, rumours said, the worst riots were taking
place – on an ojek! (an ojek is considered a ‘low’ form of transport). Her
son Ugo was with friends, somewhere in town. It turned out that she
was alone at home, save for the servants, even as rioters were looting
and burning the ruko (rumah, ‘house’ and toko, ‘shop’: combined house
and shop) around the corner, bordering ‘River Park’. But she presumed
1 An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Van Leeuwen 2000:87-111.
2 After months of student protests and rallies in all major Indonesian cities, against rising prices and
in favour of political reform, the situation in Jakarta exploded on 12 May, when six demonstrators were
killed by police. On 13 May, clashes with police were reported everywhere, and violence spread all over
Jakarta, until the situation resembled a civil war with looting, mob anger against, and rape of, Chinese
people, arson and the grand-scale destruction of private and public property. It was later determined that
1,218 people had been killed, 1,193 of them in fires. Damage included the destruction of two hospitals,
two sub-district offices, 13 markets, 40 shopping malls, 11 police stations, more than 65 bank offices, 383
private offices, 24 restaurants, 12 hotels, more than 1,000 private homes and thousands of shops (Van
Dijk 2001:192).
The May 1998 riots as depicted in the comic strip Amien Rais; Jejak langkah
bersejarah by A. Luoman and Gelar Soetopo, 1999
 III ‘Bring Boldoot!’ |

that the cars would stay safe and undamaged, because of their secure
hiding places.
That same night I called my distant aunt, Annie, who lives close to
the city centre in the Slipi district. It had just been reported on CNN’s
late news programme that Slipi’s major shopping mall, Slipi Plaza, had
been set on fire after looting. I was worried, because my aunt’s bungalow
borders Slipi Plaza’s tiny parking lot. Furthermore, Aunt Annie’s life
had, for the last fifteen years, been focused on Slipi Plaza – the place was
practically her very own, air-conditioned, micro- and macrocosm. To my
surprise, Aunt Annie appeared downright cheerful on the telephone. She
asked about my mother’s health and about my job, in no way referring
to the apocalyptic events that were, at that moment, unfolding so close
to her home. When I enquired about her family’s safety and her house,
she said matter-of-factly: ‘Oh… we have a bucket ready and a hose...’
Annie’s voice sounded uptight, but she herself did not mention any anxi-
ety about her situation. At that very moment, as I came to understand
later, more than a hundred people were burning alive in Slipi Plaza.
Aunt Annie went on to ask me whether I would soon come to Jakarta
again. She implored me to bring her a bottle of ‘Boldoot’, an archaic,
Dutch brand of eau de cologne that used to be much sought after during
colonial times.3 She did not listen to my questions about the whereabouts
of her husband or her five children and the state of her house – she just
kept repeating that I should bring her ‘Boldoot’ whenever I returned to
Jakarta.
These are just two examples of the way in which the majority of my
acquaintances and relatives reacted to the turbulent events of May 1998.
Whether by telephone, e-mail or in (later) face-to-face conversations,
whether immediate or delayed, their reactions often seemed to be domi-
nated by denial, playing down, joking or fixation on matters that, at that
moment, lacked any clear importance. The abrupt and violent interrup-
tion of normal daily life therefore, appeared to be an issue that was not
openly mentioned; something that equalled a taboo. It seemed that only an
indirect and cautious approach justified the raising of this subject. A simi-

3 It was widely used in case of fainting and dizzy spells caused, for example, by tropical heat. Boldoot
cologne is still in demand in Indonesia. A Dutch journalist told me that she knew an 80-year-old man
living on the Moluccas who had long collected bottles of Boldoot cologne – she was also asked to bring
Boldoot when visiting him (personal communication, T. Lingsma). Boldoot was also known as odeklonjo
among Indos.

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lar issue, albeit in quite the reverse form, had occurred during the first few
months of Krismon, towards the end of 1997.4 This aptly acknowledged
combination of several crises in the public sphere soon turned out to be a
vast social tabula rasa. Within a few weeks, the Krismon phenomenon of-
fered a vast repertoire of local interpretations. Referring to Krismon could
clarify bad school results, a headache or a rash, traffic jams, a cancelled
wedding or a broken car, while simultaneously a dish called nasi Krismon
(Krismon-style fried rice) was on offer in many Jakartan road side stalls.5
Krismon signified much and at the same time nothing; it seemed to be a
convenient new container term with haphazard therapeutic effects.
Although the political, economic and monetary crisis in general did not
annihilate or seriously threaten the standard of living of most of the middle
classes (however, generalizing here is dangerous), their lifestyle did become
duly adapted to the new social circumstances.6 In a subtle and symbolic
way, this adapted appearance of middleclassness seemed to reflect a grave
Krismon-consciousness. Furthermore, this secondary form of comment-
ing on major social turbulence seemed – albeit only in Jabotabek– a new
shared concern of the wealthy and affluent middle classes. It seemed as
if collectively they had gone into mourning for a prescribed period; as if
a grand ritual was being observed.7 A similar ‘restyling’ mechanism took
place in May 1998. In times of social crisis, the middle classes seemed to
put into operation a substitute cultural code, which apparently guaranteed
an ongoing production of middleclass-related meaning.
In the turbulent year of 1998 – called zaman edan (crazy, chaotic
period) by many Jakartans – this substitute cultural code was effectu-
ated not only by Krismon, but by the May 1998 riots as well, which
preceded the eventual stepping down of President Suharto after 32 years

4 Krismon and ‘the crisis’ are not synonymous: whereas the former is a vernacular term referring to
a perceived grand-scale but largely undefined socio-cultural malaise, the latter comprises a variety of
economic, monetary, political and social crises that manifested themselves intermittently in 1997-1998.
5 Another instance of this phenonenon was a television commercial for a cheap headache medicine,
which showed the word KRISMON! in a large, red lopsided type font, followed by the image of a desperate
woman clutching her head, followed by the larger-than-life image of a packet of the advertised capsules.
6 Gerke (2000:137), equating cultural style with economic patterns, asserts that ‘the lifestyles of the
middle class have been reduced by the crisis’. What I observed in Bintaro was that middleclassness
changed without regard to the relative effects of the crisis on personal financial circumstances.
7 This ‘ritual’ was launched by Suharto’s eldest daughter ‘Tutut’ with the so-called ‘I Love the Rupi-
ah’-campaign in the beginning of January 1998, which was intended to fight the worsening monetary
crisis. In front of numerous cameras, she ceremoniously changed US$ 50,000 into rupiah at a Jakartan
bank and urged the audience to follow her example. This triggered the question among the public of
how someone who loved the rupiah came to possess so many dollars in the first place.

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in power. Krismon had made middle-class people envisage decay, pov-

erty, defeat, and the loss of status and prosperity, whereas the May 1998
riots had confronted them with what they felt had to be the apocalypse:
furious mobs that destroyed, looted and raped everything and everyone
they came across on their rampage through town and suburbs.8 This
doomsday scenario of total loss, or of one’s actual physical undoing, had
become a real perspective almost overnight.
Understanding why the middle-class answer to crisis and disaster
involved a ‘substitute cultural code’, in what way this default cultural
code expressed itself in the daily lives of the middle classes, and the
exact meaning of the subtle and symbolic changes in behaviour, in con-
versation, in statements and in initiatives, requires an exploration of the
epoch-making events that led to the emergence and expansion of the
‘new middle classes’.

wounded at birth

Only recently has the anthropology of late-modern societies seriously

attended to the appearances and consequences of social trauma. The
second half of the twentieth century has brought civil wars, ethnic vio-
lence, economic collapse, the migration of people and ecologic disasters;
the question of how exactly the reconstruction of ‘traumatized’ societies
could then take place, has offered new and interesting social research
themes. The sociologist Kirby Farrell (1998:19) considers trauma to be a
key concept when researching processes of rapid social change. Trauma,
he thinks, has to be understood as an interpretative process. The experi-
ence of violent trauma can be associated with a radical, instant change
in perspective resulting in an ‘imaginative gap’, which compensatory
cultural materials try to fill. Farrell suggests comparing trauma, or the re-
membrance of trauma, with brainwashing, and urges one to realize that
the concept of trauma can be used for all kinds of purposes. Ideological
manipulation and exploitation of trauma can forge new social ties, for
instance by creating and maintaining ‘national’ traumas. Trauma can
therefore function as a source for attributing new meaning at all levels.
8 Although the victims were mainly of Chinese descent, an imminent threat was felt by the entire
middle class. The mayhem was generally felt to be a revenge against the rich. See Asiaweek, 29-5-1998;
Ita Sembiring 1998.

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Because social trauma contains an interpretation of the past, it is also

a specific form of historiography, in which the present is derived from
the past (Farrell 1998:14). Farrell offers, in this interpretative concept of
trauma, a model that can be used to investigate the social practices that
developed in the wake of Krismon and the May 1998 riots.
Social trauma can be defined as a ‘generational’ experience for many
members of the Indonesian middle classes. Their much-discussed emer-
gence has often been associated with the violent and traumatic establish-
ment of the New Order regime in 1965-1966, when a ‘communist’ coup
attempt, which has still not been clarified, was followed by the immediate
seizure of power by then Major General Suharto, later culminating in
the massacre of more than half a million Indonesians (Schwarz 2001:19).
Furthermore, the New Order’s subsequent, successful economic reform
policy was founded on effective and considerable political repression
(largely by implications concerning this previous massacre of alleged
communists). Dick (1985:62) suggested that this moment in Indonesian
history, the so-called Gestapu, was ‘probably better [understood] as a
middle class counter revolution than as a simple military coup’. Others
have regarded the events of 1965-1966 as fundamentally involving ‘the
liquidation of the human and organizational basis of the most overt
class-based political force in the country, and the foundation of a state
pursuing profoundly different class interests. The middle classes […] are
the fruits of that wrenching and painful political about-face’ (Tanter and
Young 1990b:6). Unsurprisingly, only two months before Suharto actu-
ally stepped down, almost all of nearly 600 middle-class respondents in
an annual survey placed ‘democratization’ above ‘political stability’ and
‘economic growth’ as desirable political goals for the first time.9
The history of the contested coup and its bloody aftermath – another
zaman edan in modern Indonesian history – were systematically doctored or
hushed up during Suharto’s reign, and merely mentioning it could lead to
awkward and shocked responses in any social situation (Vatikiotis 1998:24;
Schwarz 2001:19). Indeed, in later decades referring to this black period
made people swiftly close doors, pretend they had not heard certain re-
marks or abruptly finish telephone conversations, all apparent signs of es-
tablished trauma.10 Clifford Geertz (1973:324) wrote about the massacre:
9 Asiaweek, 20-3-1998.
10 Vatikiotis 1998:24; Schwarz 2001:19. Even as late as 2001, these awkward responses are still com-
mon, as became clear in the documentary Shadow play (Hilton 2002).

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Surely, so great a catastrophe, especially as it mostly occurred in villages

among villagers, can hardly have left the country unmoved, yet how far
and how permanently it has been moved is impossible to say. Emotions
surface extremely gradually, if extremely powerfully in Indonesia: ‘The
crocodile is quick to sink,’ they say, ‘but slow to come up.’

The mysterious murdering of six generals on 30 September 1965, in-

stantly defined by Suharto as a ‘communist coup attempt’, was rapidly
declared by the New Order as the unparalleled ‘national trauma’ of
Indonesian history.11 The sequence and implications of the events that
day have been drummed endlessly, multifariously and in great detail into
the nation’s consciousness, in order to transform ‘30-9-65’ (the ‘coup’
date) into the origin myth of the New Order. In this myth, the demoniza-
tion and total physical destruction of the PKI (Indonesian Communist
Party) are taken as a matter of course. The cause of the national trauma
is therefore not to be found in the massacre of almost half a million
compatriots; it is to be detected in the ‘cowardly’ murder of six brave
generals. The Indonesian people are forever indebted to these heroes
and martyrs – such is the message that is unequivocally conveyed by way
of the represented trauma (Leclerc 1997).
Moreover, it becomes quite an arbitrary matter to distinguish be-
tween the realm of history and that of culture regarding these subjects, as
Pemberton has remarked about the cultural discourse of the New Order.
Pemberton (1994:25) compares his attempts to examine the discourse on
origins that inform the New Order present with the writing ‘toward a
history of the present or, more precisely, toward an issue of origins where
the very distinction between culture and history is itself displaced’. He
states that Suharto’s regime has been ‘fed’ by so many reminiscences of,
and references to, ‘authentic’ (Javanese) cultural origins, that the ‘present’
was ultimately a reflection of an imagined, cultural past. This ‘present’ is
therefore not a modern, Western-modelled present, but merely a postco-
lonial present, in which a dreamed version of ‘Java’ and strong Javanese
connotations such as slamet (here in the sense of ‘continuity’ – ‘nothing
happens’) speak to the imagination of many (Pemberton 1994:26).
As if following Farrell’s theory, the Indonesian ‘national trauma’ –
the murder of the generals – forms part and parcel of this national his-
11 A radically different interpretation of the coup attempt was offered by Anderson and McVey 1971
in the so-called ‘Cornell paper’.

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toriography, as well as the cultural achievements of the New Order. The

frequently depicted story of the gruesome discovery and the recovery of
the six mutilated bodies from the ‘Crocodile Pit’, a deserted well, is a re-
curring motif, a national symbol, and as such an intimate ‘fact’ for several
generations of Indonesians.12 Moreover, the myth of the Crocodile Pit
has thus functioned as an adequate ideological instruction: it indicated,
quite unequivocally, that the regime’s answer to disobedience and rebel-
lion would be to strike back with unbridled violence and mass murder.
Suharto made this message clear in his autobiography:

Since I, with my own eyes, have seen what has been found in the Croco-
dile Pit, I have put the total destruction of the PKI as top priority; it was
my main occupation to destroy their opposition on all fronts, in towns, in
the provinces and in the mountains to where they had fled. […] I assisted
[…] the people to protect themselves and to cleanse their territory from
criminal elements. (Ramadhan 1991:113.)

In the aftermath of the annihilation of the PKI, a radical depoliticiza-

tion of society took place, which eventually turned ‘communist’ terms
such as ‘social inequality’ or ‘socio-economic policy’, let alone ‘class
struggle’, into taboo expressions;13 this process depended heavily on de-
politicization and indoctrination in education and in family life (Shiraishi
1997). New middle-class families, hungry for education, were the ideal
targets of these programmes, full of duly revised Pancasila state ideology
(see Vatikiotis 1998:95 and Chapter II). In her examination of the effects
of New Order ideology on middle-class children and their experiences at
school, Shiraishi (1997:164-5) has concluded that the national language
contains a ‘crucial void’ at its core – a silence that has to be connected
with the silence that is associated with the unspoken truth of the violence
on which the New Order regime stands:

Learning Indonesian today means learning not only its grammar and
syntax, but also what must be kept unsaid and how important it is to

12 Leclerc 1997:303. During the New Order reign, schoolchildren were obliged, on the national holi-
day, to watch a gruesome propaganda film depicting the New Order version of the events of 30-9-1965.
13 According to Schwarz (1994:37), ‘[t]he New Order’s aversion to public politics grew progressively
more severe to the point that even the term “politics” itself, says sociologist Arief Budiman, became a
bad word’.

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know what lies behind the silence. […] The truth has been kept unsaid,
therefore, what is said cannot attest the truth.

Suharto’s New Order cleverly turned a traumatic experience into a social

instrument, on the one hand successfully mythologizing the ‘communist’
coup as the eve of the takeover, and on the other hand enforcing a com-
plete, state-imposed silence and gradual depoliticization following the
massacre of 1965-1966, causing deeply felt fear and insecurity in society
(Siegel 1998a). Because of the imposed absence of a socially shared, his-
torical and rational account and explanation of these events, the threat
of this dark and unclear episode has for a long time remained palpable;
it is the Indonesians’ real trauma. For instance, there is a remarkable
if latent fear of vengeance sought by the descendants of the murdered
(alleged) communists, or by their ‘ghosts’. Those who have profited, fi-
nancially or otherwise, from the rise of the New Order live in particular
terror (Siegel 1998a) of these ‘ghosts’, carefully kept alive by the regime’s
power holders. The deliberate manipulation of powerful emotions (such
as agony and guilt) and the constant use of appealing symbols (con-
cerning authority and menace) have, taking other factors into account,
led to a successful traumatization of the entire Indonesian population.
Meekness and docility have become cherished national characteristics
in a relatively short time. The acronym ‘ABS’ (asal bapak senang, ‘keep-
ing our father/leader satisfied’), symbolized memorable words for more
than thirty years, because they were used to make ironic comments on
current social relations within the New Order (Shiraishi 1997:97-121).
‘Father’ not only referred to the position of President Suharto, but also
to the numerous other father figures in the socio-political system, who all
demanded respect, deference and obedience.
Farrell’s interpretation of trauma is remarkable in that it offers an
understanding of the traumatic experience as a framework for cultural
interpretation. This approach stresses the importance of the continuity
of experience, which is a promising perspective – especially when trying
to understand the meaning of ‘crisis’ for the ‘new’ middle classes in the
context of their early association with the establishment of an authoritar-
ian state. Their apparently comfortable position in a deeply depoliticized
society should not be taken for granted. Again, the generational experience
of the new middle classes did not specifically invite them to uninhibited

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verbal communication.14 Many observers hold that in exchange for pros-

perity and accommodation, the middle classes have all but been sworn to
silence by the New Order (Vatikiotis 1998:93; Schwarz 2001:287; Shiraishi
1997:164-5). The expression of meaningful comment on one’s own life
and that of others, therefore, took place, and still takes place, merely in
cautious and indirect ways, for example by performing ‘TST’ (tahu sama
tahu; a collective form of ‘to hear, to see and to hush up’) and by jokes,
rumours and the manipulation of objects. This is a rather unorthodox
manifestation of trauma. If trauma can be regarded as an opportunity for
cultural innovation, it is necessary to ask why the middle classes’ response
to crisis and disaster is a change of style. An examination of what might
be seen as the hallmark of the middle classes, their consumption habits,
is a necessary first step in this analysis of outer appearances. How do the
middle classes interpret consumption culture, how do processes of com-
modification manifest themselves, and what new roles are allocated to
consumer goods and objects, especially during difficult times?

the quest for more

It was halfway through the 1990s that material abundance in Jakarta

reached new and previously unknown heights, mainly in ‘ordinary’ mid-
dle-class families. I knew many children that were raised on doughnuts,
pizza, hamburgers and frozen-yogurt. They were continuously immersed
in air conditioning and, when not in school, they were seated in front of a
wide-screen television. I met numerous families in which each child had
a personal servant who later functioned as a personal driver. Carrying
two or three mobile phones became common, as did housewives taking
an early-morning plane to Central Java to attend fashion shows or spas.15
Consumption became all-important, almost paramount to life itself.

14 Pemberton 1994. According to Pemberton, the New Order’s creed of ‘nothing happens’ stems from
colonial times, when notions concerning rigidity and being motionless were recognized as ‘tradition’ by
the Javanese elite.
15 Elsewhere (Van Leeuwen 1997b) I have given a detailed account of how a newly wealthy housewife,
‘Laila’, spent her days: her main hobby was decorating apartments. She bought several newly completed
apartments at a time and decorated them all in different styles, copied in detail from Western interior
design magazines. Once finished, she showed these perfect apartments to her husband before locking
them up, seemingly forever.

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Conversations were dominated by discussions about prices, discounts,

brands and stores, with the word berapa, or ‘how much’, used as a kind of
mantra. ‘Knowledge’ meant knowing how, when, where and what to buy,
from whom and for whom. People bought amazing quantities of goods,
many of which seemed superfluous – recently purchased objects were
often put back into their cardboard cartons after having been presented
and compared with those of the neighbours. These consumption habits
were no doubt an imitation of those of Suharto’s children, for whom
‘more’ was all.
On several occasions I witnessed an act of consumption after which
the buyer seemed unsure about the function, useability, value or quality
of their purchase. None of this seemed to matter much, though, since the
act of buying immunized an object against ‘interpreting’ it. Stored away
in their cardboard cartons, these objects, which sometimes remained
unpacked, seemed to wait for better times. I noticed this phenomenon in
several middle-class households and I have often interpreted it as a way
of bringing abundance under control, or of structuring affluence. People
seemed to purchase a lot of goods just for the act of buying. Storing them
in cardboard boxes completed this act. Another form of structuring af-
fluence was the mania for collecting that seized the new middle classes.
The Bintarese hunger for vintage cars and motorcycles in the 1990s was
led by no less than Suharto himself, who hoarded Harley Davidsons, and
Vice President Habibie, who hoarded Mercedes cars (Wardhana and
Barus 1999). According to Wardhana and Barus (1999:164), the authors
of one of the few works on the ‘super-rich’ in Indonesia, Para superkaya
Indonesia (1999), the ultimate goal of every collection of vintage cars is
to give its owner ‘a sense of security and comfort’. In Budi and Sissy’s
neighbourhood ‘River Park Hills’ in Bintaro, it was considered ‘boring’
to purchase a new Mercedes, whilst acquiring a vintage Mercedes was
thrilling and interesting. Obviously, considerations of status played a
major role in the choice of automobile, but motives of this kind were re-
garded as vulgar or ‘OKB’. ‘Anybody can buy a new car’, Budi told me,
‘while only a connoisseur knows how to create a collection.’ Obviously
the language of consumption is continuously in motion, requiring con-
stant manoeuvring to give off the right signal at the right spot. It was
the better-off middle classes in particular who feared being considered
vulgar, a parvenu and ‘OKB’, when refinement and savoir vivre, ‘to know

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how to live’, seemed to be their real objectives.16 Siegel (2002:199-229)

is therefore right when he writes: ‘The Indonesian middle class is not
merely wealthier than the underclass; it is almost comfortable with its
wealth.’ It was my impression that it took a constant struggle for mem-
bers of the middle classes to avoid ‘being devoured by their wealth’, and
the desire to touch, buy, or try was often overshadowed by doubts and in-
security. Meanwhile, the underclass, due to their lack of experience, were
deemed by the middle class to feel uncomfortable when faced with the
purchasing, handling or even the sight of (luxury) consumption goods. As
the middle class had experienced, goods do sometimes have a menacing
appearance, as well as being tempting, and ‘experience’ may not be the
key answer to this issue. The alleged ‘almost-ease’ with which the middle
class manages its affluence – according to Siegel – might therefore be
more a matter of make-believe. It is possible that a continuous, unnerv-
ing battle is taking place against consumption goods which ‘run amuck’:
goods which threaten to live ‘their own lives’. Although it seems as if this
struggle for significance has been won by the comfortable middle classes,
it came at a high price: an insatiable appetite for more, paradoxically
coupled with a deeply felt fear of plundering and destroying masses or
rakyat – the loss of everything. These masses are, for the time being, nei-
ther identified, specified or recognized parts of the population – they are
just massive and menacing. They are completely severed, as it were, from
any imaginable social or political context. This middle-class perception
of the apolitical character of the ‘masses’ is illustrated in the ‘tragedy
diary’ of the young journalist Ita Sembiring (1998) who, trapped in her
suburban row house bordering Bintaro, gives a detailed if somewhat
resigned report of her experiences of 13 and 14 May 1998. She continu-
ally calls friends and relatives all over Jakarta and notes down their ex-
periences and stories of cruelties, violence and mayhem. She describes,
for instance, how the massa (the masses) attacked the nearby Catholic
school ‘Santa Ursula’ and how the warga (citizens) prepared themselves
to defend a nearby shopping centre threatened with violence. Sembiring
is, from the first page of her diary, consistent in distinguishing between
massa and warga, between ‘crowd’ and ‘citizens’, just as her informants on
the phone would have been. The two terms are crucial to her narrative,
16 It was remarkable that this refinement and savoir vivre were evidently thought lacking among Indo-
nesians of Chinese descent. The ‘Chinese’ style of consumption was generally seen as vulgar by pribumi
(sociocultural group of ‘true’ or ‘authentic’ Indonesian natives).

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self-evidently pointing respectively at plunderers and destroyers, and at

their potential victims, as if this contrast between massa and warga dates
from time immemorial.
On 16 May, Ita Sembiring wrote, that she did not feel safe in her
bathroom anymore because the massa might arrive any moment. ‘But’,
she goes on, ‘suppose war really breaks out presently – taking a bath will
possibly become a real problem then.’ The war she describes is appar-
ently waged between the massa and the warga. The terms in which she
describes the movements of the massa are, not surprisingly, borrowed
from warfare: in her diary she mentions for instance ‘conquering’; ‘to
occupy’; ‘to possess’; ‘to surrender’; and ‘massacre’. Although Sembiring
and her peers seemed to know exactly which strategies and tactics the
masses were capable of appropriating in such times, she never mentions
in her diary what she thinks is in fact at stake in this ‘war’, since social
inequality was not a recognized entity in the depoliticized middle-class
perception. At the end of her diary, when Jakartan life is back to nor-
mal again, she is very happy to find that her storage space for charity
goods for the poor has been left untouched by the masses. Clearly, the
‘poor’ and the massa are not identical; the former can be accommodated
and linguistically fixed, whereas the unidentified latter are capable of
destroying ‘all’. The perception of social inequality is marked by both
rigidity and plasticity, taking place in a context of metaphysics such as
religion rather than politics. For Sembiring and her acquaintances, class
struggle and even class differentiation belong to a nonexistent category.
Meanwhile, Ita Sembiring’s immediate neighbours at last found an oc-
casion in their suburb, in the midst of imminent attack, to politely get
acquainted, all ‘in a pleasant atmosphere of good intentions’.

the language of objects

An obsession with consumer objects and their brand names character-

ized my ‘emergency’ conversations with both Sissy and my Aunt Annie.
Sissy’s emotional description of the safe havens in which she was able
to store the five Mercedes cars while her loved ones all turned out to be
elsewhere in the city struck me as remarkable. It seemed as if she identi-
fied the car collection as part of her family. Knowing that the cars were
‘safe’ helped her believe that the situation was under control. Something

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similar was at work in Aunt Annie’s demands for Boldoot, the bottle of
cologne that I was to bring from Holland. When I called Annie on 14
May, she seemed to be in some form of denial – I guessed afterwards
that she just could not face the collapse of her immediate and beloved
surroundings. When I visited her six weeks later, she still refused to ac-
knowledge the danger she had been in. Her only comment was: ‘We had
a bucket and a hose ready.’ Moreover, she doubted the fact that more
than a hundred people had been killed that day in the burning mall. If
there had been any victims at all, they could not have added up to more
than eighteen, she kept stating stubbornly. What can explain her re-
peated request, even when her world was on fire, for a bottle of colonial
cologne? A bottle of cool and refreshing, genuine Boldoot as a nostalgic
representation of (and soothing ritual from) a bygone era of colonial
quiet and order is a fairly obvious association. Another, not very convinc-
ing possibility could be that Annie’s appetite for luxury commodities had
been revived by the looting which had preceded the arson. Either way,
the use of brand names as a kind of mantra is revealing.
Richard Sennett (1997:22), writing about urban public culture in the
nineteenth century in The fall of public man, pointed at the facilitating role
that the new wide variety of machine-produced goods – sold in a mass-
merchandise setting – played in the gradual dissolution of a rich and
established, eighteenth-century public life into a bleak, withdrawn and
‘private, morally superior realm’. Goods suddenly seemed to be capable
of ‘having a life of their own’. Sennett (1977:23) argues: ‘When a society
dedicates itself to the principle of things having meanings in themselves,
it thus introduces an element of profound self-doubt into its cognitive
apparatus, for any exercise of discrimination may be a mistake.’ In a
completely depoliticized and hushed-up society, it might therefore be en-
ticing to give occasional priority to ‘the principle of things having mean-
ings in themselves’ – to what can be called a ‘language through objects’.
Mentioning brand names could possibly give structure and meaning to
life at moments when the usual vernacular for whatever reason breaks
down, as happened during my Jakarta phone calls in May 1998. An obvi-
ous occasion for this breakdown of the vernacular could be the flare-up
of a latent middle-class fear of the ransacking, looting massa, a fear of
the destruction of all. As such, this reciting of brand names may be an
example of the creative power of trauma, but numerous other associa-
tions with goods are also imaginable.

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Adela Pinch (1998) has described, in a fascinating essay, how in

early-nineteenth-century England, lace from France could become the
mouthpiece of middle-class women, who felt traumatized by a steadily
emerging consumption culture. During this epoch, a remarkable amount
of middle-class ladies turned into shoplifters, with a strong and shared
preference for French lace. Pinch describes these practices in a setting
of implicit protest against the new role of women as passive, consuming
housewives and their concealed contempt for the new ‘shopocracy’ – a
tacit and unanimous comment on rapidly changing class and gender re-
lations in late-Georgian England. The women themselves, once caught,
offered no explanation for what had happened: ‘[t]hings simply seemed
to follow them home’ (Pinch 1998:124). Pinch holds that shoplifting is
not a transgression of the ‘borders’ of the world of consumerism, but a
disclosure of its true nature, in fact an expansion of it: ‘shoplifting from
a certain perspective normalizes shopping’.17 The ‘improper’ temptation
of the object can be satisfied in just one way – by becoming its owner
in an ‘improper’ way. Why was it French lace which tempted these an-
gry women? Pinch (1998:132) describes lace as a classic fetish object:
‘diaphanous, barely there, both concealing and revealing what lies be-
neath’. Moreover, the import of lace was restricted due to the wars with
France, causing its value as a luxury good to multiply. Lace was regarded
as an object of luxury which guaranteed happiness and which no real
lady should have to go without. The question of whether French lace can
possibly bring true happiness, torments each consumer: ‘an uneasiness
that dogs modern consumer society – an uneasiness that finds its home
in the concept of fetishism – that happiness might in fact be found in the
material thing’ (Pinch 1998:133). Social reconstructions fail, according to
Pinch, to disclose this fatal attraction of the material object. She suggests
that a phenomenological or psychoanalytic approach to this mysterious
and powerful force might provide an understanding, because it is possible
‘that in a modern, affluent society, the differences between luxury and
necessity become blurry, and other senses of impoverishment or need
besides that of real material want come to play in our relationship to
things’ (Pinch 1998:142). Aunt Annie’s extravagant and untimely request

17 Patricia Spyer (1998:10) holds that the fetish, treated as an ‘other’ to the commodity, valorizes
and normalizes the social relations of capitalism. Ordering a bottle of cologne while confronted with a
looted and burning shopping mall seems, in this context, comparable to the shoplifting of lace: both are
attempts at establishing ‘normality’.

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for a luxurious bottle of Boldoot was just such an ‘other sense of need’.
The bottle of Boldoot embodied her need for a sense of the safety and
orderliness of ‘nothing happens’.

disciplines of plundering

The views of Sennett, Pinch, Spyer and others concerning the role of
material culture during social change can be helpful in a further explo-
ration of the appearances of Indonesian middle-class trauma (see also
Appadurai 1986). Both Pinch and Sennett write about the early nine-
teenth century, when a massive supply of new, mass-produced commodi-
ties was introduced to Western society. Quite significantly, late-twentieth-
century Jakarta offers a comparable phenomenon: the fast expansion of
consumer culture brought along a huge wave of new consumer goods
and services. Writing about the social context of material expansion,
Sennett (1977:145) states that the capitalist order ‘had the power to
throw the materials of appearance into a permanently problematical,
permanently “mystifying” state’. By using the term ‘mystifying’, Sennett
refers to Marx’s idea of the mystification of goods: the making of a set of
associations related to an item, which have nothing to do with its use.18
The notion, therefore, that a typically Jakartan, unbridled, late 1990s
consumption style had developed before the crisis struck, renders the
sets of associations corresponding to consumer goods meaningful, such
as the apparently casual and illogical ‘utterances’ regarding commodities
and their manipulations, as well as brand names.
The reactions of members of the middle class to the massive loot-
ing and plundering that took place during the May 1998 riots also seem
significant in this context. During those two days of rampage, the middle
class was eventually forced to take real notice of its less affluent fellow
townspeople. To ignore them – the usual stance – turned out to be an un-
feasible option at a time when every television channel showed how and
where the lootings in town took place.19 These shocking and disturbing
18 Marx held that the mystification of goods diverted attention from the production process to the
objects themselves, thus facilitating capitalism. Sennett (1977:145-6) however finds no explanation in
modern capitalism for the question of why and how people at the time came to take the idea of ‘mysti-
fication’ so seriously.
19 Van Dijk 2001:192. On 15 May, all six television channels had to broadcast the same news and
pictures about the rioting in order to calm down the population.

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images inscribed themselves in people’s minds, not least because since

that time they have frequently been used in television advertisements for
insurance companies.
The author and former colonial civil servant Albert Alberts has de-
scribed in detail how rampok (plundering) took place on the Indonesian
island of Madura in 1942, during the onset of the Japanese occupation.
He was amazed at the staring and absent glaze of the islanders, who all
carried loads of textiles out of shops during the invasion:

Plundering or rampas was not a crime in the Indies, but a disease, or still
better, a temporary mental aberration. Now I could witness this with my
own eyes. The Madurese entered the toko (shops) as if they were som-
nambulists, carrying off armloads full of goods and walking around with
them in a state of total bewilderment. They did not even bring home
their loot. (Alberts 1992:132-3.)

Soon the police arrived and ‘the plunderers let themselves indeed
be handcuffed, still staring and sleepwalking’. A similar emphasis on
‘stoned’ facial expressions and puppet-like behaviour characterized the
reports of middle-class eyewitnesses to the plundering in Jabotabek. An
elderly lady, Bu Lies, told me how she had watched long rows of kam-
pung dwellers passing her house. They all pushed shopping trolleys from
a nearby Makro supermarket carrying refrigerators, microwave ovens or
washing machines. Some of the trolleys were empty, but that apparently
didn’t matter at all. According to Bu Lies, all rampok participants walked
around with the same unreal and staring expression on their faces, as if
they were dreaming. Lots of the rampok stories that circulated in middle-
class Jabotabek for a while carried the message that ‘they weren’t happy
at all with their things’. Probably this observation was inspired by the
underlying conviction that ‘they’ were not supposed to be happy with
their goods, because these were after all not meant for ‘them’ and were
therefore useless to ‘them’ – I overheard this remark as images of a looter
carrying a desktop computer appeared on television. It is also possible
that the middle classes were preparing themselves for the massive traffic
in all kinds of stolen goods that ensued. From the Jabotabek kampung
that season streamed a constant flow of electronic goods, such as fax
machines and DVD-players, all at very low prices, according to my in-
formants.

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The often-repeated television images of the disturbances are difficult

to characterize. Men and women of all ages emerge amidst the smoke
and debris from shops with armloads of goods, or fully stacked shopping
carts holding everything from parlour tables, computers, indoor foun-
tains and mattresses to bags of rice. Goods that were simply too big to be
carried away by one person were burned or destroyed on the spot, with
amazing, determined violence.20 There were reports that looting was
not only done by the urban poor, but also practised by schoolchildren,
housewives and executives; even European tourists were reported carry-
ing looted CDs (Van Dijk 2001:190; Allan 2001:20). I was told that at the
Jabotabek’s Indofood distribution centre, troops – called in to secure the
centre – helped the looters and asked them to line up for merchandise.
It was remarkable that during my later stay in Jakarta I never heard any
disapproving sounds or utterances in the middle-class living rooms where
I watched these often- repeated images on television. Reactions diverged
from a kind of concealed envy to a rather forced, malicious enjoyment
about the ‘ridiculous’ combination of rakyat and sophisticated luxury
commodities, such as a kampung boy in flip-flops, caught by the camera
carrying a pair of trendy brand-new roller skates. My own account of a
guided tour through the remains of a looted and burned down shopping
centre in Bekasi, where even the toilet bowls turned out to have been
carried away – as duly pointed out by the tour leader – was received
with derisive jeers back home in Bintaro (see Chapter VI). These reac-
tions to the sudden material abundance of looters as well as middle-class
bystanders seem to have something in common: they showed a distinct
and particular discomfort with the idea of anything to be had for free.
Since rust en orde had, for many decades, been the ultimate goal of state
governance, large-scale plundering signified an extreme social renuncia-
tion. Amazingly, members of the middle class showed no tendency at all
to condemn looters or to call them thieves or vandals – instead there was
an implicit acknowledgement of the right of the underclass to a ‘share’
in the affluence.21 Plundering was regarded as an ‘understandable’ thing,
and the fact that the looters were ‘not happy’ with their booty, and their

20 Objects in the public domain, as well as private property, were destroyed. Television footage showed
an adolescent boy attacking a traffic light with the furious zeal of an iconoclast.
21 See Magnis-Suseno 1997:51: ‘The Javanese, and Indonesian people generally, are quite tolerant of
the privileges of the elite, but these privileges involve the countervailing duty to care for the welfare of
the people, the wong cilik.’ See also Dick 1985.

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tendency to destroy certain commodities – so the explanation goes –

were consequences of their being masih bodoh (still backward). Theirs
must be understood as a situation of insufficient initiation in modern
consumption techniques and conditions, connected to a general lack of
education (Anderson 1990:145). Indeed, when looters appeared elated
with their new goods, they were deemed ridiculous because of an appar-
ent incompatibility of goods and owners. I even met several members
of the middle class who would rather certain commodities be burned
or destroyed than enjoyed by the looters. What also appeared to play a
role in this middle-class confusion was a complex and problematical at-
titude vis-à-vis appropriated material affluence, such as the ambivalent
relationship with certain possessions. This brings back to mind Pinch’s
remark about ‘other senses of impoverishment or need besides that of
real material want’. In the 1990s many, mainly Jakarta based, analyses,
essays, columns and other writings were published in which the intel-
lectual avant-garde of the middle class reflected on the problematical
aspects of its own hedonistic, materialistic ‘culture’, summarized in the
acronym ‘MEP’ (materialisme, egoisme, persaingan; materialism, egoism,
competition; see Suryana Sudrajat 1995). MEP-culture was suspected of
preventing the development of more democratic relations and processes
in society. In these essays, the blame for ‘MEP’-culture was often placed
on the ongoing proses globalisasi (Arief Budiman 1990:231; Hadijaya
1999). Daily Jakartan conversations gave rise to new terms such as cewek
matre (material girl), cowok merek (brand-name crazy guy) and tante HIV,
an abbreviation of tante Hemang Ike Vikirin (do-you-think-I-care auntie).
Middle-class Jakartans appeared to have certain expectations and
ideas about the procedure of looting, which explains the stories about the
taut and ‘hypnotized’ facial expressions in the midst of chaos, violence,
hurry and elation. Ita Sembiring’s diary (1998:22) gives an account of
her first looting experience: a gas station that was plundered by dozens
of moped riders. From a distance she observed how the looters actually
queued up in an orderly fashion, ‘while people normally do their utmost
to jump the queue in front of the pump’. She (1998:72) also reported
how an acquaintance found himself in a supermarket that was being
plundered, where looters politely helped each other to find and select
commodities and the right brands, ‘so it looked as if they were shopping
instead of looting’. Ita Sembiring (1998:18) wrote that she expected loot-
ing to take place ‘in a situation of amuk [rage]’.

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Since May 1998, violent and angry plundering directed against the
established and affluent classes has been rife in Jakarta as a form of class-
conscious intervention, and as a way of restoring lopsided social rela-
tions. The remarkable mood of the looters on which Sembiring, Alberts
and several informants reported, seems not so much an expression of
fury, but rather a state of ecstasy called latah, a particular Malay reaction
in the form of obstinate, devious behaviour (H. Geertz 1968:3; Winzeler
1995). Latah can manifest itself in a perplexed rigidity, in imitations or in
a trance-like state, all caused by a psychological shock or disturbance in
the context of a social loss of control. During the May 1998 riots it has
also been reported that plunderers danced to the rhythm of the bullets
that were fired in their direction, convinced, in an apparent trance that
they were invulnerable.22
The reactions of well-off Jakartans, meanwhile, indicate that plun-
dering is perceived as belonging to a different category than stealing. It
seems as if plundering is not regarded as a crime or even as a moral issue.
Greed, possessiveness and envy seem contested impulses in Indonesian
society, which is largely informed by Javanese notions about ‘the good
and just life’ – in a similar way to the previously mentioned concepts of
‘materialism, egoism and competition’ (Dick 1985:90). These notions
have not only led to phenomena such as MEP, but also to a discourse on
the unbridled greed of Suharto’s children, which was uncomfortable at
that time. This discourse was, however, about aesthetics and not ethics
– it was ‘ugly’ to be as greedy as Suharto’s eldest daughter Tutut. This
discourse on the good and just life had apparently taken the place of a
widespread social debate on the unequal distribution of income. Only
the mildest of judgements were made about greedy and possessive peo-
ple, who were seen by the majority of the population as people who had
let themselves ‘go’ or who had ‘forgotten’ themselves. Their behaviour
was understood not so much as bad, but rather as ugly. The very wealthy
represent their affluence, to themselves as well as to others, as an obvious
grace from heaven or, less popularly, as a temporary loan from Allah. In
other words, their wealth was founded upon a form of coincidence be-
cause, as they claimed, they belonged to the middle class (Van Leeuwen
1997b). Despite the popularity of discussing abstract social stratification,
a more politicized view in which the well-off simply belong to the afflu-

22 C. van Dijk, personal communication, 1999.

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ent class in Indonesian society did not appear, no doubt because of the
strict depoliticization of the past decades.

krismon and new forms of frugality and

contemplation

Along with the expansion of Krismon a new interest in frugality, simplic-

ity and absence appeared among the middle classes. The economic crisis
did not strike everyone and everywhere with the same intensity – it was
no ‘great equalizer’. Businessmen who were engaged in exports, like my
friend Budi, saw their rupiah income multiply five-fold, making them
rich overnight. Therefore Budi denied the crisis in all possible respects
and he enjoyed answering his phone with the words ‘Crisis? What cri-
sis?’ for weeks. He purchased two more vintage Mercedes cars at the
beginning of 1998 and could also afford a radical renovation of his new
Bintaro ‘River Park’ house.
In March 1998, I was invited by a business associate of Budi to a chic
and costly dinner in a prestigious Korean restaurant. Two families and a
few friends were present. After finishing our meal, while we were getting
ready to leave, I saw Sissy gathering the left-over sugar cubes from our
table as well as from the adjoining ones, swiftly stacking them in a small
plastic bag from her purse. When she noticed my amazement, she mut-
tered: ‘Sugar. Very expensive.’ It turned out that quite a number of well-
off women had adopted this new custom. Sugar had indeed become an
almost unaffordable sembako (nine items of staple food; from sembilan bahan
pokok), but for the common man in Indonesia – not for the middle classes.
The ‘looted’ sugar was brought to middle-class homes, where sugar was
usually taken from large and heavy bags, just like rice, flour and other sem-
bako. This symbolic ‘thrifty’ behaviour could adopt various forms. Festive
Javanese family ceremonies, such as the celebration of Budi’s sister Rosa’s
seventh month of pregnancy, were replaced by austere Bible readings,
‘because of Krismon’. In this case we had been formally warned that the
ceremony’s meal would be simple and plain, ‘without a tumpang’ – it turned
out, however, to be as sumptuous as ever.23 In rather exclusive shopping
malls, such as Plaza Senayan, I saw several ABG-mal,24 obviously from very
23 A tumpang is a ceremonial, cone-shaped dish of yellow rice.
24 ABG, from anak baru gede, are young adolescents. ABG-mal are young, fashionable, seemingly promis-
cuous girls who hang around in shopping malls. See also Chapter IV.

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wealthy families and dressed in expensive, sexy designer outfits, with noto-
rious rubber flip-flops – the underclass footwear that is usually banned in
shopping malls – on their feet. This was a rather puzzling manner of dress
to me, until the connotation with the ‘discourse’ on frugality became clear.
Soon after the first shocking weeks, in which the middle class was
confronted with stories about bankruptcies, lay-offs and forced removals,
an atmosphere arose that allowed the invoking of Krismon as a perfect
social panacea. For the middle classes it seemed as if the reification and
mentioning of Krismon, plus a rapid adaptation of lifestyle, were of
paramount importance to an ideological survival of the crisis. Virtually
all the families I knew had been touched by Krismon, whether through
varyingly dramatic episodes of neighbours, colleagues or relations, or
because misfortune had become a part of their own lives. Everyone knew
stories about people who had lost all their money overnight; people who
had lost their job, their house and their cars within a week, occasionally
followed by the loss of their spouse; people who had had to call back
their children from abroad at a moment’s notice. Nevertheless, only very
few acquaintances of mine actually knew people who were in serious
trouble. Moreover, people did not talk much about these events and
when they did, it was always in covert terms. The catastrophe touched
the realm of the things unsaid, things that had to be kept silent. The
arbitrariness that accompanied the occurrence of disastrous events was
certainly contributing to this stunned silence as well. Still, every poignant
victim of Krismon that I heard about seemed to end up in a safety net
of family ties and other relations, which provided the conditions under
which life could be continued according to old standards. Despite their
drastically reduced purchasing power, ‘losers’ had to remain among the
trendsetters of Jabotabek’s comfortable middle class. Loss of status for
too many members of this ‘club’ would threaten the whole elite, when
and if this loss of status would result in a visible exodus of ‘losers’ from
the happy few. In this sense, Krismon tested the social coherence and
vitality of the affluent among the middle class. Were they also capable of
protecting themselves from going downhill ‘ideologically’?
To prevent a loss of status, the reserves of cultural capital were also
plundered, albeit in the form of knowledge of international consump-
tion styles. The upper-middle-class trendsetters appeared to be very
resourceful in applying their knowledge. In chic quarters of Jakarta, a
‘progressive’ style came into fashion, in which Western discourse and

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Krisis in affluent Kemang, Jakarta, 17 August 1998

Jabotabek vernacular complemented each other. The taboo against the

trade in second-hand commodities – which had previously belonged to
the unthinkable and unhygienic domain of the tukang barang bekas, the
junk dealer with his wooden push cart – could now be lifted. When
marketed in a proper, sophisticated style, the second-hand aspect actually
provided additional prestige: designer or artis (artist) second-hand clothes
turned out to provide an extra cachet. Midway through 1998, the fash-
ionable quarters and suburbs were flooded with baju artis (artists’ cloth-
ing), which were available during the popular jumble sales and garage
sales, two new elements of middle-class society. Vendors at these markets
mockingly called themselves Orang Miskin Baru, the ‘new poor’.
On 17 August 1998, the national holiday Hari Raya Merdeka, I visit-
ed a sort of flea market in the luxury quarter known as Kemang in South
Jakarta. The entrance to this outdoor fairground was heavily guarded to
keep out disoriented ‘real’ tukang barang bekas. The design of the fair was
a copy of American charity bazaars: I spotted colourful tents, flags and
fashionable catering businesses, a performance by an amateur jazz band
and a few artists selling paintings and framed photos, to create just the
right atmosphere. The primary language was English, which underlined
the exclusivity of the event. Despite the efforts to dress the place up in

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an artistic and sophisticated style, it was immediately clear that many of

the vendors were on the verge of financial ruin. Some nuclear families,
mother and father sporting huge dark glasses, offered their complete
inventory of household goods for sale, including toys, clothing and
kitchen equipment, at a fraction of their value. I also saw many chic and
well-groomed women with their complete stock of French and Italian
perfumes on offer, on little tables that also held rows of tear gas canis-
ters. Numerous women, almost all sporting dark glasses, sold household
equipment, home-baked cookies, Dutch pancakes, brownies and boxes
of tissues. Amidst all these private persons, the rather huge colourful tent
of a German insurance company was placed, offering life and damage
insurances by way of loud, German-language posters (‘Eigenes Leben, ei-
genes Risiko: FUTURE, das junge Sicherheits-Programm’ – ‘Your own life, your
own risk: FUTURE, the new insurance programme’). Quite striking
were the many commercial tear gas and stun gun dealers who, despite
their obvious lower social standing, had apparently gained access to the
fair. Trade was very intensive. Goods were thoroughly inspected and
sniffed at, and negotiations were lengthy. Nobody, it seemed, marvelled at
the very unusual sight of the situation: fellow middle class suburbanites
who, under a burning sun, heavily competed for a few rupiah. So long as
the goods on offer were labelled secon han or souvenir, it all appeared to be
a new game for the rich, not comparable with the tiresome, dirty business
and the marginal lives of the tukang barang bekas.
A similar phenomenon turned out to be the mushrooming kafe tenda,
‘tent cafes’, that started appearing in the posh and lush Kebayoran Baru
quarter. It seemed that the crisis caused affluent young Jakartans to en-
tertain on the streets – a previously unheard of and quite sudden devel-
opment. Many of them were no longer able to afford regular nightlife,
where prices were on a par with international standards. Members of the
middle classes, who previously associated public space with disease, crime
and danger, now seated themselves with an apparently superb savoir vivre
on terraces that were improvised under tent cloth, in the leafy, suburban
neighbourhoods. These tenda quickly became popular sources of income
for well-known yet jobless actors, sportsmen and beauty queens; these ce-
lebrities offered drinks (rarely alcoholic) and food at relatively cheap pric-
es. However, their food was still much more expensive than the food from
a warung (makeshift food stalls for the common man). Apart from being
named after their celebrity owners, the tenda often sported comical names,

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sometimes referring to the crisis, such as World Bank Cafe, which served
dishes such as nasi bangkrut (bankruptcy-style fried rice). Their famous
owners, their exclusive locations and, last but not least, their youthful
clientele who still arrived in luxury cars all resulted in kafe tenda becoming
the new centres of Jakartan night life, surrounded by major traffic jams
each night. These kafe tenda soon became a kind of public space asylum for
the consumption-cultural elite, which offered space to people who knew
how to behave and who knew about leisure. Since the kafe tenda were a
new status symbol, the poor quality of the still pricey food for sale did not
matter at all. Tenda offered exclusive nightlife space to the many members
of the comfortable middle class who could no longer afford to visit the
renowned discotheques and restaurants. This was partially made possible
because their wealthy friends and associates showed solidarity by making
their less lucky comrades’ choice of venue into a new trend. The fact that
nightclubs and stores in shopping malls went bankrupt one after the other,
and that the town offered a burned and shattered sight was hushed up
and ignored – as were all evident signs of crisis, loss and violence.
Towards the end of 1998, the ongoing need for the production of new
status symbols resulted in a similar way in the flourishing of new ‘political’
parties and activities, all initiated and organized by the affluent middle
class. Lifting the various bans on political activity as well as the forthcom-
ing elections had laid bare a whole new terrain, in which distinguished ac-
tivities, such as fund-raising parties could be undertaken: ‘political parties
had replaced BMWs as status symbols for the elite’ (Allan 2001:190). Being
actively involved in ‘political change’ and reformasi became, therefore, a
temporary fashionable affair among the wealthier middle classes, although
Budi accused those newly involved activists among his acquaintances of
being sok tahu, ‘hypocritical show-offs’. He was convinced that these new
activists were in fact devoted to what was generally called the status quo, the
New Order regime’s state of being, as opposed to reformasi total.25 A few
months before, Budi had also shown considerable anger when several of
his friends had suddenly announced themselves to be outspokenly anti-
KKN (korupsi, kolusi dan nepotisme). ‘We all do it, all the time’, he told me,
‘Indonesian business simply cannot exist without KKN. They know! They
are all sok tahu!’ (see also Young 1999:75).
25 Vedi Hadiz 1997:109; Vatikiotis (1998:31) points out that ‘Suharto was fond of saying that change
must be executed without disturbing the status quo’. Clearly, ‘nothing happens’ and ‘status quo’ are
closely related ideologically.

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In 1998 it was difficult to openly and seriously discuss private matters

related to Krismon with members of the middle class who could be con-
sidered ‘victims’ of the crisis; instead came an endless sequence of jokes.
Heri, a friend of Budi, who was fired in early February as a result of the
bankruptcy of his father-in-law’s building consortium, would arrive each
morning at around nine o’clock to hang around in the offices of Budi
and his employees. They were all either former college friends or family
members of Budi’s. Heri seated himself in his regular swivel chair, smil-
ing as always, and would spend the day playing with his mobile phones
and telling racy jokes and business anecdotes. He became a permanent
but apparently useless part of the busy and rather cramped office, in
which people moved over for him with a self-evidence that did not allow
further questioning. Around five o’clock each day, Heri announced that
he ‘kind of must be off now’. He was supplied by his affluent wife with all
kinds of gadgets including the newest mobile phones, watches and cars,
which were all duly demonstrated and discussed during office hours.
When, after several months, I had got to know him reasonably well, I
carefully ventured to broach the subject of his former job and his present
professional situation. Heri turned out to be quite obstinate – he immedi-
ately adopted the role of ‘clown’ and started to make obscene suggestions
and imitate ‘funny’ voices. He even stood on his head rather than face
my enquiry. This happened several times. He did not want me to meet
his wife, which was rather unusual, nor did he invite me to his house. I
could not learn much about him from others either, since other people
did not talk at all about Heri’s inactivity and his deplorable business posi-
tion. In a way it seemed as if nothing significant had happened to Heri.
The New Order mantra of ‘nothing happens’ seemed to evolve, when
crisis struck, in a big and perplexing silence which could only partially be
explained by traditional ‘Javanese’ ways of being polite and considerate.
I underwent similar experiences in people’s homes. When I visited
Aunt Annie one day in early March she showed me, full of pride, her
rare orchids, which were finally blossoming, and a few other interesting
items in her house. A short while later I needed a paper tissue, which
were normally plentiful in Annie’s home, stacked away in oblong or-
namental boxes in all corners of all rooms, just like in all middle-class
rooms and cars. These boxes were ornaments that, more than any
other object, reflected the simultaneous indolence and sublimated fear of
stains that characterized the New Order epoch. I was amazed to find not

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only the nearby gilded tissue box empty, but to discover all the boxes in
the house empty. When I asked Annie why, she shrugged and responded
with: ‘We have crisis now in Indonesia. You know… crisis’, instantly
looking serious, with a stern face. Those deliberately empty tissue boxes
were, apparently, her symbolic contribution to the new craze of frugality
that was in fashion during the first few months of the crisis.
It was only in the intimacy of the nuclear family where I experienced
that the menace of crisis and decay could also lead to uninhibited con-
sumption. Budi’s little family, for example, suddenly started to eat and
drink to extremes, going to middle-class chain eateries and fast-food res-
taurants several times a week, ordering dozens of dishes at once. Not only
Ugo, but all of the children each had two main dishes and several desserts,
after which often followed a plate of nasi goreng (fried rice), and occasion-
ally even a second round of orders. It reminded me of a futile form of
hoarding. Their manner of eating changed as well: Sissy fed her children
chicken brains from a little dish with her fingers – ‘Good for your school
performance!’ – and there was a lot of playing with food, which was for-
merly a forbidden activity. All left-over food was wrapped and taken home.
Sissy showed a particular discomfort around her Western guest now
that Krismon reigned. She expected me to be shocked at the sight of the
increased number of beggars and street children in the city centre and
on the connecting roads. In fact, she expected from me precisely what
I expected from her in terms of Western-style social consciousness or
charity-mindedness. Sissy and Budi had never appreciated it when I had
given money to beggars from the back of their luxury cars, but they had
always tolerated it out of hospitality. The last time this had happened –
during Krismon – Sissy objected to the amount of money I had donated:
‘That is just too much!’ she maintained: ’You are not supposed to know,
but that is really too much, they get frightened of so much money.’ Sissy
and Budi hardly ever gave money to the beggars who lined up along the
roads every morning and evening and who were now queuing by the
dozens on all connecting roads and crossings.
The morning after this incident, I was taken for a ride by Sissy. She
matter of factly showed me a new little rack on the dash board, meant
to hold coins of Rp 500 (US$ 0.07) for parking facilities. The rack was
completely filled with coins. We started a circular tour through the
suburb, passing several big crossings so that I would notice how Sissy
handed out coins to every beggar we came across. Meanwhile she gos-

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A burnt-down bank building in Bintaro Jaya, June 1998

siped about her in-laws and halfway through our trip, she entered a
McDrive to buy hamburgers for Ugo. It was only after the coins were
finally gone that we returned home. These highlighted demonstrations
of political correctness – taking home ‘already paid for sugar’, a jobless
sales manager ‘just going to the office’, the empty tissue boxes, the coin
rack ‘for the beggars’– seemed quite common occurrences. Among the
middles classes, the crisis was handled and managed by small, symbolic
and elegant performances meant to suggest that everything was, for the
time being, still under control. Meanwhile, the country’s economic disin-
tegration and the seemingly endless plunge of the rupiah, with its miser-
able consequences, dominated the newspapers and news programmes.
Although the inescapable and multifaceted crisis was given a proper
name, Krismon, it seemed that for the middle classes, the crisis mainly
gave rise to the adaptation of social rituals. The crisis could apparently
be interpreted as a kind of latest fashion, which required new codes and
skill – a change of style within consumption culture.
Budi’s ‘disaster tourism’ was a good example of the constitutive role
of style during Krismon. He was eager to witness the rampage in Glodok
at close quarters, not only on 13 May, but also on 14 and 15 May. He
took his son Ugo along, using his digital camera to document every
landmark in the dishevelled city: burned-down shopping malls, destroyed

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buildings and police road blocks on the streets. Budi e-mailed me these
photos on the very same day in the form of postcards, with captions such
as ‘Souvenir from Jakarta’, ‘I ♥ Jakarta’ and ‘I Saw Jakarta Burning’.
The latter slogan came from a T-shirt that Ugo tried to sell me. Budi’s
digital photos showed the overweight Ugo, clad in the leisure style of
Jakarta’s middle class, posing in front of a still-smoking pile of rubble,
a beheaded traffic light, or in front of a tank: all following the classic
rules of a tourist snapshot. Sissy did not fancy these trips at all, although
she referred to them later as a kind of extravagant, ‘sporty’ challenge,
comparable to rallies or hiking. Budi’s ‘touristic’ perspective on his trips
to ruined Glodok did not meet Sissy’s perception of recreation: they re-
minded her of Budi’s desertion on 13 May, when she was left alone while
‘River Park’ came close to disaster. Tisna later convinced her mother that
her father’s outing was a form of survival tourism, providing Sissy with a
mode to discuss the disturbing trips with her sisters or with me.
This typical confusion about contesting interpretations of actions
or style during crisis situations occurred once more in Budi and Sissy’s
household, just after the violent attacks against Catholics in Jakarta later
in 1998. Sissy told me she had immediately removed all crucifixes and
religious stickers from their cars, and she had stopped wearing her huge,
golden crucifix pendant. When I visited her a few weeks later, their gar-
den statue of the Holy Virgin, which had previously been staring into
‘River Park’ from under a cement grotto with a tiny waterfall alongside,
had been moved to the side of the house, with her back to the street, so
that she was invisible to both passers-by and occupants. The next day the
statue was completely removed from the garden and hidden in the pantri.
‘Why?’ I asked Budi. ‘Because she needs fresh paint, the waterfall has af-
fected the varnish’, he responded. When I later asked the same question
to Sissy, she answered that it was no longer at all safe to have the Holy
Virgin on show like that in the garden. The kampung people could eas-
ily take offense now on their way to the mosque, she explained.26 A few
weeks later the statue, freshly painted in blue and red, figured once more
in the garden in a specially created grotto with a built-in waterfall and
spotlight. It was invisible from the street, but when seen from the house
it was a colourful beacon of hope and trust.
While Budi from the first moment of Krismon opposed any discus-
26 The annual Muslim fasting month had just started so kampung inhabitants preferred to visit the
‘big’, new mosque close to ‘River Park’, and crossing the compound meant a shortcut (see Chapter I).

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sion involving insecurity, danger and risk, Sissy was much more open in
the way she coped with and assessed danger, especially when risks related
to religion. ‘Saving’ the statue of the Holy Virgin was perceived by Sissy
as a deed of devotion rather than of cowardice or subordination to the
masses, which was probably how Budi considered it. However, Budi
knew how to fix the situation via the paint job, without even negotiating
with Sissy. Meanwhile, they were both tacitly terrified of what might
have happened: ‘Islamic’ hordes, triggered by the presence of the Holy
Virgin, might have burned down their house and cars, destroyed their
property, and violated their daughter.

trauma and lifestyle

During both Krismon and the more acute calamities of 13 and 14 May,
indirect verbal or non-verbal expressions – a language of objects and
symbolic actions – appeared to play a considerable role in calming fears,
exorcizing danger and restoring relations among members of the middle
class. These unusual forms of communication all seemed to originate
from the realm of consumption culture, either in the tangible form of
significant commodities, such as tissue boxes and Mercedes cars, or as
new consumerist practices, such as the trendy kafe tenda and disaster tour-
ism. Further exploration of the latter phenomenon in particular might
help us to begin to understand this process of ‘consuming’ the crisis and
ascertain the meaning of these changes in styles and living.
When I received a digital photo from Budi depicting his son Ugo
‘saying cheese’ in front of a tank surrounded by smoking debris, with
‘Souvenir from Jakarta’ as a caption, I was struck by the normalizing
power of a tourist postcard’s format. In her study on forms of representa-
tion, Susan Stewart (1984:134-5) discusses the souvenir and remarks that

the souvenir domesticates on the level of its operation: external experi-

ence is internalized; the beast is taken home […] We do not need or
desire souvenirs of events that are repeatable. Rather we need and desire
souvenirs of events that are reportable, events whose materiality has
escaped us, events that thereby exist only through the invention of nar-
rative.

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‘We welcome reformasi…’ A looted store, Jakarta, June 1998
|  Lost in mall

Souvenirs thus appear to domesticate events and experiences, ren-

dering them unique and unrepeatable. Budi’s digital postcards from
Glodok followed many precursors from the United States, Germany
and England, places he had often visited as a tourist. He rendered this
troublesome place harmless by the common practice of sending post-
cards, thus turning the place where he actually lived into one of many
destinations for sight-seeing – an ultimate denial of circumstances. Now
that he had ‘done’ his own city, he could go on to his next destination.
The horrible violence, the chaos, the terror and the ‘turning inside out of
all values’ of Glodok two days before could now be filed away among the
innocent outings to Boston, Düsseldorf and London, outings that would
gradually be transformed by memory into one and the same ‘trip’. By
e-mailing the disaster postcards to me the very same day, it seemed as if
the pictures were, in a flash and without any ambiguity, relegated to the
past, to the safe domain of nostalgic reminiscence. Only by assuming the
habitus of a ‘disaster tourist’ could Budi enter the faraway and significant
battleground of Glodok, without any fear, involvement or responsibility
and escaping a ‘real’ confrontation with reality.27 Even at that moment,
in Bintaro, just around the corner from ‘River Park’ and close to his
house, the massa were rampaging through and burning down the local
shopping centre – a situation to which Budi probably did not know how
to respond and that offered him little choice. The 1999 Wiyanto family
expedition to Eropa dan Mediteranean, presented as a ‘family holiday’ and
a ‘sacred last wish’, embodied in a similar consumerist vein a safe escape
from political turmoil and uncertainty.
As in nineteenth-century England, where consumption culture be-
came a vehicle for middle-class female protest against social change,
the same phenomenon offered the Jabotabek middle class a medium
by which people could tell themselves and each other that ‘nothing
happened’ after all. It seems as if this exclusive medium or vernacular
of consumption culture had more to offer to the middle class than the
Indonesian language did: where the latter contains ‘voids’, the former
has the obvious eloquence of a native language. When the middle class
is considered as a traumatized generation, conceived in bloodshed and
silenced by affluence, this preference is all the more understandable, as
the need for expression is paramount among the traumatized. Although
27 The Glodok area is well known for its many consumer electronics outlets, the latest technological
gadgets being one of Budi’s hobbies.

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it may well seem that, in times of crisis, the middle class was busily con-
tinuing a dominant cultural discourse of which the ultimate issue was
ongoing consumerism, consumption culture provided a much-needed
medium of expression to a ‘tongue-tied’ people. Still, the fact that the
content of much of the expression and communication during the crisis
could be reduced to the New Order creed of ‘nothing happens’ seems
closely linked to the uncomfortably interwoven genesis of the regime
and its new middle class at a time when social change in general again
became firmly associated with danger and disturbance. New Order phi-
losophy survived the crisis by way of a hidden but steady metamorphosis:
relentless indoctrination transformed state ideology into an everyday
discourse that ultimately proved suitable for times of crisis and despair
as well. It should not, however, be forgotten that the ‘nothing happens’-
creed forms an echo of the colonial obsession with rust en orde, which in its
turn reflected immanent anxieties about a nameless and rebellious massa
out there. The New Order regime had its precedents.
Meanwhile, the ‘nothing happens’-facade of seemingly comfort-
able middle-class social life was certainly not kept up in isolation. The
ongoing social exclusion that largely underlies its continued existence
required, in the first place, a careful engineering of (sub)urban spatial
arrangements and surroundings. How were these arrangements realized,
by whom, and what did they look like? How were they interconnected?
How was social exclusion in everyday urban life realized? Under what
circumstances did actual social exclusion ‘movements’ take place and
how did people perceive them and partake in them? To seek answers to
these questions, an examination of the rapid expansion in the 1990s of
the typical Jabotabek shopping mall as an outstanding example of social
engineering by spatial intervention, especially in its role as socializer and
institutionalizer, will follow.

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 IV

Celebrating civil society in the shopping malls

prologue: scenes of a visit to pondok indah mal,

august 1998

When Sissy felt dissatisfied with her role as housewife and mother, which
was usually on particularly stressful days, she would take me to Pondok
Indah Mal, a forty-minute drive – with a little luck – from Bintaro’s
Sektor IX. Our local ‘utilitarian’ Plaza Bintaro mall, where we shopped
for provisions and incidentally caught a movie or a fresh vegetable juice,
would not do as a proper outing on such a day. Far more glamorous and
cosmopolitan, the huge Pondok Indah Mal, with its colourful banners and
flags, its chronic surrounding traffic jams and the general bustle on its vast
parking areas, was a much more suitable shopping mall for a breath of
fresh air. Once inside the mall, Sissy would softly complain about things
Budi had said or done during the previous days and nights, while we
slowly sauntered past the endless displays of consumer goods, fast-food
restaurants and ice-cream parlours. On these particular days, Sissy wore
what seemed like all her gold, platinum and diamond rings, as well as the
massive golden crucifix pendant that she would stop wearing in public
after December 1998.1 After having walked the full length of one or more
floors, Sissy usually would pull herself together, check her appearance in
a pocket mirror and either she would cheerfully invite me for lunch in a
mie (noodle) restaurant, or I would offer her a cappuccino in Croissanterie
and French Cafe Oh La La, a fancy and somehow ambiguous place that I
knew Sissy would never dream of visiting by herself. Unlike Gajah Mada,
the noodle restaurant, Oh La La was not a family place but a hangout for
people on their own or clusters of sexily dressed teenagers.

1 During this month, several attacks on Catholic churches took place in Jakarta.
|  Lost in mall

One day in August 1998, after we had had lunch and were strolling
past a noisy karaoke contest platform, I confessed to Sissy that Pondok
Indah Mal was now my favourite mall, since its visitors appeared to
be mostly normal people. By this I meant her to understand a mix
of the perceived ‘lower middle class’, ‘middle middle class’ and a few
bule. Disclosing one’s favourite mall to somebody, like disclosing one’s
favourite sinetron (soap opera), was a kind of ‘coming out’, a way of
showing one’s true personality type. Sissy confirmed my choice, adding
‘Thank God, no kampung people are admitted here, like in Mal Taman
Anggrek. There they just come in and walk around!’ I asked her whether
she meant, for instance, people without proper shoes. ‘Yes,’ she con-
firmed, ‘And with lots of roaming children, you know, all running about,
nobody cares... They sometimes even ask for money!’ When I questioned
her further about this, she blurted out that now, with the krisis of the May
1998 riots, the satpam at Mal Taman Anggrek did not stop kampung
people from entering the mall anymore: ‘They just come in and walk
around.’ Sissy was indignant about this loss of all propriety. It was the
first time I had heard a middle-class person saying aloud that underclass
people should stay away from their territory: the malls.
Meanwhile we strolled along, surrounded by fat little boys with white
knee socks, wearing sneakers with tiny red flashing lights on the heels,
and by pink-uniformed girls, the so-called suster, who ran after chubby
toddlers, spoon and plastic food container in hand. In front of the win-
dow of an exclusive shoe shop, beautifully made up, thin young girls in
high heels were hanging around as if waiting for customers. The girls
showed an excess of bare skin, and they had shiny black hair and white
teeth. These girls, I knew, were generally called ABG (anak baru gede, ‘chil-
dren who have only just grown up’. Sissy’s mood appeared to sink quickly
again as soon as she became aware of them.
During the May riots, Sissy had been terribly afraid when her con-
venient, fun-coloured neighbourhood ruko just around the corner had
been looted, burned down or otherwise destroyed by people from a
nearby kampung. Budi had left her by herself that night, because he had
been eager to witness the larger-scale mayhem in Glodok, the Chinese
quarter. His pattern of coming home late at night had recently become
a problem again, as Sissy now told me. Instead of leaving the mall in
time to avoid the massive suburban evening rush hour, Sissy entered
a Mothercare shop and started to graze, touch and unfold all kinds of

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baby clothes and equipment, although there were no babies in her life
that I knew of, and none were expected. ‘Sooo cute!’ she kept uttering,
indulging herself freely. After working her way through the entire baby
fashion stock of Mothercare, we finally left the shop and the mall, with
no purchases this time. On our way back home, caught in an endless traf-
fic jam, Sissy – in a better mood again – hummed along with a ‘romantic
car music’ CD she had bought on a previous visit to Pondok Indah Mal.

introduction: towards a shopping-mall society?

Shopping, or rather window-shopping, was one of the initial mall-based

activities that New Order-bred middle-class families could engage in as
a ‘unit’ (Young 1999). ‘Shopping’ was clearly not feasible for crowds,
mobs, extended families or groups, or even individuals. ‘Shopping’ was
from the start the core activity at the mall, but by the end of the 1990s,
a whole range of non-commercial social events were taking place in
what seemed to be the most ‘natural’ venue in the city. People went to
the mall to partake in mass blood donations; beauty contests; musical
performances; charity meetings; ethnic festivals, church services; group
circumcision rituals and art exhibitions. They met each other during
children’s skateboarding lessons, fashions shows and computer courses.
They gathered in food courts, attended business meetings on the top
floors and picked up sex workers in the malls’ innards. Most importantly,
these visitors to the shopping malls recognized in each other their shared
intention to belong to an idealized and imagined middle class.
The remarkable proliferation of shopping malls in Jabotabek over the
last fifteen years was only noted, surprisingly enough, immediately after
the riots of May 1998, when several newspapers and weeklies reported
that ‘hundreds’ of shopping malls had been damaged, burned down or
looted. Coloured maps of disaster zones showed how some malls had
been hit much harder than others; they were classified and distinguished
according to (ethnic) ownership and the degree of destruction, revealing
disturbing patterns. By 1998, the horizontal and vertical specialization
(‘targeting’) of malls had long since been set in motion, resulting in malls
with distinctive ‘identities’ derived from a focus on a particular ambiance
or product type, specific income levels or even the ethnicity of shoppers.
Nevertheless, most malls catered to all layers of the urban population that

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considered themselves as belonging to the middle class. Their popularity

among the Jabotabek residents had become so tremendous that on Sunday
afternoons, hundreds of thousands of people would flock to the major
malls. Visiting the mall had become the standard weekend outing for mid-
dle-class families. Shopping malls were regarded as the new urban social
centres, as novel manifestations of a public sphere in which ‘people met
people’ and new and experimental cultural forms became established – or
not. Their opening ceremonies were grand and important city events, du-
tifully presided over by local mayors, governors and other office-holders.2
Such developments give rise to a number of important questions: what was
the wider social meaning of the rise of the shopping malls in the 1990s,
and how can we characterize the involvement of the local population,
the mass media and the management? What actually happened inside
the malls and how did this relate to the outside environment? What can
the selection of the goods on offer in the malls, as well as their manner of
display, tell us about Jabotabek’s social micro- and macrocosm?
At the end of the 1990s, the social interaction that took place in-
side the malls had, at face value, all the qualities that a coherent social
fabric is supposed to present: it was horizontal, voluntary and founded
upon shared convictions about consumption and other related values.
Since malls were breeding grounds for emerging public opinion or civic
awareness, they resembled, in several important respects, a form of civic
space. What could be witnessed inside shopping malls during these years
looked a lot like a peculiar form of civil society in the making. This as-
sociation sounds far-fetched, suggestive as it is of more honourable and
dignified institutions, but it also leads to new and unusual approaches
towards incipient social change. Therefore, before addressing my four
main questions, I will first explore some recent theoretical reflections on
civil society in a postcolonial context.
A consideration of shopping malls as possible forms of civil society
in the making draws on Charles Taylor’s (1990:98) understanding of
civil society in a ‘minimal sense’; civil society exists, according to Taylor,
‘where there are free associations, not under tutelage of state power’.
Emphasis should indeed be put strongly on the apparent absence of state
power, or even on the complete invisibility of the state in shopping malls
2 For instance, the opening of Ramayana in Cengkareng Plaza was witnessed in August 1999 by
the mayor of West Jakarta, Hadisaputra, and Carrefour in Duta Merlin Plaza was opened by Deputy
Governor Yasin.

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– the massive popularity of malls seems closely connected to their being

perceived as ‘private’ institutions.
Both the new social role of malls and a developing public debate on
the ins and outs of civil society had their onset during the second half of
the 1990s. In that era, both were thoroughly and frequently discussed in
the Indonesian media – although in different sections. Their simultane-
ous rise hardly led to curious comments or considerations. The idea that
the massive gatherings of (would-be) consumerists could have anything in
common with an ‘institutionalized civility’ or could even be regarded as a
powerful manifestation of public life – both often regarded as forerunners
of civil society – was apparently too far-fetched (Sennett 1977:264). To
what degree did the classic distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’ space
prevent an appreciation of mall gatherings as potential platforms of civil-
ity? As we have seen, this classic opposition is often contested and highly
adaptable: spatial opportunity was often deemed a better guide in daily
life than a strict observation of a distinction between public and private.
Comparable with what happened in the formerly socialist Eastern
European states after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the public de-
bate on civil society became more focused on the present and future role
of the state and feasible state-society relations immediately after Suharto
stepped down in May 1998. A largely implicit point of departure in this
debate was its foundation in the classic abstraction of state-society rela-
tions as an inescapable opposition. In this context, Taylor (1990) warned
against a ‘universalization’ of what he saw as a specifically Western
European historical development, which is why one might reserve the
term ‘civil society’ for a strictly European frame of reference. The po-
litical scientist Partha Chatterjee (1990:120) criticizes this approach, be-
cause only by enriching and expanding this development ‘can one encap-
sulate non-European processes as the particulars of a universal history
whose […] subject is […] Europe’. Much of the laborious, obligatory
and artificial character of the late New Order debates about civil society
can be reduced to this theoretically and ideologically charged hornets’
nest that is the origins of ‘civil society’.3 How then can contemporary
urban social change be fruitfully framed in this or any debate on civil
society? Is there a way to escape the purely theoretical outset?
3 Farid 2005:174. Farid argues that in the late 1980s the concept of civil society became a tool to
expose the inequality between state and society, while simultaneously suppressing a discussion of class
difference.

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Chatterjee offers a radically differing view of the historical context

of ‘civil society’. He disagrees strongly with the Eurocentrism that seems
hidden in Taylor’s approach and demonstrates the limits of the European
concept of civil society, claiming that this concept is a particular and pro-
vincial form of a universal concept. Focusing on British India, Chatterjee
claims that modern configurations of state-civil society relations, wher-
ever they happen, became possible in the first place because of the rise
of what he calls the narrative of capital – the ‘true universalist and global
narrative of European history.’ This narrative, he maintains, was capable
of turning the violence of mercantilist trade and colonialism into a story
of universal progress, development and modernization. A price had to
be paid, though, for this narrative to take shape: the destruction of the
narrative of community was fundamental, because ‘community’ and
community-based forms of production were obstacles in the develop-
ment of necessary capitalist concepts such as the ‘nation-state’ and the
‘individual’. Established social relationships within the community did not
correspond with the new requirements of the capitalist state vis-à-vis the
relative interconnections of its citizens. Traditional, complex and hybrid
community ties needed to be cut in order for the state to create a popu-
lation of ‘individuals’, who had formal and/or well-organized alliances
to the state and to each other in nuclear families, schools, production
processes and ‘civil society’ (see also Clancy-Smith and Gouda 1998:12).
The suppression of the narrative of community in Europe allowed both
the posing of a distinction between state and civil society and the erasure
of that distinction. According to Chatterjee (1990:130), ‘[c]ivil society
thus became the space for the diverse life of individuals in the nation; the
state became the nation’s singular representative embodiment, the only
legitimate form of community’. ‘Community’ belonged to the domain of
the natural and the primordial: it had to be sanitized and domesticated
before being shared as ‘good nationalism’. Colonial rule imported these
forms of the modern state – the institutions of civil society – but, crucially,
without turning its colonial subjects into citizens. Indian anti-colonialism
therefore constructed its national identity entirely within a narrative of
community, since bourgeois civil institutions were not within reach for the
colonized. This new, largely cultural narrative of community focused on
‘the inner domain of culture’ and used a rhetoric of ‘love, kinship, auster-
ity [and] sacrifice’, a narrative interrupted by the postcolonial state in its
trajectory of national development, and its embeddedness in the universal

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narrative of capital. As a consequence, the only form of community rec-

ognized and tolerated by the postcolonial state is that of the nation. All
aspirations and expressions of community identity other than ‘official na-
tionalism’ (Anderson 1991) have to be subjugated, if necessary by use of
state violence. Indonesia’s very different colonial experience, in which an
early nationalist narrative of community did not so much focus on ‘aus-
terity’ and ‘sacrifice’ but rather on progress and development, meant the
transgression of ethnic boundaries, the ‘emerging from traditional struc-
tures’ (Siegel 2002:200). Here the nation also became the sole legitimized
expression of community, with the state as its representation, although,
in contrast to Europe, apparently without civil society as ‘space for the
diverse life of individuals’. Chatterjee shows how a particular European
concept of state-civil society relations ‘dogs the contemporary history of
the world’ and haunts debates and discussions on postcolonial state-civil
society relations, which often appear to be based on something other than
observations of social reality. Chatterjee’s approach, bringing state-civil
society relations together with the capital-community opposition, is help-
ful in understanding contemporary forms of urban social change, because
it offers a framework for the interpretation of less obvious connections
and relations in the public realm’s tangible, everyday life.
The rise of the shopping centre phenomenon, which was such a
significant intervention in the Jabotabek physical and social landscape,
is open to a wide range of interpretations, starting with those of its im-
mediate local observers. Its occurrence in a decade of remarkable social
and political turbulence, manifested in a momentous public discourse on
political renewal, makes investigating the perceptions, representations
and opinions regarding the shopping malls at the time of their emer-
gence all the more interesting.

representations of shopping malls: the media

The Indonesian media of the late 1990s depicted shopping malls as al-
most unreal palaces of consumption and modernity, or places belonging
to a realm of intangibility and illusion. For example, in the March 2001
issue of the hip, Bali-based monthly Latitudes, the celebrity author Ayu
Utami ‘takes us on a tour of Jakarta’s mall scene. Posing as a person from
another planet in her story, Utami explores the contradictions and com-

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A ‘modest’ mall: Plaza Bintaro Mal
 IV  Celebrating civil society in the shopping malls  |

plexities of Indonesian consumerism.’ Her essay, called ‘God and the sea-
sons drop in at the mall (as well as someone from another planet)’, started
off at the luxurious, first-class Plaza Indonesia Mal. Here Christmas and
the Idul Fitri holiday were simultaneously being celebrated in style, as
songs of praise and glittering decorations associated with these festivities
brightened up the busy atmosphere. In giving us a literary-flavoured de-
scription of several shopping malls through the eyes of an ‘alien’, Utami
deliberately sought out an alienated view of the proceedings in the mall.
For instance, she stated that ‘God and the market both appear together
in strange ways’, and that ‘[s]talls selling religious goods stand in strange
juxtaposition next to stalls selling tools, exercise clothing, dog toys and
reflexology massage equipment’. In Utami’s planet of origin, there was
only God, no ‘market’. When she noticed a couple embracing on the
escalator, she recognized this embrace, however, as something ‘real’,
something ‘exceeding the market’. Utami brought in Baudrillard, Marx
and Husserl, before concluding that in Jakarta, malls have become social
centres – they ‘attract busy people by offering a world in brief ’.
A postmodern approach to shopping malls was also displayed in
an article in the newspaper Kompas, in which university teacher Freddy
Istanto cited Foucault, Hebdige, Debord and Baudrillard in an attempt
to explain the new function of malls as both centres of social and cul-
tural activity where one might shape one’s own lifestyle, and ‘sources of
knowledge, information, value systems and morals’.4 An article in The
Jakarta Post argued that

there is definitively a sense of escapism involved in mall culture. The

real world outside is hot and dirty, fast and confusing. Inside it’s cool and
clean, safe and glamorous. Malls offer a new conduit of social interac-
tion. They are the symbol of a generation overwhelmed by manipulative
stimulus and newfound freedoms… Who cares if it’s all just an illusion?5

These and numerous other, similar representations of malls in the lo-

cal media showed a strong tendency to deny or neglect certain features
about their social reality. Malls were regarded and treated as strange
phenomena in need of a cautious and literary approach. Newspaper
journalists writing about malls did not recoil from using terms such as
4 Kompas, 22-2-2002.
5 The Jakarta Post, 24-8-2001.

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hiperkomoditas, simulasi and komunitas maya (virtual community) on the front

pages.6 According to Michael Featherstone (1995:24) this ‘rhetoric of
postmodernism’ was adopted by Western commentators to better un-
derstand ‘the changes to the cultures of cities and urban lifestyles’; it also
inspired Indonesian colleagues to report about the proliferation of malls
and consumer culture in their cities in the same rhetorical way. Although
the design and management strategies of shopping malls are rather stan-
dardized all over the globe, the social configurations of these centres of
consumption differ remarkably at local levels. In this respect shopping
malls are fully comparable to the ubiquitous McDonald’s restaurants:
the latter’s socially constructed meaning in central Beijing, for instance,
would amaze the suburban Boston regulars.
The fact that shopping malls in Greater Jakarta have evolved into
places where mainstream social and cultural city life takes place, was re-
flected in the city newspapers reporting on the events of daily life. In the
1990s, the ‘miscellaneous’ headings on page three gave way to a stream
of minor reports from inside shopping malls: on small-scale criminality,
insignificant accidents, beauty contests, art exhibitions, educational pro-
grammes, musical festivities and charity meetings, all scraps of the wide
scope of social and cultural life that can be found in any town centre, al-
beit minus any form of political activity. Malls turned out to be important
urban meeting places at the end of the 1990s, even as they functioned as
postmodern palaces of glamorous consumption, illusion and spectacle.
One token of this urban reality was the pink or blue baby album that
invariably accompanied the birth of yet another Wiyanto grandchild. On
page two was a space for noting the date when Baby had been to the mall
for the very first time, along with the name of the mall. Susi regularly
remarked proudly that ‘Wina was only ten days old when we took her to
Pondok Indah Mal for the first time!’ There was little acknowledgement in
the media of this token of new social dynamism; instead came high-brow
generalizations about ‘postmodern consumer paradises’, which allowed
members of the middle class to marvel at their own ‘postmodernity’.7
The silent exclusion of the majority of the Jabotabek population from
6 A similar approach towards the phenomenon of shopping is mentioned by Miller 1998:71-2: ‘the
journalistic representation of shopping as an extravagant bout of hedonism and materialism […] is
ubiquitous. [...] It is the degree of abstraction of this discourse away from practice and experience that
makes it so quickly and easily assimilated amongst people of a wide variety of backgrounds.’
7 This peculiar form of self-reflection can be found in the ‘Jakartan’ novels of Richard Oh: The path-
finders of love (1999) and Heart of the night (2000).

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malls was of no interest to journalists. Could this have reflected their

initially uneasy stance towards shopping malls and consumerism at large?
Contrasting views from ‘inside’ – from the malls’ managers’ point of
view – on social matters and on the planned development of consumer
society in Jabotabek, are an inextricable part of the contextual reality
of shopping malls, and therefore potential sources of insight into local
interpretations of the public/private dichotomy.

managing a ‘supermal’ – an interview with victor

chan of pt balindo international property

During the May 1998 riots, the Supermal Lippo Karawaci, the biggest
and most famous shopping mall in Indonesia, which was situated in the
fast developing real estate area west of Jakarta, had been so badly burned
and looted that it needed to close. Although the mayhem had not led
to total destruction, as it had with Slipi Plaza, almost all of the three
hundred shops inside the supermal had been looted and in the devastating
fire that followed, 69 people had been killed. In its heyday, the popular
mall received around 300,000 visitors on Sundays, arriving from all over
Jabotabek and even from as far as Bandung. After fourteen months of
rebuilding and renovating, the Lippo Supermal was ready to reopen in
a pastel-coloured Mediteranean style. In order to avoid any repeat of the
events of May 1998, the mall management had placed the new military
barracks of the ‘052 Wijayakrama Military Resort’ right next to the mall.
Swift military intervention could be guaranteed day and night if neces-
sary. It was also said that Victor Chan, the mall manager, planned ‘to
set up a special gallery to allow visitors and tourists to see pictures and
objects related to the May 1998 tragedy at the shopping centre’. This
initiative struck me as remarkable, because the activity and the setting –
commemorating in a mall the mayhem and killing that had taken place
in that same mall – seemed incompatible. Moreover, a sense of the his-
torical was not considered a general and popular Indonesian inclination.
When I interviewed Chan (37) about his plans and ideas a few days
later, he had already backed down. ‘It was not exactly a Hall of Shame
that I had in mind’, he told me in his office in the Lippo Supermal,
which was decorated with a childish gaiety, ‘just a gallery with some
photos and objects. And with a list of the names of the people who

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were killed. But I realize now that it is too controversial and that nobody
would approve of it. I just had not foreseen that people here would feel
ashamed and afraid, when confronted with such a gallery.’ Mr Chan
was a native of Singapore, a political scientist by training, and holder
of the ASM (Accredited Shopping Center Manager) designation of the
ICSC (Integrated Computer Solutions Consultants). He had been living
in Jakarta for thirteen years as an independent consultant in mall man-
agement and at the time was being hired by PT Balindo International
Property, a real estate agent that represented the new owners of Lippo
Supermal: a firm based in the Netherlands called Rodamco.
Chan had presumed that his commemorative gallery would enhance
the social function of the mall. As he explained in English:

We do not think about making money – we know that the mall has a social
function and that it is very important. The mall’s most important function
is in community service, in fact. When a mall is situated in a poor area,
like it is here, it is a too upgraded thing and it can cause social jealousy.
We offer work to 4,000 people from this area, we deal directly with vil-
lage heads to take local workers and to reassure shops in the surrounding
area. We do a lot to improve our PR, we invite local people for selamatan
[ritual meals], for instance. We invite them to create jobs around the mall.
We like to make social obligations, because income distribution is uneven
here. Malls can help improve things – some do it for publicity, some do
it voluntarily, like we do. We give polio vaccinations to schoolchildren.
Lippo personnel give blood donations every three months. We want to
become the mall of preference also for foreign tourists, not only for local
tourists. It is an intellectual exercise to design the right style of the mall,
we don’t want a ‘Planet Hollywood-thing’. [The renovated Lippo mall was
completely done in pastel-coloured Mediteranean style mixed with children’s
design.] We have to provide parking space for bicycles, motorbikes and
public buses… we are forced to integrate with our immediate surround-
ings. We want to bring health to local society, without destructing it. We
want to avoid too expensive brands, no extravagancies. We want small re-
tailers, locals, of small factories, smaller prices. This is our strategy: to sell
stock-lots, because we are far away from the city. Snobs don’t want to buy
stock-lots, but lower-class people do. We reduce the social gap. We want
to sell second-choice items, or old-fashioned items, imitations, yes, illegal
ones. Our aim is not to make people spend, but to make them middle class

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sooner. Our aim is to teach them to spend useful. We want to invest in

goodwill. We want to make a memorial scroll with the names of everyone
who worked on the restoration of the mall, people risked their lives paint-
ing the walls, that is why we should remember them. Our mall is an oasis.
It is 315 meter long. We make the people exercise, there are no parks in
Jakarta, mind you. They walk the mall an average 3.2 times up and down
each visit. Visiting the mall means stay fit and improve your health.

Victor Chan got noticeably carried away while talking about his spe-
cialty, the management of shopping malls, and I was impressed by his
visionary plans.
The second time that I visited Chan, I asked him more direct ques-
tions about actual procedures and standardized modes of conduct in
the mall before it was closed down. He told me that there was ‘indeed’
a strict dress code at the mall, although it was not officially made public.
At every entrance, there were hidden racks with shoes in all sizes. Visitors
with bare feet, rubber sandals or flip-flops were obliged to borrow shoes
in temporary exchange for their identity cards, known as KTP (kartu tanda
penduduk). Security guards had to oversee these proceedings, which were
deemed necessary, by Chan, to fight inequality in the mall as a social
meeting place – people should be protected against feelings of malu (social
embarrassment; shame). Chan disclosed to me that he was not satisfied
with this rather expensive procedure, because unsuitable people still found
their way into the mall. Handing out decent clothing at the entrances as
well was not much of an option, he sighed, and dirty people had to be
refused at the door, all disagreeable solutions. Chan therefore planned to
develop a new Lippo Mal in miniature a little distance from the existing
mall. This ‘mini-mall’ should function as a specialized mall for people
who did not yet belong to the middle class and who still maintained, ‘by
the way’, very different patterns of consumption. At the ‘mini-mall’ they
could be trained in shopping and making choices without being bothered
by middle-class families, according to Chan, who went on to inform me
extensively about the special training sessions that were, up until now,
part of the educational trajectory of the mall’s security personnel. Chan
claimed that these sessions were absolutely necessary to prevent insult-
ing behaviour, misunderstandings and the chances of people becoming
malu. All these expensive special measures and training sessions would,
of course, become superfluous once the ‘mini-mall’ became operational.

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When people had been duly educated in this small-sized mall, they could
move up to the real Lippo Supermal without running any social risks.
At the conclusion of our talk, and after his repeated denials of any
involvement with the development of the military quarters nearby,
Chan gave me a short tour of the completely renovated ground floor
of Lippo Supermal. I had already inspected the offices – not open to
the public – during my first visit. The walls were all painted with huge,
colourful scenes of smiling children having a good time in a playground,
with the words LIPPO SUPERMAL appearing everywhere. The im-
mense ground floor was full of little pink, yellow and mauve staircases,
roofs, cupolas, facades and gateways, all helping to suggest a gigantic
late-nineteenth-century Mediterranean town square. The high, black-
painted ceiling also brought about this effect. Antique-looking plastic
lanterns hung on mint-green walls and from tiny balconies. A stuccoed
sign on the wall said ‘1897’. Most intriguing were the enormous, ringed
white pillars that somewhat divided the immense space, but also gave a
mosque-like, larger-than-life feel to the place. Plastic palm trees and huge
movie screens showing soundless children’s cartoons and commercials
could be found at various points. Stalls offered mainly cheap, low-quality
toys, such as balloons, funny ballpoint pens and toy bears. A few shy
young families were seated on French-style cafe chairs, munching food
from little warung-style food outlets and staring, as if hypnotized, at the
screens. The food on offer was simple and rather cheap; the prices were
more or less the same as out on the street. Cleaners all sported neat blue-
and-yellow Hawaiian shirts, blue Bermuda shorts, white socks and blue
sneakers. They busily swept the tiled floors, although not many visitors
had shown up that day in the just reopened Lippo Supermal.
After leaving the mall, I found myself standing in front of a huge,
cream-and-orange, four-story building, in the last stages of completion.
Next to it, a shorter building that looked like barracks was still under con-
struction. A green banner in front of it said ‘Markas Komando Resimen’
(Headquarters of the regiment). An information board in front of the
huge building announced that the housing division of Lippo Karawaci
had ordered the construction of this military building (Gedung Makorem
052/WKR Lippo Karawaci), that it was designed by Lippo architects,
that the project should be finished by 15 September 1999 and that zero
accidents had taken place at the building site so far.
It was a rather weird experience to see military barracks and a shop-

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ping mall being built so close together, almost as if they went hand-in-
hand. The notion that a shopping centre had to be defended against the
‘enemy’ also struck me as bizarre. From the context of Chan’s statements
I understood that this ‘enemy’ could be found among the urban residents
who did not have regular access to the malls – the underclass, in other
words, for whom a ‘mini-mall’ was being designed in order to make them
respect and deserve the Lippo Supermal. Chan had disclosed his visionary
plans for a fully fledged, ‘100%’ consumer society, including a two-step
‘education’ into the middle class for the aspiring underclass. Nevertheless,
from ensuing talks I understood that Chan’s ambitions had clipped wings,
because his distant superiors had wanted him to concentrate on security
and ‘keeping out the underclass’, in order to better accommodate the
middle-class consumers. His reluctance to discuss the fun-coloured army
barracks could be explained by his ‘consumer culture idealism’, which now
found only thwarted expression in the Lippo Supermal. Chan’s numerous
visits to various Jabotabek malls had opened his eyes to the new and amaz-
ing social role and possibility of malls as town squares. As a hired manager,
however, he was not able to exploit this development, despite his idealistic
plans: his assignment was to make a profit and nothing else.

exclusion at close quarters

Shopping malls became the equivalent of urban parks or town squares

because the majority of middle-class families, as I found out, could not
conceive of Sunday outings other than going to the mall or plasa, to spend
the afternoon among their ‘peers’. Virtually all the people I knew went to
the mall on Sunday, or wished that they could go the mall when they had
other obligations, so they told me. The hegemonic New Order dictum of
‘nothing happens’ agreed with a slow evolution of Jabotabek malls into an
interconnected archipelago of Indonesian mass consumer culture. It was
therefore significant that social inequality between mall visitors only came
emphatically to the fore right outside the mall itself, where, for example,
the owners of motorbikes usually had to walk inconveniently long and
hot distances to their parking place, whereas car owners could reach their
cars within a few minutes.8 Underclass people were not generally seen
8 The extensive use of the car-call facilities at certain malls demonstrated the existence of a large class
of mall visitors who could afford to hire private drivers.

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entering the premises, including the parking lots and lanes in front of the
entrances. They seemed to keep away from these quarters, as if they con-
sidered them to be a kind of no-go area. Sissy and her sisters told me once
that it was ‘social shame’ that urged the underclass people to stay out of
sight, thus corroborating Chan’s views on middle-class social perceptions.
After the May 1998 riots, the boundary between ‘in’ and ‘out’ be-
came even more pronounced. Huge concrete blocks wrapped with razor
wire and large barricades made out of wood and barbed wire encircled
the premises of most shopping malls, suggesting an impenetrable for-
tress. Meanwhile, a few suburban utilitarian malls such as Bintaro Plaza
allowed small underclass boys, who sneaked into the basement super-
market Hero, to offer their services as barefoot grocery carriers, runners
of errands, or as umbrella escorts when there was heavy rain. Middle-
class people enjoyed having these convenient little services, with a feudal
touch, at their disposal. Here one could also find numerous becak drivers
waiting for customers in front of the heaps of barbed wire.
At most of the more exclusive malls there were no such scenes,
simply because they could only be reached by private cars and taxis.
Members of the underclass were to be found near the middle-range
malls and sometimes even on the premises, but they were practically
invisible to passers-by because they squatted low or hid behind bushes
or walls to remain out of sight. Their social invisibility coincided here
with their partially self-inflicted actual invisibility. None of the mall
visitors seemed to take offence at their hidden presence, or at this out-
of-tune manifestation of social inferiority. After a year of intensively
visiting malls, I myself had almost become used to this habit of turn-
ing a blind eye to ‘incompatible’ forms of human life near the mall,
although I had feared this unsettling shift in perspective from the begin-
ning of my stay. The ability to overlook people unless they complied
visually with middle-class standards of dress and appearance seemed
an innate quality of the people who did comply with this dress code. I
never saw, for instance, children take notice of beggars, street children
or scavengers, except when forced to, that is, when approached whilst
in a car. It seemed as if they simply did not exist, as if they did not form
part of the social configuration of the moment.
On the evening that I had been invited to the elaborate birth-
day party of one of Budi’s little nieces at a McDonald’s outlet in the
Metropolitan mall in Bekasi, I observed a great deal of music, a lot of

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food, many guests and presents and a clownish protokol (see Chapter II).
When we left the restaurant, I noticed outside in the pouring rain a
scarcely clad, underfed and dirty girl of about five years squatting on the
upper steps of the stairway that led to the McDonald’s entrance. She was
staring through the glass windows of the restaurant and begged passively
for coins from departing guests. Nobody in our party seemed to notice
her or the striking contrast between her condition and the abundance
and luxury of the birthday party. At the time, I had been unsettled by
this situation and by the apparent divergence in perception between my
hosts and me. Only later, when I got used to it, did I come to understand
the crucial importance of this form of ‘mall blindness’.
The proliferation of shopping malls and the changing scenes in-
side these malls might be seen as an expression of postmodernity
in the Jabotabek area. There seems to be a similarity to contempo-
rary Western cities, about which it has been argued, according to
Featherstone,

‘that postmodern […] tendencies can be observed in the new urban spac-
es which point to a greater aestheticization of the urban fabric and the
daily lives of people, the development of new consumption and leisure
enclaves (such as shopping centers, theme parks, museums)’. This is fol-
lowed by the remark that ‘if postmodern points to something it is the
eclipse of a particular coherent sense of culture and associated way of
life which was dominant in the Western upper and middle classes which
set the tone for the culture as a whole’.

The apparent similarity between Western cities and Jabotabek’s urban

fabric seemed superficial, because a ‘particular coherent sense of culture
and associated way of life’ was all but dictated by the shopping-mall cli-
entele: the culture of middleclassness, of eager adaptation to imagined
and formalized standards, norms and formulas that have become associ-
ated with the middle class. The ‘no rules, only choices’-view, sometimes
seen as the postmodern credo that favours egalitarianism and tolerance,
was surely not applicable here.
While the number and variety of shopping malls in Jabotabek rapidly
increased, one factor stayed the same: their total inaccessibility to certain
groups of society. Still, if pressed, people were quick to find rationaliza-
tions for this inaccessibility, such as Chan’s remark that ‘certain people

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had to be protected against their own feelings of malu’. Similarly, Sissy’s

contempt appeared to be directed against maladjusted behaviour – not
wearing shoes and ‘lots’ of running, begging and untamed children. But
besides the wearing of shoes and decent, clean clothes, besides being
washed and combed, there clearly existed a further body of knowledge
that was indispensable when inside the mall – as even Chan had had to
admit to himself, shortly before conceiving his ‘mini-mall’. This body of
knowledge regarding how to behave in the mall was a cause of much anxi-
ety and apprehension in broad layers of Jabotabek society. It was reflected
in cartoons, jokes and television commercials, such as the series of Rinso
detergent ads in which fat, lower-class housewives, talking in the Jakartan
vernacular, use English words such as ‘satisfied’ (setispet) and ‘target’ while
folding the laundry in their one-room apartments.9 An understanding of
English apparently belonged to this body of knowledge. By hanging out
frequently in certain ‘low-ranking’ malls on Sundays, I was able to see peo-
ple who seemed to move about stiffly, as if they wore corsets under their
neat clothes. It seemed as if there existed a general awareness of restric-
tions on posture, such as the absolute prohibition on jongkok, the traditional
squatting posture of men, or moving forward too fast, the latter possibly
connected to new understandings of tempo (Goffman 1990).
In strange contrast to this persistent and rigid principle of exclusion,
there evolved an ongoing process of proliferation, stratification and spe-
cialization of the shopping malls. These developments seemed to ‘culti-
vate’ aspiring mall visitors into experienced, socialized members of mall
society: knowing what to expect and what not, how to behave and move
and how to appreciate circumstances at differing malls (see Giddens
1991:20). Actual shopping skills were just one aspect, and a subordinate
one, of this ‘mall knowledge’, which was an initiation into modernity as
self-reflection, to be experienced in the most basic of malls. Here people
learned to be aware of, and strip themselves of, all traits that might be
seen as kampungan (the ‘vulgar’, ‘uninhibited’ and ‘primitive’). The ongo-
ing differentiation – particularly the vertical one – had been crucial in
the transition of malls to a new cultural and social realm – that of the
consumption of experience and pleasure as a popular cultural phenom-
enon. Malls had become ‘social agglomerates which show a concern with
stylistic display […] and presentation of self ’ (Featherstone 1991:97).
9 In the living rooms of my Bintaro neighbours, these ‘lower-class’ ladies on the television, along with
their vernacular, were hilariously mocked and imitated.

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 IV  Celebrating civil society in the shopping malls  |

Featherstone also mentioned, in this context of Western societies, that

although it seemed as if ‘old cultural hierarchies’ were becoming obso-
lete, the New Rich built themselves high-investment enclaves that were
designed to exclude outsiders. In Jabotabek, it was the middle class that
built shopping malls to experience modernity and exclude outsiders; in
their suburban residential streets, however, they seemed rather ambiva-
lent about the often convenient presence of the underclass.

desire at stake

With the underclass kept outside the malls, what was the mood like in-
side? Did contrasting views such as Utami’s postmodernism and Chan’s
‘business developmentism’ lead to ambiguity and confusion, or does
abundance bring joy? Shopping malls in Jakarta manifested themselves
first and foremost as concentrations of wealth and abundance where,
at least initially, desire became a dominant theme. Apart from the en-
tertainment halls, restaurants and cinemas, these giant buildings were
loaded with consumer goods; every desirable item could be found in the
mall. These goods were all attractively put on display within easy reach,
which made their tangibility seem extra real. It was therefore common,
in the early 1990s, to see awe-struck visitors take small commodities in
their hands – say, a cassette or a hairbrush – and unaccustomedly turn
them over and over again, before putting them back on display. Even the
‘alien’ Ayu Utami eventually picked up a pair of irresistible boots and
tried them on when visiting the mall for the first and only time. To find
a suitable attitude towards this everyday overabundance of goods was
apparently not an easy or obvious thing for middle-class Indonesians.
Siegel’s (2002) observation that they are ‘almost comfortable’ with their
wealth also applied to the mall, where visitors were filled with a particu-
lar sense of self-awareness or self-consciousness of ‘being in the mal’, as
if their presence in the mall defined them as different and modern – not
the same as they were before entering.
An expensive T-shirt that I bought in Bintaro Plaza Mal in 1999 illus-
trates this form of apprehensive awareness. Under the words LOST IN
MALL is a primitive, ape-like man, with large bare feet, clad in animal

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‘Lost in Mall’ T-shirt
 IV  Celebrating civil society in the shopping malls  |

skin and armed with a club.10 He looks bewildered, scratching his head
against the background of a shopping mall where ‘modern’ people in
jeans and T-shirts – including an embracing couple on an escalator –
know how to behave. One can also make out the words DUDUK (sit),
DONUT, SALE 70%, BUSANA (clothing) and the sounds the primitive
man utters: ‘di-gi, ma-ga, ig-gi, ni-gi’. Mall anxiety, a particular form of
fear of failure, was apparently a publicly recognized phenomenon and
subject to joking: nobody wanted to be mocked for being a ‘primitive’ in
the mall. The T-shirt offered a materialized ‘fantasy’ in which, accord-
ing to Goffman (1990:25), writing about disruption of projected social
definitions, ‘devastating exposures occur’: ‘An intense interest in these
disruptions comes to play a significant role in the social life of the group.
Practical jokes and social games are played in which embarrassments
which are to be taken unseriously are purposely engineered.’
What also seemed significant about this T-shirt representation was
the antithesis that it contained. It was not in a context of ‘wealth versus
poverty’ that the joke was cracked – the most obvious contrast that malls
as storehouses of wealth could produce in Indonesian society – but in
a seemingly irrelevant context of ‘modern versus primitive’. The joke
in question would not have been as funny with an underclass person as
protagonist, although underclass people formed a considerable part of
Jakartan daily reality. They are the real ‘misfits’ in the shopping mall,
and not ape-like men. Apparently the underclass was taboo even in rep-
resentations of the mall.
When I asked Grace (37), an unemployed psychologist, what she
supposed it was exactly that drove all these people to the mall to hang
around, she thought about it for a second and then answered disapprov-
ingly: ‘kurang disiplin’ (lack of discipline; letting go), meaning that these
middle-class people were not trained well enough in taming their own
desire and laziness; they ‘let go’. As a consequence, they spent too much
time hanging around in the mall, posing as consumers amidst goods they
could not afford to buy, wasting their time and souls. ‘Letting go’ was also
an expression used to refer to the general attitude towards the wealth of
the former presidential Suharto family: they ‘let go’; they did not guard
their inner control mechanism. Grace’s views on malls as places to ‘let
go’ and to relax from ‘discipline’ were shared by my Bintaro acquain-
10 In Indonesia in the 1990s, T-shirts had become important signifiers of (subversive) social and politi-
cal notions and perceptions.

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tances, albeit not all in a similarly moralistic vein. However, ambivalent

stances about the moral tenability of malls were common. A journalist
friend of mine received an invitation from the successful Jakartan car-
toonist Anto Motulz, to meet him for an interview in a coffee bar at a
brand-new and fashionable shopping mall in the Cilandak area, called
Town Square Mal.11 During this meeting he informed her of a big new
project: a cartoon representation of Jakarta as a ‘dream city’, without
any flaws or problems – an ideal place to live. When my friend asked
him about the place of shopping malls in this representation of Jakarta,
Motulz maintained adamantly that shopping malls were boring and
uninteresting places, and they were definitely not going to be part of his
dream project. Since Motulz had been insistent about meeting this for-
eign journalist in this particular coffee bar, it is hard to imagine that the
considerable social and cultural significance of shopping malls had left
him indifferent. Furthermore, to erase all shopping malls – those ‘dream
palaces’ full of wealth, desire and excess – from the Jakartan cityscape
would turn the town into a virtual social desert for the middle classes.
Motulz’s eagerness to sip pricey coffee and be seen and interviewed in a
shopping mall, while being acutely uncomfortable with the idea of the
presence of shopping malls in his ultimate dream version of Jakarta, was
a contradiction he was not prepared to address.
Malls seemed to be associated with shame, with a lack or an ab-
sence, and with an imagined battleground of modernity and excess
versus risk of social exclusion, as expressed in the ‘Lost in Mall’ T-shirt.
Experienced shoppers like Sissy occasionally used the Pondok Indah
Mal to ‘reinvent’ themselves: to assume a different, more independent
identity, a similar experience of social transformation. For a large part of
the new middle classes, the ambivalent attitude towards shopping malls
can be explained by their total lack of experience as consumers. Their
parents belonged to the first or second generation to handle (modest)
sums of cash, which may have led to confusing or even dramatic experi-
ences. Lea Jellinek (1991:151) showed, in the final part of her study on
the changes in Jakartan kampung life during the 1970s and 1980s, how
kampung dwellers, not used to handling the housing compensation pay-
ments they received, spent this new money ‘fulfilling family obligations,
repaying debts and turning their fantasies into reality. Within a matter of

11 Monique Doppert, personal communication, July 2002.

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 IV  Celebrating civil society in the shopping malls  |

months, little of the compensation money remained. Kampung dwellers’

use of compensation was restricted by their economic and social security,
limited knowledge of how to invest and previous patterns of behaviour.’
Spending money was a potentially confusing and risky affair.
The large-scale demolition of Jakartan kampung, such as Jellinek’s
Kebun Kacang in the early 1980s, had been set in motion to make room
for the emergence of the first shopping malls such as Gadjah Mada
Plaza, among other things. Within a decade, the same premises had of-
fered space to two extremes on the consumption scale: first bleak auster-
ity in the kampung, then excess in the shopping mall. Jakartan kampung
dwellers referred to this period of urban renewal as zaman kurang ajar,‘the
age without a moral code’, a time of disorder and decadence. Wealth
was felt to be a disruptive force, and malls, as warehouses of wealth,
were seen as potentially dangerous. Without suggesting that the Jakartan
middle classes of the 1990s had their immediate roots in kampung com-
munities, the collective awkwardness about the place of shopping malls
in urban society appears to be connected with a keenly felt contradiction
between morality and consumerism.12 This is why Ayu Utami observed
traces of what she apparently considered blasphemy in the mall: ‘God
and the market appear together in the mall.’ She presumed that ‘God’
and ‘the mall’ were somehow incompatible. Only by showing the proper,
‘restrained’ attitude when inside shopping malls, and by carefully mas-
tering the inward tension that this contradiction produced, could one
prove oneself and others to be worthy of belonging to the middle class.
Shopping malls were crucial sites of social contestation and transcen-
dence, and the visitors knew this.

beginners in the shopping mall

In July 1994, I accompanied Budi, Sissy and their children, who were
then still living in the Matraman quarter, on an exploratory trip to the
Bintaro Plaza Mal. In the morning, before leaving, Budi had ceremoni-
ously protested against this outing, but in the end he gave in, muttering
that ‘without malls the economy would stagnate’. First we went to pick
12 The New Order state had an ambiguous attitude towards rising consumerism, on the one hand
regarding it as a necessary part of ‘development’, and on the other condemning it as negative and un-
Indonesian (Foulcher 1990).

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|  Lost in mall

A cartoon satirizing greedy shoppers in the mall, by Benny Rachmadi

(from the series Lagak Jakarta, 1997)

up Susi, Sandra and their families at Susi’s home, which was about 800
metres from the mall. We rode there in three air-conditioned Kijang vans.
Once inside the mall, the families separated and I joined Budi and Sissy
– without the children – for a slow, leisurely stroll past all the hawkers on
the ground floor. Budi and Sissy were dressed in the ‘expensive casual’
style that had become fashionable just then: expensive T-shirts, Lacoste
shirts with Bermuda shorts and designer sandals, loafers and sneakers,
all adorned with gold jewellery, Ray-Bans, costly mobile phones, Rolex
watches and designer handbags. At the mall it turned out that many of
the visitors had dressed in this carefully designed ‘casual’ style.
The central part of the ground-floor plan was, in certain non-exclu-
sive malls, reserved for the ‘exhibitions’, usually a collection of hawkers
who gave little performances in front of their wares, such as futuristic-
looking washing machines, Japanese massage devices, lamination ma-
chines and giant fish tanks containing exotic albino fish. The objects for
sale at ‘exhibitions’ were largely do-it-yourself-in-a-minute gear, revolu-
tionary kitchen appliances or ‘newly’ invented foreign devices to do with
improving personal health. They all referred to domestic miracles and

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 IV  Celebrating civil society in the shopping malls  |

ideal solutions, perfect bodies and dream worlds; ‘a vast phantasmagoria

of commodities on display, constantly renewed as part of the capitalist
and modernist drive for novelty […] a stable, hierarchically ordered
meaning is dissolved’, as Featherstone (1991:23) remarked about the first,
nineteenth-century department stores.
Hawkers, mostly dressed as waiters in white shirts with rolled-up
sleeves, gave loud and overenthusiast demonstrations of their wares,
while their uniformed female assistants, when asked for information,
unfolded financing schemes and instalment plans at an amazing speed.
Budi and Sissy took it all in, listening attentively, before sauntering on.
The place was packed with people, but there was no chaos or tumult
and everyone moved about slowly. Only a few people were actually
spending money on goods – the mall was clearly more of a spectacle
than a market. At the centre of the exhibition was a desk with two easy
chairs on a fluffy carpet. Here one could buy properti, perhaps a house
in Bintaro Jaya, based on three framed photos of specimen houses on
the desk. Financing schemes were also unfolded here, a sign of the easy
availability of cash in the early 1990s when ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ was an
often-repeated motto in sales departments. The fluffy carpet was also for
sale; it belonged to the hawkers at the next stall.
After an hour or so of strolling around, Budi’s mood seemed to dete-
riorate, while Sissy’s stayed lively and attentive. For Sissy, this trip to the
mall together with her family was clearly the most important moment of
the week, at least in 1994. She kept happily taking objects in her hands
and comparing them, making quick calculations with a pocket calcula-
tor and asking critical questions. She performed the role of a ‘critical
consumer’, while Budi seemed to get depressed, realizing that he still had
hardly any serious spending power. Finally, Sissy bought three discount
cassettes of car music – items for her modest collection – before going
down to the basement, to the spacious Hero supermarket. Here Sissy
spent at least one and a half hours filling her trolley, slowly passing down
all the lanes again and again, discussing and comparing goods, prices
and brands, all the while doing her calculations. Meanwhile Budi had
disappeared. Later we all went back to Susi’s tiny home, where a gour-
met party of take-away foodstuffs broke out.
Every Sunday that I spent with them that year this visit to the
mall was repeated. They never visited the same mall twice in a row.
After Bintaro Plaza came the more sophisticated Pondok Indah Mal or

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|  Lost in mall

Pasaraya Mal. Sissy’s elation and Budi’s moodiness both gradually dis-
appeared once mall visits had become a weekly routine in their lifestyle.
Budi had become quite affluent in the 1990s, all the more so after May
1998, and he no longer felt nervous about his ‘performance’. Sissy, a crit-
ical and responsible consumer, could not really appreciate the ‘cultural’
diversification of the malls which became apparent in the latter half
of the 1990s, when most shopping malls – often in collaboration with
their clientele – had started to establish their own ‘distinctive’ culture
and style, with which visitors could ‘identify’. In Plaza Senayan, known
as ‘PS’, smart, fashionable youngsters came to be seen as well as to see
and to mix with bule in the trendy cafes and coffee shops. In the same
vein, Mal Taman Anggrek, known as ‘MTA’, catered to ‘adventurous
families’, offering skateboarding, a climbing wall, rollerblading, ice skat-
ing and other ‘family fun activities, puzzles, drawing & coloring contests,
karaoke, jungle jamming part[ies], music festival[s], plus many other
exciting programs held daily!’13 The ‘MTA’ mall ‘gave interpretations
of for instance Tarzan movies into a series of activities which reflect the
dynamic characteristics that exemplify Jakarta’s youth... we are a family
orientated mall’.14 The Plaza Indonesia mall was famous for its culture
of exclusivity and high style, expressed by the many designer outlets –
in this ‘Mecca of consumerism’, there were no entertainment venues.
Mangga Dua mall (‘M2M’) specialized in electronics and computers, but
one could also conveniently find fortune tellers, psychics, dukun and as-
trologers, all brought together to give the mall a special, mystic ‘flavour’.

mall glamour and the suburban housewife

Sissy became less keen on visiting malls because her ‘thing’ – being a criti-
cal, thrifty consumer – was not one of the characteristics that malls identi-
fied within their newly defined target audiences. In the mid 1990s, Sissy
still went to church every Saturday night, where she was duly reminded
to fight against greed and materialism. Her critically aware stance the fol-
lowing Sunday at the mall, thinking twice before she spent a single rupiah,
became something of an anachronism in the latter half of the 1990s, when
the mall had become the place to hang around for the middle classes. Of
13 Advertisement in The Jakarta Post, 9-7-1999.
14 The Jakarta Post, 15-7-1999.

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 IV  Celebrating civil society in the shopping malls  |

Objects to entertain, in Plaza Bintaro Mal

course Sissy still enjoyed doing her bit of shopping, especially with her hus-
band around, but the lively enthusiasm of the early 1990s was gone – the
cinema was, apart from various Mothercare outlets, the only part of the
mall, any mall, which could still send her into real rapture. Sissy was also
critical of some of the temporary changes after May 1998, although she
continued her escapist visits to Pondok Indah Mal. Sissy seemed to have a
split personality when it came to her conduct in a mall, which depended
on the presence of her family. Without husband and children, she walked
faster and more purposefully. She showed interest in a wide variety of
shops and items such as mobile phones, shoes, CDs, baby gear, electronics,
cinema programmes and fashion magazines. In her family’s company, she
would normally have walked past these items without noticing.
Sissy was still ambivalent about the various trendy cafes and cof-
fee shops; expensive ‘French’ or ‘Italian’ places that offered certain
categories of Jabotabek middle-class society unique and meaningful
sites of self-identification. They represented recreational zones which
middle-class women could visit unaccompanied, where they could sit
and smoke, eat and drink freely and where middle-class young lovers
could sit intimately together without fear of admonishment and where
middle-class homosexuals could openly look for company. As such, these
cafes comprised ‘public’ places where the hegemonic New Order idea

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of ‘family’ was considerably put in perspective; where consumer culture

and its proliferation of lifestyles, information and images seemed to have
found its temporary zenith (Shiraishi 1997). Featherstone (1991:103)
wrote about Western shopping malls in this context:

shopping is rarely a purely calculative rational economic transaction to

maximize utility, but is primarily a leisure-time cultural activity in which
people become audiences who move through the spectacular imagery de-
signed to connote sumptuousness and luxury, or to summon up connota-
tions of desirable exotic far-away places, and nostalgia for past emotional
harmonies […] shopping has become an experience.

In Jakartan shopping malls, it seemed that the ‘spectacular imagery’ and

the ability to ‘summon up connotations of […] far-away places’, with ‘nos-
talgia for past emotional harmonies’ as a by-product, had resulted in real,
tangible niches for identities that, outside the mall, were highly controver-
sial. The elegant coffee shops and stylish ice cream parlours were thus not
simply the relaxed and cosy places they appeared to be; they had also be-
come sites where contested identities could be explored and celebrated for
those who could afford it. Sissy was aware of this ‘underground’ function
of the coffee shops, which probably explained her ambivalence towards
these places. On the one hand Sissy felt attracted to the idea of being an
independent female with tastes of her own, driving her own car, overseeing
her own staff of three servants, and capable of pursuing almost any com-
modity or service that she desired thanks to her lucrative side businesses.
On the other hand she felt at home in the prescribed role of thrifty spouse
and devoted housewife, ‘sacrificing’ herself and ‘her own career’ for the
welfare of her family.15 In the mall she could experience either role, ac-
cording to her mood. She could ‘escape it all’ or she could perform the
part of the ‘good housewife’. So Sissy was never completely relaxed when
we were having a treat at one of these fancy places and neither, it seemed,
were many of the other customers. In ‘French’ coffee shop Oh La La,
most of the single ladies continually talked on their mobile phones, while
smoking cigarettes and never once looking up. Other customers clumsily
attacked over-sized, stuffed croissants with a knife and fork, or exchanged
exotic-looking bits of food from their plates. Young men sat for a long time
15 Sissy regarded her considerable ‘informal’ earning capacity as private and domestic, whereas she
associated having a ‘career’ with the formal economy of the public sphere (see also Smyth 1992:37).

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behind their cups of espresso, also smoking non-stop; unlike the women,
they tended to nervously watch people pass by.
The only people who looked like they were having a delightful time
were the young, smartly dressed girls known as ‘ABG’. Sitting together in
groups of three or four, they enjoyed themselves, shrieking with laughter,
whispering into the tiniest mobile phones and singing silly tunes, like
young girls on television advertisements. However, these groups of girls
could also look very bored, as I once witnessed in Kafe Wien on the top
floor of posh Plaza Senayan. I spent a whole afternoon in August 1999
just watching clusters of these bored, expensively dressed ABG-girls, who
continuously ordered previously unexplored exotic dishes virtually with-
out touching them – yawning, smoking, playing with their jewellery or
with their food, having mobile phone conversations and leafing through
a pile of well-thumbed old glossy magazines. Sissy recognized ABG-
girls whenever they were around in the mall, and they were a source of
mockery and fun, but also of scandalized anxiety for her, for she knew
precisely how a considerable number of ABG-girls accumulated their
large budgets: by prostituting themselves in the malls, approaching their
customers (oom-oom) in front of a nice pair of shoes in a shop window
or in a trendy coffee shop. The dark and meandering bowels of the
malls, where the toilets, cleaning closets and other non-profitable nooks
were situated, offered ample space for these transactions, it was said.
Alternatively the couples would simply go to the parking basements.
Sissy could not protect her sixteen-year-old daughter from these scenes,
because ABG-girls were everywhere, just like their potential customers;
their presence as sexual attendants in the mall was assessed by many
male members of the middle class as a normal part of the offerings of
consumer culture. ABG-related activities were, in other words, free from
any criminal or dubious considerations. The girls were usually paid not
with money, but with ‘presents’, such as a pair of shoes from the expen-
sive shoe shop in front of which they had lingered.
Many commentators have linked the proliferation of youth prostitu-
tion in malls with consumerist lifestyles, reproachfully claiming that ‘the
market’ and consumer culture (konsumerisme besar, or ‘big consumerism)
‘forced’ young girls into prostitution by arousing their consumerist greed.16
It was noteworthy that in the context of the mall, the commoditization of

16 See for instance Kompas, 4-5-1999, ‘Prostitusi remaja di Jakarta’.

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the sexual services of ABG-girls – all on their own terms – thus gave rise
to a public discussion, whereas the flagrant commoditization of suster or
nannies (mostly very young, underpaid and rather ignorant village girls)
in their role of tangible tokens of middleclassness was taken for granted.17
However, the presence of glamorous ABG-girls in the mall seemed a
‘natural’ and almost necessary phenomenon. ABG-girls belonged to the
interior of the mall, just as fashion models belonged in a fashion magazine.
They did not exist outside the mall. Everyone knew that not all ABG-girls
were selling themselves and this was perhaps the most ambiguous aspect
of this particular, fuzzy form of prostitution – a ‘public’ ambience where
no police existed, no kriminalitas (criminality) could happen and where
beautiful young girls might or might not sell their bodies. Furthermore, in
the malls the overall and tacit point of departure was desire supposedly
under control. At face value, nobody needed to take offense. Morality
was apparently not at stake, for in the malls discipline was regarded as
a shared key concept. However, as one of Sissy’s sisters told me, she and
many other women in the mall suffered from a silent anxiety, because they
tended to suspect their husbands of being secret ABG ‘consumers’. In fact,
they shared the view of social psychologist D. Soemitro, who commented
in the newspaper Kompas: ‘We all like to talk beautifully about morality,
but in reality we are practising unusual activities such as homoseks, anal seks,
masturbasi, onani. We act therefore as hypocrites.’18 In this claim, morality is
the natural counterpoint to Westernization, with its exchangeable elements
of consumer culture and sexual liberty, of which prostitution forms a fixed
part. Indeed, Soemitro stated that ‘in the West, sex workers are normal
workers’. In prostitution among ABG-girls, the two come together against
the background of the morally ambiguous space of the shopping mall.
This was also reflected in the rumours, which began circulating shortly af-
ter May 1998, that in the malls ‘Chinese women were continuously raped
and they never went to the police to report it’. Nevertheless, the malls
embodied the only urban space where couples could stroll hand-in-hand,
with or without a suster in their wake, all contributing to the general feeling
in the mall of ‘nothing happens’. This notion of superior immobility had

17 Kopytoff (1986:84), discussing Western, contemporary and other approaches to the commoditiza-
tion of things and people, states that ‘the conceptual distinction between the universe of people and the
universe of objects had become culturally axiomatic in the West by the mid-twentieth century’. The
usual assumption that a universal distinction is at stake here seems unfounded.
18 Kompas, 4-5-1999.

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found its ultimate expression in the interior of the malls in the mid 1990s.
Everything in the shopping malls seemed to be under control, symbolized
by the strategic presence of uniformed satpam, idly hanging around in pairs
or strolling about.
It was an intriguing experience to find out that the all-pervading ‘noth-
ing happens’- feeling of the malls stayed much the same during the latter
half of the 1990s and beyond.19 Despite the ongoing diversification and
the new multifunctional orientation of malls, the basic sensation of control
and protection was shared by all visitors. Nothing disturbing and nothing
spontan appeared to happen, except for staged events and celebrations such
as the assembled annual religious festivals, all celebrated in the same style
and manner. As Douglas and Isherwood (1979:65) point out, the general
objective of the consumer can only be to construct an intelligible universe
with the goods he chooses. To begin with, this social universe needs a de-
marcated temporal dimension. The simultaneous use of several religious
and mundane calendars in this cognitive construction, however, pointed
at a contradicting intention. Instead of ‘loading the passage of time with
meaning’, these mixed celebrations erased all differentiation and sense of
periodicity, resulting in what felt like a temporal vacuum. Indeed, shopping
malls were so decontextualized and depoliticized that clocks and windows
were nowhere to be found – neither time nor place were relevant dimen-
sions inside the malls. However, Anthony Giddens (1991:17), writing about
the ‘contours of high modernity’, has remarked that

The emptying out of time and space is in no sense a unilinear development,

but proceeds dialectically. Many forms of ‘lived time’ are possible in social
settings structured through the separation of time and space. Moreover, the
severance of time from space does not mean that these henceforth become
mutually alien aspects of human social organization. On the contrary: it
provides the very basis for their recombination in ways that coordinate so-
cial activities without necessary reference to the particularities of place.

The fact that the lavatories in shopping malls were invariably situated
in almost impassable, dark, hidden or far-away nooks suggested likewise

19 On the other hand, in 2003 parts of the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI) Marine Corps – on the
eve of their departure for Aceh – came to a Jabotabek shopping mall to do a military exercise amidst
the sales ladies, aimed at suppressing terror (mengatasi teror); Republika, 30-4-2003. The same goes for the
regular bomb hoaxes in Jabotabek malls during the late 1990s.

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that the private activities that took place there belonged to another di-
mension, not to the time and space that pertain to the mall. Most of the
people strolling about in the malls seemed to have no clear idea of time:
they wandered aimlessly around, looking a bit dazed, until they felt like
having an ice cream or a hamburger. Depending on the type of mall and
their skills as members of the middle class, people would enter shops to
touch and try out commodities such as tennis rackets or microwave ov-
ens. This was easier to do in electronics stores in Pondok Indah Mal than
in the chic Louis Vuitton boutique in Plaza Senayan. In the latter half of
the 1990s, the already existing stratification of shopping malls became
complicated by new retail chain management strategies to diversify and
personalize the malls. Malls started to cultivate their own ‘culture’ and
to issue ‘membership cards’.
Malls gradually succeeded in incorporating themselves into the
realm of cultural capital, a phenomenon reflected in the monthly ‘Mall
Calendar’ published in The Jakarta Post. A few malls started to organize
‘ethnic festivals’ as a new commercial concept, celebrating ‘the beauty
of Indonesian arts and cultures’ in an exact copy of the New Order’s
interpretation of demographic and cultural diversity: by standardizing
‘culture’ and rendering it harmless, which was effected solely by stressing
aspects of display and performance (see also Foulcher 1990). In the con-
text of the shopping mall it was possible to run into a cluster of colourful,
body-painted Papua citizens, weaving baskets under a banner reading
‘Ethnic Millennium 2000 – The Making of Traditional Indonesian Arts’.
In Pondok Indah Mal, a ‘Madura Week’ early in August 1999 featured
dances and an exhibition of tourist art. It was not only ‘ethnic’ diversity
that was celebrated in the mall: in the Mega M Mal a six-year-old, 53
cm tall female dwarf, ‘Suprehati’, was displayed twice a day, together
with a four-horned goat that ate cigarettes, in a show of human and
animal oddities.20 These ‘cultural’ and spectacular events underlined the
fact that in Indonesia, shopping malls had become sites where consump-
tion and leisure were meant to be constructed as an ‘experience’, using
Featherstone’s already cited formulation. This ‘experience’ was, however,
carefully designed never to challenge the frame of ‘nothing happens’.

20 The Jakarta Post, 5-8-1999. According to her manager ‘Uus’, Suprehati’s older brothers and sisters
could go to school thanks to the income generated by the girl. The exhibition of ‘odd’ human beings
brings to mind the World Fairs of the late nineteenth century (Bloembergen 2002).

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the supermarket: exclusion, allocation and

targeting

Of course, apart from experiencing spectacles in the mall, people also

shopped for groceries. How did they do this? Can mall supermarkets
be understood as ‘first-contact zones’ for certain goods? What do these
goods and their manner of display tell us? The inaccessibility of malls for
members of the underclass appeared to be all but a given in Indonesian
society. It was assumed that because the underclass was ‘not yet’ edu-
cated and developed enough to change its attitude towards wealth and
to master the connected inward tensions of consumerism, they ran the
risk of losing control. In other words, it was not its poverty that made the
underclass unsuitable to enter the mall and become consumers; rather, its
unsuitability was caused by a more general backwardness and thus also
a lack of personal development, according to the prevailing view. Since
the number of malls, as well as their immediate social functions, steadily
increased as malls developed into pre-eminent urban meeting centres, all
without the participation or even presence of the underclass – the rakyat,
the ‘masses’, the ‘common people’– a closer examination of proceedings
at the Jabotabek malls is necessary. A few impressions of the basement,
where the supermarkets were situated and thus the food shopping took
place, are particularly insightful. Shopping for provisions is, after all, the
mundane form of shopping, supposedly far removed from glamour and
excess (Miller 1998).
I spent many hours in the basements of malls, either in the company
of Sissy or by myself, meeting others customers, checking out products
and observing people shopping. One could invariably find huge, inter-
nationally oriented Hero supermarkets in all the mall basements, and
the atmosphere there was more down-to-earth, notwithstanding the
conspicuous luxury and abundance. Hero started serious business at the
end of the 1970s, when the total number of supermarkets in Jakarta
still amounted to only seven. Hero defeated its main competitor, Gelael,
in the late 1980s, despite Gelael’s handing out of a free tube of tooth-
paste to customers who spent a minimum of Rp 10,000 (US$ 4), and
its promise that consumers who spent Rp 20 million (US$ 8,000) would
receive a free video recorder. Hero struck back by issuing VIP cards and
publishing a glossy magazine. A former Hero public relations manager
explained:

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We are mainly targeting the upper middle classes of society, that is why
we have issued these VIP cards – a real big success, by the way. Further-
more, we found out that our customers dislike shopping together with
people from the lower classes. They feel that it is disturbing. That is why
we are slightly more expensive than the others. People who drive a Mer-
cedes or Peugeot 505 don’t mind paying a few more rupiah extra.21

In those days, supermarkets were still called toko dingin (cold shops) by
the common people, who still could enter these places unsuspected.
Half way through the 1990s, toko dingin were no longer talked of because
of the success of Hero’s marketing strategies: for more than a decade,
the lower classes hadn’t entered Hero supermarkets, except as servants.
Later Hero reoriented itself towards a bigger market share. Crucial to
this development must have been the fact that in 1990 the proportion of
people who had to live in intolerably poor conditions had declined from
well over half the population to around 20%, meaning that spending
power, albeit modest, was being dispersed throughout the population
(Vatikiotis 1998:109). Hero’s glossy magazine became a pulpy brochure,
distributed door-to-door.
Weekly grocery shopping at Hero had, in the late 1990s, become the
most recognized and shared aspect of middleclassness among Jakartan
middle-class housewives. Being in the queue with a loaded shopping
trolley served as proof of membership – for forms of ‘window shopping’
also existed in Hero, although on a much smaller scale than on the up-
per levels of the malls. The daily food shopping was usually taken care
of by the servants, who went to the pasar (market) or bought from street
sellers early in the morning. At Hero, people initially bought prestigious
goods such as imported detergents and cleaning agents, bottled sauces,
foreign foodstuffs such as spaghetti and yogurt, treats such as chocolate,
imported fruits and candy bars. They also sometimes bought ‘experi-
mental’ goods: exotic things that had been shown on television or that
people brought from abroad. Towards the latter half of the 1990s, Hero
started to offer the range of ‘traditional’ foodstuffs which were previously
only for sale at the pasar, now transformed into ‘quality’ goods, wrapped
in plastic, sealed or deep-frozen and far more expensive and ‘hygienic’
than those sold outside. People then began to do all their food shopping

21 Indonesië naderbij, 6-2-1989:8.

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at Hero, sending their maids out to the pasar each morning just for their
own (much cheaper) foodstuffs.22 Most of the people I knew still went to
Hero to shop just once a week, corroborating Douglas and Isherwood’s
(1979:122) observation that the periodicity of a household is a good
marker of social class: lower frequencies point to higher strata.
Sissy liked to take her time and stroll slowly past the thousands of
products that were neatly on display, initially constantly using her pocket
calculator. Later, she managed very well without, as if something of her
old stance as a critical consumer came back to life in Hero. Sissy actively
approached all kinds of products and examined them closely, sniffing or
squeezing them, and she enjoyed trying free samples. In the mall base-
ment, Sissy could enjoy being in the mall without being confronted with
ABG-girls or other disturbing aspects of modern life. The basement of-
fered her a virtually endless range of products that were all within reach,
literally, conceptually and financially. Matters of proportionality and
morality regarding wealth and abundance seemed much less obvious than
they were upstairs, for provisioning can be seen as one of life’s few essen-
tial tasks. Sissy’s sense of appropriateness could also be explained by the
division in shopping labour that, ‘as feminist research has clearly shown,
creates the woman as the person whose desires are subsumed in the labor
of provisioning and the man as the person whose personal desires can and
should be expressed and indulged in shopping’ (Miller 1998:44).
Still, the first time I encountered the overwhelmingly wide choice in
the supply of paper tissues at Hero, I experienced a strong impression
of senselessness and mystification. Sissy regarded this seemingly point-
less abundance as a normal, realistic form of display. On both sides of
the shopping aisle where we pushed our trolley, towered piles of paper
tissue packages of many different brands, qualities and prices. Not only
were large bales of tissues on sale, but also individual little packages that
contained only ten tissues, along with every size and amount in between.
Sissy always obtained her paper tissues at discount prices from one of
her sisters, who made a little money on the side in this way, so she had
no use for this abundance. Later, I discovered that several other prod-
ucts where ‘over-represented’ in exactly the same way: rows of cans of
infant formula milk, at every price level and featuring numerous brands,
formed solid-looking walls. It seemed hardly possible to make a ‘rational’
22 It is remarkable that upper-middle-class women in these years rediscovered the pasar as a ‘traditional
market’, a perfect destination for a tourist excursion.

187
Products advertised in a Hero supermarket brochure, August 1999
 IV  Celebrating civil society in the shopping malls  |

choice from one of these brands in the context of convenient grocery

shopping – getting an overview of the supply of brands and qualities of
infant formula milk available took almost half an hour.
The same could be said of the many racks of skin-whitening creams
and lotions, which were priced from Rp 10,000 (US$ 1) for ‘Marina UV
(ultraviolet) White’ to Rp 400,000 (US$ 40) for Japanese brands such as
Shiseido, which were kept behind locked windows. This seemingly ‘ir-
rational’ supply of certain standard perishable consumer goods reflected
the strongly developed stratification within the middle classes; they ap-
peared to be markers of classifying categories. In order to involve newly
arriving members of the middle classes – people who were often called
the ‘wannabees’ and accused, by established middle-class members, of
manipulating middle-class symbols instead of being real spenders – the
retail chains offered products of which the symbolic or social meaning
was paramount (see also Gerke 2000). ‘Symbolic’ should here be under-
stood in a double sense. On the one hand, these products were typical
Indonesian middle-class consumer symbols. On the other hand, the
(overly cheap) commodities on the bottom line of the supply scale em-
bodied purely representational value; they were merely symbols of prod-
ucts, for it was not so much the quality of the content that counted in the
purchasing but the wrapping, which shouted WHITENER or TISSUE.
The wide range of certain goods in Hero was a good indicator of
their representational capacities vis-à-vis middleclassness. For instance,
the proximity of shiny or lace-covered ornamental boxes filled with
paper tissues in the average middle-class car or household was indispens-
able. This is why my Aunt Annie made such a strong statement by keep-
ing these pompous boxes in her home empty at the outset of Krismon,
although she could easily afford to buy paper tissues. It was as if she went
on a semiotic strike, refusing to maintain threatened lifestyle symbols
amidst massive economic and social turbulence. In reality, since paper
tissues of low quality were sold by street vendors, no middle class person
needed to do without them. Soft, pure, white paper tissues seemed to
accentuate the cleanliness and sense of hygiene of their users in a subtle
way, which is why the tissues and the ability to handle them became
modest, but excellent status markers. Their availability at cheap prices
was a tacit invitation to join ranks with the imagined middle classes,
provided that candidates were clean enough, knew enough and had put
aside their ‘traditional’ terry-cloth rags, usually wrapped around the neck

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– the ideographic predecessor of the paper tissue.

Management strategies demanded that once aboard, one could go
all the way along the supermarket aisle, depending on one’s upward
social mobility. The many rows of different cans of infant formula milk
told a similar story. To belong properly to the sphere of the middle
class or to control someone’s claim of belonging could pre-eminently
be demonstrated vis-à-vis the subject of nurturing infants. I witnessed a
young mother carrying a newborn baby brusquely being asked the same
two standard questions over and over again: ‘Berapa bulan?’ (How many
months?), followed by ‘Pakai merek apa?’ (Which brand are you using?).
The brand of infant milk reliably indicated status. The notion, which
stemmed from late-colonial times, that infants can thrive only by being
fed (imported) cow’s milk was a crucial part of the middle-class canon, so
much so that at the outbreak of Krismon, middle-class ladies risked po-
lice confrontation by illegally demonstrating on the streets of Jakarta that
the country’s babies faced starvation without affordable infant formula
milk. The opinion that breastfeeding babies was kampungan, a ‘backward’
practice, was hardly ever stated openly. Feeding infant formula milk to
children had rather been promoted as a ‘modern’ thing, perfectly suited
to the life of modern, working women. Hero’s astonishing choice and
price range of powdered-formula-milk products, stacked and lined up in
tins, seemed to represent local, imagined middle-class social stratification.
The configuration of the numerous types of skin whitener operated
according to similar rules. Just as the display of infant formula milk in
the shop hovered between the realms of foodstuff and medicine, the skin
bleachers occupied a place between the realms of cosmetics and medi-
cine. I often encountered doubtful-looking women in front of the racks
of whitening products, examining bottles and jars and looking rather
undecided about their prospective purchases. When, posing as a doubtful
consumer myself, I made enquiries about their experiences with certain
products, such as the just-launched, mid-priced cream White Perfect, I
sometimes became engaged in an instructive exchange of product in-
formation. Since virtually every middle-class woman fiercely wanted to
achieve a lighter complexion, lively debates about the well-tested products
on display could follow. As a rule, customers were convinced of the more
satisfying bleaching effects of the expensive and ‘scientific’ products and
the damaging or even dangerous side effects of the cheapest ones. The
quality of the unaffordable Japanese products was beyond any customer’s

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doubt, although I never met a Hero shopper who had actually used them.
It was thought that women who could afford such high-priced creams
went to clinics such as the Jakarta Skin Center. Sissy had her own pri-
vate ways of acquiring whitening products, which she did not share with
her sister Sonya, who seemed obsessed by her ‘too dark’ complexion.
Although Sissy never mentioned these products themselves, I could tell
when she was expecting results by her standard question: ‘Do you see any
difference in my face?’ She firmly judged the cheap supermarket whiten-
ers (as she did with the cheap tissues) to be rommel (trash). Light (putih) skin
has long been associated not only with female and male beauty, but with
a range of largely cognate values such as hygiene, purity, wealth, success,
modernity and superiority that are immediately recognized by virtually
every Indonesian. Hero’s reply to the general quest for whiter skin, and all
that it stood for, was to put such products within reach of every customer.
The move from traditional, home-made bengkoan root concoctions and
rice powder, to the modern little white plastic bottles and jars of pemutih
(whitener) was therefore easily imagined and performed.
These three particular goods – tissues, milk powder and skin whitener
– shared an agreed meaning in a ‘universe constructed from commodi-
ties’ (Douglas and Isherwood 1979:80). These particular goods marked
the universe of the imagined middle class and as such, it was not their
physical consumption but what Douglas and Isherwood called the sharing
of names that formed the greater part of their utility.23 This sharing of
names that have been ‘learned and graded’ allowed aspiring consumers
to take part in the construction of a classification system and, consequen-
tially, in middle-class culture. Consumers created a common and particu-
lar world from commodities chosen for their fitness to mark ‘events’ in an
appropriately graded scale (Douglas and Isherwood 1979:75-6).
In its efforts to offer products that promised social inclusion, Hero
did more than just cater to the growing desires of aspiring middle-class
customers or ‘wannabees’.24 Compared to its ‘upper class only’ marketing
policy of twenty years before, this U-turn marked a new strategy of getting
the lower class through its doors by whatever means necessary. As long as
23 ‘Names’ is used here in a wider sense: ‘we use “names” as handles for grasping the more hidden
cognitive processes synthesizing consumption […] we view goods and their names as the accessible parts
of an information system’ (Douglas and Isherwood 1979:81).
24 The relationship between the forces of production and consumption should be seen as constantly
in interaction. Marketing is dependent on interpretation of the changes in the way in which goods are
used in social relations (Miller 1987).

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lower class members observed the dress code – wearing shoes and sporting
clean, ironed and repaired clothes, and being washed and combed – as
well as its implicit codes of posture and behaviour, in addition to the nu-
clear family code, they were very welcome in the ranks of the middle class.
Since social intercourse in Hero supermarkets was a civil affair, with most
people acting politely and obligingly to each other without taking rank too
obviously into consideration, the atmosphere seemed even more relaxed
than on the upper floors of the mall. Instead of experimenting with min-
iature supermarkets, as Chan proposed vis-à-vis malls, Hero relied on the
proper attraction and ‘civilizing force’ of consumer goods.

shopping malls as institutions of jabotabek

civil society

The vast and popular Jakartan Merdeka Square has recently been trans-
formed into a kind of exclusive, middle-class theme park by Sutiyoso, the
governor of Greater Jakarta (see Chapter I). This all happened despite
the fact that the park, with its widely known national monument at its
centre, was generally regarded as the heart of the Indonesian nation and
ideologically served as the most ‘public’ place in the country. Moreover,
apparently the scarcity of public parks and recreation grounds for
the urban poor was never an important consideration at the city hall.
Sutiyoso ‘mallified’ Merdeka Square within a fortnight, in an apparent
attempt to copy the successful Jabotabek real estate developers’ approach
to space. In juxtaposition to this autocratic instance of public policy, the
statements of Victor Chan are of great interest when examining local
distinctions of ‘public’ versus ‘private’. For an entrepreneur, ‘making
“them” middle class sooner’ may seem a far-fetched long-term business
goal, belonging more to the domain of income policy than to the field
of commerce. Chan was, however, serious about these aspirations, as
was evident from his plans for an educational ‘mini-mall’. Indeed, in
the interviews Chan presented himself as a young version of an elderly
statesman rather than anything else. What I witnessed in ‘his’ mall was
that cheap and ordinary ‘traditional’ food was sold by heavily subsidized
warung keepers – an amazing development. Ironically, these warung keep-
ers could in theory have been chased away from the upgraded Merdeka
Square by Sutiyoso to find a new niche for business the next day in

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the renovated Lippo Supermal. Moreover, Chan’s views regarding the

desired expansion of the middle class or, more crudely, of the market,
were apparently shared by the supermarket chain Hero: their display and
offer of goods, such as the enormous range of skin-whitening products
and paper tissues, indicated that their main business target was also the
underclass’s mass conversion to middleclassness.
What do these developments tell us about the use and perception of
space? The blurring of the borders between ‘public’ and ‘private’ space
seems to reflect the appropriated role of the manager of the contested
space, whether he is a public or a private actor. This appropriated role is
apparently not strictly connected to formal and regulated roles and du-
ties, as we have seen in the case of Governor Sutiyoso, a public appointee
and in that of Chan, a commercial entrepreneur. As a consequence,
borders between ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres of action and responsi-
bility seemed blurred, often leaving the proper role of the state either
undefined or hybrid.25 Perceptions about blurred public-private borders
have not only led to largely class-shaped projections of ‘our’ space ver-
sus ‘theirs’, but have also contributed greatly to the confusion about the
place and role of state performance and the limits of its authority.
It is significant that shopping malls seem, for the regular visitor, de-
fined not only by an absence of the underclass but also by an apparent
absence of the state. The ‘protective power’ of the ghost of the New
Order state did manifest itself, however, not only in the army barracks
next to the Lippo Supermal, but also, subjectively, in the following letter
to the editor of The Jakarta Post:

I went to Hero supermarket on Jl. Sultan Agung in Jakarta on Aug. 20

and bought two bottles of Evian mineral water for my own consumption.
I opened one of the bottles and drank a little. I felt some salty particles
on my tongue. I looked at the bottle and discerned a number of white
grains, like salt, in the water.
Remembering a recent report in Kompas daily on the poisoning of a
number of schoolchildren after consuming a chocolate product made in
25 A spectacular instance of this phenomenon took place in September 2004, when a senior police
officer was reported to have treated the convicted Bali bomber Imron, then serving a life sentence in
prison, to a drink in a Starbucks coffee shop in the luxurious shopping mall Plaza Indonesia in Jakarta.
Police officers explained that Imron, clad in dark suit and tie, needed to be interrogated on new terror
cases, adding that ‘taking them for a drink in a cafe might be a useful technique to get information’. This
event reportedly led to outrage in Australia (The Jakarta Post online, 2-9-2004; Koran Tempo, 2-9-2004).

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France (and also the case of dioxin in Europe recently), I did not dare
drink more of the mineral water.
I appeal to the Ministry of Health, the Indonesian Consumers Foun-
dation (YLKI) and other authorized agencies to probe this matter to en-
sure protection of consumer health.26

juniarsa, jakarta

Here are many elements that typify the complex interplay between the
idea of state, wealth and class identities. The writer is apparently not at
all ‘comfortable’ with her conspicuous consumption, buying two bottles
of expensive French drinking water in the consumer’s paradise that is
Hero. She is therefore suspicious and immediately finds fault with the
product, associating the flaw with foreign poison and beseeching his
good old state for protection, instead of seeking education, more of
which she seems to need.
Aspiring consumers often felt similarly overwhelmed or threatened by
the abundance of unknown (imported) products and services. Their first
impulse, to turn to their bapak state, was understandable in the light of its
decades of authoritarianism and protectionist economic policy.27 As we
have seen, however, the proper venue for their concerns should have been
fellow consumers and commercial entrepreneurs such as Victor Chan, for
an education in consumerism. The role of the state seemed to guarantee
the workings of liberal capitalism by keeping armed forces at the ‘dispos-
al’ of shopping-mallmanagers.28 Here, the ‘firm frame’ of the New Order
state thus didn’t offer protection to its citizens, but to businesses and to free
enterprise. Meanwhile, the ambiguity of the public-private dichotomy
makes us realize that the state, by protecting the shopping mall, also pro-
tected the citizen-consumer’s sole meeting and recreation grounds, their
new ‘town square’, the locus of their civil society in the making. In fact,
what was protected concerned the development of a new public-cum-

26 The Jakarta Post, 25-8-1999.

27 The ‘experienced’ middle classes, in contrast to the ‘aspiring’ ones, are quite familiar with the idea of
the retreating or non-performing state. When massive floods in Jakarta in the beginning of 2002 caused
many poor people to leave their homes, members of the middle class organized efficient soup kitchens and
temporary dwellings, explaining eagerly that ‘the state doesn’t do a thing, that’s why we have to do it’.
28 The Armed Forces embody the monopoly on violence of the state, justifying in the case of ‘Kar-
awaci’ the exchangeability of the terms ‘state’ and ‘army’, aparat.

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private sphere – a ‘community’ of and for the middle class. This ongoing
blurring of boundaries between the public and the private realm seemed
focused on the ultimate, national rejection of the underclass as the social
category that seemed neither based in the public nor in the private sector.
The underclass, or rakyat, of Jabotabek was regarded, by the state as well
as by the middle class, as an obstinate manifestation of ‘communality’. It
partly embodied what was regarded as ‘primordial’, ‘primitive’ and ‘natu-
ral’ in the nation-state – the ape-like man on the T-shirt and his kin.29
Perceived as living in communities of extended family bands that are not
clearly demarcated, with no permanent home or address, and scraping a
living by partaking in the ‘informal economy’, unwashed and uncombed,
underclass people fully embodied the antithesis to middleclassness.
They had not yet ventured on any trajectory; they were seen as ethnic
leftovers on the road to progress. At this point Chatterjee’s analysis of the
wider implications of the state-civil society opposition becomes salient,
because the collective rejection of the underclass by the state as well as by
the middle class should be understood as the final rejection of ‘community’
and perhaps the idea of the nation. ‘Community’ simply did not fit into
the grand narrative of capital, in contrast to state and civil institutions,
which had assigned places. The fact that these civil institutions, such as the
idea of ‘citizen’ and the distinction between public and private, appeared
to have no clear definition or significance in a postcolonial context, has
formed no obstacle whatsoever in the Indonesian state-civil society debate.
In the next chapter, I set out to explore another, less obvious phe-
nomenon by which the Indonesian middle class excludes others and,
simultaneously, seems to define itself vis-à-vis the idea of the nation.
This phenomenon is the subtle and intricate interplay, recently invented
by the middle class, between the tropical climate and the artificial, air-
conditioned one. How does this interplay manifest itself in everyday life?
The nature of this politically charged interplay appears, however, to
have its roots in the late-colonial era, when social exclusion mechanisms
and practices were proliferating. Is a ‘reinvention’ or ‘revamping’ of a
particular colonial exclusion practice indeed feasible? If so, under which
conditions can this reinvention occur?

29 Apart from the underclass, the ‘primordial’ is thought to be constituted by Indonesians living in
the Outer Islands, who are approvingly regarded by the middle classes as ‘traditional’ or, in a pejorative
sense, as ‘primitive’.

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 V

Climate control, class and the nation

introduction

‘Welcome Home to the Heroes of Foreign Exchange’ – this was the ban-
ner that met returning migrant workers at Soekarno-Hatta International
Airport on the morning of 31 August 1999. That day President Habibie
inaugurated a new, third arrival terminal, exclusively designated for re-
turning migrant workers – around 600 persons each day.1 The new ter-
minal was designed to offer special protection to the vulnerable returning
migrant workers against the many extortionists and swindlers – airport
officials, in fact – who, it was claimed, preyed on them. Habibie, who
expressed sympathy for the fate of the many migrant workers who had
experienced rape and abuse by their employers abroad, also promised
them protection against this form of misery in the future.2
The workers, most of them just returning from Saudi Arabia and
forced, on the spot, to listen to their president, were told that apart
from immigration facilities, they could conveniently find both currency
exchange and coach ticket booths in the new terminal. Several reporters
were struck by the fact, that the new building was not equipped with air
conditioning (AC), but with ceiling fans, in contrast with the other two
arrival terminals. The Jakarta Post reported the next day that ‘[o]ne work-
er likened the temperature in the building to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, a
major destination for Indonesian workers’.3
Climate regulation has obviously been an important theme at the pres-
tigious Soekarno-Hatta Airport, which ceremoniously opened in 1985.
The much-praised architecture of the building initially provided a kind of
1 The Jakarta Post, 1-9-1999.
2 The majority of migrant workers are female.
3 The Jakarta Post, 1-9-1999.
|  Lost in mall

natural air conditioning through the use of specially engineered panelling

that regulated air circulation. The climate in the vast, half-open-air build-
ing complex was reported to be wonderfully cool and fresh (Hulst 1988).
Nevertheless, within a year of the opening ceremony, this miraculous con-
struction was replaced by air conditioners. In the eyes of many people –
mostly foreign travellers – this high-cost operation was incomprehensible.
Inside it was now cold, dry and stuffy, a separated, closed and ‘sealed’
space. Although there was no official statement, rumour had it that the
authorities believed that the absence of AC in a modern, prestigious and
‘international’ building complex such as the new airport was giving foreign
visitors the wrong idea about the state of modernity in Indonesia.
In Indonesian urban society, there seemed to be an association be-
tween air conditioning and modernity, although it was not much talked
about.4 This was probably because these associations were made in the
border zone of the social taboo or the ‘things unsaid’. They seemed to
belong to the tricky domain of the ongoing national project of pemban-
gunan (development), where social inequality prevailed; hence the popu-
lar term belum (not yet), which politely indicated that a person was still
situated on the lower rungs of the social ladder. Meanwhile, jokes and
innuendos, such as the remark about ‘Jeddah’ by the worker mentioned
above, revealed much about the nature of this development-related trick-
iness. In this case, it seemed that two stereotypes of social inferiority were
ironically connected by high temperatures: that of the abused foreign
labourer in hot Jeddah, and that of the backward, lower-class Indonesian
who did ‘not yet’ need AC in his or her new arrival terminal. The just-
returned ‘Hero of Foreign Exchange’ was challenging, albeit indirectly,
the sincerity of Habibie’s speech and suggesting another meaning or
purpose for Terminal Three: cleansing the two other arrival terminals
of ‘underclass’ people under the guise of ‘streamlining the immigration
procedure’ – the introduction of airport apartheid.
This suggestion is not at all far-fetched. Through daily experience
and observation I discovered that the obviousness and everyday char-
acter of the tropical climate no longer appeared to be an implicit and
collective Indonesian experience. In Jabotabek, referring to being hot or

4 I use the binary opposition of ‘modern’ versus ‘backward’ in lieu of ‘modern’ versus ’traditional’,
because this latter, confusing term is claimed by the middle class for those native aspects of culture that
represent nostalgi, for instance ‘traditional market’ for pasar. Traditionalism has thus become part of
modernity. For a differing view, see Budianta 2002.

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‘too hot’, or to the ‘mugging’ or ‘oppressive’ heat, seemed to be a mes-

sage in which a certain social prestige was being conveyed. I noticed this
when I visited a newly opened cafe in my own neighbourhood, across
the main road of Bintaro Sektor IIIa. The place, called Cyberkafe, was a
trendy, expensive and over-the-top restaurant and bar, unique and quite
pretentious for our part of town. I happened to be the only customer
among a dozen idle, uniformed personnel, but it was a while before the
nervous young bartender ventured to chat with me and asked me where
I was from. He then mentioned out of the blue that for him personally,
‘Indonesia was far too hot’. When I bluntly asked him why, he was visibly
startled. Eventually he replied: ‘Pusing’ (dizzy; sick), hesitatingly followed
by: ‘And I sweat.’ His colleagues giggled and our short conversation
ended. This slightly awkward situation reminded me of an eager new-
comer’s anxiety regarding unexplored and therefore potentially danger-
ous cultural capital. My unexpected question was enough to unsettle the
young bartender, who was apparently walking on thin ice. I went through
a similar experience when I picked up the Wiyanto family at the airport
on their return from their Eropa dan Mediteranean trip. I asked what their
most striking impression had been; ‘Hot! Hot!’ they had answered in
unison. Later Susi and Etty pointed out to me how all of them, especially
the children, had suffered from the relentless heat of Europe and the
Mediterranean, starting with their visit to the Vatican. Their collective
recollection of their trip of cultural highlights consisted mainly of the
parching heat, though they also devoted some attention to comparing
how expensive each country had been.
A final example of an artificial-climate oriented experience is an
occasion that took place in Aunt Annie’s modest bungalow in Slipi.
After announcing the big event for several years, one day her home had
suddenly been equipped with air conditioning. One morning towards
the end of 1997, my aunt took me by the arm to show me the brand-
new air conditioners in her and her daughters’ bedrooms, somewhat
solemnly informing me that ‘they now used AC’. The members of the
household had long disputed whether the religiously mixed couple
should use their savings to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca, to make
a trip to Europe, or to acquire air conditioning and a few other items.
Some of that money had already been used up, as a matter of fact, by
the installation of a boiler for hot showers two years previously. After
several visits to my aunt, it became clear to me that the new air condi-

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tioners were hardly ever put to use – possibly not at all. All the doors
and windows of the house were kept open throughout the day, and
most of the windows at night, as they had always been. My aunt and
her family had been living in this bungalow since 1962, and I had never
heard them complain about the rooms getting too hot, or make any
other remarks, for that matter, about the indoor climate. Aunt Annie
enjoyed living in this bungalow, situated next to her favourite shopping
mall and surrounded by similar bungalows, housing similar families.
She liked to take early morning strolls with the ibu-ibu (ladies) from the
neighbourhood and to visit Slipi Plaza Mal with her daughters, to hang
out and gossip for hours. When I finally asked my aunt whether she
enjoyed using her AC at night, she complained about the long-term
pains in her chest and throat, which always worsened in cold air. She
told me she preferred to sleep with the door open, without switching
on the air conditioning. This fact did not lessen her pleasure and pride
in the recent purchase of the costly equipment at all; for days she kept
mentioning that they no longer belonged to the ‘have not yets’ in their
neighbourhood, at least in regards to AC. She and her family found
themselves to be on the right side of a demarcation line.
A rare, explicit glimpse of the 1990s social context in which air con-
ditioning figured is offered by the following letter to the editor of The
Jakarta Post, written by an alarmed citizen:5

Modern housemaid

In a country where mass media pinpoints the wide gap between rich and
poor, or the haves and have nots, I would like to cite the true story of a
modern maid.
Yeyen (not her real name) commutes by bus from Tangerang to Jakar-
ta, where she works as a maid. But, sitting in the airconditioned bus, she
looks more like a lady of the nouveau riche. They say she has taste, just
because she is well-dressed. How well-dressed? Her shoes and handbags
might not be originals, but a Ricci or Satchi copy. Her cosmetics are more
or less the same as her mistress’s.
She gets Sundays off. When her house, situated behind a five-star ho-
tel, was bull-dozed due to the hotel’s expansion, she received Rp 12 mil-

5 The Jakarta Post, 7-9-1999.

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lion. They say that money begets friends and relatives. She was left with
not too much money, but with the advice and help of her employer, she
opened a bank account.
She was wise enough to buy a house at Tangerang, in a respectable
neighborhood, complete with television and telephone line. When she
cannot come to work, because she has to accompany her ailing mother to
the public hospital, or due to some other unavoidable circumstances, she
does not fail to notify her employer by phone.
When her employer goes grocery shopping, she even buys her maid
life’s necessities. She is just a maid, but is treated almost like royalty.

A. Djuana
Jakarta

The blurring of the boundaries between ‘lady’ and ‘maid’, or middle

class and underclass, expressed by the ‘facts’ of this story, is a major
source of anxiety here. It appears that maids and servants are not sup-
posed to travel in air-conditioned buses; from this starting point, the
letter-writer sees his protagonist eventually as being ‘treated almost like
royalty’, thereby suggesting that a carnival of the classes quite automati-
cally follows on from such AC liberalism.
This letter, as well as more elaborate ‘AC cases’ such as ‘Soekarno-
Hatta’, may not have been mere instances of the commodification of
everyday life, the ongoing process in which daily commodities such as
air conditioners take on a wide range of secondary or artificial associa-
tions by replacing their use value with an exchange value (Featherstone
1995:18). Rather, it seemed that these cases symbolically conveyed
a hegemonic political message containing social exclusion and using
consumer culture as its vehicle. My fieldwork provided clues that the
‘consumption’ of a commodity such as an air conditioner might require
a certain knowledge – a largely embodied knowledge – not to be found in
the AC owner’s manual. The air conditioner, although a ‘pure’ and well-
defined commodity, has become entangled in a web of associations that
are directly related to Bourdieu’s symbolic capital. In Greater Jakarta,
conversational contexts and embodied practices seemed to refer to this
acquired knowledge, expressed in air-conditioned lifestyles.
Does this simply mean that ‘comfort air conditioning’, which is the type
of air conditioning at stake here, is a consumer durable that is being used

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Facial expressions of a non-AC bus passenger (left) and an AC bus passenger

(right), cartoonist Benny Rachmadi (from the series Lagak Jakarta, 1998)

as a new marker to draw boundaries between categories in Indonesian

society, on a par with a BMW? Or is air conditioning just a technical
device in a more complex ‘construction of an autonomous cultural
sphere with rigid symbolic hierarchies, exclusive canons, and classifica-
tions’ (Featherstone 1995:20)? Consumer theory, from which these ques-
tions stem, may not clarify the meaning of the subtle processes of social
change, which seemed to be connected with the large-scale introduction
of air conditioning in Jabotabek in the 1990s. The ‘atmospheric’ quality
of the air conditioner as a commodity is perhaps partly indebted to this.
Air conditioning escapes the usual routines of display and contests of
brand, for instance, because the device itself is usually not visible at all
(although the situational context of air conditioning, such as huge dark
windowpanes, takes over this display aspect, as in the Soekarno-Hatta
Airport).
The vast body of local, particular knowledge, which over time has
been accumulated about the use and significance of air conditioning,
can properly be classified as a peculiar form of symbolic capital. The
question of how this rather recently invented commodity could in-

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duce such a body of knowledge finds its explanation in the social and
historical context in which the air conditioner could become such a
meaningful device. I am indicating an ongoing, largely implicit discus-
sion or debate on the tropical climate and its imagined repercussions
at the physical level, in a collective as well as in an individual context.
Many residents of Jabotabek had politically invested in this discursive
formation, reflecting the role of air conditioning as a vehicle for the
distribution of modernity and backwardness in Indonesia, against the
background of what seems an ‘exoticizing’ and ‘essentializing’ of the
tropical climate. This is why I call this subtle but omnipresent exchange
a discourse on climate.

a discourse on climate

I heard the familiar sigh ‘aduh panas’ (It is hot!) uttered thousands of times,
in all possible contexts, but it took years of frequent visits to Jakartan sub-
urbs before I began to recognize that ‘feeling hot’ was a highly structured,
social state of body and mind, in the context of a steady proliferation of
AC, fur coats and hot showers. Indeed, the relief that was offered to me
during very hot weather only made me realize that I myself was uncer-
tain about how hot I should feel and the heat I could and should endure,
given my Western background, my mixed racial origins, my housing situ-
ation and my occupational activities. What was ‘normal’? To surrender
to the climate and live with it was not an option in my situation – I had
to make choices about how hot I felt, about actions such as switching on
the air conditioning and about social situations. To whom could or should
I complain about the heat, and when? Obviously not to the becak driver
who transported me home after grocery shopping, and not to my visitors
from the West. I realized that the double self-reflexivity at stake here was
typical of ‘modes of ordering’: ‘self-reflexive strategies for patterning the
networks of the social’; that it was part of a discourse, with its own rules
of construction and evaluation, all inspired by air conditioning.6 Feeling
hot was apparently not only a physical, but also a social and possibly a
political thing. Was this new possibility of choice, and therefore doubt and
self-reflexivity, regarding the climate dividing Indonesian society? A grow-
6 See Law 1994:21 for an account of the notion of ‘modes of ordering’, or ‘strategies for patterning
the networks of the social’.

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ing number of young people’s bodies seemed incapable of dealing with

tropical weather. Having grown up in continually air-conditioned spaces,
young people felt no need to readjust to their own ‘national’ climate –
their self-awareness was ‘cool’. They seemed to have internalized the
special knowledge and experience attached to the discourse on climate
completely and irreversibly within their bodies, as a form of symbolic
capital – they actually fell ill when exposed to their outdoor climate for
too long. Over the years, a growing number of people in my Jabotabek
social circle seemed in doubt about their ‘body temperature awareness’,
its social meaning and the self-reflexivity it took to ‘feel hot’ or not. They
also seemed in doubt about how to partake in such a thing as a discourse
on climate. Somehow there was something risky and political at stake
regarding this matter, which touched on the domain of knowledge and
power. They sometimes failed to grasp certain subtleties. I assumed that
the majority of Indonesians, unused to air-conditioned lifestyles, had no
awareness of a special and ambiguous relationship between their selves
and the climate. Without air conditioners, they could ‘not yet’ partake in
the discourse of climate, because as such it did not exist for them.
So the discourse on climate, as I perceived it, perfectly reflected an-
other definition of Foucauldian discourse: it was a form of strategic ar-
rangement that was intentional, but did not necessarily have a subject. At
its heart was a negation of ‘normality’ (the climate), but at the same time
this forceful stance was wrapped up in body language, in clothes, in side-
lines, in palaver and chit-chat or in a complete silence, which spoke for
itself. It appeared to be the articulation of a powerful but depoliticized
elite: the better off in Indonesia. Their project resulted in the creation
of two imagined climates: their own, a cool, equable and internationally
standardized artificial climate, and the climate of ‘others’, which was
humid, stifling hot and parching: the tropical climate. These were two
highly suggestive climatic realms of symbolic social significance.
The social aspects of the climate in Indonesian society are hardly
ever openly acknowledged as a politicized or political subject, apart from
in jokes and innuendos. The question of who feels hot, when, where and
why – from a societal perspective – sounded almost daft, because the
tropical climate was a ‘neutral’, universal and timeless phenomenon, a
given that could not be changed or influenced.7 The discourse on climate

7 Climate change was not yet a widely discussed theme.

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was therefore a largely silent discourse, and the introduction of ‘artificial

climates’ seemed, paradoxically, to promote this silent discourse.
Both the everyday character and the longue durée of the local climate
contribute to the struggle for power: these two unimportant-sounding
aspects turned the climate into a ‘social’, and then into a political subject
in contemporary Indonesian society. The country’s history of political
repression and depoliticization shows that political meaning or debate
regularly became invested and dressed up in neutral or mundane subjects
outside of the authorized political arena, such as clothing styles, religion
or food (Schulte Nordholt 1997a; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). These
subjects were more or less ‘invented’ or ‘stylized’ by political activists and
they were, at least in their eyes, clearly connected, often in a symbolic
way, to political claims. As such, they were somehow demonstrative in
character. An example of this was the wearing of headscarves by fe-
male students during the late 1970s and 1980s as a religious vehicle of
political dissent. Little historical attention has been given to long-term,
unobtrusive or ‘blind’ processes of the transfer and investment of po-
litical meaning in Indonesia. Perhaps these processes were so minor or
pedestrian that they escaped scholarly scrutiny altogether. Talking about
and referring to the climate and ‘being hot’ seems to be a good instance
of the kind of phenomenon I am alluding to – daily conversation that
slowly turned into political discourse.

discourse analysis: air conditioning and beyond

One of the few anthropologists whose curiosity was triggered by the

diversity she noticed in characterizations of the Indonesian climate in
Jakarta is Shiraishi. Her Young heroes (1997), a study of middle-class fam-
ily life in the late 1980s, focused on descriptions and experiences of the
‘heat of the midday sun’ in Jakarta. In an impressionistic way, she draws
two extremes: the tough street children she observed, who ‘played tireless
and indifferent to the heat on the afternoon streets’ and the middle-class
world of the ‘parching’ afternoon sun, in which children should be pro-
tected by their family from the intolerable, exhausting heat. A signifi-
cant conversation she had with a middle-aged peasant in Central Java
(Shiraishi 1997:28) featured a comparison between working the muddy
rice fields and being a peddler on the Jakartan streets. Being in the heat

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of the sun on the streets had never bothered him, he informed her: ‘“I
was born here, in this land. I am used to it, sudah biasa”, he said, smil-
ing one of those patient smiles.’ Shiraishi had obviously questioned him
about the particular discomforts of his outdoor jobs, which is probably
why his reference to being comfortable with the sun was accompanied
by a ‘patient smile’. For him, the weather and the sun are not to put
into question: they are simply there and are normal. In his imagination
there was no room for other climates or for other forms of belonging or
‘relating’, in a self-reflexive sense, to the climate. Shiraishi also introduces
us to a one-year-old boy who had stayed in air-conditioned rooms from
birth, and who was supposedly so alienated from ‘the natural climate of
his motherland’ that he could not endure the sun’s heat at all. However,
at his grandmother’s house, he did play in the sun. Shiraishi (1997:35)
explains this event by interpreting the air-conditioned enclosure that the
boy was brought up in as ‘the thick blanket of protection […] against the
outside world of strangers and the social climate as any air-conditioned
enclosure is against the natural climate’. Shiraishi’s focus on her particu-
lar interpretation of this event distracted her from the more acute social
implications of air conditioning – its capacity to distribute modernity
and thus to exclude rather than to protect. The need for social exclusion
may not be typical for New Order society, but its tendency to restore or
‘recycle’ past or colonial forms of knowledge, techniques and formulas
bent on making social difference, is remarkable. Modernization can be
seen as a key notion for these undertakings of knowledge-restoration
and recycling. Modernization seems capable of giving unexpected, new
and ‘hard’ dimensions to formerly ‘subjective’, hushed and classified
discourses on exclusion. What I call the present-day discourse on climate
is actually a redeployment of a late-colonial discourse, which became
facilitated by modernization and could thus ‘revive’ itself.
The discourse on climate not only helped to promote exclusion, but
also seemed to facilitate a more intricate project: the estrangement of
middle-class selves from the imagined nation. In Indonesia, the idea
of ‘nation’ has been interpreted as meaning something ‘natural’ and
authentic, something primordial and inherent in the blood, much like
ethnicity. As Ariel Heryanto (2001:15) phrased it, ‘The pure construct-
edness of a social identity such as ‘‘nation’’ was simply not recognized.’
Aspirations to forsake membership of the nation, and to withdraw from
this artificial, state-induced community, were thus a rather complicated

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affair – it probably involved the condition of the body, since the essence
of nationalism is often felt to be located there. Self-evident and everyday
aspects of the climate in which people live and which they share with
their compatriots seem, for many modern Indonesians, to no longer be
part of everyday normality. It is in this sense that the climate has become
‘subjectified’ and has become, over the decades, part of a sphere of
contestation. There was a subtle and peculiar social anxiety and confu-
sion connected to ‘feeling/being hot’ in the largest urbanized part of
Indonesia, Jabotabek.
The focus of invested symbolic meaning in the discourse of climate
has widened to include not only commodities such as air-conditioning
installations but also the body itself. Perceptions of the elite regarding
‘dealing with the climate’ had come to be shared, over the years, by up-
wardly mobile middle-class people, who focused on the commodities that
seemed relevant to the discourse on climate. The important symbolic
meanings and implications of air conditioning had become interwoven
with its proliferation. Younger generations of elite and upper-middle-
class people tended, eventually, to embody the discourse on climate,
in the sense that their bodies seemed no longer adjusted to a tropical
climate, as if this ability of the body had evaporated after being continu-
ously cooled down. Before examining the practices of such ‘defaulting’
bodies, a further survey of the situational context of air-conditioned
space in a wider sense offers useful insights regarding this ‘cooling down’.

configurations of air-conditioned space

The swift replacement of the natural air circulation system with win-
dowpanes and air conditioners at the recently completed national air-
port appears to be a clear example of spatial intervention with a largely
symbolic character. The question of whether the indoor climate needed
adjustment or not appeared to have been of no importance at all; the
unacceptable image created by the completion of a vast, modern and
prestigious building without artificial air conditioning – without the
‘jewel in the crown’ – needed to be fixed at all costs. The Soekarno-
Hatta-case is thus comparable to the introduction of air conditioning
in Aunt Annie’s bungalow: she felt her home to have been ‘upgraded’
after the long-awaited installation of AC, even if she never switched it

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on. The symbolic function of the air conditioners is also comparable to

my uncle’s perpetually unopened bottle of whisky, which stood in the
open cupboard in the living room. My uncle, a devout Muslim, kept
this bottle until recently, 1998, as a token of his modern and ‘national’
orientation. Objects and their arrangement in my aunt’s house, full of
contradiction and ambivalence, have always been a wonderful indication
of the state of ‘things’ in New Order society.8 They reflect, in a subtle
way, the homely materialization of pembangunan and ‘maju-ness’ – a par-
ticular, Indonesian understanding of modernity that draws on notions of
urbanity and consumerism.9
‘Contradiction and ambivalence’ can also be signified by the absence
of objects, as the missing air conditioning in the third terminal suggests.
Habibie’s words at the inauguration took on an air of contradiction in
and through this context of ‘conspicuous’ absence of air conditioners.
If we regard the new national airport as a monument of modernization
– in the same sense as Monas, the huge national monument, has been
called ‘Soekarno’s self-portrait’, an objectification of the nation-state’s
own image of its modernity – it becomes clear why air conditioning was
indispensable in this project (Lindsey 1993:192). An image of modernity
that did not have the fundamental symbol of AC would be missing a
very important element of gengsi, (distinction), namely maju-ness (prog-
ress), at the expense of or just compared with others, the backward or
not-yet-modern people. This can also be ascertained from the way my
aunt talked about her neighbours: she used to classify them as ‘haves’
and ‘have not yets’. I also gathered this from the subtle stress she placed
on the word ‘now’, when she announced: ‘we now use AC’. For my aunt,
the presence of air-conditioning equipment in a home was an unmistak-
able status marker. Here we can find a diversification in consumption
patterns: whereas she acquired an object (and its symbolism), the expe-
rienced AC-elite bought an environment. The actual indoor climate was
in this context of no interest to Aunt Annie. Because she always enjoyed
the soft breeze that wafted through her rooms from the wide-open doors
and windows, she had no desire to change these arrangements. Aunt

8 See Van Leeuwen 1997a. According to Miller (1994:313), objects form ‘primary objectifications of
values and orders, in which groups of people as, in effect, arrays of objects are then also incorporated
[…] while we sometimes become disturbed by the inconsistencies and partial commitments of people, it
is less problematic to find contradiction and ambivalence signified in objects’.
9 On maju see Sekimoto 1997:333.

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Annie had always greatly enjoyed being fanned for hours at a stretch by
her former servant Sum while watching television. She simply abhorred
– and did not ‘understand’ – the freezing, dry cold that, especially in
the early 1990s, became the standard temperature in prestigious offices,
major cinemas, top-class shopping malls and executive-class train com-
partments. She had no acquired taste, nor physical knowledge, to cope
with or ‘savour’ the artificial cold climate. Although she was engaged in
the discourse on climate, hence the ‘senseless’ purchase of AC, she re-
fused or did not know how to partake in what seemed to be the ultimate
in symbolic capital – a ‘cool’ body. Annie’s sense of modernity found its
limits in her sense of bodily comfort, as was probably the case with the
majority of middle-aged and elderly people.
In Greater Jakarta, just before Krismon broke out at the end of 1997,
it appeared clearer than ever that air conditioning was not merely being
used to adjust the indoor climate of big buildings, but to create exclusive
atmospheres, interconnected islands, of intense cold. The degree of
coldness became a new source of gengsi (prestige) – the colder, the better
– and connected to this, the individual’s ability to cope with it. Dubious
stories about amazing, freezing temperatures and Antarctic situations
circulated. An amusing example of such an urban legend focused on
a newly completed, prestigious high-rise building in the city, on Jalan
Rasuna Said, where the father of a relation of a friend’s acquaintance
happened to have his office. The air conditioners in the place were said
to be pre-programmed to produce such amazingly low temperatures that
the half-frozen staff of his company, after some deliberation, decided to
have heaters flown in from Australia. Attempts to check up on this fan-
tastic story predictably failed.10
The usual outfits to fight frigid temperatures consisted of wool busi-
ness suits, fake fur coats, long-sleeved jersey dresses, boots, turtle-necked
jumpers and leather jackets. When the ‘fall and winter season’ started
each year, in early December, these outfits were all worn by models
partaking in fancy fashion shows in the more prestigious shopping malls.
They were also shown in display windows, amid artificial snow and
Christmas trees. The inconvenience that was inevitably caused by wear-
ing these winter clothes in a tropical climate was apparently to be en-
dured, which was – as I once overheard – taken as showing disiplin, which

10 Pauline van Roosmalen, personal communication, June 2002.

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had previously been associated with wearing shoes. Significantly, disiplin

was never associated with ‘enduring’ the tropical climate – the latter was
invariably communicated by sighing ‘aduh panas’ (It is hot). However, the
prolonged exposure to air-conditioned space actually promoted a disci-
plining of the body, eventually resulting in ‘defaulted’ bodies.

bodily techniques

Returning to the rather modest claims on modernity that were put forward
by technology in my Aunt Annie’s house, her example shows that the ef-
fects of such claims ran their own course after a while. This refers not to
the process by which the supply of and access to symbolic goods is restrict-
ed by the ‘specialists in symbolic production’, but to the phenomenon of
‘embodied knowledge’, a form of symbolic capital, that appeared to be a
side effect of the prolonged use of air conditioning. Over time this form of
knowledge became part of a wider cultural practice. Annie’s abhorrence
of cold artificial climates marked her as a late arrival to this practice, since
she somehow mistook or neglected the drift of the discourse on climate.
Unlike Shiraishi’s much earlier experience with the ‘protected’ little
boy, I have met and befriended a considerable number of people who
not only informed me that they could not live without AC, but whose
bodies showed unmistakable signs of overheating and bordered on
collapse when exposed to the ‘tropical climate’. Budi, who visited me
in Amsterdam in the summer of 1996, seemed unable to endure the
‘heatwave’ that happened to strike the city – temperatures reached 30-
33º C. He looked pale all the time, sweated profusely, felt miserable and
was almost unable to move – coping without air conditioning all day
actually made him desperate. He finally flew back home to Jakarta, five
days ahead of schedule. I have seen these ‘symptoms’ in other friends
and acquaintances as well, for instance when I lured them into taking
a neighbourhood stroll early in the morning or just before dusk, when
elderly Chinese and an occasional middle-aged person wearing jogging
trousers took some fresh air this way. Taking strolls in the fresh air, or
simply walking during the daytime was an inconceivable activity for
most middle-class people, whether they were used to air conditioning
or not. My Aunt Annie, for instance, who enjoyed early-morning strolls
wearing jogging trousers along with the ibu-ibu, resented all other forms

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of outdoor walking which seemed beyond comprehension to her. When

I stayed at her home years before, in 1994, I had invited her and her
family for a fast-food dinner in Slipi Plaza Mal, in a Japanese-style res-
taurant called Hoka Hoka Bentu (Van Leeuwen 1997a:78). Although a
walk to the mall’s main entrance should have taken our small company
just five minutes, she and her adolescent sons and daughters refused to
go to the mall in any other way than by car – they later claimed that it
was ‘too hot’ to walk. To me, going by car meant first of all driving to
the highway, then making a difficult U-turn, and finally being stuck in a
traffic jam for at least half an hour to drive 750 metres, before reaching
Slipi Plaza’s parking lot, which had in fact bordered on Annie’s front
yard before the mall was burned down in May 1998.
Annie was not pleased when I persisted in walking and the dinner
party got off on the wrong foot. Back then, I had not yet realized that
‘walking’ as a family could only be properly performed in a shopping
mall, and that a family should arrive there in an air-conditioned car.
Arriving at a mall on foot, as a family, was clearly felt by Annie as
somewhat humiliating or unnatural, a sensation that I could only fully
understand and empathize with much later.11 The social construct of the
average New Order family relied heavily on cars, because a car could
define a family, given a suitable context such as a shopping mall or an
airport. In general, when middle-class people ventured to walk outdoors
during daytime, their bodies suffered visibly, and the same applied to
young children. ‘We cannot live without AC’, explained a young and
progressive academic, trained overseas as an architect. ‘We have to work
in our offices and drive back and forth, for us it is totally impossible to
live without AC. A modern society cannot afford people having siestas,
although our climate asks for them.’
References to being hot or ‘too hot’, or to the ‘stifling’ or ‘oppressive’
heat, became a message in which a certain, significant social prestige
was conveyed, without need of further context. Take, for example, my
meeting with the young bartender, who found Indonesia ‘far too hot’
and who was visibly upset when I unexpectedly asked ‘why’. My ques-
tion made him feel that he was not experienced enough to partake in the
discourse on climate, which is why the effect of his ‘utterance’ was lost.
What this young man seemed to want to signal to me was that he could
11 All the more so, since I came to understand that Annie was aware of Slipi Plaza being classified as
a ‘downgraded’ mall.

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Outdoor entertainment in Ancol, Jakarta’s old-fashioned seaside
amusement park
 V  Climate control, class and the nation  |

be classified among the modern part of the nation that could not endure
the national climate. Even without lifelong exposure to air conditioning,
he belonged to the class of free-floating global citizens and not to that of
the primordial ‘tropical Indonesians’. A cynical side effect not only of the
grand-scale use of air conditioners but also of general traffic conditions
in Jakarta was the infected and poisoned outdoor climate on the main
avenues and arterial roads. Because the middle classes were not supposed
to spend a second longer outdoors, in public space, than absolutely nec-
essary, the condition of the outdoor environment was generally neglected
and nobody seemed to care.12 There was little serious interest in planting
and maintaining shadow trees, in fighting and reducing air pollution,
in careful placement of the numerous outlet pipes of air conditioners
or the construction of pedestrian-friendly walkways, apart from in the
space immediately surrounding shopping malls or exclusive real estate.
‘Public air’ was thus largely comparable to public space in that both were
neglected, as aspects of the collective environment, by the city adminis-
tration. Clean air had become, in certain parts of town, a synonym for
air-conditioned, ‘private’ air. As a consequence, outdoor public spaces
became more unattractive, inhospitable and unhealthy, while the need
for indoor air-conditioned space increased, thereby creating a gap not
only between two types of space, but also between two distinct worlds.
On a bright morning, the young academic I mentioned above of-
fered to be my guide during a walk through old Menteng, a lush and
shady neighbourhood of architectural interest, without excessive exhaust
fumes from traffic. During this daytime walk, he often had to rest and
after a while started to complain of dizziness and a headache – he was
perspiring heavily and looked awful. The next day, he reported that he
was actually ill. All morning, I had a strong impression that it was not
the actual heat, which seemed quite manageable that morning, but the
idea of being exposed to ‘tropical heat’, that triggered his indisposition.
It was not the sumptuous acquisition of commodities that was at stake
here, but the sequential acquirement of new bodily techniques. Marcel
Mauss (1973:74-5) recognized, while travelling abroad long ago, what he
called ‘social idiosyncrasies of the body’ and the role of education and
biology in it:

12 When office workers who work along the big avenues need to go to an adjacent skyscraper, they do
not walk but take an ojek.

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The action is imposed from without, from above, even if it is an exclu-

sively biological action, involving his body. [...] It is precisely this notion
of the prestige of the person who performs the ordered, authorized,
tested action vis-à-vis the imitating individual that contains all the social
element. The imitative action which follows contains the psychological
element and the biological element.

Techniques of the body can be classified into actions of a mechanical, a

physical or a physico-chemical order. The latter type of action seemed to
be on the advance in Jabotabek, simultaneous with the steady advance of
air conditioning. My young architect friend’s natural ability to cope with
the idea of tropical climate seemed to have been lost somewhere earlier
in his life. As Mauss (1973:76) puts it: ‘The constant adaptation to a physi-
cal, mechanical or chemical aim […] is pursued in a series of assembled
actions, and assembled for the individual not by himself alone but by all
his education, by the whole society to which he belongs, in the place he
occupies in it’. Mauss points out that a physical/chemical bodily process
such as perspiration can be subject to intricate social regulation – in this
case to the ‘de-tropification’ of a young, middle-class body. This clearly
appeared to be an acquired bodily technique, which belonged to the
symbolic capital of the upper middle class. People of upper-class strata
did not consider members of the lower class, such as domestic servants,
eligible to acquire new bodily techniques. For them, the tropical climate
was not deemed a problem. A Bintarese friend of mine named Maya,
a young, liberal-minded, successful artist, happily showed me the newly
built second floor of her modest house, where her bedrooms were situ-
ated. When I remarked that they were all furnished with air conditioning,
she replied that it was ‘of course’ impossible to sleep or even live without
AC on the new floor. In saying this, she did not take into account the
closet-like quarters where her servants spent the night, without AC, a fan
or even an indoor window or ventilation hole. She presumed that her ser-
vants lived in a different climate, one that did not require any adjustments.
I heard many similar ‘silences’ or typical remarks concerning the
position of pembantu regarding domestic arrangements. I received ample
instruction on the topic of domestic servants, when an elderly upper-
class lady living in the lush district of Cilandak gave me a lecture as I was
about to move into my own Bintaro row house. According to this lady,
the ‘principle of the servant’ was that the servant always works under

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the lady’s supervision. Furthermore, the partition between the lady’s and
the servant’s quarters should always be kept closed and locked at night
as well as during the lady’s absence. She informed me that pembantu bod-
ies were better suited to the heat than ‘ours’ and that they never should
be granted the use of AC. ‘But’, she continued, ‘they could very well,
on request, be supplied with a small fan’. (This remark brings back to
mind the Soekarno-Hatta-case.) Again, an opaque distinction is made
between lower-class and middle-class bodies, which in any case should
justify poor accommodation. The letter to the editor of The Jakarta Post
by A. Djuana, who clearly feared a dissolution of boundaries between
‘lady’ and ‘maid’ caused by the indiscriminate use of AC in public buses,
also alluded to this ‘natural’ distinction.
Air-conditioned space was first of all cleared space, which meant
that it was free from unwanted social elements, from intruders – a place
where ‘we can be among our own kind’, according to Sissy. It was, also
in this sense, a successor of naar boven (literally ‘going up’), a colonial col-
loquialism that I once overheard being used by a millionaire’s wife from
Cinere, in Jabotabek. She meant going up for a trip to the cool mountain
resort of Puncak and escaping the heat and bustle of the city, just as the
colonials did in the old days. I gathered this when Susi surprised me
during an afternoon visit to her place on one of my first days in Bintaro,
when she remarked: ‘Let’s take Wina out to the mall for some fresh air.
She has been indoors for the whole day!’ I understood then that for many
middle-class people the air-conditioned environment of shopping malls
equalled an ‘outdoor’ situation, naar boven, where a family could enjoy a
healthy, leisurely stroll in an artificial climate, which they experienced as
‘fresh air’. Shopping malls were regarded thus even by families who lived
in relatively healthy neighbourhoods, such as Bintaro Jaya. Many months
later, I came to share this outlook on ‘outdoor’ situations myself. Once
used to living in an artificial environment – a vast and dense suburb
without open recreation grounds, forests, lakes or parks – I began to ex-
perience the repetitive visits to shopping malls as breaths of fresh air and
opportunities to enjoy outdoor space. To me as well the shopping malls
came to represent not only town squares, but also the Great Outdoors.
The extent to which acquired bodily techniques regarding the ‘cli-
mate’ served as a class marker became highly visible at the beginning of
1998, when the nightclubbing middle classes, or ‘Indoyups’, transferred
their ongoing nightlife celebrations to the Jakartan suburban city streets

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due to Krismon. Until then, recreational activities on city avenues – in

open, public spaces – had been anathema to the middle classes, because
of the widespread associations with poverty, crime and pollution (Van
Leeuwen 1997a). The initial success of the kafe tenda originated in the
fact that their cosmopolitan clientele had been introduced to the outdoor
catering industry while abroad – they demonstratively knew how to sit,
eat, move and relax, on narrow but stylish public terraces. These bodily
techniques differed so much from the ‘traditional’ postures of common
Indonesians having a meal at a street stall (warung) – perched on a wooden
bench, crouched over their bowl and half-hidden behind a banner – that
there was not the slightest chance of misinterpreting the situation. Bodily
techniques could thus be helpful in changing the nature of public as
well as private space. As we have seen in the previous chapter, displaying
‘Western’ body language and suppressing ‘Indonesian’ body language,
such as the traditional jongkok squatting position, could turn the privately
owned space of the shopping mall into a designated area of ‘modern’
public culture.
This was also visible in Bintaro’s posh quarter ‘River Park’ on
Tujuhbelas, the national holiday on 17 August. On this annual occa-
sion the inhabitants of this affluent neighbourhood organized plays and
games for the kampung population, including the children, who lived just
behind the bordering concrete wall. Budi, my friend from ‘River Park’,
posed as a cynic: ‘Today is a politically correct day for us. We can be to-
gether with the rakyat (common people) for just one day.’ In spite of this
claim, the segregation of the two kinds on the square of wasteland that
served as a playground that day reminded one greatly of a zoo situation:
the darker-skinned kampung people were all squatted together silently
in the scarce shade on the field, dressed in worn shorts and T-shirts,
barefooted or wearing rubber sandals. The ‘River Park’ people were
neatly dressed in light-coloured tennis and golf outfits, some wearing
gloves, sporting Ray-Bans, gold-rimmed spectacles and white caps. They
stood to one side in the full sunshine – a rare situation for them – legs
apart, folded arms, constantly joking. Some of them consistently spoke in
English to their children and neighbours. Budi had admitted to me that
he had taken off his gold Rolex watch before leaving home out of fear
of meeting a pickpocket, although no social mixing took place at all. The
‘clean’ games, such as tug-of-war, were performed by the inhabitants of
‘River Park’ – hence the gloves – whereas the ‘dirty’ games such as greasy

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From the Ullen Sentalu Museum brochure

pole climbing, were played by the rakyat, who I heard being ridiculed by
their hosts because of their eagerness to capture prizes.13
The domain of knowledge that was invested in the discourse exoticiz-
ing the tropical climate seemed based on a rather complicated form of
symbolic capital, which restricted meaningful participation to members
of the ‘established’ middle classes. Lifelong exposure to air conditioning
provided, for instance, special knowledge, not only in the form of various
bodily techniques, but also regarding the finesse of air-conditioned lifestyles
versus ‘tropical’ ways of life. Yet, there was no escape from the discourse
on climate, just as ‘there is no way out of the game of culture’ (Bourdieu
1989:35). Since all Indonesians relate to this tropical climate, they all

13 Prizes consisted of boxes of Indomie instant noodles, Rinso detergent, T-shirts and a rice cooker.

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relate to this discourse, as became clear in the remarks of Shiraishi’s peas-

ant. This aspect of the discourse on climate made it resemble a ‘national
project’, with an assessment criterion that was both tacit and totalitarian in
character. Since the discourse on climate as a national mode of ordering
so obviously accommodated the Indonesian middle class, we could address
questions concerning its background and genesis by the exploration of a
place where the quest for modernity, air conditioning and the actual cli-
mate have become greatly entangled: the private Ullen Sentalu Museum,
near Yogyakarta in Central Java, which was founded in 1997.
This museum differs from the two aforementioned ‘cases’ – Soekarno-
Hatta Airport and my Aunt Annie’s bungalow – in that it is not solely air
conditioning that is used as a token of modernity, but the whole contex-
tualization of the museum, of which AC forms an inalienable part. At
the time privately-owned museums were still scarce in Indonesia; almost
all museums were financed by the state and, as such, they were regarded
as typical ‘state’ institutions. What was actually on display in the Ullen
Sentalu Museum is not easy to convey. According to its colourful and
glossy brochure,

Batik tradition and her costume are the Javanese heritage and the ex-
istence of its cultural identity when women of the royal courts had the
leisure and meditation to create the philosophical patterns reflecting the
beauty, mistery and legend of the Javanese noble’s history.
The Ullen Sentalu-stone museum which was constructed from its
stone soil and located on the slope of the triangular mountain of Kaliu-
rang – where the captured view of Mt. Merapi and the anchored spirit of
Ullen Sentalu are in nDalem Kaswargan (Heavenly Hills) – is dedicated
for fostering public’s appreciation on the historical artifacts and artistic
mastery along with experiencing the nature myth of Kaliurang heights.
The institution management of the Museum provides multifaceted
venue in romantic nuance for discovering the hidden treasures inside an
encyclopedia of the ancient elements which meticulously remains con-
served for study and enjoyment purposes.

The official language of the museum, which was located in the cool
mountain resort of Kaliurang, close to cheap restaurants, guesthouses
and a vast recreational park for children, was English, as attested by the
brochure. Its location suggested that it was targeting lower middle-class

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families on Sunday outings – the Kaliurang area is virtually deserted on

weekdays. Its admission rates were nevertheless very high (five times as
high as the children’s park’s), because, as manager Nyonya Eva told me
later during an interview, the museum aimed to cater to a select audience
(a seleksi). State museums, in contrast, were free or very cheap.
Anyone expecting to admire fine, antique specimens of batik in
this museum must have felt disappointed, since only one of the many
stylishly designed and illuminated rooms was dedicated to this subject.
The few, not particularly interesting examples of batik on display were
folded, wrapped in plastic and stocked in a huge glass cabinet. On the
walls of the entrance hall hung a row of framed photocopies of sepia-
tinted, colonial-era photos, some depicting anonymous Dutch families
dressed in white and sitting in gardens. Most of the rooms were occu-
pied by very large, brand-new, cheap-looking paintings of stereotypical
‘Javanese royal families’ in various ‘traditional’ settings strongly recalling
cinema billboards. Among these paintings was a large portrait of the late
Princess Diana and Prince Charles in the same billboard style, with a
vase of white flowers in front of it.14 The representational status of these
unsigned paintings was unclear: were they fine art or merely pious, rev-
erential portraits? Were they ethnographies or historical narratives? All
the paintings were protected by two centimetres of thick safety glass, on
which several yellow stickers were taped at random, with dates and exact
times of cleaning and what I presumed to be the initials of the cleaner.
Nyonya Eva informed me later that one of the goals of the museum was
indeed kebersihan, that is, to keep the building clean and tidy, since Ullen
Sentalu was a museum swasta, a private museum. I came across small glass
cases scattered around the floor of the museum, in which humidity and
temperature were apparently recorded or controlled.
What actually seemed to be on display in the museum was display
itself. There did not appear to be a single ‘historical artefact’, ‘artistic
mastery’ or work of art in its collection that justified such striking features
of modern museum technology.15 Illumination, protection, guiding, se-

14 The late Princess Diana is an especially revered heroine in the Indonesian middle class. The day
after she died, I received an email from Budi with ‘his personal condolences’, saying that he felt very
sorry for me, ‘because she was a wonderful person’.
15 There is a similarity here with Pemberton’s findings about the Indonesia Museum in Taman Mini,
a Jakartan theme park focusing on the ‘beauty’ of Indonesia, inspired by Disneyland. Although I do
not share Pemberton’s (1994:256) assertion that a museum cannot have new objects on display, he does
recognize the ‘abuse’ of the ‘museum form’ in order to legitimize New Order politico-cultural claims.

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curity, ticketing, cleaning, modes of display, climate regulation and the

final ‘evaluation questionnaire’ were all of superior quality and doubtless
the trump cards of the museum. ‘All’, as my uniformed and obligatory
guide explained, ‘very unlike state museums, which are dirty, dusty, dark
and all without air conditioning’. Nyonya Eva informed me that Ullen
Sentalu was part of a bigger company that also exported garments. The
owner, Pak Samuel, was a very wealthy surgeon of Chinese descent, an
orang Kristen (a Christian), who lived in Jakarta. The concept and design
of the place, with its Ullen Sentalu Domestique Museum Shop and the
Java Bazaar Museum Café, had all been his very own idea – his private
dream. When we said goodbye, Eva announced the traditional Javanese
wedding of a relative of Pak Samuel, which would take place the fol-
lowing Sunday in the museum grounds. After paying US$ 50 in cash,
foreign guests were welcome to witness this authentic and exceptionally
sakral ceremony in Yogya-style, at which she could guarantee the pres-
ence of four royal highnesses from the kraton (palace). A batik fashion
show was included in the price, as well as a packed lunch and a guided
tour through the museum.
In the Ullen Sentalu Museum, it was not only the air conditioning
that signalled hypermodernity, but all available technological gadgets
and devices that together represented high museum technology, in em-
phatic contrast with the state’s ‘primitive’ way of handling important
collections, ‘all without air conditioning’, as my guide had significantly
pointed out. This was also reflected in the museum shop and restaurant,
which were designed according to recent Western fashion. The hybrid
collection itself – the photocopies, amateurish paintings and tourist ob-
jects – seemed to cater to a middle class that appeared to have no clues
or memories of its past. Its function was largely educational, since it sug-
gested glimpses of a nostalgic colonial past and a corresponding, vague
‘Javanese’ dynasty, in which an average middle-class person should be
able to find an imagined but comfortable historical niche. It was there-
fore no coincidence that the very last room on the museum’s tour was
dedicated to a huge painting of an obese, elderly Chinese woman wear-
ing Javanese royal attire and surrounded by kneeling servants. I correctly
presumed her to be one of Pak Samuel’s ancestors – it was in fact his
mother. In creating Ullen Sentalu, a hypermodern and internationally
standardized museum, Pak Samuel had provided a valid mediator not
only between his own Chinese origins and a ‘Javanese heritage and the

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beauty, mistery and legend of the Javanese noble’s history’, but between
a whole class of people who had recently arrived at greater wealth and
seemed at a loss for an authentic cultural identity (Lindsey 1993:170).
Clifford (1997:122), perceiving museums as political institutions,
makes a distinction between what he called majority museums, which
articulate cosmopolitan and national patrimonies, and tribal museums,
whose agenda is to escape such notions and to maintain an ‘oppositional
predicament’. By not distinguishing between art and culture and by
challenging the notion of a unified national history, the tribal museum
historicizes and politicizes viewing positions. According to this classifica-
tion, the Ullen Sentalu Museum is a tribal museum. It produces and
exploits familiar ‘museum effects’ to offer an imagined, shared history
to the middle-class ‘tribe’, in which a deliberately vague Javaneseness, a
flirtation with the colonial past and a contempt for the Indonesian state
and its amateurish museums go hand in hand. The role of technologi-
cal innovation – as a vehicle for modernity – in validating these various
claims is of crucial value; the longed-for colonial past can be modernized
in retrospect, and can thus still be experienced.

degeneration and moral rearmament –

from ‘knowledge’ to ’discourse’

Under which historical and political conditions could a concept such as

the climate ever become part of a sphere of socio-cultural contest? Now
that the climate has been ‘cultivated’ into an exclusive set of middle-class
lifestyle practices, are these practices possibly after-effects of preceding
efforts at symbolic production? According to Appadurai (1996), certain
links exist between present-day socio-political consciousness in India and
distinct styles and techniques of British colonial bureaucracy. In his essay
Number in the colonial imagination, he examines the colonial roots of the vola-
tile politics of entitlement (‘what are your rights?’) and of classification
(‘what group do you belong to and where does it fit in the political land-
scape?’) in contemporary India. Elaborating Edward Said’s argument
that even orientalist imagination could prepare the way for armies and
bureaucracies, Appadurai (1996:115) explores the precise links between
the ‘orientalist knowledge project’ and the ‘colonial project of domination
and extraction’. He focuses on the changing role in this knowledge project

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of censuses, numbers and enumerations (of bodies, castes, villages, dis-

tances and wells) from the nineteenth century onwards, stating that ‘their
referential status quickly became far less important than their discursive
importance in supporting or subverting various classificatory moves and
the policy arguments based on them’. According to Appadurai, the colo-
nial state’s discursive or rhetorical needs were thus construed centrally as
statistical needs. Moreover, the pedagogical and disciplinary functions of
numerical strategies regarding the vast bureaucracy and population were
considered very helpful in controlling and reforming the latter.
Appadurai’s examination of colonial styles invites us to explore a cer-
tain analogy to the after-effects of the late Netherlands Indies knowledge
project, of which the discourse on climate forms an important part. At
the beginning of the twentieth century, knowledge about the East Indies
increasingly manifested itself in the medical and moral realm – often as
‘scientific’ claims – while the rhetorical properties of this knowledge be-
came simultaneously more outspoken than ever. This ‘rhetorical’ shift in
the role of colonial knowledge is largely comparable to the British Indian
experience (see also Clancy-Smith and Gouda 1998:10-1). Appadurai’s
(1996:134) assumption that ‘the colonial gaze and its associated tech-
niques have left an indelible mark on Indian political consciousness’
makes sense for Indonesian political realities as well, although the nature
of the respective knowledge projects was rather different in character,
largely due to demographic reasons. As Jean Gelman Taylor (1982)
has made clear, the role of colonial (that is, Indo-European) women in
shaping the Netherlands Indies was more pronounced than elsewhere;
matters of succession and finance prior to the nineteenth century were
largely dependent on female family ties. Taylor also mentioned an ap-
parent incongruity in Indies society: the largely gender-bound mixing
of languages, manners and customs at all levels of society, in sharp
contrast to the British Indian colonial way of life. Consequentially, the
process of exoticization, which could have been brought about by any
Dutch knowledge project, was initially limited. Many potentially ‘exotic’
aspects of the Indies (such as language, food, dress and religion) were
intimately connected to colonial daily life by female kinship relations.
This limitation could also have been a consequence of the related fact
that, according to Taylor (1982:135), the Dutch were unable to maintain
the coherence and integrity of their own culture in the colony, even for a
few decades. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the size of the

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mixed-blooded population in the colony had become so large that people

of mixed-blood descent played a role in almost all layers of society. As
a consequence, whereas the British may have been ‘virtually obsessed’
(Appadurai 1996) with classifying the Indian population, the Dutch were
more preoccupied with attempts to draw the borderline between ‘us’ and
‘them’ – skin colour was little help here.16
The rather relaxed Indies way of living came to a halt in the last
decades of the nineteenth century.17 Shortly after the Suez-channelled
influx of fresh colonials from the mother country, among whom were
thousands of white brides bearing new moral attitudes towards the
Indies way of life, elite colonial society transformed into all but a social
annex of Holland. European-born women had to be protected against
the immoralities of ‘mestizo’ or Indo-European lifestyles. This entailed a
sharpening of the ‘colour line’ and a general closing of the ranks of white
society. Customary (concubine) relationships between white men and na-
tive women were deemed immoral and shameful for the polite colonial
society. The ancient Indo-European culture became suspect, and was
even seen as degenerate. The arrival of white women not only introduced
racist and other new classifications within white colonial society, but also
created new differences between the races – they became the bearers of
newly defined colonial morals, supported by a new, ‘scientific’ knowledge
project that focused on the colonial and colonized body (Stoler 1991:426).
Behind these developments was a deeply felt anxiety concerning the
supposed white supremacy and apparent colonial order. At the begin-
ning of the twentieth century, white totok (just-arrived’) immigrants, liv-
ing according to Dutch standards, started to dominate the upper levels
of government and society, and they set the tastes and fashions for the
rest, although their number remained small in proportion to the total
European, largely mixed-blooded population (J.G. Taylor 1982:168). The
cultural identity of the colony became re-established or ‘Europeanized’
and the colony was now baptized ‘Tropical Holland’. The newly arrived
white brides were all but appointed as its ‘guards’. As Ann Stoler (1991)
points out, this fear of the imminent degeneration of the white race
stimulated new ideas about eugenics, which not only provided a new ter-

16 In 1886, all who lived as ‘Europeans’ and were regarded as such by their associates were, on request,
officially confirmed in that status (J.G. Taylor 1983:170).
17 The British interregnum in the early nineteenth century had interrupted the ‘relaxed’ Dutch colo-
nial way of life.

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minology for the colonial elite but also entailed a medically and morally
based concern regarding white prestige in general. In its wake came a
debate focusing on further racial segregation and new sexual and moral
norms. The new, racist and class-specific colonial identity was connected
to fear of sexual contamination, physical danger, moral decline and
an unfit climate, which was said to cause degeneration after prolonged
exposure (Stoler 1991:421). The author and notorious Indies-hater Bas
Veth (1977:1) introduced the colony to his Dutch audience as early as
1900 as follows: ‘All that arrives fresh, becomes faded; what blushes,
pales; what blossoms, withers; what glitters, becomes dull; what glows,
becomes extinguished; – ideas, feelings; notions; illusions; body-and-soul
of Europeans, who must live there…’
Degeneration was believed to express itself at physical, moral
and cultural levels, causing severe psychical disturbances and nervous
breakdowns that demanded a specialized tropical medical science.
Acclimatization, which in the previous centuries had been promoted and
encouraged as a healthy way of becoming adjusted to life in the tropics,
now became something that contained danger and implied the loss of
white identity. The fear of degeneration was so pervasive that people of
mixed race, the former ‘champions’ of acclimatization, became suspect,
as argued by Pattynama (1998:99-100):

miscenegation was increasingly viewed not only as a sign of racial degen-

eration but also as a cause of political unrest. Until the late nineteenth
century, mixed Indo children had been regarded as physically and psycho-
logically better equipped to flourish in the tropical climate. After the turn
of the century, in contrast, Indo-European children were depicted more
often as the tangible evidence of their white father’s sexual weakness, as if
they were suddenly tainted, both physically and morally, by the supposedly
inferior qualities of their Indonesian and Indo-European mothers.

The ‘dangerous’ climate had to be tamed by a strict diet and faultless per-
sonal hygiene, for which European women were made fully responsible.
Various manuals on ‘the tropical household’ taught these women how to
spend their time instructing, supervising and controlling native domestic
servants. ‘Holland’ became the leading principle in all matters domestic.
The new colonial identity was reflected in a drastic change, a ‘de-
tropification’ of lifestyle practices, such as matters concerning hygiene,

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sexuality, leisure, food and dress. Locher-Scholten (2000) mentions the

remarkable introduction, between the world wars, of woollen suits and
hand-muffs for ladies in Indies fashion magazines – the predecessors of
the furs and winter clothes in present-day shopping malls. According to
Locher-Scholten (2000:139), ‘Europe was the main information source.
In the early 1930s, the women’s pages of the Java-bode were beyond time
and place; they had no particular setting and did not refer to the Indies at
all.’ Clothing styles and materials reflected a nostalgia for Europe, hence
the ‘illusory nature of these fashion columns’.
Focusing on the particular aspects of the Netherlands Indies that are
most instrumental to this change in colonial politics, the redefined role of
the tropical climate in daily life is surely remarkable. Apart from the new
appreciation of climate as a problematic and complicating phenomenon
regarding labour productivity, it permitted the newly authorized medical
doctors and moral specialists to firmly lock the colonials up in their frag-
ile bodies.18 ‘The nervous suffering of whites in the tropics’ (Roelfsema
1927), the title of one of the numerous brochures and booklets on the
white predicament, became a vignette of late-colonial society. The bro-
chure was written by Dr Roelfsema, a ‘rhinologist’ based in Batavia, who
advised Dutch authorities to prevent the further spread of tropenneurose
(neurosis of the tropics) by having all newcomers to the tropics examined
and having their noses operated on.
Many colonials became obsessed with medical matters, with new
medicine and experimental therapies, all focusing on the new term tro-
penneurose. Significantly, ‘European furlough’, initially granted after every
twelve years of official colonial duty, began to be allowed after every ten
years, then after every six years of staying in the malignant climes, as a
way to cure and prevent further degeneration of the workforce. A lively
polemic between the advocates and the adversaries of a proposed four-
year cycle went on for years.
The tropical climate also served, as Stoler (1991) has made clear, to
formulate a new contempt for colonials who had adjusted themselves
too much to the native ways of life and who were too far removed from
the ‘healthy’ local European community. The risk of being classified as
part of this degenerate category was for many of the numerous Indo-
18 The effects of this ‘debate’ were far-reaching: 1954 saw the publication of an inaugural speech on
this subject, Prestasi kerdja dan iklim tropik (Labour performance and the tropial climate), by Soetarman. The
unsuitability of the climate for white-collar labour is still a topic of conversation among the middle classes.

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European colonials a tremendous source of insecurity that deeply af-

fected their daily life.19 For them, the awareness of an undeniable sense
of bodily comfort in the tropics often became a self-reflexive pitfall,
because it led directly to harsh conclusions about their individual state
of degeneration and thus to their ‘proper’ place in the colonial project.
‘Nervous suffering’ eventually acquired a certain flavour of distinc-
tion, reflected in numerous contemporary novels and stories on modern
life in the tropics, which could also be found in travelogues and diaries.
Referring ceremoniously to the burden of the tropical climate and one’s
personal vulnerability appeared to be a standard of – often female –
modern authorship. The outdoor environment of Batavia (Jakarta) was ‘a
nightmare […] of blinding light, stifling heat, the sweat of brown coolies
[…] a dark and full station building, a packed train […] shouting people,
crying children and heat, heat, heat […]’ (Kooy-Van Zeggelen 1921:91).
This imagined repulsion climaxed in June 1940, when the Dutch govern-
ment was on the brink of resuming its evacuation from London to the
Netherlands Indies. At the last moment, Queen Wilhelmina (who had
never set foot on Indies territory) opposed the plan. According to the
diary of a high official: ‘She refuses to go, for She cannot because of the heat. It
is dreadful, that a member of the House of Orange uses such an argu-
ment: any argument had been better and more understandable than this
one!’20 (Kersten 1976:30). This same official presumed, for that matter,
that the ‘natives would be overwhelmed’ by the presence of the Dutch
queen and government in the Netherlands Indies (Kersten 1976:30).

middle-class ambiguities and the ‘primordial

predicament’

Between the world wars, a discourse on cultural notions that served the
‘preservation of the alienness of the ruling group’ (Chatterjee 1993:10)
flourished. Its main issue – racial inequality – was articulated as a set
of preferences and matters of taste regarding food, dress, language,

19 The memoirs of E. Breton de Nijs, a pseudonym of Rob Nieuwenhuys, mention how, in the 1930s,
his light-skinned Indo aunt, Sophie, worried about the ‘penetrating […] decidedly native body odour’ of
her dark-skinned Indo stepdaughter and eventually sent her to a gynaecologist to help her get rid of it
(Breton de Nijs 1973:167).
20 Italics by Kersten.

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hygiene and other everyday-life practices. Dress, for instance, reflected

taboos related to fashion and fabrics, clothing and cleanliness that
marked the prescribed colonial social order (Locher-Scholten 2000:135).
Everyday-life practices functioned as pedagogical sites where ‘white’
versus ‘native’ ways were assessed – often tacitly and under the banner
of ‘Westernization’ or ‘modernization’. This is in line with Bourdieu’s
(1989:94) assumption that societies that seek to produce a new ideol-
ogy through ‘reculturation […] set such store on the seemingly most
insignificant details of dress, bearing, physical and verbal manners’. In
treating the body as a memory, they entrust to it in practical form the
fundamental principles of the arbitrary content of the culture. The role
of the climate regarding these everyday practices as a complete sensory
environment – especially in the colonized tropics – hardly needs further
elaboration in this context. The re-evaluation of the tropical climate
as ‘unfit’, ‘dangerous’ or ‘degenerating’ became a leading principle of
this new cultural discourse, which in the eyes of many contemporaries
formed part of the wider project of modernization. For most of the
colonized elite, the political content of distinguishing ‘modern’ versus
‘native/traditional’ practices in daily life as well as in regard to more
ideological matters was very difficult to discern (Hatley 2002).
It is to this point, I think, that the genesis of the discourse on cli-
mate must be traced – to the Indonesian reception of a ‘modernization’
tarnished by certain elements of racial and class-based prejudice. The
condemnation of the tropical climate that introduced and accompanied
the new, ‘modern’ way of life in the colony must have served as an essen-
tial and inalienable aspect of modernity for Indonesians with privileged
access to elite colonial society and culture.21 This initial discourse on cli-
mate, which should be understood as a part of the ‘arbitrary content of
the culture’, has apparently been disseminated without a proper recogni-
tion of its highly politicized context. Its resumed suitability as an apparent
mode of social ordering through which the tropical body becomes exclud-
ed from the body politic came to the fore, significantly, in the late 1980s,
an era of profound New Order depoliticization and a new availability of
modern consumer gadgets – both aspects recalling late-colonial society.
Analogous to Appadurai’s India, in which methods and techniques
of social classification and categorization appear to be remainders of the
21 Young Indonesian nationalists belonging to the colonized elite started to ‘reverse’ this rhetoric in the
early 1920s, condemning the Dutch climate as sickening and murderous (Poeze 1986:238).

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‘colonial gaze and its associated techniques’, it seems that in Indonesia

it was techniques of exclusion that left an indelible mark on the national
political consciousness. As a consequence, the ones who are ‘inside’ the
discourse on climate seek and feel kinship with an imagined, internation-
al community of ‘air-conditioned lifestyles’ and none whatsoever with
their ‘tropical’ compatriots, the underclass people or rakyat. Modernity
seems thus not only conceived as a project scheduled in time, but also
as a project scheduled in space – elsewhere – leaving the Indonesian
national identity ambiguous: is it tropical or is it air conditioned? Since
Indonesian nationalism is generally perceived as situated in the body,
as ‘something “natural” and in the blood’ (Ariel Heryanto 2001:5), the
process of de-tropifying the Indonesian middle-class body can be under-
stood as a break with ties that were simultaneously deemed authentic as
well as obsolete; with, in short, primordial ties to the ‘nation’.
The capacity of the discourse on climate to mobilize the body as
the ultimate expert in the ongoing, politicized contest between moder-
nity and the primordial is its most significant quality. Just as in the past
the Indo-European, heat-resistant body betrayed its owner vis-à-vis the
latter’s claims to white colonial identity, the Indonesian ‘cooled down’
upper-middle-class body now endorses its owner’s role in an imagined,
global middle-class community. A sense of bodily control and a fully de-
veloped self-reflexivity are crucial but rather risky instruments for these
identity projects. In the words of Giddens (1991:58-9):

Regularised control of the body is a fundamental means whereby a biog-

raphy of self-identity is maintained; yet at the same time the self is also
more or less constantly ‘on display’ to others in terms of its embodiment.
[…] Most people are absorbed in their bodies, and feel themselves to
be a unified body and self. Too radical a discrepancy between accepted
routines and the individual’s biographical narrative creates […] a false
self – in which the body appears as an object or instrument manipulated
by the self from behind the scenes […] when this dissociation happens
as an unwanted feature of personality, it expresses existential anxieties
impinging directly upon self-identity.

This late-modern risk of personal dissociation is comparable to the

typical and amply fictionalized neurosis of the so-called Indos, the often
marginalized Indo-Europeans in late-colonial society who were at a loss

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to find a clear and acceptable self-identity. The risk of dissociation was

also to be found in Jabotabek suburbs such as Bintaro, where young for-
eign-educated Javanese managers solemnly renamed themselves ‘Hans’
in order to be ‘more modern’ – besides being ‘cool’. In this context, the
Ullen Sentalu Museum functions for its founder as well as for its middle-
class visitors as a forceful, tangible statement of a shared, ‘colonial’
Javanese past – ‘colonial’ must be understood here in the sense of ‘pre-
revolutionary’; time preceding social horizontality.
In rejecting the tropical climate, the middle classes were not explor-
ing a renewed instrument of social exclusion. Instead, they discarded
their most naturally and implicitly felt association with the nation – the
tropical body and its experience – as the site of prime expressions of
primordialism and the communal. In this sense, both the underclass and
the nation appeared to be regarded as similar, undesired manifestations
of the suspect domain of community, the opposite and menace of de-
velopment. The force of the discourse on climate should by no means
be underestimated. It was largely, as Siegel (1998a:17) claimed for issues
such as Islam and nationalism, derived from its intrusive quality, ‘which
is to say that in local terms it was ununderstandable; [it was] tied to the
sense that it was something other than one knew, that nothing within
traditional society prepared one for it’. This recalls Saya Shiraishi’s peas-
ant, representing the underclass, who declared himself sudah biasa, ‘used’,
to the climate, because he was born ‘here’. The force of the discourse
on climate explains why ‘Soekarno-Hatta’ functions simultaneously
as a macrocosm of middle-class households and a microcosm of the
Indonesian nation-state, both characterized by separations that nowa-
days seem to be almost intrinsic. In the formulation of Siegel (2002:222):

The middle class has disconnected itself from the sources of Indonesian
pain and humiliation and defended itself from the consequences of as-
suming a nation composed of kin. The gap between the classes is not
closed. If anything, it is opened to such an extent that relations between
the classes have become imaginary to the point of lacking a need to re-
spond. […] The people are no longer the complement to the middle class
nor are they its adversary.

In my final chapter, the late-colonial past serves once more as a frame of

reference. The subject of this tentative sketch of possible after-effects –

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the middle class’s concept of violence, its manifestations and genesis – is

volatile and vague, and to associate it with violent historical circumstances
other than the outspoken ones of war, conquest and rebellion may be far
from conventional. The barely investigated historical site that I intend to
explore, the sprawling suburbs of early-twentieth-century Batavia and
their Indo-European residents, offers an understanding of the contem-
porary concept of violence that perhaps is not obvious, but still attempts
to explain the amazing tenacity and connections of certain middle-class
notions.

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 VI

Tear gas for Christmas

introduction

From time to time, when Budi and I were sitting by ourselves in front of
the television screen and Sissy was busy in the pantri, he would light a cig-
arette and start a debate with me. Although he had become a successful
businessman and entrepreneur, he never lost touch with the fact that he
had started this career a long time ago as a student of political science in
Greenwich, Great Britain. His cherished subscriptions to The International
Spectator and other expensive foreign and scholarly magazines (which he
continued to receive even during Krismon) were tangible proof of his
lingering intellectual orientation. Budi sometimes regarded me as a kind
of fellow social scientist and I was a willing sparring partner, especially
when it came to one of his new theories about the incompatibility of
East and West, which was by far his favourite topic.
During one of these sessions, at the beginning of July 1999, we were
watching the evening news, which featured footage of supporters of the
PRD (the Democratic People’s Party) being beaten and dragged away by
the metropolitan police following a peaceful demonstration in the city cen-
tre. Several protesters were shot, and we saw images of the bloody bodies.
Similar images were shown on television every night, and they seemed to
form, in the middle-class living rooms of Bintaro, a fixed counterpoint to
the wider suburb where ‘nothing happens’. Violence did not belong to
this motionless world, where police officers or members of the military
were never spotted in public. Violence seemed emphatically absent from
Bintaro’s ‘“climate”, “ambiance”, “atmospherics”, and “milieu”’ (Spyer
2002:3). Violence always happened ‘elsewhere’, especially during the latter
half of the 1990s, when politically inspired violence in Indonesia became
more widespread. Even the occasional bombings, arson and other violent
|  Lost in mall

attacks in the nearby city centre seemed to cause no stir for Bintaro’s easy-
going, mall-visiting residents, apart from casual remarks about the traffic
congestion caused by these incidents. ‘Criminal’ violence, on the other
hand, was regularly discussed and evaluated by the Bintarese residents.1
When I watched the above-mentioned images, violent but somehow
normal, I was reminded of a public discussion that was then current in
the Netherlands, surrounding the relatively new term zinloos geweld (sense-
less violence), which related to morally unacceptable forms of physical
violence. I set out to discuss this interesting social phenomenon with Budi,
while the disturbing footage was fresh in my mind. It was very difficult to
explain to Budi this concept of ‘senseless violence’ and the sentiments that
had led to it. According to him, violence was either effective and therefore
made perfect sense, or was ineffective and did not. Of course it should
be avoided, he stated, because ‘everybody knows that violence hurts’. But
violence was not senseless just because it was bad, he argued, and I agreed
with this. However, were these adequate or effective forms of violence
indeed morally acceptable or were they merely effective? It seemed that
Budi had no difficulties in accepting the fact that violence always makes
sense, at least, for the skilful perpetrator – something that was apparently
shocking to many Dutch people, hence the hidden and confusing moral
appeal of the new term. Budi seemed not to perceive anything shocking,
degrading or ambivalent about the idea of violence in itself. It was better
to be on the giving than on the receiving end, he joked. Budi, despite his
sociological interest, simply could not imagine a ceremony such as the sol-
emn declaration, by the mayor, of a ‘violence-free zone’ in a Dutch inner
city, a zone that was even furnished with sign posts. Budi deduced that in
the surrounding inner-city areas, violence must be permitted, a perfectly
logical understanding from his point of view.
That night left me confused and more deeply puzzled than ever
by the cultural constructedness of concepts of violence, including its
presumed moral aspect. Once again, I had the impression that, in
Indonesia, violence seemed to be considered merely in terms of its ef-
fectiveness. In fact, the concept of ‘senseless violence’ appeared to me
to be more suitable for Indonesian than for Dutch society. In Indonesia,
I had often experienced that violence was merely regarded as a way
of reaching your goal – a means, an instrument – and, as such, could
1 As related in Chapter III, when political violence struck the suburb in May 1998, it was not gener-
ally acknowledged as such. See also Siegel 1998a.

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either be regarded as proper, adequate and sensible, or as senseless and

excessive, without much public or personal moral fuss. A few months
earlier, for example, while reading a newspaper during a visit to Susi,
I had expressed shock and horror after reading about a local gang of
jewellery thieves that specialized in hacking off the hands of Chinese-
Indonesian ladies in broad daylight. In response Susi, who seemed a bit
puzzled, just shrugged and tried to ‘explain’ to me that ‘this was simply
the quickest method in public places’. A similar reaction ensued when I
ventured upon the subject of the frequent and horribly cruel lynching of
thieves who were caught in the act, usually by drenching the victim with
kerosene on the spot and setting him on fire. This had begun to occur
all over Jakarta during that period – alarmingly close to the city limits of
Bintaro.2 The comment that I heard most often was: ‘But the police in
Jakarta are lazy and corrupt!’
Of course I realized all along that concepts of violence are cultural
notions that differ from society to society, and that usage of the term ‘vio-
lence’ had proved to be rather problematic in anthropological research.
Perhaps no universal, morally oriented definition of ‘violence’ could sen-
sibly be produced. Mary Steedly (1999:442) argues that whether violence
is regarded as something to be explained by culture or as something anti-
thetical to it, one runs the risk of primordializing it. Thinking about vio-
lence and concepts of violence in Bintaro, where violence was definitely
projected as occurring ‘elsewhere’, seemed a ‘tricky business’, as Spyer
(2002:14) has remarked concerning her notions on violence in Ambon in
the context of media effects, agency and the work of imagination.
When I set out to understand the systematic remarks such as the ones
mentioned above, I realized that my own concept of violence would
have to serve as a starting point. But whereas my personal history as a
member of the middle class had so far helped greatly to understand and
problematize suburban middle-class lifestyles, it faltered when it came to
making sense of the urbanites’ apparently restricted, instrumental con-
cept of violence. Two things about this concept struck me as significant:
on the one hand the generality of its understanding, shared by men,
women and children alike, and on the other hand the complete lack of
ambivalence that went with it. Where ambiguity appeared to be a crucial
notion in middle-class dealings with local modernity’s predicaments, this
2 Van Dijk (2002:12) cites the Far Eastern Economic Review regarding the frequency of these lynchings:
‘It is said that shopkeepers are stocking up on kerosene in order to be ready for the next lynching.’.

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latter circumstance really stood out. This was illustrated, fairly recently
and to an international audience, when Bali-bomber Amrozi appeared
alongside National Police Chief Bachtiar in Jakarta for a press confer-
ence on the ‘12 October’ bombing: both laughed, smiled and waved at
the public and the press. The day before, joined by grinning police and
prosecutors, Amrozi had publicly declared that he was ‘delighted’ by the
bombings, causing massive outrage especially in Australia. ‘Their sort of
ugly, sneering, amused attitude at the slaughter of innocent people is just
horrific’ commented Australian Foreign Minister Downer.3 In Indonesia
however, there was no such public indignation caused by the footage and
the statements of Amrozi; these were regarded as regular comments.
Violence as a socio-cultural concept belonged largely or perhaps wholly
to the field of pragmatics.
Historian William Frederick (2002:158), writing about the roots of
violence in Indonesia, and particularly the extremely violent and cruel
revolutionary named Sabaruddin, used the poetic words ‘shadows of
an unseen hand’. Sabaruddin had played a minor, very awkward role
during the independence struggle but, enigmatically, he has largely been
left out of Indonesian historiography. Seeking an explanation, Frederick
assumed that ‘whatever the moral cloudiness of violence and its uses and
whatever the conflicts between social realities and values, its usefulness
and its relationship to the exercise of power are too commonly under-
stood at all levels of Indonesian society to require pointing out, elabo-
ration, or moral hand-wringing’. Like the shadow of an unseen hand,
‘violence is seen primarily as the result of manipulation’.
Violence manifests itself differently in different cultural contexts. Our
perceptions of the past violence of others, especially decolonized others,
shape the way we assess other cultures today (Bowman 2001:26; Spyer
2002). Violence can be defined in two main ways, which differ in the
approach of agency: the source of violence versus the act of violence.
According to the anthropologist Bowman (2001:26), the latter approach,
practised by most anthropologists, tends

to restrict its attention to acts in the course of which one integral entity
violates or attempts to violate another’s integrity, prevents it from attend-
ing to other arenas in which violence operates – some of which, I will

3 The Jakarta Post, 14-11-2002.

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argue, are the fora in which the agents which threaten violence and are
in turn threatened by violence, are shaped. […] violence is a force that
not only manifests itself in the destruction of boundaries, but as well in
their creation.

Bowman (2001:32) goes on to suggest that what he calls ‘intransitive vio-

lence’, operating conceptually prior to manifesting itself in action, helps
to produce the integrities and identities ‘which are in turn subjected to
those forms of violence which seek victims’. In other words, violence is
‘world-making’ – not only in its actual performance but also through its
narratives and imaginaries. As has been remarked in relation to the work
of the writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, ‘writing about violence is to write
violence, or to write violently. […] Telling tales has a violent character’
(Maier 2002:66). In other words, there may be no clear and unambiva-
lent distinction between violence and its representation. Violence has a
considerable discursive dimension.
During the latter half of the 1990s, especially after mid 1998, violence
in Indonesia manifested itself on a previously unknown scale regarding
proliferation, multifariousness, intensity and incidence (Colombijn and
Lindblad 2002a). However, apart from the massive mayhem of May
1998 and steadily rising levels of petty criminality, the Jabotabek sub-
urbs and satellite cities remained relatively undisturbed. Reports of
violence were generally brought into the suburbs by the mass media,
but watching the repeated images of burning Indonesian villages, mu-
tilated corpses and desperate people on television from cosy Indonesian
living rooms, seemed disconcertingly like watching images of another
planet – a frightful planet, to me at least. In the course of time I was
not surprised when I found out that none of my hosts (including their
children) seemed to have any trouble digesting these recurrent images
as daily instances of Indonesian reality. Violence, in a broad sense, was
an easily and painlessly consumed subject in the context of the middle-
class home. Notwithstanding the all-pervasive but silent fear of mayhem
and total loss among most members of the middle class, it seemed as
if an invisible presence of violence was an inextricable element of the
atmosphere in those well-locked living rooms – or perhaps it was just
those obsessive fears relating to security that triggered these shadows of
imminent violence. The observation that ‘violence needs to be imagined
in order to be carried out’ perhaps makes sense not only regarding the

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execution of violence, but also in terms of attempts to banish it (Schmidt

and Schröder 2001b:9).
Apart from nurturing imaginary violence, virtually all suburban,
middle-class families that I befriended turned out to be ‘consumers’ and
‘producers’ of mediated violence, which can be loosely distinguished,
according to the anthropologists Schmidt and Schröder (2001b:9-10),
as ‘narratives, performances and inscriptions’. Although specifically de-
signed for the context of war, these terms are helpful for understanding
representations of violence in a more general sense as well. During my
1990s fieldwork I was in need of distant and analytical terms, because I
often felt overwhelmed by the number of assorted and diverging forms
of fictional violence. I provisionally called the many mediated instances
of violence that I encountered ‘pulp’ violence. ‘Pulp’ violence covered for
instance all oral forms of represented violence: narratives such as experi-
ences, stories, rumours, jokes, comments and utterances. It encompassed
performances such as violent plays and games (such as the repeated
mock execution of a pet dog, by pressing a toy gun between its eyes),
the casual handling of ‘violent’ objects such as toy weapons, weapons
and tear gas canisters and the recently introduced ‘violence tourism’.
The category of ‘pulp’ violence also comprised inscriptions such as
the numerous violent images broadcast on television – including news
programmes, ‘reality TV’ and ‘police investigation’ programmes – and
found on DVDs, in computer games and in cartoons. What amazed me
was the uninhibited participation of middle-class women in these acts of
consumption and production. Among religious or refined ladies it was
not considered ‘bad taste’ or ‘unseemly’ to savour and discuss hideously
violent scenes in detail, in sharp contrast to their usual reactions to what
they regarded as pornographic or ‘immoral’ scenes. For example, when a
bare back or a kiss was shown on television in front of the children, they
showed indignation or shock.
I certainly have no ambition in this chapter to attempt to deconstruct
the complicated discursive connection between the various modes of
represented violence (or the violent imaginings they generate) and the
recent proliferation of Indonesian violence (Van Dijk 2002). Rather, I
propose to examine the actual, daily manifestations of represented vio-
lence in middle-class life, in order to explore the roots of the concept of
violence in suburban middle-class Indonesia. Can we distinguish, besides
a ‘genealogy of violence’ manifested in such diverging phenomena as

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oppression, rebellion, terror networks, exploitation and mass killings, a

‘genealogy of the discourse on violence’?4 Can the way in which violence
is conceived in certain social configurations be regarded as a kind of a
longue durée phenomenon, comparable to the climatic entanglements ad-
dressed in the previous chapter? Attempts to imagine a discursive link
between present-day and past concepts of violence are doomed to be
speculative, but it might be instructive to have a picture of the ways in
which violence is represented and imagined in the middle-class suburban
context in the early twentieth century in order to understand more about
Indonesia’s wider ‘”climate,” “ambiance,” “atmospherics,’ and “milieu”’
(Spyer 2002), in which violence is conceived and performed. According
to Steedly (1999:444),

The alternative to essentializing or to culturalizing violence is not to disre-

gard it but rather to localize it. By this I mean exploring the full particulari-
ty of its multifarious occasions: how it is produced in certain circumstances;
how it is deployed, represented, limited, imagined, ignored, or instigated;
how it identified, disciplined, interrogated, and, of course, punished.

Steedly (1999:444) continues by stressing the importance of enquiry into

what is obscured, neglected or erased by exclusive attention to ‘the cruel
and the unusual’: ‘We miss the landscape of the banal – the ordinary
routines of everyday life, in cities and in the countryside, the times when
things don’t fall apart, when expectations hold, when people get by or
get on with their lives.’ During my enquiries into the ordinary routines of
everyday Bintaro life, I nevertheless experienced almost daily encounters
with represented, imagined and ignored violence, so the suggested op-
position between the realms of ‘violence’ and ‘everyday life’ is here less
applicable. When Steedly warns us not to pay exclusive ethnographic at-
tention to ‘the cruel and the unusual’, we must ask: ‘cruel and unusual’ –
in whose eyes? Forms of represented and imagined violence can be part
of cultural practice without being acknowledged by the ethnographer
and the other way around, depending on his or her preconceived ideas
and assumptions vis-à-vis the imaginary quality of violence.
This imaginary quality of violence in the ‘discovery’ of cultur-
ally legitimate violence by the colonial imagination (cannibalism, for
4 The term ‘genealogy of violence’ was coined by Schulte Nordholt 2002 in discussing the pre-
colonial and colonial roots of violence in Indonesia.

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 VI  Teargas for Christmas  |

instance), was instrumental in creating boundaries between ‘civilization’

and ‘primitivism’, between ‘us’ and ‘other’ (Schmidt 2001:92-3). Writing
about the relationship between world views and violence, Schmidt argues
that extreme European reactions to real and imagined violent practices
created a colonial discourse in which ‘all non-Christian ideas and prac-
tices were interpreted as non-human, therefore requiring elimination’.
Although in recent years much attention has been paid to this colonial
discourse, ethnographic reality – violent practice itself – has been largely
neglected. These practices ‘continue to be haunted to the present by the
images of violent “othering”, established in colonial discourse’, accord-
ing to Schmidt (2001:93). Colonial discourse has now evaporated but
violent aspects of culture still foster apparent ‘cultural misunderstand-
ings’ in postcolonial settings. The inherited, ‘universal’ contradiction
between ‘violence’ and ‘civilization’, or ‘violence and culture’ (Steedly
1999:443) serves as a dominant dichotomy that can nonetheless bring
to light surprising localized interpretations of the hegemonic terms ‘vio-
lence’ as well as ‘civilization’. It is largely in the discursive dimensions
of violence – the narratives, performances and inscriptions – that these
interpretations manifest themselves, sometimes revealing an alternative
understanding of the idea of morality as the ideological link between
violence and civilization.

humanity and usamah’s struggle

In August 1970, the literary magazine Horison published a few personal

notes on the persecution of communists in 1965 by a certain Usamah, an
‘active defender of his country’ (Usamah 1970). These notes were intro-
duced by an ‘Editor’s Note’ in which Usamah’s observations were placed
in the context of the ‘civilization of modern man’. They were presented
‘as the expression of the humanity that can never be eliminated from
human existence, no matter how long or how terrible the war that may
befall them. This is the natural reaction of a man who sees others as his
fellow man’ (Usamah 1970:89). The humanity of Usamah was directly
connected, by the magazine’s editors, to his being a writer,5 for it was
5 The editorial board was composed of Mochtar Lubis, H.B. Jassin, Zaini, Taufiq Ismail, Arief Budi-
man and Goenawan Mohamad, several of whom belonged to the Indonesian intellectual elite in the late
1990s.

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‘only to be expected that Usamah, a writer, could not bear to see [the
killing and torturing of enemies]’ (Usamah 1970:89).
The actual notes give a detailed account of the capture, interrogation
and torture – on Usamah’s command – of two women (a former class-mate
and an acquaintance) and a man (the family doctor). In the end Usamah
finds that he cannot stomach the torture – not because he was feeling
sorry for the victims, nor because he was opposed to what was happening
in general. Rather, he claims that he just ‘wasn’t used to watching people
being tortured’. Usamah asks for a transfer and soon starts overseeing the
guarding and executing of prisoners, among whom are the two women.
Their execution is a breaking point for Usamah. Although he understands
that in ‘such chaotic conditions, morality will be put aside’, he cannot bear
the ‘horror’ any longer; his soul and heart were not tough enough:

I don’t blame anyone. No one was guilty. […] Without […] resolute sol-
diers like those who gave active ‘lessons’ to the Communists in Solo, ‘les-
sons’ such as were given to Sri, Ibu Y [the two executed women] and
Doctor X, perhaps the crushing of G-30-S6 would still not be over.

Although Usamah has not made any mistakes so far, he decides to run
away from the scene, because ‘if all the officials had been like me, maybe
the whole situation would have been reversed. It could even have been
the other side which held the initiative.’ He continues by saying ‘I was
fed up and couldn’t go on with the hypocrisy any longer’. Usamah finally
leaves Solo in order to calm his shattered nerves. Although the ‘Editor’s
Note’ claims the moral superiority of writers in general, hence the
reference to modernity as a kind of vehicle for humanity – both being
regarded as counterparts to primitivism – Usamah’s own story predomi-
nantly tells us about his sensations of physical repulsion when faced with
violence in the form of torture and execution.
In Usamah’s narrative, his finesse is being put to the test. His resis-
tance against violence seems aesthetically rather than ethically informed,
especially when he stresses his approval of these methods (‘active lessons’)
and their ultimate goal – violence is too ‘ugly’ for him. Surprisingly, the
‘Editor’s Note’ tells us the same when it repeatedly underlines and cher-
ishes Usamah’s inability as a writer to ‘bear to see it’. It also underlines

6 Gerakan 30 September (30 September movement).

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‘the writer’s’ constant duty to ‘train himself to use his finer feelings’;
apparently to teach himself to get sick when confronted with physical
violence instead of just to witness it or perhaps to ‘feel exalted’.7 Most
strikingly, the ‘Editor’s Note’ does not recognize the conspicuous lack of
a morality-based rejection of violence in Usamah’s story; his rejection
is after-the-fact, as it were, a physical inability which proves him to be
ultimately human and modern. But, Usamah tells us, luckily, there are
others capable of doing the dirty work. Apart from unclear references to
modernity, civilization and humanity, it should be noted that the absence
of a moral rejection of violence in Usamah’s story, whether based on
reason, religion or something else, is not regarded as problematic by the
editors. This corroborates the impression that elements of a particular
confusion on the subject of violence are brought to the surface by this
contribution to Horison and particularly its editorial note, published un-
der the supervision of an editorial board composed of prominent and
widely acknowledged intellectuals.
Violence seems to be regarded as something from the realm of the
inescapable, as an almost natural phenomenon. It is considered indispens-
able in certain situations, but at the same time it is regarded as the counter-
point to modernity. A modern, civilized man should refrain from perform-
ing acts of violence and leave the matter to more ‘primitive’ or unmodern
persons. Civilization is thought of as incompatible with violence, albeit in
the sense of violence as an individual practice or skill. Similar instances of
this understanding of violence are, for that matter, found everywhere in
present-day Indonesian mass media, as well as in everyday conversations,
comments and exchanges. What follows, though somewhat fragmentary
and anecdotal in character, should contribute to a better understanding of
the range of the representative dimensions of violence.

everyday narratives, performances and inscriptions

Among the field notes I have gathered over the years that relate incidents
of ‘pulp’ or mediated violence, I found many minor remarks and events
that struck me, at the time, as unusual. In July 1997, for instance, I re-
ceived as a welcoming present a krakeling, or set of brass knuckles, from
7 This echoes the disiplin of late-colonial times, when colonized people seeking to belong to modernity
found that they had a duty to train themselves to wear shoes, to be punctual or to save money.

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my just-married friends Novi and Neil, who also demonstrated its use.8
As a Christmas surprise in 1998, Sissy presented me with a carefully
wrapped-up canister of tear gas. Later it turned out that she had started
a profitable side business as a seller of variously shaped tear gas canisters
for ladies – she informed me that the ‘cigar’ model was the most sought-
after.9 Earlier in 1998, a young businessman had shown me his new pis-
tol, in the same way he used to show me other new purchases: proud but
casual. Other glimpses of other pistols followed. Ugo played with stun
guns, as many children did, in the car during traffic jams.
Among my field notes, I also found remarks about an absence of
shock or rejection. For example in respect to the outbursts of extreme
violence that accompanied the referendum on East Timor in August and
September 1999, the television offered daily information about and im-
ages of atrocities, without much further comment. The attitude of com-
plete indifference displayed by anyone I happened to be with, including
women and children, consuming these programmes was remarkable.
The images of violence in Aceh or Maluku were met in a similarly unre-
sponsive way, although ‘Aceh’ seemed to stir compassion, because ‘after
all Acehnese are our brothers’ – a comment that I heard in the home of
one of my distant Muslim family relations (Siegel 2002). In Budi’s office,
several ‘Timor’-jokes circulated in August and September. The sole and
repeated comment on the large-scale violence on East Timor was shortly
expressed as ‘kompensasi’ (compensation) for lost Indonesian investments.
From time to time, violence turned out not to be ‘just’ mediated, but
part of reality. After visiting a shopping mall one Sunday, Budi and Sissy,
their children and I were in a car, queuing to leave the busy car park.
Suddenly, near our car, a young man was violently beaten up by several
security personnel, until he finally collapsed, with a bloody face. This was
met by little response – except a surprised ‘look there!’ – from my com-
panions. My shock at seeing such a thing happen, so nearby, exacerbated
by my friends’ apparent indifference, initially went unnoticed. But when
Sissy turned around and saw my white face, she willingly explained that

8 Krakeling was also the name of a typical Dutch biscuit with a sophisticated reputation among the
colonial and colonized elite. Brass knuckles (called boksbeugel in Dutch) resemble this biscuit, hence the
use of the term krakeling today.
9 Despite the proliferation of tear gas canisters among middle-class women in Jakarta in 1998, an
adviser of former president Habibie in 2000 explicitly denied having ‘seen even a trace of tear gas cans
among her Jakartan friends and acqaintances’. This statement reflected the reluctance, shown at that time
by many cosmopolitan members of the middle class, to be associated in any way with ‘native’ violence.

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the young man was probably a thief or a robber.10 A couple of weeks

later, while seated next to Sissy in her car, I happened to see a major
school brawl close to Blok M: groups of very agitated boys in school uni-
forms, running, armed with clubs and sticks, while the traffic had come
to a chaotic standstill. I heard panicky yelling. Almost to my regret, I did
not witness any actual fighting at the scene. I knew that these brawls were
often deadly affairs; just a couple of days before a young boy had been
stabbed in the thigh when entering the ‘wrong’ minibus, which was full of
his opponents. He later died from loss of blood. Dozens of school pupils
died that year in similar ways during fierce afternoon clashes (tawuran) on
the city streets, clashes that were said to belong to an urban tradition of
school feuding and therefore attracted no serious concern among parents
or teachers. The earliest complaints about this type of fight dates from
1918 and they have continued since then (Van Dijk 2002:285). Sissy
merely seemed annoyed at the extra delay on our way home.
Central to my experience of ‘re-enacted’ violence was an elderly
Indo-European lady, known to me as Tante Tatty, who claimed to be a
former aide of Indonesia’s first president, Soekarno, and who lived in
Sektor I of Bintaro. From the first moment I got to know her, she was
always eager to tell me stories and anecdotes in which criminal violence
was the recurrent theme. During every visit I was buried under a rhe-
torical avalanche of violent stories about rape, robbery, death scenes,
crushed animals, suicides, random killings, stabbings and shootings.
Tante Tatty took an obvious delight in these testimonies. Because she
used a lively form of Petjoh,11 her staccato stories turned into some kind
of miniature performances of violence. A well-known psychic who oper-
ated in the highest circles of Jakartan society, she often claimed to have
‘inside information’. She told me, for instance, a fabulous story about
the tragedy in the presidential palace in which the late ‘Bu Tien’, the
wife of then president Suharto, was mistakenly shot through the throat
by her greedy sons when they quarrelled about which of them should be
privileged to exclusive rights to produce the first Indonesian automobile.
Tante Tatty offered me gruesome details about the corpse, which were
10 This incident reminded me of a story told to me by the journalist Willy van Rooijen, who inter-
viewed the chief of a police station in Jakarta in the 1980s. Their conversation was suddenly interrupted
by loud screams, clearly coming from somebody being beaten up nearby. When Van Rooijen protested
against this, the very polite police chief offered her his excuses and explained that ‘unfortunately, their
housing was rather cramped, so they couldn’t move to another room’.
11 Petjoh (or pecuk) is the collective name of the Dutch vernaculars used by (lower-class) Indos.

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‘100% first hand, from a niece of Bu Tien, a customer of mine’.12 When

female visitors joined us, which was often the case, Tante Tatty invited
them to tell their own versions of current kriminalitas stories, to reveal
new horrible and cruel details, or to corroborate Tante Tatty’s narrative.
Tatty’s two daughters, aged 17 and 31, sometimes joined us and nod-
ded or offered whispered details. For these polite, friendly, often elderly
and fragile ladies, the plain frankness and delight that went along with
these barbarically detailed representations of violence were obvious. The
events they discussed were eventually and collectively deplored by shak-
ing their heads and lamenting: ‘Too bad!’ During the long aftermath of
the May 1998 riots, Tante Tatty was very eager to possess a testimonial
document published by a human rights organization, which mainly con-
sisted of many detailed and clinical photos of the charred bodies that
had been found inside the attacked shopping malls. When I asked her
why she wanted this publication so much, she told me that she was just
curious to see ‘what it had been like’ inside the burning malls.
Although no enactment of violence was involved, I underwent
similar experiences in the living rooms of families whose home life was
centred around the television set. Indonesian television channels, private
as well as state-run, offered a daily range of violent movies, cartoons
and TV series, all perfectly reflecting the more than averagely violent
character of popular culture in Indonesia. The violence in these mostly
American and Australian cult movies and Japanese cartoons was often
extreme, with scenes of mutilation, torture and killings and no seri-
ous plot. Hour-long sessions of beheading, burning, hacking to pieces,
shooting, drowning, burying alive, chain-sawing and electrocuting of
bodies were regularly consumed by young families, including toddlers
and schoolchildren. Saturday night – family prime time – was usually
reserved, by most channels, for the ‘pick of the flick’ in violence. One
family came home from a Saturday evening church service to just such
entertainment:

12 Tatty usually verified the truth of her stories by referring to members of her vast social network.
When she informed me that the figures from the popular Western children’s television programme Tele-
tubbies were actually being played by kidnapped British children who had been sewn into their costumes
and who died of suffocation a few weeks later, to be replaced by new victims – a significant, current
suburban myth – she mentioned a journalist friend as her ‘number-one source’.

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Once arrived at home, we found Ramli [father] lying down in front of

the TV-screen, chain-smoking and in his shorts. He was watching a ter-
ribly cruel, violent crime DVD with Dolby sound-effect. Blood seemed to
pour from the screen, the moanings could be heard in the kitchen. Ramli
enjoyed it very much; he had watched this one several times before. Djoko
[nine-year-old son], delighted, immediately joined his father while Erna
[mother] grinned watching the two having fun together. Ramli took great
care in using the fast forward button in case of kissing or a sudden bare
back. (Van Leeuwen 1997:47.)

The enjoyment of extremely violent movies as a cosy family activity was

in no way exceptional among middle-class families. There was no feigned
rejection, disgust, dislike or prudence among the audience at all, nor was
there any awareness that these types of images might have a ‘bad influ-
ence’ on children.13 Sissy enjoyed violent films so much that she used to
rent them on DVD in order to watch several by herself at night, lying on
the sofa and eating large quantities of durian fruit when Budi was out or
asleep. Significantly, though, Sissy did not enjoy watching horror movies.14
The context of the consumption of these fictive images of violence
was clearly the family. Young children and their parents spent hours in
front of the TV watching cartoons and TV series in which constant
fighting, destruction and black magic were the chosen themes. The im-
mense popularity of Japanese cartoons in which the supernatural was
mixed with the violent, such as Doraemon, Kung fu boy, Power rangers or The
black steel warrior (Ksatria baja hitam), had produced a wave of merchan-
dised products – table cloths, magazines, plates, shampoos, toy weapons,
key hangers, shower curtains, lighters – targeted at ‘the family’. In many
middle-class families, daily commodities bore images of violent heroes
and their special weaponry.15 These violent ornaments and the daily use
of and reference to violent objects, such as canisters of tear gas, brass
knuckles, knives, fighting sticks, stun guns, baseball bats, razor wire, dag-
13 A recent research project focusing on the situation in Indonesia regarding children and television
concluded with nine ‘recommendations for media’, not a single one of which was directly concerned
with the exposure of children to violence on television. See Goonasekera 2000.
14 She was not alone in her dislike and fear of horror movies, which she connected with the world of
ghosts and spirits of the dead. Her children were discouraged from watching this kind of entertainment.
Whereas violence is a normal and everyday phenomenon, ‘horror’ belongs to the supernatural, the
spooky things one does not want to be confronted with.
15 The widespread popularity of such ‘heroes’ is also manifest in the recent use of the name ninja for
‘mysterious (masked) killer’, a usage derived from the popular Japanese cartoon Teenage mutant ninja turtles.

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gers and pistols, which had in fact become household objects, created an
atmosphere in which violence seemed imminent.16 Violence seemed, in
short, thoroughly domesticated, an almost daily and often matter-of-fact
topic in which the consumers rarely lost interest.
The same approach could be found in media reports about crime,
in which an obsession with technical detail often seemed to prevail, as
in the report of ‘974,822’ intercepted ecstasy pills, or a victim with ‘41’
knife wounds. No further comment was thought necessary.17 A chief of
police who was interviewed on the TV news about a bomb attack that
had killed several people restricted his comment to ‘but it was actually
not a bomb at all, bombs are dropped from aeroplanes – in fact it was
an explosive that caused the explosion’.18 Television footage in news pro-
grammes usually showed atrocities in full gruesome detail, irrespective
of their causes; after the 12 October bomb attacks in Bali, for instance,
most of the local footage – close-ups of severed heads and limbs, charred
bodies and puddles of blood – was deemed unsuitable for broadcast in
Europe. The most obvious phenomenon related to the need for ‘vio-
lence realism’ was the immense popularity of crime and ‘investigation’
programmes on television, such as Buser (from buru sergap, ‘to chase and
catch’), Investigasi and Jejak (‘Trail’). These reality TV programmes were
broadcast several times a day, and were full of violent chases and rough
interrogations of already beaten-up suspects, the discovery of mutilated
or decayed corpses – sometimes as a result of suicide or lynching – re-
constructions of crimes and more general inspections of crime-infested
areas in the big cities, including realistic coverage of forceful police
operations. These programmes were getting more and more violent. In
1999, I saw an item about a woman whose head had been sawn off on
the sofa in her modest living room. About a day later, her younger sister
was asked by the TV crew to lie down on her belly on the blood-soaked
sofa, in order to exactly ‘reconstruct’ the murderer’s approach to his
crime. Crying miserably, she more or less complied with this request.
I never heard anybody complain about these horrible, disturbing
images, which were consumed by children and their parents with the

16 This atmosphere was usually intensified by the proximity of uniformed safety personnel.
17 Siegel (1998a:33) connects this ‘accuracy’ with New Order political strategy. The same statistical
‘accuracy’ regarding criminal facts can be found in late-colonial newspaper reports. In general, statistics
seem to be associated with the strong state.
18 Covering the explosion at the Jakarta Stock Exchange in 2000.

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same equanimity as drama series such as Dallas. Budi once told me that
he found these programmes ‘boring’, adding that ‘only items about the
attacks by Front Pembela Islam [a fanatical Islamic militia] on nightclubs
and brothels were fun’. The ‘accuracy’ of reports about criminal and
other forms of violence met an apparent need, for on several occasions
I witnessed an ardent curiosity for all the visual ins and outs of nearby
crime, which surpassed sensationalism. One morning, when I was at-
tending an intimate meeting of a few Catholic nuns and housewives in a
suburban neighbourhood, a distraught servant ran in, screaming that a
gang of armed robbers was emptying a neighbouring house of its posses-
sions. I expected these women to panic and lock themselves in, but in a
moment all the ladies were out on the street, in a silent, collective attempt
to witness the criminal proceedings at close quarters. When they later
returned to the house, they expressed disappointment because they ‘had
seen nothing’. A need for ‘statistical’ accuracy vis-à-vis the reporting of
violent acts also drove the accounts of the victims of violence. A young
man who was tortured by militia during the mayhem in East Timor in
1999 did not remember clearly who had pressed burning cigarette stubs
against his body or where and when exactly it had happened, but he re-
called which brand of cigarettes had been used: Gudang Garam Light.19
It seems as if the identity of the perpetrator, as well as the moral status
of the deed evaporated in the exact details of the deed.
A similar phenomenon appeared to be ‘disaster tourism’ in Jakarta
after the May 1998 riots. Shopping venues such as Glodok and Galaxi
(in Bekasi), where many dead victims were found and devastation had
been rampant, became the object of day trips for the middle classes. A
young student treated me to an ‘exclusive excursion’ in Bekasi: a guided
tour by a former senior security officer, of a burned-down shopping mall
where about a dozen looters had been found dead (the ‘Agung Shop’).
The guide, dressed in an impeccable camouflage uniform and named
Pak Elly, showed everything in detail and in chronological order. First, he
pointed out the nearby kampung from which the looters had advanced,
then he showed the hole in the back wall through which they had entered
the building and some of the axes that had been used. His dramatic
unveiling of the remnants of the toilet blocks, where ‘as you all can see,
they have even removed the toilet bowls, to drag them to their kampung’,

19 Willy van Rooijen, personal communication, 2002.

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seemed staged as the climax of the tour. The indication of the exact
location of the corpses and their respective condition brought the tour
to its end. Pak Elly’s resourceful change of profession was a real piece of
luck, because he was now making a lot of money, he told me afterwards,
handing over his camouflage-coloured business card. The swiftness with
which this man had turned his former security object, a medium-sized
shopping mall, into a kind of violence theme park or, better, violence
information centre, was remarkable. In front of the blackened ruin, on
the former car park, several food stalls had started business again too,
now catering to ‘tourists’ instead of shoppers.
A further example of this ‘need to know’ was demonstrated to me by
Budi after I went back to the Netherlands, shortly after the mass killings of
Madurese immigrants by Dayak and Malay inhabitants in Kalimantan,
near the city of Sampit. From his office in Jakarta he e-mailed me a mes-
sage saying ‘Reformasi in Sampit – here is a portrait of us and our people
(the complete Indonesian human being!)’, which was a series of photos
depicting the maimed and mutilated bodies of Madurese, including
young children. What made these photos especially gruesome was that
they had all been taken at very close range, offering clinical and horrible
details. I then learned that several similar series of ‘Sampit’ photos were
being forwarded from office to office in Jakarta, in the same way as dirty
jokes, cartoons and pornography constantly circulated among the white-
collar workers. A couple of months later, after Budi had forwarded me
another office joke – ‘Chinese soup’ was a series of photos depicting the
preparation of a cooking recipe, its ingredients being a carrot, an onion,
a bottle of soy sauce, a Chinese bowl and a human embryo about to be
chopped up – I asked him to remove my e-mail address from his mailing
list, fearing more gruesome jokes and ‘information’ from Jakarta.
During one moment of my fieldwork, violence definitely crossed my
path, leaving me very sad and frightened. In September 1999, a friend
of Budi’s and mine, Sander Thoenes, a Dutch correspondent for The
Financial Times stationed in Jakarta, was murdered by the military in East
Timor while doing research for a story. The three of us had been going
out together from time to time since the beginning of 1998, usually for
Friday afternoon drinks at the Mandarin Hotel. Thoenes would press
Budi for insiders’ business stories, and Budi would feel important and act
‘Javanese’ or impersonate politicians, a source of much delight. I remem-
ber being devastated by the news and fleeing as soon as possible to Budi,

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in order to share our grief. His only comment on the tragedy was re-
stricted to: ‘Sander survived eight years of Moscow hoodlums [Moscow
being Thoenes’s previous station]. Jakarta now proved to be too much
for him.’ I was bewildered, not only by this remark, but also by Budi’s
reluctance to speculate about the actual facts surrounding the killing and,
finally, by his refusal (because of sakit perut, ‘stomach cramps’) to accom-
pany me to the memorial service that was held for Thoenes. What was a
major experience for me seemed an everyday event for Budi. Before long,
I realized that survival, after all, was the only thing that counted, even
in the ‘comfortable’ middle-class suburbs. Somehow, Thoenes had failed
this ultimate test, which meant he was no longer interesting. Budi never
talked about him afterwards, even when I tried to lure him into reminis-
cences. Eventually, I was almost grateful that Budi, uncharacteristically,
also never alluded to the rumours about the mutilation of Thoenes’s
body, which started to circulate in the wake of the affair. Watching news
programmes that focussed on Thoenes’s death amidst other violent inci-
dents, all by myself in my neat row house in Bintaro and trying hard not
to feel alienated, I suddenly felt that the inevitability of violence, as I now
began to experience it, made its details of great interest. There was no
sense in qualifying it as a bad or evil abstraction, because this obviously
hampered such a major thing as survival. Somehow, this strange revela-
tion soon faded to the periphery of my mind and life went on.

roots of discursive violence

The empirical notes presented in the former section, I would argue,

establish a remarkable absence of the usual uneasiness, moral rejec-
tion or gradations of ambiguity often associated with ‘civilized’, global
middle-class lifestyles in regards to violence and images of violence (Elias
1982:234-5, 307-9). The domestication of violence in the middle classes,
the acceptance of violence as an inevitable, unambiguous, actual part of
reality, the interest in its techniques and methods and the obvious ‘un-
derstanding of its usefulness and its relationship to the exercise of power’
(Frederick 2002) formed a rather unusual if not deviant phenomenon,
given their comfortable and often internationally oriented lifestyles.
Although these global lifestyles are particularly characterized by their
immersion in popular culture, with its overload of images of violence, a

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strikingly different approach and ‘feel’ to represented violence can also

be observed. In contemporary Indonesia’s middle classes, ‘the violent’ –
all possible representations of violence – seemed not at all excluded or
barred from the daily life of men, women and children. There was, for
instance, no immediate and spontaneous rejection of extremely violent
images – I never overheard a parent say ‘Don’t look now!’ when watch-
ing TV together with their children, although many scenes seemed to ask
for parental prudence. Nor was there ever any need felt for a legitimiza-
tion or justification of violence, apart from the moments that I seemed
to need ‘help’ in understanding its application, as when I witnessed the
young man being beaten up at the mall. The most remarkable aspect of
this phenomenon appeared to be the lack of any ambiguity regarding
a possible moral dimension of violence. At the middle-class, grass roots
level, something like ‘political correctness’ regarding violence did not
seem to exist – except perhaps among the more cosmopolitan middle-
class Indonesians who lived abroad, or travelled frequently. It has been
noted that the Indonesian urban middle classes have created themselves,
from late-colonial times onwards, by adopting ‘modern’ models and
standards largely originating from the West, such as the nuclear fam-
ily, education, hygiene, ‘discipline’, consumerism, individuality and,
more generally, a pursuit of modernity (Locher-Scholten 2000:28, 33-4;
Shiraishi 1997). The accompanying acknowledgement of violence as
something morally doubtful and adverse to modern civilization seems to
have been left out of this socio-cultural project. On the contrary, my field
notes suggest that a particular understanding or taste for ‘the violent’,
for its technical intricacies, was a common and shared point of depar-
ture among the middle classes. Considered in this context, the editorial
framing of ‘Usamah’s story’ as a singular achievement in humanity and
modernity tells us two important things. Violence, in politically correct
circles, was regarded as somehow incompatible with modernity’s ideals
in 1969, and only a handful of people, such as ‘writers’, were capable
of refraining from it. Meanwhile, even the ‘Editor’s Note’ to ‘Usamah’s
story’ tacitly accepts the inevitability and usefulness of violence where
it merely underlines the individual importance of keeping your hands
clean of violence, of staying out of it and of leaving it to others.
An obvious explanation for the fact that the middle-class concept of
violence contains almost no moral dimension can be found in its sheer
proliferation and frequency in the last century. Apart from the recent

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spate of communal violence, major events such as the Japanese occu-

pation, the Indonesian Revolution, various regional revolts such as the
Darul Islam rebellion in the 1950s, the bloody birth of the New Order
regime in 1965-1966 and the invasion and subsequent release of East
Timor have all contributed to a general assessment of Indonesia as a
violent country, where violence has been too much a part of daily reality
for too long a time to be effectively placed in the rather abstract context
of morality (Colombijn and Lindblad 2002b:1; Steedly 1999:443-4).
Against this line of reasoning, however, we could note that it was not the
urban middle classes directly who became the victims of these eruptions
of political violence. The urban middle classes, in their quest for moder-
nity, could theoretically have embraced almost universal notions of the
‘inhumanity’ and ‘primitivism’ of violence, just as Usamah’s editors did.
Not only did such a thing not happen, but a ‘taste for the violent’ seemed
already to have taken its place, however striking its incongruity with the
established canons of middle-class ideology.
The question of whether socio-historical conditions have favoured
the emergence of such a singular concept of violence is both inescapable
and reckless. Could a sharp focus on the urban context of this phenom-
enon help explain matters? Could this peculiar ‘taste’, this instrumental
and curious understanding of violence, have taken root in the early
days of urban middle-class formation in the late-colonial period? In the
Netherlands Indies during the first decades of the twentieth century, a
plethora of new ideas, beliefs and expectations merged with established
urban notions and practices. As with the subject of violence in a wider
sense, these urban notions and practices were historically enmeshed in a
larger and more diffuse pattern of violence that was connected to colo-
nial rule, and that demands further consideration.

forms and representations of colonial violence

The relationship between emerging concepts of violence and urbanity

had its roots in the second half of the nineteenth century. A particular
urban culture started to develop during that time in cities such as Batavia,
Surabaya and Semarang, when growing numbers of Indo-European city-
dwellers (an estimated half a million) became impoverished (Wertheim
1947:5). They were known as the ‘little’ or ‘simple’ Indos and they soon

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formed the equivalent of the lower class in the colony. When exploring
early concepts of violence in colonial society it is certainly useful to dis-
tinguish between the diverse appearances of violence in the Netherlands
Indies. What usually comes to mind – images of destroyed fortifications
behind a pile of Acehnese bodies – suggests that warlike situations were
the only level of colonial violence, in marked contrast with daily reality.
The issue of colonial petty violence, for instance, has largely been sur-
rounded with taboos and silence, notwithstanding its proliferation and
everyday character. It was a phenomenon at the crossroads of ‘senseless
violence’ and ‘domestic violence’, often randomly used against domes-
tic servants and lower-class Javanese. These casual thrashings, in sharp
contrast to the violence of heroic combat situations, were not consid-
ered a proper topic of polite conversation; masters who habitually beat
their servants (or slaves) considered it as a self-evident practice and not
a subject to be discussed. Those masters, many of whom were born in
the Netherlands, who did not beat their servants, preferred to pass over
the subject.20 The use of petty violence has never been questioned in
the colony for the same reasons that domestic violence is hard to discuss
today: it was a form of private violence, a quick, hidden, small-scale but
systematic abuse of power. As such, it was largely practised in the wom-
en’s domain, the household, where the rough treatment of slaves even
after the abolition of slavery in 1860 was often continued with domestic
servants and estate dwellers (De Haan 1931).
The generally violent nature of colonial rule in the Netherlands
Indies has not been properly acknowledged for a long time. One excep-
tion is Schulte Nordholt (2002:4), who stated that ‘the colonial violence
that was experienced across nearly the entire archipelago established a
regime of fear that continued to resonate in the memories of the popu-
lation until the end of the colonial period’. In the same essay, Schulte
Nordholt advocated a ‘decolonisation of colonial historiography’ to
counteract the Dutch tendency to romanticize the colonial past and to
refuse to acknowledge the systematic use of violence as a means of co-
lonial domination. An example of this tendency to neglect chapters of
history that deal with the actual use of the monopoly of power by way of
violence forms the near-forgotten history of the colonial police (Locher-
Scholten 2002:82). Related studies of abuse of colonial power in the
20 The autobiographic novel Nog pas gisteren, by Maria Dermoût (1953), gives an account of a clash
between these two types of masters in the late nineteenth century.

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coolie labour situation on plantations in East Sumatra have seen undue

criticism (Breman 1992). One of the few official studies that focus on
Dutch violence during the Indonesian revolution is, significantly, named
the Excessennota (Memorandum of excess), a transitional term in which
the later Dutch qualification ‘senseless violence’ can be heard. After
twenty years, colonial violence could thus still be assessed by historians as
theoretically ‘failing’, ‘adequate’, or ‘excessive’ – terms that still referred
to its pragmatic context. An example of the idea of ‘adequate’ violence
is the ‘therapeutic’ violence – responsible, balanced and functional –
that orientalist Snouck Hurgronje and military Van Heutsz invented
and planned to use against rebellious Acehnese in 1898 (Bossenbroek
1996:37), but to no avail: the therapy degenerated into a chain of excess
that set the standard for future campaigning.
A historiography of the forms and frequency of ‘petty’ colonial vio-
lence, manifestations of which could be found in encounters in the city
streets, villages, estates and in European households, has yet to appear.
The everyday, habitual character of these petty forms of violence, such
as hantem kromo,21 left almost no trace in official archives, registered docu-
ments and even newspapers, although it must have been an inextricable
part of colonial reality for many people. Primary sources such as novels,
diaries and travel accounts, however, offer ample and revealing clues and
details regarding the use and role of this petty violence, as in the auto-
biography Het land van herkomst (1934) by E. du Perron.22 Although refer-
ences to forms of petty violence appear throughout the entire colonial
period, the tendency seems to decline, as reminiscences and practices of
the initial slave society slowly faded from collective memory.23 The influx
of European-born women from the end of the nineteenth century on-
wards also had a softening effect in this respect.24 That the use and abuse
of power were central to colonial dominance has however been a perma-
nent and important theme, in the empire as well as in the household, and
is recognized as such by many contemporary chroniclers and novelists.
21 Hantem kromo meant the thrashing of servants, kromo being the word colonials reserved for (Cress
1998:99). Mühlenfeld, a colonial civil servant on leave who investigated the labour conditions of Indone-
sian servants in Holland in 1916, mentioned twelve cases of physical ill-treatment (Kousbroek 1992:146).
22 Du Perron related examples of violence in the context of daily colonial life: a schoolboy’s experi-
ences, his father’s relations with Indonesians, et cetera.
23 The majority of the population of Batavia consisted of slaves until the mid-eighteenth century (De
Haan 1935).
24 The character of the relationship between mevrouw (lady; mistress) and her servants changed in this
period from intimate and informal into disciplining and formal.

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The harsh climate of a society that pre-eminently relied on violence

for its continuity manifested itself not only in relations with the native
population of course. Among Europeans themselves, the tendency to
trust violent means to settle scores, discipline inferiors or even raise
their own children was a dominant and longstanding fact. For instance,
the frequency of fighting duels as arrangements for ending quarrels,
even in the twentieth century, suggests that violence was quite a normal
mechanism of social regulation – ‘Asian and Netherlands Indies society
were both used to it’ (Beekman 1998:376). Another example is the way
European soldiers were punished in instances of insubordination: they
were caned with a rattan, chained by the ankle to heavy cannon balls for
months or years or otherwise mistreated, all according to local military
rules that lasted until the very end of the nineteenth century.25 For most
people in the Netherlands, these measures would have been unthinkable
at the time.
The arrival of white womanhood in the colony must have had a
softening or ‘civilizing’ effect on petty violent practices, as was the case
regarding licentious sexual morals and other Indisch colonial customs.
However, this softening effect did not have any impact in Indo milieus,
since the social gap between female totok and these ‘degenerated’ Indo-
Europeans was too wide. This could explain why the culture of late-
colonial Indo society, feeling threatened and hemmed in – is sometimes
depicted as a celebration of violence (see for instance Snoek 1990:33).
A telling sign of a violent society is the number of synonyms they have
for ‘thrashing’. In Petjoh, the following words for ‘thrashing’ were used,
according to Richard Cress (1998): attakeren, beuken, blazen, dilabrak, fileren,
klop, gampar, geplok, gasak, geboek, getok, hantem, hantem Kromoh, punt-komma,
pata, poekoel, rammelen, ranselen, slentikken, boos tingkol. Pattynama (1997:123)
further mentions getjoebit, gedjèwèr, geplintir and gesintil. In this dynamic
period of budding nationalism, the tension between ‘Indo’, a racial
and class-based term, and ‘Indisch’, a term that related to practically
everything in the colony except ‘Dutch’, became more and more pro-
nounced, resulting in the formation of a brotherhood or union of ‘Indo-
Europeans’ (Bosma and Raben 2003:288).

25 For details of these practices see Cohen 1967.

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indo society and the age of reform and emancipation

Violent practices and representations gained considerable importance

among lower-class Indos towards the end of the nineteenth century,
when the number of impoverished Indo-Europeans rose dramatically
as their positions were gradually taken over by white newcomers to the
colony.26 These poor Indos often became marginalized people, despised
and excluded by ‘decent’ middle-class colonials. They were at a loss for
a clear social identity throughout late-colonial society and formed the
colony’s own urban proletariat class.27 Living in suburbs, at the border
of the kampung, in sometimes destitute conditions, Indos strove to be
‘white’ and in their turn sometimes despised the Indonesian population,
all the more so when the so-called Ethical Policy, intended to modernize
the colonized, was initiated.
Among the lower-class Indo men and boys (boeaja, or ‘crocodiles’, as
they were often called by ‘decent’ colonials) being a good fighter became
crucially important. In lower-class Indo society, caught between the colo-
nizers and the colonized, survival meant the capacity to deliver the first
and final blow. Hunting, boxing, bodybuilding (‘bouwmaken’) and other
masculine pastimes such as motor racing, petty crime and chasing girls
were favoured. Indos wanted to avoid the image of effeminacy, of weak-
ness, of belonging to the female realm of colonized land and people. As
McClintock (1995:24) writes about British colonialism:

As the visible trace of paranoia, feminizing the land is a compensatory

gesture, disavowing male loss of boundary by reinscribing a ritual excess
of boundary, accompanied, all too often, by an excess of military vio-
lence. The feminizing of the land represents a ritualistic moment in im-
perial discourse, as male intruders ward off fears of narcissistic disorder
by reinscribing, as natural, an excess of gender hierarchy.

In this sense, Indos resembled the colonial stereotype more than actual
Dutch colonials. Escaping into extreme masculinity seemed to give them

26 A remarkable explanation for this violence appears in an epilogue by Surie (1978) to the novel De
paupers, by Victor Ido, contending that the inadequacy of Petjoh as a formal language obstructed the
verbal resolution of conflicts.
27 Bosma and Raben 2003:233. More affluent Indos, often descended from well-off Indisch families,
implicitly belonged to the colonial upper classes.

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a pretext to use violence as a class marker, although many of them

belonged without any doubt to the lower class, or paupers. Their fre-
quent and obtrusive use of violence and its symbols seemed to ‘elevate’
Indos on the imagined social ladder: it made them less Asian and more
white. For Indos, colonized Asians equalled the female gender: passive,
subordinate victims of the male principle (Gouda 1998). The period in
which the Indo communities developed into a distinct urban culture just
preceded the onset of the Europeanizeering (Westernization) of the higher
levels of colonial society. Ancient Indisch social customs and manners,
such as the separation of men and women at social gatherings, disap-
peared from the upper class as they were not appreciated by the large
number of female totok (C. Taylor 1990). As the link with the Netherlands
became a treasured relationship for the new colonials, modernization
of the colonial enterprise was set in motion. Its most important vehicle,
the Ethical Policy, was for many newcomers a great influence on their
perception of native society. A combination of these factors – the final
assault on Indische or ancient colonial culture and the Ethical Policy –
may have caused colonial society to turn a blind eye to the existence of
Indo subculture, with its Indisch elements and its unmistakable impact on
educated Indonesians of common descent.
Shortly after the decline of what I have called ‘petty violence’ in co-
lonial society, around the turn of the century, the much-debated Dutch
version of the mission civilatrice was set in motion. The Ethical Policy,
which aimed to develop and modernize native society, strove to have a
‘civilizing’ effect on the colonizers as well, where it advocated compensa-
tion and compassion. However, changes in attitude were also observable
in native society. Locher-Scholten (2000:197), in her collection of essays
about gender and modernity in the late Netherlands Indies, mentions the
‘civilising offensive, which drew elite women and men more firmly into
the sphere of Western family life. The expansion of modernity implied
the Westernization of the Indonesian elite, which would strengthen the
colonial state, with the family as its cornerstone.’ The modernization of
native society that both the colonizing and the colonized elite strove for
was above all aimed at middle-class values such as education, hygiene,
marriage reform, the nuclear family and thrift (Locher-Scholten 2000;
Kartini 1912). Many reformers considered their mission as a campaign
against backward ‘tribal’ or ‘Islamic’ customs such as child marriage, po-
lygamy, black magic and sacrificial ceremonies. The outward appearance

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of daily life in the urbanized parts of the colony started to change rapidly
around 1906, when recently developed educational opportunities, indian-
isatie28 and a host of new, low-ranking jobs that were a result of improv-
ing economic conditions introduced fast-growing numbers of young
Indonesians to lifestyles that formerly had been completely unknown.
The ensuing rush for modernity was, however, inspired far more by the
fashions of the time than by the restricted ideals of the Ethical Policy.29
The proliferation of ethnic-cultural youth organizations and the new
Islamic reformist movement, for instance, reflected similar developments
taking place in several parts of Asia. The emancipation ‘on their own’
of the Indos, another side effect of the economic recovery, took place in
the same decade. This also contributed to the new workforce that found
its place in the lower and middle levels of new managerial bureaucracies
in commercial offices, in expanded government administrations, schools
and hospitals (Nieuwenhuys 1967:28). It moreover led to a further strati-
fication of the Indo social category.
To a considerable extent, this social emancipation process during the
first two decades of the twentieth century was literally a shared experience
for urban Indos and ‘vanguard’ or emancipated Indonesians: they not
only came to share a language (Malay and/or Petjoh), but together they
also made their first entry into modern public places such as canteens, de-
partment stores, changing rooms, classrooms and meeting spaces, Malay
theatres (komedie Stamboel and wajang Tjina), krontjong (Indo music) concerts,
cinemas and public transportation facilities (De Jong 1998:394). Last but
not least, they came to share the new and dreadful experience of wearing
shoes. Although Indos often felt threatened in their advanced social posi-
tion by emancipated Indonesians, cross-cultural contacts must have been
fairly extensive and numerous, especially when the two population groups
came to live in mixed neighbourhoods (De Jong 1998:393-4; Wertheim
1947:7-10). The significance of these scarcely documented encounters
should not be underrated. The gap between native Indonesian daily-life
customs and those of European modernity often proved to be much
too wide for aspiring Indonesians, which left the hybrid, native-related

28 Indianisatie means the steady replacement of European, low-ranking employees by Indonesians.

29 The confusion that was brought about by this ‘rush’ in the 1920s and 1930s is illustrated in the novel
Buiten het gareel by Soewarsih Djojopoespito (1986). Its nationalist heroine, the destitute Suwarsih, ‘hates
Westernization’; at the same time she is very proud to produce ‘at least’ a tablecloth for her husband’s
frugal meal.

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lifestyle of the ‘little’ Indo neighbour as a more feasible role model. After
all, the Indo-European way of life had for centuries been the hallmark of
the colonial elite.30 The tendency of the white colonial elite to withdraw
anxiously from the wider colonial society from the early 1920s onwards
also obstructed the obviousness of their social ‘example’ (Locher-Scholten
2000:126). The precise impact of the Indos on the early formation of
Indonesian middle-class culture as ‘brokers’ or otherwise is not easy to
trace in written records. Indo culture formed in most respects a Fremdkörper
in the idealized social reality of the Ethical movement, incompatible with
the rhetoric of modernization. The specific and dynamic urban-based
Indo culture has at best been regarded as a ‘culture of poverty’ and could
hardly find recognition in this atmosphere of denial, not by reformists,
civil servants or historians.31 According to Pattynama (1998:106-7), ‘the
obscuring and forgetting of mestizo Indo-European histories, in which
miscegenation was pivotal’ has been caused by two contradictory narra-
tives of the colonial past that dominate Dutch collective memory: one a
‘celebratory tale’, the other a ‘story of regret and contrition’.
Indo culture’s intermediate role in the process of creating an ur-
ban middle-class culture in the first decades of the twentieth century is
therefore largely overlooked, although ample evidence of cross-cultural
processes can be found in remnants of early popular culture, such as
cheap novels, the products of a budding native film industry, martial
arts instructions, cookbooks and spiritual or philosophical brochures.32
These novels and films were, as a matter of fact, largely characterized by
their violent and/or pornographic content (Van Till 1996). A stunning
example of the early taste for sadistic images was the illustrated weekly
De Zweep (The Whip), edited by the Indo press agent Dominique Berretty.
He promoted his paper as a ‘cruel weekly’, with ‘John Cat-o’-nine-tails’ as
editor-in-chief; it was, from 1921 onwards, conditionally sold with several
major newspapers. Among the paper’s regular images were naked and
mutilated bodies found in the city morgue (Bosma 1997:363-4). Although
it is generally stated that ‘genuine Indo’ or Indo-European culture evapo-
rated rapidly when Westernization arrived after the turn of the century, it
is clear that the lower-class forms of Indo culture survived throughout the

30 The present-day Javanese aristocratic elite still harbours many of these Indisch notions (Pemberton
1994).
31 Exceptions are Koks 1930; Van der Veur 1961; Bosma and Raben 2003.
32 Exceptions are Wertheim 1947; Van Till 1996.

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1930s (De Jong 1998:396). According to De Jong (1998:396), Indo culture

was positively ‘booming’ in Indonesian society even in the 1920s and the
1930s, although this phenomenon was largely ignored by or unknown to
the European upper classes. Another important clue to a politico-cultural
connection between the two social categories can be found in the very
first voices that propagated nationalist ideas, in particular that of Douwes
Dekker, an ‘angry’ Indo who inspired and collaborated with young
Indonesians (De Jong 1998:389). Historian Ulbe Bosma (2005:68) argues
that Indo class consciousness emerged around the turn of the century and
that Indos were the first to imagine a concept of an Indies citizenship,
‘just at the dawn of Indonesian nationalism’. This suggests that nascent
Indo and Indonesian notions of citizenship were inspired by shared or
similar experiences with late-colonial economic and socio-cultural issues.
Besides the survival of ideas and practices that clearly belong to the
heritage of the European colonial elite, such as notions about sexual
puritanism, the climate and education, a few stray traces of late-colonial
Indo culture also still seem to partake in modern urban middle-class life-
styles. The forms of mediated violence described earlier in this chapter,
which reflect current concepts of violence, may in certain respects also
belong to this heritage of late-colonial Indo culture. As it happens, this
particular notion of violence – as a largely instrumental, rather amoral
everyday issue – belonged to a typical set of ideas and notions on cultural
practices that came to be shared by Indos and aspiring Indonesians alike,
and that was fostered in the sprawling suburban communities in the first
three decades of the last century. Although Indonesian middle classes
have, apparently, easily embraced modern middle-class ideas, practices
and values, those early middle-class concepts of violence seem to have
been resistant to a ‘modern’, ‘civilized’ understanding of violence. This
is comparable to other current, typical middle-class notions, for instance
concerning supernatural practices (sometimes called parapsikologi, both
then and now), physical beauty, racial superiority, interior design, the
role of religion and culinary preferences – notions that have been dis-
seminated by the mass media to the wider society.33 These concepts stem
from a particular ‘creolization’ of persistent ideas, notions and practices
that, under pressure of modernization, accommodated a new-born need
of making sense in the marginalized and urbanized parts of the colony.
33 Educated Indos and Indonesians who practised forms of black magic, which was strongly associ-
ated with ‘the primitive’, often regarded and presented these practices as scientific projects (Ido 1978).

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However, this speculative investigation of late-colonial mental history,

inspired by puzzling encounters with represented and real violence in the
field, in no way justifies serious claims on the actual existence of a ‘geneal-
ogy of concepts of violence’. Nor would, for that matter, any investigation
of any genealogy that may stem from late-colonial lower-class Indo cul-
ture. In all probability, there are no solid ways to explore possible genealo-
gies stemming from ‘obscured and forgotten’ histories, since these histories
were from the start not just obscured and forgotten in the Netherlands,
but in Indonesia as well. Loose ends are all that remain, although they are
nevertheless indispensable in gaining an understanding of the dynamics
of contemporary urban and suburban society, as Frederick (1983:355)
suggests: ‘the late-colonial period […] is, especially in Indonesia, the his-
torical period in which the broad contours of urban social transition are
most widely recognized yet the inner nature and workings of the change
are most thoroughly hidden and misunderstood’.34
The inner workings of the social change indicated by Frederick
were strongly influenced by shared understandings and expectations
of modernization, the all-encompassing sign of the times in the 1920s
and 1930s. However, for several decades afterwards, violent episodes
would determine the course of modern Indonesian history against the
background of actual, state-guided undertakings of the project of mod-
ernization. During New Order rule, the urban middle classes became
relatively sheltered from most forms of violence, but their obsession
with crime, revolt and insecurity within a politico-authoritarian context
favoured the persistence of instrumental concepts of violence such as
‘useful and in relationship to the exercise of power’. The stepping down
of Suharto and the subsequent proliferation of many forms of violence,
of which even the middle classes for once became the victims, signified,
in spite of reformasi, a further continuation of a ‘regime of violence’. A
particular set of notions of violence, in particular the categorical confu-
sion of the ‘Editor’s Note’ to Usamah’s story, can also be discerned in
Indonesian mass media reports dealing with violence these days, born
out of the antagonizing forces of local experience and of modernity’s
opaque claims on civilization.

34 Frederick (1983:355, 371) suggested using oral sources and vernacular materials in order to ‘un-
derstand how [urban] Southeast Asians in this [late-colonial] period viewed themselves from the social
standpoint’ despite scarce or misleading source materials.

260
 Conclusion

The chapters of this book dealt with diverging aspects of middle-class

suburban life in the late 1990s, the closing stages of New Order reign. As
a whole, the textual organization of this book offered a gradual shift of
focus: from concrete spatial structure to dimensions of the ‘inner life’ of
middle-class suburban society. The individual chapters each offered new
information in an investigation of Indonesian middle-class lifestyles that
facilitate socio-political agency. Most of the chapters were concluded by
remarks and observations of a more or less provisional character, which
will now be assembled in order to address the problematic issues regard-
ing ‘the new middle classes’ that I set out to investigate from the start:
their unclear contours, apparently non-existent socio-historical origins
and contested agency.
My initial observations concerned the fact that suburbs reflected a
multi-levelled ambiguity: on the simultaneous absence and presence of
the New Order state, on the ‘modern’ yet conservative orientation of their
residents, and on the conflicting principles of feeling enak and performing
disiplin (Chapter I). This resulted, for instance, in the ‘restoration’ of older
Indonesian lifestyles, beginning at the oldest fringes of the new suburbs,
where kampungan ways of living slowly returned. The second chapter
concluded with findings about the dominating and penetrating impact of
New Order ideology as a multi-faceted influence on daily life. ‘Suppressed
fear’ turned out to be a generally harboured sentiment among members
of the educated, suburban middle class, as a probable consequence of
long-term depoliticization that was part of New Order political ideology.
Many members of the middle classes harboured feelings of being radi-
cally different from the ‘underclass’ or massa, who were considered to be
a social menace. The effects of depoliticization can also be identified in
the findings of Chapter III, where it was argued that in times of disaster
and mayhem, it was not politics but consumption culture that offered a
shared frame of communication, reference and reassurance to the middle
class. Chapter IV focused on the phenomenon of ‘localized’ mall culture,
|  Lost in mall

resulting in the characterization of the mall as a no-go area for members

of the ‘underclass’. This exclusion lead to a fraternization of mall visitors,
who found in the mall a common ground that was the basis for the rise of
an exclusive ‘civil society’, celebrated in the hundreds of Jabotabek malls.
Ambiguity was evident here as well: in the blurring between public and
private realms, in the overwhelming supply of consumer goods and ser-
vices and in the wider choice of modern roles and identities available at the
mall. The conclusion of Chapter V focused on the theme of social exclu-
sion and inclusion by establishing signs of an ‘ethnicization’ of the middle
class: the abandoning of the tropical climate, in body and mind, in order to
reside (physically and conceptually) in ‘global’, air-conditioned surround-
ings. This ‘cool state of being’ of the middle classes can be recognized as
a new form of being radically different from the Indonesian massa, and is
inspired by a repressive, late-colonial discourse on the ‘degenerating trop-
ics’. The final chapter explored present-day conceptualizations of violence
among the middle class and marginalized urban practices and conditions
of late-colonial society. As a tentative outcome, the covert endurance of
suburban traditions has been assumed as a possible and partial explanation
of different assessments of the moral aspects of violence.
What does this succession of observations and/or conclusions finally
offer, in response to my initial questions concerning the contours, origins
and agency of the middle class and the formation of middleclassness?
Starting with the problematic theme of contours and demarcation, my
observations showed that the rule of thumb – that a clear sense of iden-
tity defines who belongs and who does not – did not completely apply to
Jabotabek in the late 1990s. The insecurity of members of the new middle
classes about their own middle-class identity was reflected in the reliance
on spatial surroundings as the paramount demarcators of middleclass-
ness. Social inclusion and exclusion became factual conditions, although
some of these strict boundaries proved to become negotiable over time:
in the suburbs, comfortable (enak) Indonesian life turned out to be difficult
to realize without the immediacy of asli (authentic), unmodern elements,
arrangements and persons. In the shopping-mall supermarkets, middle-
class aspirants were targeted by easily affordable middle-class products,
such as low-quality tissues, powdered baby milk and skin whitener, in an
effort of producers to expand the middle class. In the meantime, the idea
of social engineering using fences and walls was adopted by the local
Jabotabek government, which fenced and closed off the main and only

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urban ‘underclass’ recreation zone, Merdeka Square. This monumental

space, the former symbolic heart of the nation, developed overnight into
a middle-class theme park, with entrance fees, car parks, colonial spotted
deer and jogging facilities. Merdeka Square became a token of state-
organized middleclassness as well as one of social exclusion. The contours
of the middle class in Jabotabek can therefore be described as a negative
demarcation, shaped by urban residents who are eager to share a peculiar
distance vis-à-vis the perceived ‘underclass’. Moreover, it seems that these
contours are in some sense internalized by local authorities as reflected
in urban spatial arrangements such as the ‘privatization’ of public space.
The simultaneous development of privately owned structures and places,
such as the hundreds of shopping malls, real estate housing developments,
theme parks and toll roads, into idealized public spaces essentially ac-
cessible only to the ‘middle class’, narrows the understanding of what it
means to be a citizen to being a participant in an exclusively middle-class
identity project. Others do ‘not yet’ belong there, or they do not belong
there anymore. The idea of a public culture open to all citizens does not
seem to exist at any level. Instead, the shopping mall functions as a com-
mon meeting ground for specimens of the middle class – as a budding
civil society based on exclusion.
Analogous to this rearrangement of space, a progressive shift in this
middle-class identity from being a ‘tropical’ one into a ‘cool’ one shows
how the awareness of being radically different, helped by air condition-
ing, hasbecome internalized and how it prompts people to seek alle-
giance with other ‘air-conditioned’ middle-class members, jeopardizing
the idea of an Indonesia-wide nation. This brings us to the question of
the allegedly non-existent origins of the middle class. The first notions
of the middle class and its role in Indonesian society were raised in the
early 1930s. For various reasons, the late-colonial era was important to
the development and formation of the idea of the Indonesian middle
class, among the colonized as well as among the colonizers. The onset
of the modernization or Westernization of the colonial state was placed
within the context of a newly developed, urban public culture, in which
‘imported’ institutions of civil society (however curtailed or ‘colonialized’
they may have been) became more clearly established, largely in order
to legitimize colonial rule. The experience of these cultural and spatial
developments, and the experience of the policies and philosophies of
the ethical period, were crucial to the budding urban Indonesian and

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Indo-European middle classes. These experiences functioned as encoun-

ters with modernity as a new lifestyle, of which a new identity as a civil
subject formed a significant part.
Not surprisingly, the paramount ideological role of education as the
pioneer of nationalism also dates from this era, along with its potential
as a divisive element. This is aptly reflected in a 1935 excerpt from the
nationalist Soetan Sjahrir’s (1987:62-3) Indonesische overpeinzingen:

The intellectual distance between my people and me is certainly no greater

than between an intellectual in Holland and, for example, a Drent peas-
ant, or even between an intellectual and the generally uneducated people
of Holland. The main difference appears to be that a Dutch intellectual
doesn’t recognize this distance, because a large portion of the Dutch popu-
lation – a very large portion in fact – is at the same intellectual level as him,
and it is precisely this portion that forms an entity which is Dutch intellec-
tual life: the intellectuals, the scientists, the artists, the writers. We lack all
of that. We have only very few intellectuals here […] and they do not form
an intellectual entity, a unified culture. They are still culturally ignorant.
[…] [I]ntellectuals in Holland can unwittingly build on their tradition, even
when they disagree, they have still their tradition as a point of departure.
In this country, we do not have this. For centuries here there has been no
intellectual life, no cultural life, no progress. […] Our intellectual needs are
twentieth-century needs, our problems, our views, are all twentieth century.
Our sense is not directed towards mysticism, but towards reality, clarity,
pragmatism. […] For our intellectual needs we are dependent on the West,
not only in a scientific sense but also in a general, cultural sense.

What Soetan Sjahrir expresses here is the feeling of being alienated from
his society. His feelings of alienation are caused by the almost insuperable
distance he felt to exist between those who are within modernity (that is,
Westernization) and those who are ‘not yet’ modern, although they both
belong to the same nation. He imagines the radical difference between
the Indonesian intellectual and the ignorant Indonesian, describing the
loneliness of being thrown into modernity, without any supposed ‘tradi-
tion of modernity’ as was available to people in the West – not realizing
that this sensation of being cut-off from the roots is characteristic of
the state of being modern everywhere, not just in Indonesia. However,
formal education – ‘in our society still immediately granting superiority

264
 Conclusion |

among the uneducated’ – was regarded by Sjahrir (1987:130) and other

nationalists as the only means of crossing this ontological distance, as
much as education, preferably abroad, is nowadays seen by the middle
classes as the true marker of middleclassnes.
Simultaneous with this predominant trope of ‘education’, many
other, less obtrusive forms, practices and concepts of modernized life
were adopted by the growing numbers of Indonesians and lower class
Indo-Europeans who entered the urban public arena during the first
decades of the twentieth century. In a similar way to the belief in
education, many of these minor forms, practices and concepts have
subsequently persisted for decades among the middle classes relatively
unaltered. Unlike ‘education’, they formed no part of grand theories,
but they came to be established in urban and suburban spatial and cul-
tural routines as comfortable and tacit assets of urban middleclassness.
A peculiar and complex example is the concept of the unsuitability of
the tropical climate, as I argued in Chapter V. A rather speculative and
tentative example could also be found in my foray into the origins of the
middle-class concept of violence, as in Chapter VI. However, speculation
forms a major and necessary part of any investigation into the remains
of the distinct, late-colonial (1930s) Indo-European urban culture in
Jabotabek, for this past is not acknowledged as a predecessor of current
diverging urban conditions, in clear contrast with the recently celebrated
Betawi inheritance (the dominant and colourful traditional folk culture
of Jakarta) that exclusively represents the city’s ‘ethnic’ origins. Since
most aspects of late-colonial Indo culture were not spectacular or obtru-
sive, it did and does not lend itself easily to recognition, celebration or
revival.1 In the late-colonial era, Indo culture dealt predominantly but
often implicitly with issues of class distinction and difference, and it is
in this respect that the middle class reflects certain longue dureé effects of
the past Indo presence in the urban areas. The nexus of the persistent
nationalist idea of the middle class as a ‘pioneer class’ of the Indonesian
nation, and the process of Westernization and extension into society of
the late-colonial state, helped to produce an early self-identity of the
middle class as a permanently modernized avant-garde of society.
The last question that now needs to be addressed concerns the ex-
1 In the Netherlands, Indo or Indo-European culture is celebrated and commemorated by the de-
scendants of postcolonial migrants, in contrast to Indonesia, where its ‘exotic’ aspects, for instance its
cuisine, are not obvious.

265
|  Lost in mall

tent to which the middle class can be characterized as having consistent

political agency in Indonesian society and the direction, if any, in which
this agency appears to lead. Here it is useful to recall Ariel Heryanto’s
(2003:26) remarks on the plurality of middle classes in the same nation-
state: they can be progressive as well as conservative, opportunistic as well
as apathetic, ‘for various reasons that are historically specific’. However,
since my research focused on the middle class as a cultural categorical
construct – middle-class self-understanding – I am not concerned with
the plurality of a socio-economic phenomenon, but with dimensions of
cultural cohesion. Not surprisingly, this particular cohesion was ‘translated’
and embodied in concrete spatial structures found throughout the suburbs.
Simple and obvious principles of social inclusion and exclusion could thus
apparently be maintained without apparent high social costs, and social
ambiguity or middle-class insecurity diminished visibly in these places.
The internal logic of these modern spacial arrangements, including air-
conditioning facilities, brought about urban social exclusion in an effort-
less, almost mechanical way. Encounters with members of the underclass
on the various ‘public’ premises were, as a rule, tolerated only if the latter
materialized in a deferential way and in order to earn a livelihood. As with
the suburban infrastructure and the spatial logic of shopping malls and
theme parks, social engineering by concrete structure was performed in
the microcosm of the standard middle-class residence, where ‘traditional’
partitions of space and/or air-conditioned zones indicate the inaccessibil-
ity or unacceptability for servants and other low-ranking service personnel.
These initially clear-cut spatial arrangements were all under pressure.
After a decade, some of the 1980s pioneer suburban development border
zones were hardly distinguishable from the original half-rural, half-urban
(kampungan) city fringes, because of the tropical patina they had acquired
over time due to neglect, residential shifts and a gradual adoption of in-
formal economic interests, with the corresponding livestock, small-scale
cultivation and fleets of vehicles. Commerce could also be seen in quar-
ters that were still prestigious, such as the almost worthless vans collected
and parked around the corner from Sissy’s house, or the many banners
found in quiet residential streets announcing various private businesses
such as computer or English courses, beauty parlours or child day care.
In the malls, the basement supermarkets provided typical middle-class
commodities for underclass prices, thereby luring housemaids and handy-
men into the vestibules of middleclassness and obscuring imagined social

266
 Conclusion |

boundaries. Those who considered themselves to be ‘real’ members of

the middle class repeated Solvay Gerke’s (2000) accusation: these people
are not real consumers, but symbolic consumers. Paradoxically, capitalist
interests seemed here to undermine class identities that were partly estab-
lished by consumer practices. By the late 1990s, this perceived clearance
sale of class identity had restricted itself to the mall basements, apparently
because diversification of the higher floors was not yet (belum) deemed
feasible. In middle-class homes, pressure for change led to adjustments.
Parallel to the massive influx of new commodities, a standard set of mod-
ern servants’ necessities had become the norm: small-sized plastic furni-
ture, such as low stools, a miniature fan and a small size TV-set (usually
black-and-white, and often set up on the ironing board). Servants could
thus arrange a ‘colony’ of the master’s living room for themselves – for
instance in the dapur. But when the master was away, for example in Budi’s
case, servants did not hesitate to take over ‘untransgressable’ middle-class
roles, manipulating the wide-screen TV’s remote control from the mas-
ter’s easy chair, feet up and smoking Sampurna (an expensive brand of
kretek cigarettes), and paying lengthy visits to the local shopping mall as a
form of leisure, all of which justified entirely Budi’s anxious premonitions.
In general, every household seemed to have problems finding ways to
manage their servants’ recent demands, often brought in connection with
demokratisasi, and to establish comfortable controlling mechanisms. Sitting
in chairs and enjoying air conditioning were tought to be the domain of
the middle class and a no-go area for servants, and this showed the extent
to which simple spatial arrangements were crucial to conserving practices
of social exclusion and inclusion.
These spatial arrangements currently find themselves under pressure
from various directions: tropical neglect, capitalist expansion and de-
mokratisasi. The idea, though, of being radically different from the rest, of
being middle class, is under less immediate pressure, as the middle class
can escape to what can be regarded as the ultimate spatial arrangement:
the ‘cool’ or air-conditioned body. Being radically different also trans-
gresses the bounds of society in another way by becoming incorporated
in arrangements of the state, which is demonstrated in the public priva-
tization of Merdeka Square, or the state-sponsored military protection
of a shopping mall such as the Lippo Supermal. These observations ex-
plain the hegemonic and unobtrusive way in which middle-class agency
operates: by unassailable, seemingly apolitical and silent spatial and

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atmospheric arrangements that nevertheless speak loudly for themselves.

In my introduction, I mentioned the apprehension I experienced
when I came across a giant spanduk in Bintaro in September 1999:
‘Together by way of aerobics – we fight drugs – at 7 a.m.’ The inexpli-
cable link I felt to exist between the simultaneous appearance of the span-
duk and the climax of the massacre on East Timor turned slowly into a
coherent story during the following years, when I became more aware of
the umbilical cord that connects the middle class to the state in Indonesia.
The devastation after the state-induced purging of East Timor and the
East Timorese – possibly the ultimate exclusion of the ultimate underclass
of Indonesia – had, I understood, to express its final justification where
it counted most: in the heart of middleclassness.2 Here, the ‘desertion’ of
East Timor was tacitly felt to be the first sign of the dreaded disintegra-
tion of the Indonesian state, and the destruction and killings that followed
were therefore experienced as due compensation. This appeared to be ex-
pressed not by public opinion or in political statements, but in a gigantic,
anonymous red-and-white banner in a plot of suburban wasteland, that
told people to do aerobics together in order to fight drugs. A poorer icon
of collectivity, modernity and political awareness than this flat representa-
tion of middleclassness is hardly imaginable.3
To precisely what extent has the Indonesian middle class been de-
pendent on the consolidation of the New Order, or Orde Baru, state,
apart from the purely economic dimension? The reverse seems rather
to be the case: the 1965 coup was a ‘middle-class revolution’ from the
start, and the massive depoliticization of the nation under President
Suharto’s reign helped to prime the emerging middle classes for their
eager redefining of the scope of the political in society. Yet, it is highly
unlikely that more than three decades of a peculiar political inertia
could have been maintained with relative ease without suitable, already
existing ideological frames of reference within society – frames that were
probably moulded during earlier, more familiar stages of repression
combined with modernization. These frames of reference, representing
late-colonial middle-class concepts, practices, ideals and values, have
proved to be capable of resisting scores of political slogans, and they can
probably survive the demise of the Orde Baru as well.
2 From the start the East Timorese were excluded from the ‘myth of origin’ of the Indonesian state,
‘the Revolution’.
3 The banner later turned out to have been placed there by the Pak RT of the neighbourhood.

268
 Glossary and abbreviations

ABG anak baru gede, ‘children who have only just grown up’;
young adolescents
ABS asal bapak senang, ‘keeping our father/leader satisfied’
adat customary law
aliran world view streams
alun-alun traditional village square consisting of a vast lawn,
often situated in front of a palace
amuk rage
anak bungsu the youngest, ‘traditionally’ spoilt child
angkot angkutan kota, public minibus
aparat armed forces
arisan club meeting
asli authentic

bak mandi square cement water container used in bathrooms

banci male transvestite
bapak sir; father
becak bike taxi
belum ‘not yet’, is a polite phrase used to avoid negation
berapa ‘how much’
berdikari berdiri di atas kaki sendiri, self-sufficient
blancon ready made, manufactured
boeaja crocodile
bule white person
bunga duri flower thorns
busana clothing

cewek matre ‘material girl’

cowok merek ‘brand-name crazy guy’

dapur ‘wet’ kitchen

|  Lost in mall

demokratisasi ‘democratization’
desa village
disiplin ‘disciplin’; ‘disiplin nasional’ is a state slogan commonly
seen on banners, stickers, posters and wall paintings
dua anak cukup ‘two children is enough’, the New Order state slogan
promoting family planning
duduk sitting
dukun traditional curer-sorcerer

eksekutip from orang eksekutip, ‘executive people’

eksekutip muda youngsters from affluent families
enak conclusion – good, comfortable, relaxed

fakta baru novelty

gengsi prestige

hantem kromo thrashing of servants, kromo being the word colo-

nials reserved for lower-class Javanese

ibu-ibu ladies
ilmu (magical) knowledge
indekos room and board
indianisatie the steady replacement of European, low-ranking em-
ployees by Indonesians.
Indisch ‘Indies’, a reference to colonial creole culture in the
Dutch-Indies, initially shared by white colonials and
colonials of mixed descent (Indos), after 1900
abandoned by the majority of the white colonial
populatian
Indo an Indo or Indo-European is a person of mixed white
and Indonesian descent, during colonial times this usu-
ally meant of European and Indonesian descent

jalan street
jalan tikus ‘mouse road’, semi-secret short cut
jamu traditional herbal medicine
jongkok traditional squatting position

270
 Glossary and abbreviations  |

kafe tenda tent cafe or restaurant, that became fashionable during

the monetary crisis
kampung village or lower-class urban quarter
kampungan ‘primitive’, also: informal, rustic
kebersihan cleanliness
kebudayaan culture
kemajuan progress
Kentuki ‘Kentucky’; as in Kentucky Fried Chicken
KKN korupsi, kolusi dan nepotisme, corruption, collusion and
nepotism
kompensasi compensation
komunitas maya virtual community
konde traditional Javanese hair bun
koneksi connection
krakeling brass knuckles
kraton palace
kriminalitas criminality
krismon/krisis the long term monetary, political and social crisis that
moneter started in 1997
KTP kartu tanda penduduk, identity card
kuno old-fashioned, obsolete

latah a particular Malay reaction in the form of obstinate,

devious behaviour
Lebaran the feast at the end of the Muslim fast

maju(-ness) progress
malu embarrassed
masih bodoh ‘still ignorant’
massa the ‘masses’, underclass
MEP materialisme, egoisme, persaingan, materialism, egoism,
competition
mie goreng fried noodles
mie noodles
The moderen (modernity) local interpretation of modernity
moderen, the the locally modern
monumen monument

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nasi goreng fried rice

nasi gudek typical Javanese rice dish

ojek motorbike taxi

Orde Baru New Order, the term coined by President Suharto to
characterize his regime

Pak RT the elected chairman of the rukun tetangga, an obligatory

(official) neighbourhood representation
pantri display kitchen, scullery
parapsikologi supernatural practices
pasar market
pegawai civil servant
pembangunan development
pembantu servant
pemilu pemilihan umum, general election
pemuda youngster
pemutih skin whitener product
pendopo a Javanese construction consisting of a decorated roof
held up by pillars, used for gatherings
penduduk asli ‘original dweller’
perek perempuan eksperimental, ‘experimental girl’
perumahan housing project
pesta demokrasi ‘festival of democracy’, general election
Petjoh the collective name of the Dutch vernaculars used by
(lower-class) Indos
plasa ‘plaza’, shopping mall
polisi cepek ‘hundred-cent police’, informal traffic regulators
polisi tidur ‘sleeping policeman’, speed bump
pribumi ‘indigenous Indonesian’
priyayi high-ranking native official
pusaka heirloom
pusing sick, dizzy
putih white

rakyat ‘the little people’, the masses

rampas, rampok plundering
rapat meeting

272
 Glossary and abbreviations  |

realestat ‘real estate’

reformasi political reformation period, surrounding the stepping-
down of President Suharto
Romawi Roman
romboter roomboter (Dutch), butter
rommel rommel (Dutch), trash
ronda neighbourhood watch
ruang tamu formal front room, used to receive guests
ruko combined house and shop; from rumah, ‘house’, and
toko, ‘shop’
rukun harmony, co-operation, unity of effort, minimization of
conflicts
rust en orde rust en orde (Dutch), ‘peace and order’, a colonial slogan

savoir vivre savoir vivre (French), ability to live life well

selamatan Javanese ritual meal
senam sek ‘sexual gymnastics’
senang comfortable
sinetron soap opera
slamet selamat, health
sombong arrogant
spanduk banner
sudah biasa being used to something
suntik injection
suster nanny, nurse

taman rekreasi recreation park

tante HIV tante Hemang Ike Vikirin , ‘do-you-think-I-care auntie’, ar-
rogant female
tawuran school brawl
toko dingin ‘cold shop’, Western-style grocery
tropenneurose ‘neurosis of the tropics’, a psychosomatic disorder of
Dutch colonials during the late-colonial era
TST tahu sama tahu, a collective form of ‘to hear, to see and to
hush up’
tukang barang bekas lower-class junk dealer
tumpang ceremonial, Javanese cone-shaped dish of yellow rice

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|  Lost in mall

upacara ceremony

warga citizen
warung shop
warung tenda tent cafe or restaurant, that became fashionable during
the monetary crisis – the long term monetary, political
and social crisis that started in 1997

wong cilik ‘the little people’, the masses

zaman edan ‘crazy times’

zaman kurang ajar ‘the age without a moral code’
zinloos geweld ‘senseless violence’, a term referring to a Dutch societal
crisis in the 1990s

274
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290
 Index

052 Wijayakrama Military Resort ASM (Accredited Shopping Center

163 Manager) 164
30-9-65 125-6 see also Gestapu Athens 78
ABG (-girls) 154, 181-2, 187 Australia 193, 209, 234
ABG consumers 182
ABG-mal 139 Bachtiar, National Police Chief 234
ABS (asal bapak senang) 127 Bali 38, 40, 66, 89, 159, 193, 246
Abu Dhabi 55 Balikpapan 32
AC see air conditioning Batavia 1, 225-6, 230, 251, 253 see
Aceh 183, 242 also Jakarta
Acehnese 242, 253 Beijing 162
Acropolis 78 Bekasi 2, 31, 99, 136, 169, 247
Adri 74, 80, 109 Belgium 72
Agung Shop 247 Bengkel Nightpark 88-9
air conditioning (AC) 27, 84, 103, Berretty, Dominique 259
128, 197-200, 202-3, 205-10, 213-4, Betawi 265
217-8, 220, 263, 266-7 Beverly Hills 40, 75, 80-3, 94, 98,
Air mata Ibu 88 100-1, 105, 107
Alam Sutera 39 Bintarese 32-3, 35, 46, 48-9, 57-8,
Ambon 233 60-1, 129
America 85, 114 see also United Bintaro see Bintaro Jaya
States Bintaro Jaya 2, 3, 14-5, 19, 24-6,
Amrozi 234 29-39, 41-2, 46-51, 57-64, 67, 69,
Amsterdam 1, 40, 67, 119, 210 73-5, 80-1, 89, 93-6, 98, 101, 104-5,
Ancol 212 110, 114, 122, 129-30, 136, 146,
Annie, Aunt 121, 131-2, 144-5, 189, 150, 177, 215, 229, 231, 233, 237,
200, 208-11 243, 249, 268
Arief 99 – Sektor I 31, 35, 37, 243
Armed Forces 69, 194 see also TNI – Sektor II 31
Asia 6, 8, 24, 257 – Sektor III 36

|  Lost in mall

– Sektor IIIA 33, 74, 199 Cat-o’-nine-tails, John 258

– Sektor VII 46 Cempaka Putih 107
– Sektor VIII 47, 62 Cengkareng Plaza 156
– Sektor IX 33, 48, 51, 75, 80, 96, Chan, Victor 163-7, 170, 192-4
153 Charles, Prince 219
Bintaro Plaza Mal 58, 104, 106, 153, Chinese 77, 98, 119, 210
160, 171, 175, 177, 179 Christians 71
Blok M 58, 243 Christmas 27, 77, 84, 96, 98, 161,
BMW 202 231, 242
Bogor 2 Cilandak 174, 214
Bogor Palace 64 Cinere 215
Boldoot 26, 119, 121, 132, 134 Cinta 106, 109
Boston 39, 81, 150, 162 Ciputra, Ir. 37
British India 158 Citra Indah 39
Bu Ditha 107 Citra Raya 39
Bu Keke 100, 119 civil society 2, 4, 8, 18-23, 26, 153,
Bu Lies 135 156-9, 192, 262-3
Bu Madu 108-9 Coca Cola 111
Bu RT 52, 107 Communists 117, 124, 127, 239-40
Bu Sas 107 consumerism 4, 45, 88, 113, 133,
Bu Tien 243-4 151, 161, 163, 175, 178, 181, 185,
Budi 25, 67, 73, 75, 77-80, 85-7, 90, 194, 208, 250
92-110, 117, 119, 126, 129, 137, consumption 4, 10-1, 14, 38, 128-30,
139, 143-50, 153-4, 175-8, 198, 145, 156, 159, 162, 165, 169-70,
210, 216, 219, 231-2, 239, 242, 245, 184, 191, 193-4, 201, 236, 245
247-9, 267 consumption culture 25-6, 128, 133,
Budiman, Arief 126, 239 146, 148, 150-1, 261
Bukit Jonggol Asri 39 consumption styles 134, 140
Bukit Sentul 39 Crocodile Pit 126
Bumi Serpong Damai (BSD) 39
Buser 246 Dallas 247
Darul Islam 251
Cafe Oh La La 153, 180 Dayak 248
Cairo 78, 87, 104, 112 De Zweep 258
Canberra 112 democracy 2, 3, 7, 16, 18, 22-3, 38,
Carrefour 156 81
Catholicism 69, 115 democratization 2-6, 11-3, 17-8, 23
Catholics 71, 73, 147 124 see also demokratisasi

292
 Index |

demokratisasi 2, 3, 267 see also Femina 102-3

democratization France 133, 194
Den Pasar 32 Front Pembela Islam 247
Depok 110
Diana 74 G-30-S 240 see also Gestapu
Diana, Princess 219 Gading Serpong 39
Diet Coke 111 Gadjah Mada Plaza 175
Disneyland 78, 219 Gajah Mada 153
Dodi 73, 80 Galaxi 247
Douwes Dekker, E.F.E. 259 Gedung Makorem 052/WKR Lippo
Downer, A.J.G. 234 Karawaci 166
Düsseldorf 150 Gelael 185
Duta Merlin Plaza 156 Geneva 72
Dutch 21, 69, 78, 222-3, 232, 242, gengsi 41, 45, 208-9 see also prestige
254 Germany 115, 150
Gestapu 124 see also G-30-S
East Indies 222 globalization 7, 34
East Sumatra 253 Glodok 119, 146-7, 150, 154, 247
East Timor 3, 242, 247-8, 251, 268 God 119, 154, 161, 175
East Timorese 268 Golkar 71, 83
Eastern Europe 19, 23 good governance 2, 7, 22
education 6, 9-10, 13, 16-8, 21-2, Great Britain 231
25, 35, 46, 67, 75, 81, 88, 91-2, Greenwich 231
103-4, 114-5, 117, 126, 137, 167,
194, 213-4, 250, 256, 259, 264-5 Habibie 2, 115, 129, 197, 242
Eilat 78 Hadisaputra 156
England 75, 133, 150 Haifa 78
Environment City 41 see also Kota Hari Raya Merdeka 141
Legenda Harley Davidson 107, 129
Erwin 74, 80, 86 Hawaii 72
Ethical Policy 255-7, 263 Heng 72-3, 80
ethnicity 22, 66, 155, 206 Heri 144
Europe 17, 19-20, 23, 40-1, 69, 72, Hero 168, 177, 185-9, 191-4
106, 157-9, 194, 199, 225, 246 Hero of Foreign Exchange 198
Europeanizeering 256 Heutsz, J.B. van 253
Europeans 223-4, 254 Hoka Hoka Bentu 211
Excessennota 253 Holland 57, 91, 98, 132, 223-4, 253,
264

293
|  Lost in mall

Horison 239, 241 Jakarta 1-2, 10, 26, 30, 36, 38-41,
House of Orange 226 43, 48, 59, 63, 67, 71, 75, 77,
Hungary 107 84-5, 87-8, 94, 102-3, 106, 110,
114, 119, 121, 128, 130, 132, 134,
ICSC (Integrated Computer 136-8, 140-1, 147-9, 153, 161,
Solutions Consultant) 164 163-5, 171, 174, 185, 190, 193-4,
Idul Fitri 161 200-1, 205, 210, 213, 220, 226,
Imron 193 233-4, 242-3, 247-9, 265
India 221, 227 – Central 63
Indian Robbie 55 – Greater 29, 162, 192, 201, 209
indianisatie 257 – South 39, 59, 74, 105, 141
Indisch 107, 254-6, 258 Jakarta Skin Center 98, 107-8, 191
Indo culture 223, 258-60, 265 Jakarta Stock Exchange 246
Indo(s) see Indo-Europeans Jalan Kenari 52
Indo-Europeans 21, 28, 52, 55, 68, Jalan Kenari Raya 81, 83
88, 222, 224-6, 228, 230, 243, Jalan Mandar Raya 49, 50
254-6, 258, 265 Jalan Mandar XXI 50, 53-4
Indomie 96-7, 102, 217 Jalan Rasuna Said 209
Indonesia Museum 219 Jalan Sudirman 88
Indonesian Revolution 251, 253 Japanese occupation 135, 251
Indonesianization 25 Jassin, H.B. 239
Indonesians of Chinese descent 55, Java 13, 47, 125
65, 71-2, 123, 130, 220 – Central 100-1, 128, 205, 218
Indoyups 215 – East 67, 69, 109
Indra 105, 115 Java Bazaar Museum Café 220
Investigasi 246 Java-bode 225
Islam 69, 229, 247, 251 Javanese cultural traditions 112-3,
Ismail, Taufiq 239 125
Istanbul 78 Javaneseness 115, 221
Istanto, Freddy 161 Jeddah 197-8
Jejak 246
Jabotabek 2, 12, 18-9, 25-7, 29, 36, Juniarsa 194
39, 40, 43, 63-7, 71, 110-1, 116,
122, 135, 141, 150-1, 155-6, 159, Kafe Wien 181
163, 167, 169-71, 179, 183, 185, Kalimantan 32, 108, 248
192, 195, 199, 202-4, 207, 214-5, Kaliurang 218-9
229, 235, 262-3, 265

294
 Index |

kampung 10, 25, 30-1, 35, 37-8, 43, – suburban 9, 32, 65, 233
47, 51-3, 59, 95, 100, 135, 154, 175, – suburban middle-class 233
247, 255 – urban 162, 259
kampung people 30-2, 35, 48-9, – urban middle-class 259
53-4, 61, 147, 154, 175, 216 Lippo Karawaci 39, 40, 43, 163, 166
Kansas 75, 92 Lippo ‘mini-mall’ 165-7, 170, 192
Karangasem 40 Lippo Supermal 59, 163-4, 166-7,
Kebayoran Baru 74, 142 193, 267 see also Supermal Lippo
Kebun Kacang 175 Karawaci
Kemang 141 London 150, 226
Kijang 4, 49, 55, 71, 85, 89-90, 176 Los Angeles 40, 72
KKN 143 Louis Vuitton 184
komedie Stamboel 257 Lourdes 78
Kompas 161, 182, 193 Lubis, Mochtar 239
Kota Baru Tigaraksa 39 Luxor 78
Kota Legenda 40-1
Kota Modern 39 McDonalds 34
Kota Wisata 39, 40, 50 McDrive 98, 146
Krismon 26, 85, 90, 92, 96, 98, 102, Madura 135
104, 122-4, 139-40, 144-8, 189-90, Madurese 135, 248
209, 216, 231 Makro 135
KTP 165 Mal Taman Anggrek 154, 178
Kuningan 102 Malang 67, 69, 100
Malay 138, 248, 257
Latin America 19, 23 Malaysia 21
Latitudes 159 malls see shopping malls
Lebaran 102 Maluku 121, 242
lifestyles 4, 8-10, 12-4, 22, 33, 43, 48, Mami 78-9, 87
55, 68, 72, 83, 93, 111, 114, 122, Manado 71
140, 148, 161, 178, 180, 189, 221, Mandar XXI 50, 53-5, 57, 101
224, 258, 264 Mandarin Hotel 248
– air-conditioned 1, 201, 204, 217, Mangga Dua (M2M) 178
228 Manneke 75, 88, 95, 106
– consumerist 181 Marina UV 189
– global middle-class 249 Marni 72, 80, 85
– Indo-European 223 Martha Tilaar 108-9
– Indonesian middle-class 261 massa 3, 17, 26, 130-2, 150-1, 261-2
– middle-class 249, 259, 261 Matraman 69, 94, 175

295
|  Lost in mall

May 1998 (riots) 2, 26, 29, 51, 72, Netherlands Indies 222, 225-6, 251-
120-4, 130, 132, 134, 138, 154-5, 2, 254, 256
157, 163, 168, 178-9, 182, 211, 222, New Order 1, 3-4, 6, 22, 32-3, 39,
235, 244, 247 63, 81, 92, 117, 125-8, 144, 151,
Mega M Mal 184 155, 167, 179, 227, 246, 268 see also
Megawati 83 Orde Baru
Menteng 213 – ideology 11, 25, 112-3, 126, 261
MEP 137 – regime 7, 9, 124, 126, 143, 151,
Merapi 218 251, 260-1
Mercedes 79, 93, 100, 107, 117, 119, – state 7, 25-7, 34, 61-4, 113,
129, 131, 139, 148, 186 116-7, 175, 193-4, 261
Merdeka Square 48, 63-4, 192, 263, New Rich 1, 4, 8, 10, 171 see also
267 orang kaya baru (OKB)
middle-class agency 15, 267 New Year’s Eve 77, 87
middle-class politics 13, 27 New York 112
middle-class suburbanites 3, 19, 66 Nita 99, 100
middleclassness 4-5, 9-10, 13-6, Novi 242
18-9, 22, 32, 39, 48, 61-4, 122, 169, Nyonya Eva 219-20
182, 186, 189, 193, 195, 262-3,
265-6, 268 OKB see orang kaya baru
modernity 2, 5-8, 13-4, 21, 25, 35, Ongky 72, 80, 85
45-6, 61-2, 65-6, 112-6, 159, 170-1, Opapi 69, 77-80, 86-7
174, 183, 191, 198, 203, 206, orang kaya baru (OKB) 11, 80-1, 129
208-10, 218, 221, 227-8, 240-1, see also New Rich
250-1, 256-7, 264, 268 Orde Baru 4, 25, 35, 39, 83, 92, 268
modernization theory 5, 7, 11-2, see also New Order
15-6, 23 Outer Islands 195
Mohamad, Goenawan 239
Moluccas see Maluku Padang 11, 32
Monas 48, 61, 208 Pak Elly 247
Moscow 249 Pak Muso 48
Motulz, Anto 174 Pak RT 52, 55, 80, 82-3, 107, 268
Pak RT Agus 80, 82
Nasakom 38 Pak Samuel 220
nDalem Kaswargan 218 Pak Tatang 107
Neil 242 Pancasila 38, 112, 126
Netherlands 16, 164, 232, 248, 252, Pandan Valley 43-6
254, 256, 260 Papuas 61

296
 Index |

Paris 40, 75, 78 Ratna 72, 109

Partai Amanat Nasional (PAN) 83
Pasaraya Mal 178
PDI-P 83
pembantu 2, 46, 91, 96, 99-101, 106-7,
214-5 see also servants
Pemilihan Umum see Pemilu
Pemilu 70, 72, 77, 80-1
Perth 81
Petjoh 243, 254-5, 257
PKI 125-6
Planet Hollywood 164
Plaza Indonesia Mal 161, 178, 193
Plaza Senayan 139, 178, 181, 184
Plaza Slipi see Slipi Plaza Mal
Pondok Indah 81
Pondok Indah Mal 8, 153-5, 162,
174, 177, 179, 184
popular culture 2, 244, 249, 258
prestige 41, 64, 141, 199, 209, 211,
214, 224 see also gengsi
pribumi 36, 55, 130
PT Balindo International Property
163-4
PT Cahyabangun Intiraya 43
PT Jaya Real Property 37, 42, 48-9
public culture 132, 216, 263
Public Social Cultural Development
Plan 33
public space 19, 23, 31, 33, 35, 105,
142-3, 213, 263
Puncak 215
Puncak Pass 84
Rais, Amien 83, 120
rakyat 3, 130, 136, 185, 195, 216-7,
228 see also underclass
Ramayana 156
Ratu Tol 60 see also Tutut
Ray-Bans 176, 216
reformasi 2, 29, 32, 58, 60, 83, 107,
143, 149, 248, 260
Rinso 170, 217
River Park see River Park Hills
River Park Hills 52-3, 55, 57, 83,
121, 129, 139, 147, 150, 216
Rodamco 164
Rolex 51, 74, 83, 176, 216
Romawi monument 48-9, 61-4
Romawi statues see Romawi monument
Rome 78
Rosa 99, 108
Sabaruddin 234
Saimun 100-2, 104
Sammi 74-5, 80
Sampit 248
Sampurna 267
Sandra 73, 78, 93, 176
Santa Ursula 130
Saudi Arabia 197
Semarang 251
servants 2-3, 32-3, 44-6, 52, 54-5, 58,
67, 69, 74, 77, 82-3, 85, 94, 96-7,
100-4, 112, 119, 180, 186, 210, 214,
220, 224, 252-3, 258, 266-7
see also pembantu
Shiraishi 11, 14, 21, 39, 61, 205-6
Shiseido 189
shopping malls 8, 20, 26, 34, 41, 59-
60, 63, 119, 139-40, 143, 146, 153-
95, 209, 213, 215, 225, 244, 262-3,
266
Bintaro Plaza Mal 53, 58, 104, 106,
153, 160, 171, 175, 177, 179

297
|  Lost in mall

Blok M 58, 243 Slipi Plaza Mal 121, 163, 200, 211
Cengkareng Plaza 156 Snouck Hurgronje 253
Duta Merlin Plaza 156 Soekarno 69, 112, 243
Gadjah Mada Plaza 175 Soekarno-Hatta International Airport
Lippo ‘mini-mall’ 165-7, 170, 197-8, 201-2, 207, 215, 218, 229
192 Soemitro, D. 182
Lippo Karawaci 39-40, 43, 163, Solo 240
166 Sonya 25, 69, 74-5, 83-93, 109,
Lippo Supermal 59, 163-4, 166-7, 114-5, 191
193, 267 see also Supermal Lippo Southeast Asia 23, 65
Karawaci Soviet Union 257
Mal Taman Anggrek 154, Starbucks 193
178 suburbanites 3, 19, 66, 115, 142
Mangga Dua (M2M) 178 suburbs 2-3, 18-20, 24-5, 27, 36,
Pasaraya Mal 178 39-40, 43, 46, 49, 63-4, 67, 81,
Planet Hollywood 164 110-1, 123, 141, 203, 229-30, 235,
Plaza Indonesia Mal 161, 178, 249, 255, 261-2, 266
193 Suharto 2, 69, 112, 117, 122, 124-7,
Plaza Senayan 139, 178, 181, 129, 143, 157, 173, 243, 260
184 Sum 209
Plaza Slipi see Slipi Plaza Mal Sunda 102
Pondok Indah Mal 8, 153-5, 162, Supermal Lippo Karawaci 59,
174, 177, 179, 184 163-4, 166-7, 193, 267 see also
Slipi Plaza Mal 41, 121, 163, 200, Lippo Supermal
211 Suprehati 184
Supermal Lippo Karawaci 59, Surabaya 251
163-4, 166-7, 193, 267 see also Susi 74, 86, 88, 93, 162, 176, 199,
Lippo Supermal 215, 233
Town Square Mal 174 Sutiyoso, Governor 64, 192-3
Singapore 38, 72, 164
Sissy 26, 67, 71, 75, 77-80, 84, 86-7, Taman Metropolitan 39
90, 94-103, 105-110, 114, 116, 119, Taman Mini 219
131, 139, 145, 147-8, 153-5, 168, Taman Safari 59, 84, 87
174-81, 185, 187, 191, 215, 231, Tamankafe 104-5
242-3, 245 Tanah Abang 90
Slamet 115, 125 Tanah Kusir 59
Sleasy 72-3, 79, 93 Tanamur 89-91, 93
Slipi 121, 199 Tangerang 2, 200-1

298
 Index |

Tante Tatty 243-4 Us 100-4, 110

Telaga Kahuripan 39 US see United States
Teletubbies 244 Utami, Ayu 161, 171, 175
Teluk Naga 39
Terminal Three 198 Vatican 78, 199
Thailand 16, 23 violence 26-8, 58, 70-1, 97, 117, 119,
The Financial Times 248 123, 126, 130, 136-7, 143, 150,
The International Spectator 213 158-9, 194, 230-1, 231-60, 262,
The Jakarta Post 161, 184, 193, 197, 265
200, 215 – colonial 251-3
Thoenes, Sander 248-9 – senseless 232, 252-3 see also
Tisna 71, 75, 102, 119, 147 zinloos geweld
TNI 183 see also Armed Forces
Toer, Pramoedya Ananta 235 Wailing Wall 78
Tokyo 75, 86, 92, 114 wajang Tjina 257
Town Square Mal 174 Westernization 182, 227, 256-8,
Tropical Holland 174 263-5
Tujuhbelas 216 White Perfect 190
Tutut 60, 122, 138 Wichita 75, 85-7, 92
Wilhelmina, Queen 226
Ugo 71, 75, 97-8, 102-3, 119, 145-8, Wina 74, 162, 215
242 Wiyanto family 25-6, 67-8, 72, 78,
Ullen Sentalu Domestique Museum 86-7, 90, 100, 109, 150, 199
Shop 220 World Bank Café 143
Ullen Sentalu Museum 217-21, 229 World Fairs 184
underclass 3, 15, 17-8, 25-7, 61,
63-4, 114, 130, 136, 140, 154, Yasin 156
167-8, 171, 173, 185, 193, 195, 198, YLKI 194
201, 228-9, 261-3, 266, 268 see also Yogyakarta 11, 218
rakyat Yulia 72, 103
United States 50, 72, 86, 88, 125,
150 Zaandam 57
University of Amsterdam 1 Zaini 239
Urban Poor Consortium 63 Zainul 55
urbanity 13, 208, 251 zinloos geweld 232 see also violence

299