Kampung, Islam and state in urban Java by Patrick Guiness

PATRICK GUINNESS

Kampung, Islam and state in urban Java

Singapore: Asian Association of Australia in association with NUS Press, 2009.

272 pp.
ISBN 978-9971-69-470-8, pb US$28/S$38

Reviewed by Kostas Retsikas, School of Oriental and African Studies

Guinness’s second book is the result of ethnographic engagement with an urban neighbourhood in the city of Yogyakarta, Central Java, spanning four decades from the mid 1970s to the mid 2000s. It provides the reader with an account of the many changes this kampung has undergone in the face of economic dislocations and political transitions that culminate in the economic crisis of the late 1990s and the democratic reformation that followed Suharto’s resignation in May 1998. At the centre of Guinness’s theoretical concerns lies the following question: is kampung community an artificial imposition of state institutions or does it arise organically as it were from face-to-face relations characterised by reciprocity and an ethic of mutual help? Moreover, are kampung solidarity and cooperation able to withstand the tide of modernisation, Islamic reformation, and individualistic consumption, as well as, combat the political uncertainties and the potentially divisive effects of political party competition of the 2000s? To all these questions, Guinness provides a resounding yes that celebrates kampung communalism and finds in kampung values and activities the necessary resources for the articulation of an ‘alternative modernity’ that is  supposedly distinct from both state-led development and capitalist production.

The ethnographic and historical material of the book is presented in eight chapters that together with the introduction and the conclusion bring the overall number of chapters to ten. After setting the tone in Chapter 1, in Chapter 2 the author begins his ethnographic explorations with an intimate portrait of the life and deeds of his long- term host, patron and friend, the late Pak Sugiharjo, and his family, concentrating on the highs and lows of their everyday struggle for survival. Sugiharjo’s life story is a long-term case study of the household strategies members of this low income and marginalised kampung embark upon in order to ensure biological and social reproduction. Such themes are explored further in chapters 3 and 4 that assess formal projects and informal initiatives that were undertaken during the economic crisis by state and international actors on the one hand, and the community itself on the other, so as to alleviate poverty, create employment opportunities, and generate capital. Here Guinness finds that the latter were by far the most successful and argues the development through civil society associations or ‘informalisation’ is more effective and efficient than development through state organs. This is an argument that the book returns to in Chapter 9 that charts the programmes and publications of a specific Yogyakarta-based NGO originally established by the esteemed architect, novelist, and Jesuit priest Y.B. Mangunwijaya pursued through adopting a more participatory approach that sought to empower kampung residents.     

A very interesting portrait of the changes in terms of the challenges, problems and preoccupations facing kampung youth from the 1970s up to the 2000s is presented in Chapter 5. Of immediate concern here is an increase in drinking and gambling that coupled with the general lack of education and employment further marginalised low class youth. However, such anti-social behaviour did decrease markedly in the early 2000s partly as a result of new employment opportunities and partly through the successful efforts of community leaders.

Overall changes in the making of kampung relations are addressed in Chapter 6 with the focus shifting to kendhuren or slametan rituals and exchanges, the classical locus of Javanese ethnography. In the specific community Guinness studies slametan disappeared altogether from communal life by the early 2000s, only to be substituted with sembahyang (prayer) sessions. The crucial point of difference is that while in the past slametan brought together those who shared the same place irrespective of economic status or religious affiliations, sembahyang clearly differentiate neighbours into Christians and Muslims, and into traditionalist and reformist Muslims. At the same time, more affluent households are now able to stage increasingly lavish and expensive weddings involving greater numbers of guests the majority of whom come from outside the kampung. The reasons for these changes are multiple and have to do with sembahyang providing a cheaper alternative to slametan, the increasing economic differentiation of residents brought about by the economic crisis, and the reformists’ critiques of slametan as un-Islamic. Despite these earth shattering changes, Guinness maintains that the local community has lost none of its vitality and relevance, writing that ‘despite the potential for religious correctness to raise tension among neighbours of different faiths, harmony within the neighbourhood community remained a central ideological and practical principle of most residents’ (p.168).

The potential for latent and actual violence in kampung communities is explored in the two following chapters. Chapter 7 deals with the 2004 elections and the smoothness which characterised their holding something that Guinness attributes to both the material and symbolic resources deployed by  neighbourhood leaders. Chapter 8 aims to critique those approaches that attribute the many instances of violence in post-Suharto Java to the militarisation of society by the New Order state and those that see a violent state as an extension of kampung relations that are equally founded on violence. While Guinness might be right to criticise the first approach as reductionist, his critique of the second is neither clear nor persuasive as he often falls back on a rosy portrayal of kampung as permeated by mutual obligation and tolerance that somehow manage to contain and dissipate difference, antagonism, conflict, and enmity.

Overall, Guinness’s latest book seems to be tied to an ecclesiastical view of community that endows it with transcendental value and to insist on taking for granted distinctions such as those between community and the state that the project of modernity has naturalised as analytical and universal. Despite providing many interesting cases where profound changes have occurred in the neighbourhood it is focusing on, the kampung is treated as homogeneous, regimented, static, and largely divorced from the wider contexts it is embedded in. I also find that the model of development practice the book advocates, despite its flavour for rescuing people’s agency, bypasses critical questions such as those of accountability and the micro-politics of participation. However, the book remains a useful resource for students of Indonesia, especially those interested in development, social change, and urban marginality; others should do well to look elsewhere.