"It was during the year end, by the time John pulled into the little town, but every hotel room was taken.'You’ve got to have a room somewhere,' he pleaded to the last hotel manager, 'Or just a bed–I don’t really care. I’m completely exhausted.''Well, I do have a double room with one occupant,' admitted the manager, 'and I’m sure he would be glad to split the cost. But to tell you the truth, he snores so loudly that people in adjoining rooms have complained all week. I’m not sure it’d be worth it to you.''No problem,' the tired traveler assured him. 'I’ll take it.'The next morning John came down to breakfast bright-eyed and bushy tailed. The manager asked him how he survived.'Never better,' John said.The manager was impressed. 'No problem with the other guy snoring, then?''Nope. I shut him up in no time.''How’d you manage that?''He was already in bed, snoring away, when I came in the room,' John said. 'I went over, and said, 'Good night, beautiful' and he sat up hughing a pillow, and with some anxiety, watching me all night.'""Why do there exist Social movements?" Sunflower went on while noticing some preparations in Balai RW [a building made for communities under a village or Kelurahan in Indonesia] for new year event. Then she said, "According to Hank Johnston, social movements are key forces of social change in the modern world. Although not all social change emanates from them–technological innovation, climate change, natural disasters, and wars also are causes–social movements are unique, because they are guided purposively and strategically by the people who join them. Another key characteristic is that they mobilize and do their business mostly outside established political and institutional channels. This makes questions of their origin and growth especially compelling for the social scientist. Some social movements represent efforts by citizens to collectively create a more just and equitable world. Other movements are motivated by compelling grievances that push their adherents out of their ordinary daily routines. Social movements are typically resisted by forces that favor the status quo, which imparts a fundamental contentiousness to movement actions. But the defining characteristic of all movements, big and small, is that they move history along, sometimes in significant ways.Movement groups and organizations do not stand alone, but rather are linked in network structures through overlapping memberships, interrelations among members, and contacts among leaders. The general movement is characterized by temporal persistence beyond the fate of just one group.The ideas that fuel a movement, guide it, and give it cohesion include the time-tested and widely studied notions of ideologies, goals, values, and interests. The concept of collective identity as a key ideational element that binds together the individuals and groups within a movement. Just as in other forms of social behavior, typical movement performances–street protests, demonstrations, strikes, marches, and so on–are strongly symbolic in the sense that they are making statements beyond just the content of their songs, chants, placards, and speeches. Also, they always have an audience: those who witness the performances, interpret what they see, act upon their interpretations, and whose presence influences how the performance unfolds. Today, the performances of marches, demonstrations, and protests constitute part of political culture – namely, how to do politics outside of accepted institutional channels.Social movements are composed of groups and organizations, large and small, contentious and tamed, that integrate individual members in varying degrees of participation and mobilize them to action. It is fair to say that these are basic units of movement structure, but there are also related groups that are relevant: advocacy groups, interest groups, and NGOs.A common error in understanding the organizations of a movement is to mistake the organizations of a movement for the movement itself. In the case of the environmental movement, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, or the Earth Liberation Front are social movement organizations, or simply SMOs. These are groups varying in their size, complexity, and formal structure that are organized by citizens to pursue their claims when politicians are unresponsive or when certain issues seem especially compelling. Sometimes SMOs are highly formalized and grow quite large, commanding vast resources, like Greenpeace or Nature Conservancy. In addition to the large and significant SMO players, social movements also include small groups, some quite informal, that may be dedicated to somewhat different goals, but are, overall, guided by an environmentalist ethos. For example, groups of friends and acquaintances might create gardens in urban spaces or encourage the use of bicycles instead of gasguzzling cars and trucks. Social movements, in general, are complicated aggregations of diverse groups and individuals.Terms like nongovernmental organizations and advocacy organizations are often applied to formal groups that pursue value-based, change-oriented goals on specific issues such as human rights, peace issues, land mines, or human trafficking. Amnesty International (AI) is a huge international organization that pursues multipronged initiatives on human rights, such as advocating for political prisoners, publicizing persecution of oppositional activists, and monitoring torture and disappearances of political activists. But if the analyst steps back to frame the 'human rights movement,' then AI certainly occupies a prominent place there as a highly professionalized and effective SMO (or TSMO, for its transnational scope). But it is also an international nongovernmental organization (INGO), or, from another perspective, might be seen as part of a transnational advocacy network (TAN) for human rights.In the twenty-first century, the pace of social change will be rapid. Primary among the drivers of change is the digital revolution in information and communication technologies. Starting with the internet and email in the mid-1980s, and then the proliferation of smart phones, tablets, social media, and Bluetooth in recent years, these technologies are changing the way we live and relate to each other. It is estimated that 2.5 quintillion bites of data are created daily, and that 90 percent of the data that exist in the world today have been created in the last two years. In the hands of social movement activists, new digital technologies can encourage and facilitate mobilization, helping to extend the scale of protest beyond past limits of geography and culture, and shrinking the time required for coordinating protest tactics to a flash–as in 'flash mobs,' those instant collective actions convened by texting and tweeting on X.Digital technologies have potentially profound impacts on the relationship of states to social movements. Historically, popular movements have played key roles in prodding the responsiveness of political elites and resisting autocratic tendencies. Movements of the past have won the vote for excluded minorities. Indeed, without popular protest, it is fair to ask whether the modern state would reflect the degree of democratic participation that it does today. In nondemocratic states, where political institutions are often ossified, corrupt, and fail to provide basic services and protections, social movements are the primary vehicles whereby popular calls for change can be expressed. State regimes and social movements have always been in a dynamic relationship. Based on mass mobilizations in recent years, there is good evidence that the digital revolution puts this relationship into high gear, for example watching 'Abah' Anies who is gentle and full of smiles, or 'eppa' Mahfud with his knowledge of legal practice, on TikTok Live—Indonesia needs people like them to give birth to new social movements culture.At any given moment, a social movement is composed of a vast matrix of big and small performances. The big ones may be highly significant in the movement’s self-definition (and especially in its definition for outsiders), but the smaller ones are the multitudinous building blocks of a movement’s structure and its ideations. It is through these performances, big and small, that the movement becomes what it is for its participants and for its opponents and audiences. It is where movement culture is created and confirmed.Speaking about culture—without talking about the social movements— let's talk about Indonesian culture. Drakeley describes that each of Indonesia's many ethnic groups expresses its own cultural identity through dance, dress, music, carving, and other artistic forms, as well as through laws, customs, and etiquette. And despite the many languages, most of the population also speaks the national language, Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian), the language of the school and the office and increasingly of the street. Moreover, even in the most isolated corners of the country (anywhere that television, if not schools and government services, can reach), Indonesians participate in the national culture. The largest single ethnic group is the Javanese, a little under 42 percent of the population. The Javanese are concentrated in East and Central Java, though there are also significant Javanese populations in parts of Sumatra and elsewhere. In addition to the Javanese, other ethnic groups indigenous to Java include the Sundanese of West Java, the Bantenese of Banten, and the Betawi of Jakarta. And for many years Java, especially East Java, has been home to large numbers of Madurese, who have spread from the neighboring island of Madura.In Southeast Asia, the peoples and cultures are quite varied. Different historical, cultural, and political realities have shaped rich, unique societies throughout the region. Nevertheless, Southeast Asia is unified by a common environment, a set of shared historical occurrences, and by the similar solutions different groups apply to common problems.Common solutions among different cultures in Southeast Asia include several fundamental musical processes, which are organically related to environmental and cultural raw materials. Layers of musical organization reflect, too, the layers of human cultures in the region. Southeast Asian musicians adopted and adapted imported instruments to fit into their ensembles. Over the course of months, years, and centuries, musical styles and genres accrue their own special meanings. According to Henry Spiller, court music traditions, whose musical processes can be viewed as embodiments of kingship and social inequality, can become symbols of democracy and nationalism. In Southeast Asia, aesthetic activities such as music shape and reinforce cultural values, which are themselves, like the musical processes that model them, determined by responses to environment and politics.Like many of Southeast Asia’s modern political boundaries, Indonesia’s boundaries are an artifact of European colonialism: Dutch control during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One of the reasons The Netherlands is such a wealthy country is that it exploited the natural resources and agricultural potential of its 'East Indies' colonies, says Spiller, reaping huge profits by utilizing the inexpensive labor the native population provided. Regardless of ethnic affiliations, then, every Indonesian shares the legacy of centuries of Dutch colonial exploitation and administration.According to Jill Forshee, societies in Indonesia, reflect the natural diversity and splendor of the routes, moorings, and interiors among thousands of sea-bounded land masses forming this archipelago. Although interconnected historically through politics, trade, wars, colonialism, and the formation of the Republic of Indonesia, each island remains distinctive. Moreover, remarkable social, religious, or geographical differences emerge within islands as large as Sumatra or as small as Savu.With such variety, Indonesia defies simple categorizations. For example, eastern Indonesian islands could as logically fall under categories of Western Polynesia as of those of Southeast Asia, in terms of location, land, climate, and headhunting and chieftain cultures. Western Indonesia experienced more historical connections with mainland Southeast Asia, shares similar climate and geographical features, and developed refined court cultures incorporating Indian influences.The name 'Java' is perhaps most famous in the West not as the name of an Indonesian island, but rather as the name of a computer programming language and as a slang word for coffee. The three usages are vaguely related—the programming language was given the name 'java' to indicate that it was speedy, like someone who drinks too much coffee. And people began to use the word 'java' to mean 'coffee' because a lot of coffee was exported to the West from the Indonesian archipelago via the island of Java.Java and Bali have much in common with the rest of Southeast Asia, with regard to musical technology. Many Javanese and Balinese musical instruments are made from a variety of readily available materials, such as bamboo and wood. The most prestigious instruments, however, are made of metal, usually bronze. Ensembles of bronze instruments, called gamelan.The subsequent history of Java and Bali involves wave after wave of foreign invasions; these later invaders, however, did not displace the Austronesian descendents as they had displaced their predecessors. Instead, they assimilated with the Austronesian Javanese. Some of these early visitors, probably from northern Vietnam, brought bronze objects and technology in about 300 bc Among the artifacts associated with this wave were items that archaeologists call 'bronze drums' because they appear to be tools for producing sound, and perhaps for making rain. By 300 ad Javanese metalworkers had developed the imported technology of bronze casting and forging and created new types of artifacts, including bronze gongs with central knobs on them.Bronze percussion ensembles have played an important role in the cultures of Java and Bali for thousands of years. In kingdoms all over the world, ritual objects were (and are) an important symbol of the 'divine right' to rule (consider the crown jewels of England, for example). Medieval Hindu-Javanese kingdoms, too, had their share of heirloom crowns and gems. Their collection of ritual objects that symbolized the legitimacy to rule included musical ensembles consisting primarily of metal percussion instruments—gamelan. The term 'gamelan' is thought to come from the Javanese word gamel, which means 'to handle,' in the sense of managing or presenting something; in other words, the term 'gamelan' might suggest the process of making gamelan music, which involves treating or handling a basic musical idea. The word 'gamel' also refers to a type of hammer.Cultures of Indonesia vividly reflect adaptations to land, climate, and seas; the variety of languages and societies across the archipelago developed through an insularity of islands (some far more than others) as well as the many influxes of peoples and influences upon them. Communities in some regions lived in relative isolation while others were part of great trading or seafaring networks. Outside influences constantly arrived throughout the past and while most evident in multi-ethnic port communities, they eventually made their ways to the hinterlands through trade. Aside from some inland mountain tribes, such as the Dani in West Papua (formerly Irian Jaya), few people in Indonesia have lived in complete isolation for long periods of time.One scholar considers that the first Indonesian humans were of the broad ethnic group we now call Australo-Melanesians and that they were the ancestors of the Melanesians of New Guinea, the Australian Aborigines, and the small Negrito communities of the Malay Peninsula and the Philippines.Archaeological speculation suggests that due to the ancient exposure of the Sunda Shelf (between the Malay peninsula and the western Indonesian archipelago), many different peoples migrated and intermixed in prehistoric times. This explanation also traces the Indonesian islands and beyond linguistically, with the beginning of the migration of peoples of the Austonesian language group from Taiwan about 5,000 years ago—expanding as numerous divisions migrated to various island regions. Some words derived from the Austronesian language remain similar from Indonesia to Hawaii. The Austronesians ventured as far as Madagascar, off the east coast of Africa and to Easter Island in the eastern Pacific. They dramatically distinguished a huge sweep of islands between Africa and the eastern Pacific as a megalithic arch. Places Austronesians settled typically display large stone monuments. The immense heads of Easter Island are the most famous examples.Because ancient people across the Indonesian islands largely used tools and built structures made from decomposable materials like bamboo, rattan, wood, palm leaves, coconut shells, and grasses, little remains of their daily lives for archaeological finding. In this wet, hot climate, organic matter rots quickly, leaving few traces. Generally stone constructions like temples and graves, and tools and artifacts of metal or stone remain of the past.People living in the western region of Indonesia—including the islands of Sumatra, Java and Bali—generally resemble those of the Malay peninsula (now part of the nation of Malaysia), with straight black hair, round eyes, and dark complexions. Toward the eastern areas of the Lesser Sunda Islands (Nusa Tenggara Timur) and the Maluku archipelago, Papuan or Melanesian features characterize populations. Tightly curled hair and darker skin tones distinguish people of islands such as Flores, Timor, Ambon, or Papua. Before the last Ice Age, the island now politically divided into Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya (West Papua) was connected by land to Australia. Indigenous peoples of the Papuan island physically resemble Aboriginal peoples of Australia.The Chinese traded with Indonesia long before Europeans knew it existed and some settled early on. Chinese became established traders and middlemen in port towns, growing in numbers after Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century. A solid merchant class thus evolved adept at business management and the accumulation of wealth. Many Chinese became some of the most well-to-do business people in modern Indonesia, supported by the national regime in return for political patronage. This caused resentment among common Indonesians, who typically did not practice the Chinese business acumen and work ethic. Chinese came to dominate commerce and set up shops and enterprises on the outermost islands.Indonesia’s aquatic passages carried traders from India, Arabia, Persia, China, and mainland Southeast Asia in prehistoric time, later followed by Europeans. By way of ocean routes, India had established trade with Java from about the first century a.d. and the outermost Indonesian islands received goods from China and India many centuries ago.During the last half of the seventh century, the region around the city of Palembang in southeastern Sumatra became the center of the Srivijaya Empire, was not an ordinary Kingdom. Palembang at that time controlled trade and shipping through the Straits of Melaka—a vital commercial route for many Asian powers and later Europeans. This maritime control produced immense wealth for the Srivijaya Empire, who sent ships to China and Sri Lanka.The great Javanese empire of Majapahit, and once more, was not just an ordinary kingdom, even though rose as a rice plain polity [can be found in the symbols engraved on the Borobudur and Prambanan temples]. Coming to power in the late thirteenth century, Majapahit gained political authority over central Java and the island of Madura. Majapahit reached its peak of power under Rajasanagara in the fourteenth century through the brilliant vision and diplomatic skill of its minister, Gajah Mada. Coastal communities in Java eventually defeated the Majapahit and established a new empire of Mataram in the sixteenth century. Its leaders were Javanese Muslims, likely converted through Islamic influences in port cities. After this, Islam diffused through Java. Buddhism and Hinduism, never took hold in eastern islands such as Sumba, Timor, and Flores. By the fifteenth century, Islam had spread through Indonesia and a number of sultanates were established across the islands, notably in port towns. In southern Sulawesi, the Muslim empire of Makasar of Gowa grew extremely powerful between 1550–1660 because of its dominant port and strong leadership. Bugis (also Muslims) were sea-faring rivals of the Makasar.It was important to the leaders of the new Islamic kingdoms to establish legitimacy to rule in a way that their subjects could understand. One means for accomplishing this was to appropriate the symbols to rule, including gamelan ensembles. Legend, supported to some extent by historical documentation, holds that a small cadre of charismatic Javanese individuals, usually called the wali sanga (nine saints), spreading Islam in Java. They also established powerful Islamic states based along the northern coast of Java and establishing Islam as Java’s predominant religion. The rulers of these states eventually assumed Islamic royal titles such as sultan. It was the Muslim king of Demak who began the tradition of having the heirloom gamelan played during a festival honoring the birthday of the prophet Muhammad (ﷺ). These heirloom gamelan are known today as gamelan sekaten or gamelan sekati and the festival at which they are played is called sekaten.Indonesia is a conglomeration of islands, peoples, and cultures; its modern form is the result of a history that involves not only the lands and peoples within Indonesia, but the surrounding areas as well. This gamelan is just one of the many Indonesian cultures. But the boundaries of modern Indonesia do not coincide with any particular cultural or linguistic divisions; they are artifacts of Dutch control. Indonesia’s national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Jawi language for 'unity in diversity') capsulizes the modern Indonesian nation’s strategy for instilling a sense of common patriotism in a conglomeration of cultures brought together originally by the accident of Dutch colonization.The linchpin of a pan-Indonesian culture is the national language (which English-speakers call Indonesian, but which Indonesians call bahasa Indonesia). Virtually all Indonesians speak this national language, which is used in schools, government offices, and mass media. It is one very important manifestation of the 'unity' part of the slogan.Ensembles called gamelan are most often associated with the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali, but similar ensembles characterize the musical traditions of the entire region. Besides gamelan and other musical traditions, to speak about Indonesia, cultural aspects, probably will be the starting point for long jump.We'll continue this talk about Indonesia on the next session. Bi 'idhnillah."The sound of firecrackers was heard and followed by the vocalist of the 'Rukun Warga' youth band, 'The Sometimes'—sometimes it sounded, sometimes it didn't—who sang Vina Panduwinata's song,Peluk diriku, peluk-peluk diriku[Hugh me, hugh and hugh me again]Cium pipiku, cium-cium piku[Kiss my cheek, kiss and kiss my cheek again]Bila kau cinta padaku[If you love me]katakan 'cinta' *)[then say 'love']
Citations & References:
- Hank Johnston, What is a Social Movement?, 2014, Polity Press
- Jill Forshee, Culture and Customs of Indonesia, 2006, Greenwood Press
- Henry Spiller, Gamelan: The Traditional Sounds of Indonesia, 2004, ABC Clio
*) "Cium Pipiku" written by Adjie Soetama
