Building a partnership for social service delivery in Indonesia: state and faith‐based organisations

Contrary to the secularisation processes in modernisation theory, religions and faith‐based organisations (FBOs) are thriving in contemporary Indonesia. Strongly supported by community members, religious organisations have begun to extend their services beyond the traditional areas of education and health to operate in disaster relief and poverty alleviation programmes. These FBOs have been offering assistance to the disadvantaged whose needs have not been adequately met by the state. Social programmes run by the FBOs are an important safety net at the grass‐roots level in Indonesia; how to effectively coordinate and offer such services are important social policy issues. This paper will show that the Indonesian Government is keen to remain the key provider of social services and often perceives the services of FBOs as a threat. Some recent state policies to regulate the funding sources of Islamic organisations have posed a significant logistical challenge for their future operation. In addition, theological differences across various religious groups have made it difficult to form inclusive and extensive partnerships among the FBOs, who tend to compete with each another resulting in rivalry. These socio‐political contexts have limited the formation of effective partnerships for offering coordinated social services.     

Causes of lingering communist movement after Indonesia’s September Thirtieth Movement: the case of border area between Sarawak and West Kalimantan

This article focuses on the communist movement on both sides of the border in Sarawak and West Kalimantan around 1965 when the September Thirtieth Movement (abortive coup) took place in Jakarta. The people in Sarawak were seeking independence and opposed to being integrated into the Federation of Malaysia in the first half of the 1960s. However, after the September Thirtieth Movement, the communist movement in Sarawak started losing support both domestically and internationally (especially support from Indonesia). Nevertheless, even with the persecution by Suharto’s army, the Sarawak guerrillas and the Indonesian Communist Party in West Kalimantan cooperated in their struggle for a few years after 1965. This situation was aided by the remoteness of these areas from the centers of the nation-states (Malaysia and Indonesia) and also by the cooperation between the guerrillas and the local Chinese in West Kalimantan.     

To what extent is social security spending associated with enhanced firm-level performance? A case study of SMEs in Indonesia

Although the relationship between social protection and enterprise performance is much debated in the literature, evidence is particularly limited in the case of small and medium-sized enterprises in developing economies. Using census data from 2010 to 2014, this article examines how the provision of social security influenced business performance in Indonesia. The author finds that increased social security spending of 10 per cent is associated with a per-worker revenue gain of up to 2 per cent. Moreover, profits are not found to decrease with increased social protection coverage, suggesting that increasing worker benefits may be a worthwhile business investment.     

Changing Indigeneity Politics in Indonesia: From Revival to Projects

Through the discourse of indigeneity, rural communities around the world are joining a global network of rural justice seekers. By articulating grievances collectively, they demand state recognition while seeking support from NGOs and international development organisations. In Indonesia, the manifestation of indigenous ‘adat’ politics is no longer confined to the national struggle for the recognition of land rights, but instead, has proliferated into many localised short term ‘adat projects’. This introduction to the TAPJA special issue on adat demonstrates that both the rural poor and local elites can be the initiators or recipients of these adat projects but, at the current juncture, the latter are better positioned to benefit from such projects. The special issue shows that in Indonesia, where adat is often firmly entrenched in the state, the promotion of indigeneity claims can work in contradictory ways. Findings from across the special issue show that adat projects tend to reinforce the power of the state, rather than challenging it.     

Using the Theory of Planned Behaviour to Understand Motivation to Register Births in Lombok,Indonesia

Despite government interest in promoting birth registration, more than a third of Indonesian children do not have a birth certificate, affecting the realisation of both their human and citizen rights. While barriers to registering children's births in Indonesia have been assessed, there is limited research on how communities perceive the importance of having a birth certificate. This study used focus group discussions to explore parental motivations around birth registration. The results of a thematic analysis found that perceived use of birth certificates, perceived control over the application process and social norms related to certificate ownership affect the intention to apply.     

Keep the hope alive: young Indonesian musicians’ views of the future

Using ethnographic and interview data, this article explores hopes for the future of young Indonesian musicians. The young people are seen to consider their future trajectories in multiple, hierarchical music fields. The article also takes into account the ontological insecurity of jobs as a professional musician, arguing that there is continuous reproduction of a doxa, namely ‘survival of the fittest’ in Indonesia. Yet despite abundant risks to livelihoods, young Indonesian musicians expressed optimistic views about the future. The analysis of data below bridges the gap between the traditionally separate youth studies fields of youth transitions and youth cultures. Our interpretation critically contextualises the dialogue between these two fields based on the experiences of young Indonesian musicians as a part of the Global South.     

Adat in the Office: The Creative Afterlife of a New Order Cultural Policy

This paper explores the emergence of a new genre of garments in Eastern Indonesia: ‘traditional’ uniforms, made from locally hand-woven cloth, which are worn twice weekly by government employees in Kupang, the capital of the province of East Nusa Tenggara (Nusa Tenggara Timur, or NTT). These uniforms, which appeared following a 1997 regulation, supported the emergence of a new, urban textile culture, and a partial decoupling of traditional clothing from adat, Indonesian customary law, even as they allowed adat to make inroads into government offices. National policy, the agitation of local elites and the innovation and conservatism of artists and ritual practitioners, all contributed to this new form of artistic and cultural expression. While attention has been paid to the domesticating power of the state on local forms of cultural expression, this example shows how attempts at control can also push cultural expressions in unexpected directions.     

The politics of leisure and labor mobilities: discourses of tourism and transnational migration in Central Java,Indonesia

This article presents narratives and tropes of transnational tourism from a less considered perspective: rural migrant-origin villagers of Central Java. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Cilacap and Yogyakarta, I analyze how and why some former temporary labor migrants depict their typically harsh experiences in terms of tourism and leisure. Addressing the tendency in current research to approach labor migration and tourism as mutually exclusive or unrelated class categories and experiences, I consider the ways in which former migrants and non-migrant villagers evaluate or identify labor migration in terms of gender, class, religious, and ethno-national subjectivities associated with ‘tourist’ and/or ‘migrant’ categories. Popular and commercial imaginations of leisure travel and tourism importantly shape the subjectivities and positionalities of precarious labor migrants. Foregrounding the relations between tourism and labor migration reveals the multi-scalar ways in which associated discourses and infrastructures of both mutually shape and constitute global socio-economic inequalities.     

Muslim–Christian Relations in Kupang: Negotiating Space and Maintaining Peace

Kupang, the capital city of Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT/East Nusa Tenggara) province, is a majority Christian community in predominantly Muslim Indonesia. Despite widespread inter-religious violence in Indonesia, especially around the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998, Muslim–Christian relations in Kupang have, to date, been relatively harmonious. Minor incidents occurred in 1998 and tensions were exacerbated by the construction of a new mosque at Batuplat village in 2011, but these did not lead to larger conflicts. Drawing on observations in three urban neighbourhoods (Kampung Solor, Airmata and Oesapa), this article discusses the experiences of Muslims in these urban neighbourhoods in negotiating space for their religious practices and maintaining peace with their Christian neighbours. This ethnographic study allows us to understand factors underpinning inter-religious harmony in Kupang.     

Is the web a promising tool for data collection in developing countries? An analysis of the sample bias of 10 web and face-to-face surveys from Africa,Asia, and South America

Whereas the sample composition biases of web surveys have been discussed extensively for developed countries, studies for developing countries are scarce. This article helps to fill that gap by comparing similar non-probability-based web surveys (WEB) and probability-based face-to-face (F2F) surveys both to each other and to the labor force. An analysis of WageIndicator data on work and wages derived from surveys held in 2009–2013 in 10 developing countries (WEB-sample N = 9135; F2F-sample N = 14,659), shows that F2F samples resemble the labor force to a larger extent than web samples do. In both cases, individuals in their 20s and early 30s are overrepresented, and younger and older respondents are underrepresented. This trend is more pronounced in WEB than in F2F samples. However, the differences converge in countries with higher Internet usage. A comparison of the WEB and F2F samples shows that compositions differ greatly, with web respondents being younger, more often male, more often living alone, and higher educated, although these differences are smaller in countries with higher Internet usage. Given the cost differences between the two survey modes, one should nevertheless consider the potential of web surveys as an instrument to gain explorative insights, specifically when searching for individuals with particular characteristics.