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This article was downloaded by: [nurul huda]On: 18 January 2014,
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Kampung, Islam and State in UrbanJavaMichelle Ann Miller aa Asia
Research Institute , National University of SingaporePublished
online: 31 Jan 2012.
To cite this article: Michelle Ann Miller (2012) Kampung, Islam
and State in Urban Java, The AsiaPacific Journal of Anthropology,
13:1, 95-97, DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2012.645793
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2012.645793
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which geographical and subjective borderlessness emerge together
(p. 105). Although
the author notes that his respondents were reluctant to talk
about their lives in
Singapore, greater exploration of these issues is essential if
we are to accept the claims
made about the central role that Batam plays in the lives of
Singaporean Malay
working-class men.
Overall, I was disappointed that Lindquist was unable to move
beyond the narrow
focus of his doctoral work and situate this study in its
historical and ethnographic
context. As a study of one group of marginalised working-class
migrants in
Indonesia, the book is insightful and well-written. As a study
of migration and
tourism in the Indonesian borderlands it lacks sufficient
attention to the complex
interplay of local and global forces that shape life in the Riau
Islands.
LENORE LYONS
University of Western Australia
# 2012, Lenore Lyons
Kampung, Islam and State in Urban Java
PATRICK GUINNESS
Singapore, NUS Press, 2009
vii, 275pp., ill., bibliography, index, ISBN: 978-9971-69-470-8,
S$38.00 (paperback)
There are many strands to this curiously titled book, which
would be more aptly
named Community and State in Urban Kampung Java. Focusing on the
lived
realities and changing built environment of an off-street
neighbourhood called Ledok
in the central Javanese city of Yogyakarta, it is firmly located
in the urban rather than
in traditional understandings of kampung (villages) in rural
areas. Yet distinctions
between urban, peri-urban and rural kampung are not explored in
any depth in
Kampung, Islam and the State in Urban Java. Islam, too, is only
given cursory
treatment, being mainly discussed in relation to youth and the
importance of the
Javanese Muslim ritual feast of kendhuren to Ledok community
life.
Notwithstanding its somewhat misleading title, the book provides
rich insights
into everyday life in urban kampung Java. Patrick Guinness draws
from
ethnographic observation and historical research conducted since
1975 to provide
an intricately detailed account of urban and generational
transformation spanning
three decades. Departing from the plethora of alternately
romanticised and
disparaging accounts of kampung*which tend to portray kampung
life as eitherutopian or uncivilised, poor, uneducated, backward,
and lacking initiative
(p. 225)*Guinness avoids such narrow absolutisms. Instead, he
offers a nuancedand grounded representation of various dimensions
of urban kampung vis-a-vis the
Indonesian state and through the eyes of their residents who
struggle to
accommodate the formal within alternative informal mechanisms
and strategies
to make their lives possible (p. 85).
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Refreshingly, Guinness refuses to reify kampung community as
inviolable, despite
the sense of nostalgia that such social bonds invariably invoke
across the Malay world
the more the processes of urbanisation erode traditional
societal networks and forms
of association. Rather than treating kampung community as
sacrosanct, Guinness
explores the issues that test, strain and transform social
relations. These include
external factors such as state interventions under President
Suhartos authoritarian
New Order regime, which dissipated community strength and
undermined residents
capacity to initiate action themselves (p. 202). Factors
internal to urban kampung
communities, too, have threatened social harmony and cohesion.
For instance,
disaffected youth in Ledok who see themselves as struggling to
make a mark on the
wider city and conscious of their disadvantages position have
dealt with their
circumstances by constructing their own self-expression and
identity in a space
discrete from both mainstream society and culture and their
parents kampung
society and culture (pp. 233, 149).
Paradoxically, the same conditions that threaten to tear
communities apart can,
and often do, bring people together. The sense of community in
Ledok has been
strengthened, for example, when kampung residents have exercised
their ability to
collectively engage with state institutions and possibly seek
benefits from the state,
even in opposition to the design of state projects (p. 249).
Such affirmative action
has further empowered the community when Indonesian state
contributions to local
development, health and education facilities, employment
creation programs and
credit schemes have become more effectively managed as a result.
In a different vein,
just as kampung youth have eroded the social fabric of urban
communities, many
have equally made constructive contributions through their
dynamism, creativity
and resistance to neighbourhood programs and initiatives (p.
150).
Structurally, the ten chapters in this book explore the
complexity of urban
kampung society through examination of various dimensions of
community. Given
his thirty years of field research in Ledok, Guinness could
easily have composed this
book as a chronological narrative, but has instead skillfully
accomplished the more
difficult task of slipping seamlessly between decades to
compare, contrast and map
the processes of change in the lives and livelihoods of kampung
residents through
thematically organised chapters. These chapters focus on local
leadership, formal and
informal development strategies and trajectories, kampung youth
and modern
consumer lifestyles, the role of kendhuren (ritual feast) in
strengthening religious
community, the influence of national elections on kampung
residents, community
and state violence, and empowerment in development practice. In
this, Guinness
impressive attention to detail captures the multilayered
negotiations of urban
kampung people in their daily encounters with financial
difficulties, state interference
and neglect, and the complicated familial hierarchies and wider
social interactions
that shape and redefine community.
It is a shame this book did not benefit from tighter editorial
control. For this
reader at least, the non-standardised italicisation of
Indonesian words, non-
differentiation between many Javanese and Indonesian language
terms, unnecessary
96 Reviews
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replacement of English terms with untranslated Indonesian terms,
and lack of
currency conversion rates from Indonesian rupiah effected some
frustration. Most
disappointing, however, is the index, which for many practical
purposes is useless,
omitting as it does major keywords (such as development;
economy/economics;
education; Java; Islam; Muslim(s); religion) while including
numerous redundant
and incomplete index entries for authors whose work is cited in
the text and
bibliography.
If readers are willing to persevere and read Kampung, Islam and
State in Urban Java
in its entirety they will be rewarded with important insights
about the practices and
processes of making and unmaking community in urban Java. This
is a valuable
resource book for anyone with an interest in community
development, urban society
and state-societal relations in modern Indonesia. More broadly,
it will appeal to those
interested in the changing phenomenon of the kampung across a
rapidly urbanising
Malay world.
MICHELLE ANN MILLER
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
# 2012, Michelle Ann Miller
Tourism in Southeast Asia: Challenges and New Directions
MICHAEL HITCHCOCK, VICTOR T. KING, & MICHAEL PARNWELL
(Eds)
Copenhagen, NIAS Press, 2009
x358 pp., ill., bibliography, index, ISBN 978 87 7694 034 8,
18.99 (paperback)
Surpassing a previous work which has become a classic is always
a difficult endeavour
for any author. The editors of the 2009 volume, Tourism in
Southeast Asia: Challenges
and New Directions, had a huge challenge at hand when their
earlier work, Tourism in
South-East Asia (1993, Routledge), inevitably presents itself as
a comparison to their
most recent collection of essays on tourism in the region. The
main themes of the
1993 volume include tourism and culture, tourism images,
development, economic
planning, and sustainability. It was a groundbreaking piece of
work that stimulated
tourism research in the region. In fact, some of the
contributors were, or have since
become eminent scholars in the field. This reflects the
importance of the Southeast
Asian region to the theoretical advancement in tourism studies
in general.
Despite what might be suggested in the two titles, many chapters
in both volumes
have focused more narrowly on the social and cultural aspects of
tourism. One
wonders if this could be due to the disciplinary training of the
contributors, who are
predominantly anthropologists and sociologists with extensive
fieldwork experience
in the region. Indonesia seems to have become the paradigm case
for the study of
tourism in Southeast Asia, such that the latest instalment is
dominated by case studies
from that country, on topics ranging from ecotourism,
sustainability, and island
tourism, to material culture, cultural identity, tourism images,
and gender relations.
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