The Politics of Violence, the Violence of Politics

By Huub de Jonge

The central aim of the network, which was founded in 1988, is to bring together social scientists and historians working on Java. The network, usually called the 'Java Club', is a loosely-structured organization. In fact, it is only a list of scholars as well as PhD students who specialize in Java or Javanese outside the island itself. Members get together once a year -- alternately in the Netherlands and in another European country -- to share research output and recent experiences, under the auspices of one of the institutions to which they are attached.
The general theme of the 8th meeting was 'The Politics of Violence, the Violence of Politics'. Violence is often seen as exceptional, as not belonging to normal conditions. That probably explains why so little work has been done on violence in general and why existing studies often have a high moralistic content. The study of violence in Java, so often presented as 'peaceful' in Orientalist approaches, suffers from both these shortcomings. For that reason in the workshop violence was discussed as a more daily phenomenon than insiders and outsiders are normally willing to admit: at the domestic and neighbourhood level; in socio- economic relations; and in regional and national politics.
The topics were discussed in four sessions. The first was concerned with domestic and local violence. The papers discussed related to The Formal Denial of Domestic Violence on Java (Ines Smyth and Rosalia Sciortino), Youth Violence in Jakarta and other Javanese Cities (Solita Sarwono), Cooperation and Conflict among Iron Founders in Central Java (Mario Rutten),and Violence and Self-Help among the Madurese (Huub de Jonge). The second session was on violence and the Indonesian revolution. Starting point of the discussion were the papers on The 'Indonesian Revolution' in a Cultural Perspective (Hans Antlöv and Stein Tonnesson), Indonesian Youth Groups Confronting the Javanese Military (Willem Wolters), and The Dutch Hostage Strategy during the Bersiap-Period (Wim Hendrix). The theme of the third session was intimidation and development. The papers included Symbolic Exclusion: state violence towards Indonesian NGOs (Meuthia Rochman), The Dynamics of Students Activist Movement (Eva Kusuma). Patterns of Villagers' Resistance (Kutut Suwondo), Economic and Military Violence on Java and Madura in the 1990s (Ingo Wandelt) and Agribusiness and Smallholders: coercion and predation in West Javanese contract-farming schemes (Ben White). The final session discussed language, discourse, and metaphors of violence on the basis of two papers titled The Use of Sexual Metaphors in the Change form the Old Order to the New Order State (Saskia Wieringa) and Violence and Vengeance: coping with violence in new order Indonesia (Frans Hüsken)
From the discussions it has become clear that there is an urgent need to study in detail the different forms of violence and violence control in past and present Java. To realize this researchers should free themselves to a certain degree from the Western perceptions, standards, and uses of violence. For a thorough study of violence, extensive information on the context and background are indispensable. Special attention should be given to violence as a means of communication, as a system of political control in everyday life, as an instrument for disciplining labour, as a way of protest from subordinate and discriminated groups, as a tool of economic competition, and as a way of settling disputes where state control is weak. More research is also needed on violence at a more intimate level: domestic domain, neighbourhood conflicts, and inter-ethnic strife.
A special meeting was devoted to the theme of next year's workshop which will be held in Gothenburg. It was decided that the 9th workshop will be dedicated to the relevance of Java studies for general theory. Ben White and Frans Hüsken will inform members of the network about this topic in more detail later this year. At the next workshop there will also be opportunity to continue the discussion on violence.