Ariel Heryanto - Challenging Authoritarian Rule - Sea Nip

Challenging Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia

Challenging Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia is one of the first substantial comparative studies of contemporary Indonesia and Malaysia, homes to the worlds largest Muslim populations. Following the collapse of New Order rule in Indonesia in 1998, this book provides an in-depth examination of anti-authoritarian forces in contemporary Indonesia and Malaysia, assessing their problems and prospects.

The authors discuss the roles played by women, public intellectuals, arts workers, industrial workers as well as environmental and Islamic activists. They explore how different forms of authoritarianism in the two countries affect the prospects of democratization, and examine the impact and legacy of the diverse social and political protests in Indonesia and Malaysia in the late 1990s.

This book responds to the impasse of the transition from authoritarian to democracy paradigm by studying social agents and practices that lie beyond formal political institutions and measures of economic performance. It adopts a broader sense of politics, power and authoritarianism while challenging familiar understandings of gender, Islam, ethnicity and social classes. It will interest students and researchers of Asian Studies, Political Science, Sociology and Cultural Studies.

Ariel Heryanto is Lecturer at the Melbourne Institute of Asian Languages and Societies, The University of Melbourne.

Sumit K. Mandal is Research Fellow at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

Challenging Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia

Comparing Indonesia and Malaysia

Edited by Ariel Heryanto and Sumit K. Mandal

First published 2003
by RoutledgeCurzon
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016

RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

Transferred to Digital Printing 2005

2003 Ariel Heryanto and Sumit K. Mandal for selection and
editorial material; individual chapters, the contributors

Typeset in Times by Taylor & Francis Books Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing m Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Challenging Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia / edited by Ariel
Heryanto and Sumit K. Mandal.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Indonesia - Politics and government - 19661998. 2. Indonesia - Politics and government - 1998 - 3. Authoritarianism - Indonesia. 4. Protest movements - Indonesia. 5. Democracy - Indonesia. 6. Malaysia - Politics and government. 7. Authoritarianism - Malaysia. 8. Protest movements - Malaysia. 9. Democracy - Malaysia. I. Heryanto, Ariel. II. Mandal, Sumit Kumar.

ISBN 0415309417 (hbk)
ISBN 041534705X (pbk)

Contents

Contributors

Melani Budianta lectures in literature and cultural studies at the University of Indonesia. She was a member of the now dissolved TRKP (Violence against Women Division of the Volunteers for Humanity) and is a Board member of SIP (Voice of Concerned Mothers). Her publications include Plural Selves: Indonesian Womens Redefinition of Democracy in the Post-Reformasi Era (RIMA, 2002); Gender, Culture and Security: Old Legacies, New Visions (Asian Exchange, 2001/2002); and Beyond Tears and Anger: Representations of Violence Against Women (Nivendini, 2002).

Vedi R. Hadiz teaches at the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore. Among his publications are Workers and the State in New Order Indonesia (Routledge, 1997); The Politics of Economic Development in Indonesia: Contending Perspectives (co-edited, Routledge, 1997); Indonesian Politics and Society: A Reader (co-edited, Routledge, 2003); Capitalism, Oligarchic Power and the State in Indonesia (Historical Materialism, 2001); and Globalization, Labour and Economic Crisis: Insights from Southeast Asia, (Asian Business and Management, 2002).

Ariel Heryanto lectures at The University of Melbourne. His publications include Perlawanan Dalam Kepatuhan (Bandung: Mizan, 2000); Language of Development and Development of Language (Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 1995); The Years of Living Luxuriously, in M. Pinches (ed.), Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia (Routledge, 1999); Where Communism Never Dies (International Journal of Cultural Studies, 1999); and Post-kolonyal bir devlette simulakra: Yeni Dzen Endonezyansinda g iliskileri (Toplum ve Bilim, 1999).

Philip F. Kelly is Assistant Professor of Geography at York University in Toronto, Canada, and was previously with the Southeast Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. He is the author of Landscapes of Globalization: Human Geographies of Economic Change in the Philippines (Routledge, 2000) and co-editor of Globalization and the Asia-Pacific: Contested Territories (Routledge, 1999).

Sumit K. Mandal lectures at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. His publications include Forging a Modern Identity in Java in the Early Twentieth Century, in H. de Jonge and N. Kaptein (eds), Transcending Borders: Arabs, Politics, Trade and Islam in Southeast Asia (Leiden: KITLV, 2002); Boundaries and Beyond: Whither the Cultural Bases for Political Community in Malaysia?, in R. Hefner (ed.), The Politics of Multi-Culturalism: Pluralism and Citizenship in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2001).

Norani Othman is Associate Professor at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin), where she was an Academic Fellow (19989). Her research interests are in social and sociological theory, intellectuals and the intellectual cultures of Third World societies, womens rights, religion and gender studies. Her publications include Malaysia Menangani Globalisasi: Pelaku atau Mangsa? (with Sumit K. Mandal, UKM Press: Bangi, 2000) and Capturing Globalization (with James Mittelman, Routledge, 2001).

Acknowledgements

The contributors to this book wish to express their appreciation for the generous and consistent support of the Ford Foundation in Jakarta as well as the Southeast Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. Individual contributors extend their separate acknowledgements in their respective chapters. The co-editors wish to note a list of institutions and individuals whose assistance has been significant to the completion of this publication. First and foremost we gratefully acknowledge the moral and intellectual support of Mary Zurbuchen of the Ford Foundation, Jakarta and Hong Lysa of the Southeast Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. Their generous, unstinting and invaluable assistance went far beyond their institutional roles. We must also extend our appreciation to the Centre for Advanced Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore; the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia; Melbourne Institute of Asian Languages and Societies at The University of Melbourne; Institute for the Studies on Free Flow of Information (ISAI), Jakarta; Muhammad AS Hikam; Charlene Rajendran, the late Ishak Shari, Roslina Rosli, Lucy Tan, Stanley Y. Adi, Sujanti Marsudi, and anonymous reviewers of the book manuscript. The editors would like to thank Lies Mustafsira Marcoes-Natsir for allowing the publication in this book of her original poem and its translation, The Womens Interfaith Prayer, done by Melani Budianta.