Result of the Week: Siblings and Hegemony

In the “West,” while people usually enjoy bossing their cute little 65 year-old siblings around, they also tend to try and maintain some of the younglings’ dignity, pretending to give “advice” rather than orders. Here it seems to be different. A friend in Yogya, for example, finds it necessary to boss a (fully grown) younger sister around, refers to her as "dik" (pronounced de’, and short for "adik," younger sibling) and explains:
“Who else would tell her what to do?”

Granted, dik, is said with a great deal of affection and is considered very familiar (and is answered by "kak," short for "kakak," older sibling) but there’s something about it that just presses a button in me…

I would like to note two things here. First, a disclaimer: I have no personal feelings whatsoever on the matter of sibling ordering or respect for one’s juniors. Second, these findings are dedicated with great love to two kakak I know quite well, but with a very strong caveat: even in this sample, there are cultural differences between Javanese and Minangkabau, so extrapolate to other cultures at your own risk.

The main point of the experiments in Yogya and Padang was to compare behavior in the games (where people divided real money in different ways) between members of different ethnicities and religions, and across different treatment groups randomly exposed to visual cues for political identity (nationalism, Islam….) A side-benefit of the experiments, however, is that one can also compare behavior across many different characteristics of the subjects, whether political or sociological. One example is subjects' gender (as posted before,) and another is the number of kakak and adik they have [there’s existing evidence for example, that single children are less “trusting” in one set-up, although there’s debate as to whether it captures “trust” (gated).]

In a "quasi-Ultimatum" game we played, people divided a pie of 11,000 Rupiah between themselves and a partner. These partners separately chose a “Minimum Acceptable Offer” from a given partner, below which they rejected the transfer and both subjects got nothing. In a sense, these “MAOs” give an indication of “demands;” of how much money the partners are willing to forsake in name of fairness, pride, justice…. (and these demands may vary depending on who the other player is, of course.)

In other games we simply measured generosity in an unconditional Dictator “game,” where people can divide 11,000 Rp. between themselves and a partner with no apparent incentive to give anything.

It turns out that there were significant differences both in generosity and in MAOs (“demands”) depending on birth order, with big differences between men and women:

While men of different birth order behaved rather similarly in Dictator, “younger” women were significantly more generous then “older” ones (youngest sisters were about 600Rp. more generous then oldest ones.) On the other hand, younger sisters were also much more demanding then their older sisters (youngest sisters had MAOs almost 900Rp. higher than oldest sisters.)

As was the case with gender differences, men seem more prone to exhibit differences when the round is anonymous. When information on the players was withheld, younger brothers demanded much less than older ones. (Perhaps in anonymity there’s less face to save – less pride to defend - and pure greed can take over?)

Finally, the lowest levels of “social capital” were exhibited by single children. They were significantly less generous then others (more than 1,000Rp. less generous than youngest sisters, for example) but, at least for women, they also demanded less. At least on these dimensions, it looks like single children are an extreme case of oldest siblings (who were once single children, after all, before the sky fell on their heads.)

To sum:
Always choose a younger sibling as your “Dictator,” but don’t mess with their pride.

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The non-reductionist study of heteronormal hegemony, from PhD comics.
(I actually heard someone say “heteronormal” the other day.)

Random Assortment

- Viewed in the Pluit district of Jakarta: “Warung H. Tupac Shakur”
A warung is a food stall, and H. stands for Haji, one who has performed the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj). I didn’t actually know Tupac Shakur was a Haji; nor that he was still alive; nor that that he had a food stall in Pluit. You learn something every day.

- What international relations are all about: Apparently, last month the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, called Peruvian president Alan Garcia "fat and not very anti-imperialist"
(Via FP passport blog)

- A surprisingly high ratio of left-handed U.S. presidents
(via Marginal Revolution)

- In honor of visa-applying grad student friends
(from PhD Comics)

- Jakarta’s traffic really is something to behold [a traffic jam is “macet” (“ma-chet,”) a really bad one is “macet total.”] The Jakarta government has been combating this problem for years. Toll roads were built (guess whose daughter is their part-owner) and more recently whole lanes in downtown highways were cleared for public transportation – in itself a great idea.
Jakarta built the busway system that runs all along the main thoroughfares. The system is good, I think, and quite well designed too. There’s a problem, however. Despite the enormous cost (in public lanes, especially) the system is lacking one central ingredient: enough buses. In order to reduce traffic (which is not the only point of the system, but a central one,) the lanes need to carry more passengers than they would otherwise. Most of the time, however, the busway lanes are empty, waiting for the occasional busway-bus, while the other lanes are more macet total than ever.
The proposed solution? Cops on roller-blades!

Lake Rivalries & Bus Accessories

Who hasn't wondered, at one point or another, where to find the best "bus accessories?" Well, look no further.

In my last stay in Padang. I had just begun the experiments and was mostly just trying to keep procedures methodologically-legit amid what felt like minor logistical chaos. Luckily, a couple of friends from Jakarta showed up on a Saturday, rented a car, and suggested I take a night off and join them in going up to the mountains to see lake Maninjau.

Rationalizing the time off was easy: West Sumatra has played a very central role in Indonesian national history. Despite having only about 3% of the population, the Minangkabau produced the first vice president (Hatta,) the first women jailed by the Dutch for nationalist activity, the first prime minister, and the leader of the main Muslim party of the early republic. The region was also the center of a large Islamic revolt against the Jakarta government, the failure of which marked the downfall of that party. So really, touring the region was purely a research experience.

But back to my day off… I learned four important things on that trip:

First, don’t be polite to a phone stalker unless you want a new best friend. Most bules (“boo-leh”, gringo) will sooner or later have a stalker in Indonesia, though this is mostly due to our very different definitions of “stalking” or “privacy” (such as having such concepts in the first place.) Indonesians really are much nicer and friendlier than “Westerners” - it’s a fact – and so to most Indonesians it does not seem like an invasion of privacy at all. So, there will usually be some random person who decides they want to get to know the new bule in town, somehow manage to get hold of said bule’s phone number and find it friendly and welcoming to text message or call dozens of times with impassioned pleas for a meeting. When you think of it, in a way, they’re right.

Second, realize as quickly as possible that item one is in no way a compliment (yes, I realize women figure this one out in the West at a much younger age.) You had no more choice of being a bule than you did of the shape of your ears, so get over yourself.

Third, when in need of bus accessories, come to Padang. The little city buses there – more like small minivans with the back emptied out for some benches all facing each other – are very colorful, very loud and very ornate. If you want the “red line,” you simply take an “angkot” colored in very bright red, with Formula-1 style fins on the roof and its own distinct horn-blow. Also, don’t be confused by the extremely foul language of the American music blaring out of the loudspeaker in the back, this is family oriented transportation. Most importantly, what looks like a giant snorkel in the front of the bus is not for fumes, it’s just a snorkel. It’s a “bus accessory” and as the driver explained in a completely straight face, Padang has the best!

Fourth, there really is nothing like waking up, opening the door to a magnificent crater-lake and taking a morning swim.












(We stayed in a small guesthouse, right on the water, with a manicured entrance via a nicely ordered path. Thing is, to get to this path you first have to wade through muddy rice paddies in a nice drizzle, just to add to the romance.)

Finally, the Minangkabau are a very proud ethnicity, and they’re not always that fond of others – such as Javanese (a central point of the experiments, which measure generosity and expectations among subjects, most of whom were Javanese and Minang.) Another group of whom some Minang do not always speak kindly are the Batak, a family of ethnicities from North Sumatra. North Sumatra is home to lake Maninjau’s big(ger) rival, Lake Toba. After a while in Padang, I learned that it’s useful to speak slightly disparagingly of Toba, when compared to Maninjau (“Toba’s too big, really….”) Problem was, I unwittingly tried this on a Batak who had recently moved to Padang. He was appalled that I could even compare Toba to that puddle. This is a photo of Toba from a wonderful trip I took with a good friend a couple of years ago.

Jakarta City Blues

I’m back in Jakarta after a real vacation (meaning a couple of weeks in which one doesn't do any tangible work, but gets to feel uncharacteristically OK about it.) It amazes me how quickly one can adjust to a different environment. Being home and seeing family and friends seemed so natural, that I almost forgot I live in Southeast Asia.

One of the first nights back here I found myself at a jazz club with a few friends. The vocalist/saxophonist was Indra Aziz (a “John Doe-ish”, very Javanese name mixing Hindu and Muslim without any fanfare.) He did a wonderful, melancholic yet upbeat rendition of High and Dry, among many other things.

I’d actually seen a clip he did on Youtube before leaving the States, but I don’t think I truly appreciated it back then. It describes a typical morning in Jakarta: a "city bus", traffic-jams, rain, floods, pollution, veering traffic. It's titled "Jakarta City Blues".

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And here’s PHD Comics on the “What do you do" question (as noted before, I've encountered this question once or twice myself.)

Hallelujah

There was only one television channel available when I grew up (we couldn't quite seem to get Jordan, for some reason), so there was very little NBA basketball available. Basically, we'd get some highlights during the year and digests of the finals. When I first started watching as a boy, I really only knew of two teams from two cities I wouldn't even visit for a couple of decades. It's not easy deciding who you're rooting for when your parents aren't quite sure what sport you're talking about and the biggest local aspiration is beating CSKA Moscow.

I remember asking my father who "we're" for, Los Angeles or Boston, and he said that he and my mother had met in Boston, so we must be for Boston. I've been a avid Celtics fan since, in the same way that people all over Asia are devout Manchester United or Juventus fans. It makes no sense, I've never been to the Garden, but I stuck through it for 21 years since their last finals appearance. This morning it paid off.

At about 11:00am Jakarta time, the Celtics finished demolishing the Lakers (!) in game 6 and took their first championship in 22 years. The most glorious NBA season I can recall ended in a perfectly scripted way. True, I would have preferred to do it over a beer in Menlo Park, with better viewing hours and expert analysis from a few Pistons, Jazz and Pacers fans, but I'll take Boston over L.A. by 38 points anywhere.

The meaning of life

Now what? Experiments are finally done and I have that mixed feeling I used to get after barely surviving some big exam: the sighed relief of a job finally done and a renewed appreciation of the aimless, meaningless oddity that is human existence. What am I supposed to wake up for now? Luckily, the answer to that question is very clear: Jakarta is exactly 12 time-zones away from, say, Boston or Detroit and this week, finally, the Celtics won on the road. Few things will get me out of bed as quickly as the realization that while it may be 7:30am, the Conference Finals are on.

We finished coding data for the 360^th subject/respondent one night in Yogyakarta and the next day I found myself at a fancy hotel in Jakarta for the annual 3-day Fulbright conference here. I knew it would happen, but the switch between crazed-work mode to living it up in Jakarta was just a little fast. I vaguely remember rambling on to overly polite anthropologists at the conference about why economic games, priming treatments and embedded experiments actually are relevant to important things such as post-colonial nationalism or the rise of religious discourse in contemporary world politics. I got the feeling they were, to put in Javanese terms, less than impressed.
Indonesia is awash with anthropologists (but I have nothing against anthropologists; some of my best friends are anthropologists…), and as one friend put it, my experiments just sound a little “reductionist”. I think what really shocked her was that I usually don’t think of “reductionism” as a negative thing. But I digress.

Subject number 360, if you must know, was an anonymous 21 year old woman from an Islamic University in Yogya. In the halls of that university, incidentally, I noticed one woman in a full niqab (Saudi style female dress) and another in tight “skinny jeans”, very high heals, and make-up covered by a symbolic jilbab (Asian style veil, like the ones Benazir Bhuttu would wear.) I wonder if the two of them gossip now and then.
All in all we had six faculties in three universities, including the one in Padang, West Sumatra, and now it’s over. Data analysis and all that fun stuff have just begun but for the next two weeks at least, I get to pretend I’m done with something. To celebrate, I’m actually going home for a two week vacation and very excited about that.

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It’s been nearly a month since I posted and if you’re reading this, I guess you care, so sorry about that. A bunch of stuff has accumulated that I’ll probably upload in the next few posts. For one thing, I’ve been meaning to post pictures from the kampug tour of Jakarta with Mr. Z. and here are a few of them (you may notice the superior quality of these photos when compared to previous posts. I’d like to say it’s because Mr. Z. has a far better camera than me, but I think he’s also better at pressing that button on the top.)

This dignified gentleman (wearing the cap of someone who’s been to Mecca on pilgrimage and a traditional Javanese batik shirt) owns a little restaurant facing the canal. He provided us with coffee for which we’re grateful.

This little guy was very new to the world when we met him and his mom enjoying the morning.

These are Jamu bottles, traditional Javanese medicine sold door to door by women as a daily health routine to cure every imaginable ailment. Apparently the Jakarta Jamu scene is dominated by the women from Solo (a city near Yogyakarta and its main rival as seat of traditional Javanese culture).

Every neighborhood in Indonesia is expected to have a welcoming gate that celebrates independence, marking the years since 1945. This neighborhood is a big fan of PDI-P, the party of former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Indonesia’s founding president Sukarno (that’s Bu Mega on the flag.)

And here’s Mega at the local PDI-P station. Notice the white nose on the bull. This distinguishes PDI-P from plain old PDI (black nose.) The final –P stands for Perjuangan (“struggle”, or “struggling on…”) and was used for the new party, after Soeharto manipulated the old PDI and forced Mega to leave PDI. Yes, I actually care about these things.

And to counter the nationalist side of things, here’s a banner for PPP, the United Development Party. Under Soeharto and starting in the early seventies, there was an engineered 3-party system, with Golkar, the ruling “non-party” in the center, the nationalist (Red-White) PDI on one side and the Islamic (green) PPP on the other. All three parties still exist and compete with a bunch of new parties that entered the scene since 1998.

This is a worshiper at the large, wonderful Chinese temple in the Jakarta Chinatown.

Just when you thought you’ve seen the weirdest named streets… here’s “Public administration street (1)” (Notice poorer quality of photography.)

A guy.

ps
Continuing on the sociological side-results theme from last time: older siblings of the world, watch out, there’s some data on your behavior you might not like.

Result of the Week: Women are nicer

It is one of the noble duties of social science to quantitatively prove the obvious.

In the Ultimatum Game, subjects are asked to divide a sum of money between themselves and a partner. The partner then has a choice: they can accept the proposed division, in which case it’s carried out (and the players really get the money), or they can reject it, in which case both players get nothing.

Last week in Padang (West Sumatra) I had 104 subjects play the game in all sorts of different forms. When playing anonymously (and when the partner is anonymous as well), women tended to offer significantly more than men; their divisions were far more generous. There could be a bunch of reasons for this, obviously.

The difference could be due to different levels of “risk aversion” across gender (a different preference for “safe bets” over higher gambles). If women in my sample have higher risk aversion levels, then they might give more in the Ultimatum game in order to avoid the risk of their partners rejecting the offer (in which case both players get nothing).
When testing for risk aversion, women do actually exhibit significantly higher levels than men (finding a measure for risk aversion that avoids issues of Muslim injunctions against gambling was not trivial). This explains some of the variance in Ultimatum offers, but it’s not the whole story. Even when controlling for risk aversion, there’s still a significant difference in Ultimatum offers by gender. Something else is driving the result too.

Proving the obvious becomes easier if you include another game. When anonymously playing the Dictator Game (in which people divide a sum of money between themselves and others as they see fit, with no acceptance or rejection), women also give far more than men do. In a sense, women exhibit a far greater degree of fairness (or perhaps even altruism), and are willing to incur the very real financial cost associated with it. Women are nicer.

But interestingly, when anonymity is partially removed (when some information about both partners was revealed in the game), men were coaxed into offering (much) more than they would otherwise, essentially closing the gap with women’s offers. Women on the other hand, didn’t seem to modify their behavior significantly. Notably, this was true both in the Ultimatum and the Dictator games.

To sum (these are useful tips for life in general):

1. Women are nicer.

2. Men need to be monitored or they’ll be up to no good.

* Big caveat: I've had the data for less than a week. You can imagine how confident I am about the analysis at the moment.

The interesting thing about testing gender differences in Padang, is that it’s actually not obvious at all. The Minangkabau (the ethnicity of West Sumatra) are a matrilineal society (the biggest matrilineal society in the world, I think; they’re rare.) Inheritance among Minang is passed down through the female line (not to be confused with a matriarchal society, where women would be in political control.) As many Indonesians have pointed out to me, if anywhere you were to expect the gender stereotypes on property to be absent or reversed, it would be Padang. And a bonus of doing the experiments in Padang was the possibility of a side project on gender differences, actually hoping to contradict the obvious (a recent study did just that in a another matrilineal society with games designed specifically for it.)

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As you can gather, I’ve just returned from Padang, after yet another series of incredibly busy weeks. I wish I could blame my advisors or friends for not warning me how much work and how many unforeseen details experiments in a foreign country would entail, but I can’t. I knew what I was getting in to. (To be perfectly honest, though, the opportunity to spice academic life with actual “doing” and managing is a big reason I chose this kind of fieldwork.) The Padang experiments are now complete, and next week I return to Yogya to run the experiments in two universities there. If all goes as planned, I should have the experiments done in a few weeks, and take my first vacation of the year.

The results so far are, I’m afraid, more ambiguous than the pilot results (the gender issues, while very interesting to me in the Padang setting, are not really the core of this study, which is about the effects of politically motivated identities on experimental behavior). There’s still a lot in the data, and I’m basically happy with it, but it’s not as clean cut as it seemed before (big surprise….) I’m eager to see if the difference is due to the very different sites – the pilot was in Yogya (Java) – or due to a fluke in the pilot. I’ll know more pretty soon, I hope.

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Back to the Minangkabau: Minang matrilineality is actually a very interesting case of ethnicity vs. religion in Indonesian culture (ethnic cultural norms are generally known as adat, as opposed to religion, agama). Islamic inheritance law is very different from Minang custom, of course, and the Minangkabau tend to be devoutly Muslim (they sometimes look down upon the “syncretic” Javanese, with their strong Hindu/Buddhist cultural baggage).

As was pointed out to me by Dr. Delacroix (Aussie Minangkabau linguist extraordinaire), there are two types of inheritance now in place. Pusaka Tinggi (“high” inheritance) follows the matrilineal adat, and includes most real estate and family property. These are passed down through daughters. Property acquired through work and business during one’s life, however, is usually Pusaka Rendah (“low” inheritance) and will often follow Muslim law. It’s fascinating how easily these mixes and contradictions are incorporated, and how natural it seems to people within the culture (I spent a while asking the research assistants about this over our usual lunch at the university canteen, facing the Indian Ocean.)

The mix of matrilineal-yet-patriarchal society produces odd cases. A banker in Padang told me of a young woman who wanted to marry a Muslim Batak man (Batak is a family of prominent ethnicities in North Sumatra, all very distinct from Minang – and from Javanese). Her father didn't object, but the marriage could not take place because her mother’s brother – the one with final say on these matters – would not allow it (no one seemed to care what the mother, or the young woman herself, thought). Of course, a marriage would entail bringing the young man into the family and wealth of the mother’s side, not the father's side…

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Unrelated:

1. What people won’t do to get on the Colbert Report

2. Store keepers will often just give you candy instead of change here (change is in short supply; my cousin actually sold some to me, once, although he was also paying for dinner, so I can’t really complain.) Apparently, one bule tried to pay with candy for beer and broccoli (via this)

First Results Are In

After months of preparations in Indonesia and - let’s just say - “more than months” before Indonesia, the pilot is finished. I now have my revised procedures and far-more-educated guesses as to what might work, and I even have my first set of real, original, methodologically defensible (?) data to analyze. It’s an odd feeling: uplifting, exciting, but also a little anti-climactic.

It’s my dataset; research I planned and implemented in a far away country for a question I identified and revised three thousand times. All those hours of speculation and redrafting in an office in California, cafeterias of Jerusalem campuses, corridors of hospitals, Pacific beaches and about a dozen trips in seat B13 between the snoring guy and chatty one crossing the Atlantic have started to pay off.

These past few weeks a few dozen Indonesian students and three research assistants actually showed up to divide money according to odd rules and answer a long set of questions, from voting preferences, to the number of times they lend books and CDs to friends in a typical month, to the number of prostrations they perform in nighttime Tawarih prayers during Ramadan (since, obviously, “Traditionalists” tend to perform 23, while “Modernists” tend to perform 11; I like to pretend I’ve known that – or what Tawarih is - for ages).

On second thought, however, it’s, well, a dataset. It’s a matrix of numbers on a spreadsheet. Is it really ok to be excited about it? And yes, it's my dataset, but who said anyone else will care about what it says? (And no, you don't count.)
What’s more, it’s just a pilot. Now I need to repeat it – in revised form - with many more students here in Yogyakarta and in Padang, and hope the results hold up.

But, given that this has been one of the busiest months in recent memory, it feels good to be done with one part at least. Moreover, at first glance, the data looks very promising (no evil-eye-taunting intended…), although debriefing subjects revealed some important changes to be made to the procedure. We tried out most of these changes, and I’m still hopeful.

This has been the main asset of the past month, the intrepid, tireless and insightful Yogyakarta staff:









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I still plan to post some pictures from the Jakarta kampong tour. Here’s a taste, courtesy of Mr. Z’s photography:

And here’s another. I previously mentioned the new and rather radical PKS.
Well, guess who won the mini-election in my pilot questionnaire:














And now I'm going to sleep for 48 hours. Selamat malam.

Sleep, Padang and Beluga Whales

"Blah, blah, blah. Blah. Cliche 1, cliche 2, sports cliche No. 4 and sports cliche No. 7," Jefferson said. "We didn't do a very good job. We didn't give 110 percent. We've got to give it all we got. We've got to leave it all on the court, and we didn't do that."
New Jersey Nets forward Richard Jefferson, as quoted by ESPN
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The main two events of the week were between midnight and 10am, Thursday. At around 12:30am I realized my newish, seemingly brilliant strategy for randomly pairing subjects in the experiment rounds would make creating the printed material I was planning completely impractical. You know you're a nerd when you lie awake, for hours, over badly executed combinatorics of experimental logistics. At around 4am I decided I solved the problem (I didn't quite, but it helped me sleep for an hour, and 48 hours later I think we're good to go.)

At 5:30am I met Mr. Z, a friend who's lived here for 8 years, for an expedition through the awakening kampungs of Jakarta, along the canal down the road. Those who've experienced my state at 7:30am can imagine what 5:30 is like (after one hour of sleep), but even I must admit the advantages of early rising ("best hours of the day" and all that.) If not for Mr Z, I could easily have gone through the year missing most of Indonesia not through space but through time. I'm generally asleep when "Indonesia" happens.
Photos/descriptions of the 4-hour walkabout will follow when I solve some other minor technical issues.
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Complementary arguments:

“A politician from the PDI-P, Soetardjo Soerjogoeritno (Mbah Tardjo), said he was very opposed to the visit, because Israel still occupied Palestine, and besides, Indonesia would not gain anything from Israel because Israelis were famous for being stingy.”
Indonesia Matters (PDI-P is the nationalist party of former president Megawati)
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In other news, Friday was Balinese Hindu New Year, Nyepi Day (a day of silence.) Tourists and their dollars were not allowed out of their hotels in Bali, which I think shows a lot of Balinese dignity.
So far, in the span of three months, I've seen a (Latin) Christian New Year, a Muslim New Year, a Chinese New Year and now a Balinese Hindu one. Each one of these is an official holiday here as well. Happy new years!
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Apparently, Beluga whales enjoy the note G
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Sunday I head back to Yogya, to begin actual recruitment/survey of subjects. Crunch time has really arrived.

In the meantime, a bit more from Padang:












This is (a very dark photo of) a banner congratulating the Tionghoa (Chinese-Indonesian) population for Chinese New Year. It’s of a new political party, Hanura (The People’s Conscious Party), set up by former general Wiranto (left), who was head of the military and a major actor when Soeharto fell from power in 1998. Wiranto was also head of the military when East Timor became independent, and allegedly oversaw the horrible violence perpetrated by the military and pro-Indonesia militia (here’s the latest on the East Timor situation.) Wiranto ran for president in 2004, and wants the new party to help him do it again.


This one is of PKS, a newish, rather radical and very interesting Islamic party trying to make headway outside of its Jakarta base (it’s the biggest party in the Jakarta assembly.) I’ve been told that only a couple of years ago you couldn’t see a sign of them in Padang; now they’re holding conferences and conventions everywhere (even in Hindu Bali.)



Some more from the river:

12 years

It’s always odd to be on the other side of the world when things flare up in the Middle East. Gaza, Sderot and now Ashkelon are the latest focal points, and it doesn’t look good. It’s also odd because 12 years ago, this week, the violence hit very close when a good friend was killed in a bombing. Like most recent years – except for last – I missed the memorial service. While it was a terrible year for everyone, then, in February 1996, there was at least a hope that we were seeing the last few years of the conflict. We weren’t, and unlike 1996, very few people can actually see a viable way out now.

This is what the current war-zone looked like a year ago (although it wasn’t very peaceful then either):

Padang

I returned from Padang a few days ago, to the shocking realization that Jakarta feels like (3^rd or 4^th) home to me at the moment. Padang is, well, different. It’s right on the beach and surrounded by mountains, but most of all, people just aren’t Javanese.

Javanese (and Sundanese, the people of West Java) are extremely polite, with intricate rules as to what people will say to each other. “No”, for example, is not acceptable, under any circumstances (including when you’re asking a taxi driver if he knows how to get somewhere, and he has no clue.) “Kurang tahu” (literally: “less then know”) is about as close as people will get, and even that’s a challenge.

Minangkabau – the people of West Sumatra, where Padang is – don’t share these kinds of norms. For example, when people stare at you while you’re eating in Java (the common state of things), or laugh at you as you walk by, they usually feel mildly embarrassed if you stare back for a moment. Minangkabau don’t have this problem. They’ll just keep on staring and laughing.

This must be the cure for all those 13 year olds who want to be… whichever celebrity 13 year olds want to be. A couple of months of being the center of attention, constantly, should do the trick. A friend in Padang – a linguist from Australia on fieldwork for a master’s thesis – was at a traditional wedding in the mountains a week ago. Two kids saw her and started crying. “Made me feel wonderful”, she said.

The truth is, though, Indonesians in general are just very social people and there's actually something refreshing about Minang directness. Part of the problem is just my weird notion of “privacy”. It just doesn’t belong in a place so densely populated. And so all the “leave me alone” cues from the West – e.g. pausing while your host hovers over you to inspect how your dining is progressing – don’t work.

But the people I actually got to know in Padang - especially the staff at the linguistic lab I'm working out of - were great. Minangkabau architecture is beautiful too, the famous Padang food deserves its reputation and having the ocean front in the middle of the city isn't too bad either.
Next time I'll be exploring the mountains as well.

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My first morning in Padang there was a 5.3 earthquake not too far away.
Slept through it, of course. I love my earplugs.

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Great minds think alike:
Shlomo Benizri blames gays for earthquakes, emulating Abu Bakar Bashir.

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This must be what my Indonesian sounds like:
“In regards of communities concern of flexiblity data communication technology, pushed us to create the new product with WiFi base; called HotSpot.”
- The English introduction, when connecting at a “HotSpot”

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From the mouth of a river at the edge of town:

Marcus

1. Yogya

“Ah… born in Jerusalem?”
This was, more or less, the first thing we heard upon arrival in Indonesia, when I was 11 and the Soeharto-era immigration officer looked through our passports.

A couple of weeks ago I heard it again, this time accompanied by a big smile from a dean at an Islamic university. I was touring a few departments soliciting permission and assistance in recruiting their students for my study. Recommended response: make a reference to the Arabic origin of a word, comment on a similar Arabic word, and in general give a vague, equivocal, deniable impression that you speak Arabic.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it… I actually have no problems here with my place of birth. I’m not the only one (a friend here grew up on Cremieux street) and besides, Americans like me are born in many places (Silver Spring, Vineyard Spring). “Islamic” can also mean many things. And yet, when my next stop turned out to be the Faculty of Islamic Religious Studies, on a Friday, there was that moment of: “Right….”

Turned out completely fine, of course.

Yogyakarta was a long string of these meetings, explanations, interviews with potential assistants, etc. It was also an opportunity to revisit places and people after two years. Some have unfortunately moved on, of course, but it was good to be back. Yogya (pronounced “Jogja”) is the university city of Indonesia, full of young students and academics and is also a center of Javanese tradition.

2. Borobudur

Yogya is also close to Borobudur, a beautiful giant stupa from the Buddhist period, around 800 CE, which I had shamefully not visited before:

3. Jakarta

The rainy season has really arrived. The Jakarta airport was shut a few times last week, and the road to the airport was shut for much longer. When we finally landed at night, I embarked on a two hour ride into the city through West Javanese countryside. I doesn’t help either that my neighborhood name, “Bendungan Hilir" (“Benhil”), literally means “Dam of the River-Mouth” (or something to that effect).

Tip: don’t watch the Lost pilot episode just before flying in Indonesia.

4. Washington

But only in Jakarta can you actually vote in the U.S. primary. The Democratic Party now has a “Democrats Abroad” section, with delegates and all…

5. Arkansas

Slightly out of context, but still scary:
"I didn't major in math," Huckabee told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference meeting in Washington, D.C. "I majored in miracles."

- Huckabee disputing the inevitability of a McCain candidacy

6. Beijing

As ironic as it is, Chinese New Year is a biggish deal in Jakarta (among all the other new years). A partly-Tionghua (ethnic Chinese) friend noted bitterly that until the democratic period, it was illegal to even celebrate it. Now everyone seems to join the party.

Happy Year of the Rat!

7. Padang.

That’s where I’m headed tomorrow.

Death of a Dictator

After a couple of weeks of anticipation, it happened: Soeharto died yesterday around noon and was brought back to the family house on the famous Cendana street in Jakarta. It’s been a very interesting couple of days here, although I'm mostly just watching, a bit confused and doubtful I'm really capable of understanding what's going on in people's minds.

Soeharto ruled Indonesia for 32 years, the better part of most people’s lives, and his death is all anyone talked about in the last 24 hours. I'm in Yogyakarta at the moment (getting permission to recruit students for my research), and everyone here is glued to TV sets with round-the-clock coverage of the funeral of “Pak Harto” (Mister/Father Harto) in Solo, the nearby traditional rival of Yogyakarta. Flags on official buildings are at half mast, of course, as in this Islamic school near my "homestay":

Soeharto was actually born near here to a poor peasant family and rose the ranks of the military (first the Dutch military, then the Japanese-sanctioned militia, then Independent Indonesian army). He was a classic military authoritarian and the fanfare today is both odd and fascinating to me. After such a long, often ruthless and ever-cleptocratic rule, Soeharto receives a lavish state funeral. All of officialdom was in Solo today and even dignitaries from nearby countries were invited (the president of East Timor included! Soeharto was the president who ordered the bloody invasion of East Timor. Perhaps not coincidently, he didn’t make it in time.)

Indonesians’ feelings seem decidedly mixed too. Most people I spoke to had very ambivalent responses. He did a lot of good for the country, some said, stabilizing it and orchestrating rapid growth that brought millions out of poverty and misery (and besides, things were just cheaper then.) But then they mention the large toll roads around Jakarta (a business venture his daughter, Tutut, is reportedly invested in) or other similar issues. “Maybe he was ok, but his family wasn’t” is one sentence I’ve heard more than once.

A local blog offered this epitaph (two weeks prematurely):

Here lies Soeharto’s mortal remains.
His loss is our eternal gain.
For while he exercised his powers,
Whatever he gained, the loss was ours.

Of course, for those who paid the personal price of “stability” – hundreds of thousands murdered and many others imprisoned - growth was no consolation to begin with.

But today everyone seems, mostly, fascinated. They’ve never experienced this before. The first president of Indonesia, Sukarno, was buried without any pomp or public mourning of any kind in his rather remote hometown in East Java (in accordance with his successor’s orders.) This is really the first presidential funeral Indonesia has known.

It's been an interesting couple of days.

Here's Inside Indonesia’s take on things

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Unrelated, but fascinating

Tereza

When I left for Indonesia, I knew I’d miss tap-water tooth-brushing, but it seemed like a fair trade for being rid of the perennial questions “so why Indonesia?”

My answers about it would go something like: “Well, it’s the fourth largest country in the world. No, really. Really! The U.S. is third, Indonesia is fourth. Honestly…”
Or: “It has the largest Muslim population in the world. Seriously. Yes, bigger than Pakistan; by far. Really; look it up.”

As my cousin puts it, Indonesia has one of the lowest I/P ratios in the world.
With I = subjective Importance (in the eyes of foreigners), and P = Population.
Bangladesh is on the short list as well and I know of a little country in the eastern Mediterranean that might be at the opposite end of the spectrum (at least in its own eyes, or if we count New York Times headlines per capita).

Turns out, however, I was wrong again. Giving up tap-water didn’t rid me of the questions; I get them here all the time. People actually seem puzzled by my interest in their mega-country. It’s not that Indonesians lack national pride or that they dream of leaving – actually, for its size and relative wealth, there are very few emigrants. But the country really is lacking in attention. For many people I meet here too, the idea that I’d leave the U.S. to study Indonesian politics seems odd (come to think of it, with this international consensus on the matter, should I be worried that it doesn’t seem odd to me?)

My last line of defense in these discussions usually comes down to: nicest people in the world (quite possibly true). But the problem with ending those discussions is that I know what’s going to follow. It’s the dreaded “And what exactly are studying?” question.

In the hatchet-job of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” also knows as the film “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, Tomas says to Sabina:

If I had two lives, in one life I could invite her to stay at my place, and in the second life I could kick her out. Then I could compare and see which had been the best thing to do. But we only live once. Life's so light. Like an outline we can't ever fill in or correct, make any better.
It's frightening.

It seems like much of empirical social science is really about answering that: what should Tomas have done with Tereza? Invited her to stay? Kicked her out? If only we could experiment with both.

Well, that’s sort of part of my plan here (minus Tereza.) I can’t actually create two Indonesias, trying some nationalism here, some Islamism there… but I can try and play with some methods and quite a few assumptions and pretend that I have done that. In these two Indonesias, where most people conceive of themselves as “Indonesians” or as “Muslims”, how would they interact with each other, economically and politically? How easily would they cooperate with those who are different than themselves, who speak different languages or belong to different ethnic groups or religions?

And after all, these two Indonesias exist – wrapped up in one. And so if one learns about them both, one might be able to say something meaningful about the real political competition between “Islamist” and nationalist parties and the kind of constituencies they turn to and political appeals they can use.

So there. Next time you feel the urge to write to me with “How/when did this happen? What are you doing there? Why?” remember that I/P ratios like Indonesia’s can’t last.

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I’m off tomorrow, finally, to Yogya. Will be nice to get out of Jakarta after quite a while.

In the meantime, in turns out that R.O.U.Ss are real (via this)