The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0021/00211.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 27KB | 435 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00211}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Indonesia
Chapter 2D.   Languages}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Riga Adiwoso-Suprapto}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{urban
ethnic
government
members
rural
society
indonesian
areas
own
elite}
$Date{1982}
$Log{}
Title:       Indonesia
Book:        Indonesia, A Country Study
Author:      Riga Adiwoso-Suprapto
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1982

Chapter 2D.   Languages

     Estimates of the number of languages spoken by the more than 300 ethnic
groups range from 150 to more than 400. Some of the languages, however, are
probably not discrete languages but regional dialects of the same language.
Racially and linguistically, however, the picture is not quite so fragmented
as these estimates would suggest. Most Indonesians stem from Deutero-Malay
stock, and most languages belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language family.
The main languages spoken over broad regions are Javanese, spoken by 40
percent of the population; Sundanese, spoken by 15 percent; and the language
of the coastal Malays of Sumatra, spoken by 10 percent.

     Unlike many other developing countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia has
been fortunate in establishing a national language. In 1928 a Malay trade
language, widely used in the archipelago and relatively easy to master, was
adopted as one of the unifying symbols for the future Indonesian state and was
called Bahasa Indonesia. Even during the Dutch colonial era, and later during
the Japanese occupation, this Indonesian language was indispensable for
interethnic communication. Because ethnic languages have continued to be
spoken as well, bilingualism and trilingualism are widespread. In ethnically
diverse cities or towns an individual may use the ethnic language or dialect
at home, the regional language in public places, and Indonesian in official
and formal settings. For the postindependence generation, Indonesian has
become more important, allowing its members to circumvent problems linked to
ethnic language use. The government has also encouraged the development of
Indonesian and in 1972, with Malaysia, had worked to standardize its
orthography and grammar.

Social System

     Because each of the ethnic groups has its own system of social
organization and its own set of values, what constitutes the essence of
Indonesian identity and culture is, even among members of the younger
generation, still a matter of debate. The government, striving for unity and,
implicitly, for a national culture, has yet to define the basic
characteristics of an Indonesian national culture. The concept of gotong
royong, central to the traditions of most ethnic groups, has been promoted by
the government as one that should become the foundation of the national
culture, but it remains a question whether or not this concept will continue
to be upheld. The introduction of modern technology, individual performance,
and material gain may leave little room for traditional concepts of life.
Ethnic diversity notwithstanding, Indonesian society can be broadly divided
into four general types, based on ecological and economic adaptation: rural,
tribal, coastal, and urban.

Rural Society

     The majority of Indonesians-about 70 percent of the population-belong to
rural society and are settled rice cultivators, using either wet- or dry-rice
cultivation methods. They form a peasant community that controls and
cultivates the land for subsistence and maintains the ethnic traditional way
of living. Members of this society look to, and are influenced by, the gentry,
or townspeople (see Urban Society, this ch.).

     The pressures for change in rural life are extreme. Wet-rice growers on
inland Java and Bali are faced with the scarcity of arable land and a dense
population. The sheer quantity of people in the Javanese and Balinese rural
areas can be compared to that of moderately dense suburban clusters in the
United States. More and more villagers without any rights of land are faced
with limited, and often not so rewarding, options, such as working for wages.
Agricultural work is scarce, seasonal, and low paying. Many persons feel
compelled to leave their villages to look for better opportunities in the
urban centers.

     In this process, traditional features of rural life, such as community
cohesiveness and reciprocal work-sharing arrangements, tend to break down. By
the early 1980s sharecropping, which once permitted landless farmers to
maintain themselves and to accumulate capital to buy or rent land, was only
infrequently practiced. In the more densely populated areas and near large
cities-where most of the people lack any direct right of control over the
lands-harvests were largely in the hands of outsiders, who were detached from
village life and internal village community needs. Little help was available
to the villagers from the administration. Although the government placed
priority on agricultural development, in practice its programs had become
highly bureaucratized and have had limited success in solving new rural
problems. One difficulty with government support programs has been that the
administrators have been reluctant to share any real power with the village
communities (see Technical Support Programs, ch. 3).

     In contrast to the wet-rice cultivating society of Java and Bali, the
rural societies of other islands show variations mirroring the complexities of
each area's ecological condition. Their social systems are usually based on
dry-rice cultivation, which requires less arable land. Members of a given
community are generally members of the same extended family. Landownership is
kept within the family; intermarriage with members of other communities
provides a means of strengthening or expanding landownership. Arable land is
more available than in wet-rice cultivating areas, and if more land is needed,
new fields are cleared for cultivation by the young men of the community.

     Social structure among dry-rice cultivators is marked by cohesiveness and
by the leadership of an older, respected headman. The headman decides when the
planting season begins and often becomes the arbiter in local civil disputes.
More often than not the position of headman is inherited; often he is
wealthier and owns more land than others. Personal achievement is another
variable, however.

     Belief in ancestor worship and supernatural spirits is widespread. There
are many different rituals; the most common one is the ritual of village
purification (see Religion and World View, this ch.). This ritual symbolizes a
new beginning-the banishing of evil spirits from the village and the request
for ancestral blessings for the new planting season.

     Another characteristic feature of the rural scene is gotong royong. This
system provides unpaid agricultural labor when needed, but participants keep
close tally of who owes whom, and one is expected to reciprocate for help
given in labor or in goods.

     Adat, although diminishing in significance in the urban areas and to a
lesser degree in many rural areas as well, still is applied in local civil
disputes. (The Indonesian legal system in the early 1980s distinguished
between adat and statutory or codified law.) Adat has become one of the
stabilizing factors in maintaining the traditional rural societies.

     In 1982 communities living by dry-rice cultivation were experiencing
sociocultural change, as were wet-rice cultivating societies. Among the
factors accounting for change were pressures from government and outside
influences to "modernize" cultivation methods, resettlement of transmigrants,
introduction of modern agricultural technology, and influences from urban
areas. Sometimes traditional values clashed with government policy.

     Wet-rice cultivators from Java and Bali, who had been resettled in areas
of dry-rice cultivation under heavily subsidized government transmigration
programs, constituted a new feature of rural society in the early 1980s. In
the areas to which the trans