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3FNQBOH When anthropologists Clifford and Hildred Geertz arrived in a small 3*"6
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*4-"/%4 for ourselves, we were non-persons, specters, invisible men’ (1973:412). Things changed ten days later when they visited their first cockfight. 4JOHLFQ    
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Johan Lindquist Forty years or so after Geertz left Bali, plex at Batu 7, while a big cockfighting subdued, slowly make their way toward homogenous culture could I possibly I witnessed my own cockfight near ring is nearby. It turns out that most of the brothel complex as everyone turns find in a place where Singaporean gam- espite being an essential part of Tanjung Batu, a small port town on the Singaporeans who go to Batu 7 are to watch them. When I ask the man blers, West Javanese prostitutes and Dthe ‘Balinese way of life’, cock- the Indonesian island of Kundur in the just as interested in gambling as in the standing next to me, he tells me they itinerant men from Kundur assemble fighting was deemed backward by the Riau Archipelago, located just off the young women. are from Singapore. temporarily? The cockfight on Kundur Indonesian government and therefore coast of Singapore and the Malaysian brings together people who are not pri- illegal. On this occasion the police Peninsula. As Adi drives past the guard post at the Attempting some salvage ethnography, marily bound together by a shared sys- raided the event, suddenly and without entrance to the brothel, he gestures with I approach the two men counting their tem of values, but rather engaged in an warning. As everyone ran in different In 1824, five years after the founding his hand towards the man sitting there, winnings, at least a dozen one-hundred illicit economic system (cf. Roseberry directions, Clifford and Hildred Geertz of Singapore, the Anglo-Dutch Treaty who barely lifts his head in recognition. Singaporean dollar notes. ‘Do you come 1982). We might therefore think of the instinctively did the same. After the made the Straits of Malacca the border The blue and white paint has not yet here often?’ They stare at me. ‘It seems cockfighting ring as a kind of ‘contact dust had settled and the police had left, between the English and Dutch colonial begun cracking on the wooden build- pretty quiet’, I add. One of the men zone’ (Pratt 1992) where people who both were accepted by the community. empires, dividing the Malay Peninsula ings and the large porches where the seems to relax, and tells me they come have been historically separated come Running from the police together with from the Riau Archipelago and creating women hang out, most of them in their here every other weekend or so. When together, usually in contexts of inequal- the villagers was, it seems, a sure sign of the geographical basis for what would late teens and early 20s. I engage in a bit I ask why, I receive an unsurprising ity and subordination. solidarity and good intentions. become Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singa- of idle conversation. All of them claim answer: ‘We can gamble and the women pore. Until recently these borders were to be from West Java, a recognisable pat- are cheap. In Singapore we could never The cockfight is therefore best under- So begins one of the most famous of limited importance. When Geertz was tern in cheap brothels throughout Indo- do this.’ One of the men finally smiles, stood, not as a story that reflects a rela- arrival stories in anthropological lore. conducting fieldwork on Bali – Indone- nesia. Near the back of the complex is and says, ‘Now we are going to find tively coherent system of meaning, Geertz goes on to argue that it is pos- sia had become an independent nation a small gate leading to the cockfighting some women.’ Before I have a chance which people tell themselves about sible to understand the cockfight as a only 15 years earlier – the whole Riau ring and I decide to have a look. to respond they turn and leave. themselves, but rather as an event in microcosm of Balinese culture. Culture Archipelago was tied to the Singapore which strategies for survival and illicit should be understood as a text and the entrepôt economy. Since then regula- As I approach, a young man sitting in a I turn my attention to the two men in desires converge in the shadows of anthropologist’s task is to interpret it. tion of the borderlands has intensified. booth takes a break from smoking his their mid-20s standing next to me, who economic globalisation. It is certainly As he puts it in one of his most famous With the transformation of Singapore clove cigarette and points to a sign that are far more talkative when I address a place where meaning is being pro- lines: ‘The culture of a people is an into a financial hub in the 1980s, a tran- reads in English: ‘Entrance 1,000 rupi- them in Indonesian. ‘The Singaporeans duced (or at least communication is ensemble of texts, themselves ensem- snational economic zone – the Growth ah’. As I pay, I notice a uniformed police make up the majority of the gamblers’, taking place) between individuals, but bles, which the anthropologist strains Triangle – connects Riau, the Malaysian officer standing with another man a few they tell me, ‘but sometimes people in a context structured by emergent to read over the shoulders of those to province of Johor and Singapore. meters away. Recalling Geertz’s intro- will come from Malaysia, Thailand, or forms of inequality, and facilitated by a whom they properly belong’ (p.452). If duction to Balinese society, I smile to Brunei.’ Evidently, the only Indonesians transnational border regime that has no one looks carefully, Balinese concep- The still largely rural island of Kundur myself, certain that I will not be run- who have enough money to compete in clear geographical boundaries. Despite tions of self and society, status and hier- counts 50,000 inhabitants who have ning away from the police today. this context are the tai kongs, the men these differences – between Kundur archy, are all found in and around the mainly subsisted on rubber planting who smuggle Indonesians illegally from and Bali, and between my perspective cockfight where the ‘sentiments upon and fishing. Kundur is nowhere to be As in Bali in the 1950s, cockfighting is Kundur across the border to Malaysia. and Geertz’s – the illegality of the cock- which…hierarchy rests [are] revealed found in tourist guidebooks. Like many illegal in Indonesia. But at Batu 7 the fight has remained constant. What an in their natural colors’ (p.447). This is other islands in the region, it has been cockfighting ring is a permanent struc- The two men are from the island but ethnography of the cockfight suggests the reason, Geertz claims, that men get affected by the Growth Triangle project, ture with a solid wooden fence sur- have just been deported from Malaysia is that opening the black box of illegal- involved in ‘deep play’ – games where but remains on the periphery of for- rounding the dirt floor and a thatched where they were working illegally for ity can reveal structures of meaning and the stakes, in money and status, are so mal economic development. Informal roof covering most of the arena. It nearly two years. Most of the Indone- power that lead us to critical perspec- high that it would appear irrational for change has been more obvious. Most is still early in the afternoon but it is sian men hanging out around the ring, tives on the contemporary world. < anyone to take part. notably, Kundur has the dubious dis- crowded. A fight is about to begin and it turns out, frequently travel to and tinction of housing some 1,000 young two middle-aged men, both with ciga- from Malaysia looking for work, though References ‘Deep play’ became the defining article in women in the largest brothel village in rettes dangling from their mouths, are not all of them are from Kundur. When - Clifford, James. 1983. ‘On Ethnographic Geertz’s version of interpretive anthro- the region. Batu 7 is located seven km preparing the cocks. Most of the 50 or I ask them about their future plans, they Authority’. Representations 1. pology. In the 1980s and 90s, however, from Tanjung Batu and caters mainly to so people hanging on the fences do not claim that ‘It is only two hours across - Geertz, Clifford. 1973. ‘Deep Play: Notes Geertz sustained increasing criticism Singaporean tourists. seem particularly excited, but a group the Straits of Malacca, and there is no on the Balinese Cockfight’. The Interpreta- from a wide range of scholars. The most of six elderly ethnic Chinese men with work to be found here anyway. Once tion of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. powerful critique problematised his * * * blood-shot eyes certainly have some- they stop deporting people, we will go - Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: understanding of culture as a coherent thing at stake. The fight itself doesn’t back.’ Travel Writing and Transculturation. New whole (Clifford 1983). Not all Balinese, Adi is waiting when I disembark from last for more than 30 seconds: as the York: Routledge. it was claimed, think in the same way the ferry, one of the handful of taxi driv- cocks are released, one is almost imme- As I witnessed these events in an era - Roseberry, William. 1982. ‘Balinese Cock- and there is not just one bounded ‘Bal- ers on the island who make a killing diately mortally wounded. and place very different from the one fights and the Seduction of Anthropology’. inese’ culture. Geertz was not merely shuttling Singaporeans between the Geertz was a part of, I couldn’t help but Social Research 49. reading a text over the shoulders of his port and Batu 7. We are in rural areas I look at the Chinese men who are mak- think the cockfight is still a helpful met- informants, his critics claimed, he was within minutes of getting on the main ing all the noise. One bangs his head aphor to understand the broader world Johan Lindquist constructing one himself. road that leads out of town and circles against the fence and walks towards the of which it is a part. It was not, however, Department of Social Anthropology the island. Adi tells me that a new hotel exit while two raise their arms in tri- the particular ‘culture’ of Kundur that Stockholm University * * * has just opened next to the brothel com- umph. The others, neither excited nor it helped me think about. What kind of [email protected]

IIAS Newsletter | #42 | Autumn 2006