Representations of Conflict in North Maluku, Eastern Indonesia Christopher R
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Department of Anthropology Goldsmiths Anthropology Research Papers Previous GARPs: 1. Gorer’s Gaze: aspects of the inauguration of audience studies in British television. Gareth Stanton 2. Perilous Ideas: anthropological debates in cross-cultural arts projects. Eleanor Jupp 3. Identity, Resettlement and Perceptions of Change: The Vasava Bhils of Gujarat, India. Roxanne Hakim 4. The Virile Nation: gender and ethinicity in the re-construction of Argentinian pasts. Victoria Goddard 5. Enabling Fictions: politics, representation and the environment in Maluku, Indonesia. Nicola Frost 6. The ‘politics of the everyday’: populism, gender and the media in La Paz and El Alto, Bolivia. Sian Lazar 7. Life Down Under: water and Identity in an Aboriginal Cultural Landscape. Veronica Strang 8. ‘Sit anywhere you like, we’re all friends together’: reflections on bingo culture. Katherine Mann 9. Studying World Society. Keith Hart 10. Negotiating Autonomy: girls and parental authority in multiethnic Norway. Hilde Lidén 11. Anthropology and Anarchism: their elective affinity. Brian Morris The Devil is in the Details: representations of conflict in North Maluku, eastern Indonesia Christopher R. Duncan The Devil is in the Details 1 The Devil is in the Details: representations of conflict in North Maluku, eastern Indonesia Christopher R. Duncan GARP 12 Goldsmiths College 2007 2 The Devil is in the Details Goldsmiths Anthropology Research Papers Editors: Mao Mollano, Emma Tarlo, Frances Pine and Olivia Swift The Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths is one of the newest in Britain, having been formally created in 1985. We are proud of what we have achieved since then, and in particular of the way that people in the Department - students, staff and researchers - have sought to broaden the frontiers of the discipline and to engage critically and creatively with the traditions of anthropology in the contemporary world. We hope that the Goldsmiths Anthropology Research Papers provide a platform to communicate some of the work that makes the Goldsmiths department distinctive. The series includes articles by members of academic staff, research fellows, PhD and other students. GARP Number 12 Goldsmiths College, University of London and Christopher R. Duncan 2007 Christopher R. Duncan is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies and in the School of Global Studies at Arizona State University. His research focuses on communal violence in Indonesia , and on the resettlement and conversion to Christianity of the Forest Tobelo of Halmahera, Indonesia. He is currently working on a study of the 1999-2000 conflict in North Maluku Province in eastern Indonesia. All cover images courtesy of Christopher R. Duncan ISBN 1-904158-73-0 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the permission of the publishers. First published in Great Britain 2007 by Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW Additional copies of this publication are available from the Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW. The Devil is in the Details 3 The Devil is in the Details: to take up arms against their neighbours? What made certain interpretations of the violence representations of plausible to local people? In order to understand conflict in North Maluku, these events, academics must pay attention to the agency of the violence, to look at how it was eastern Indonesia experienced by local people and how these lived experiences in turn affected the eventual course of the violence (Mamdani 2001: 7-8). Simply In mid-August 1999 violence broke out on the explaining the violence as a conflict over eastern Indonesian island of Halmahera over the resources, or the result of instigations from the creation of new administrative boundaries. political elite, is too simple. It fails to account for What started as a dispute over redistricting how local people and local communities were quickly took on religious overtones and left caught up in events that overturned the several thousand dead and over 220,000 people established social order in North Maluku and displaced over the course of the next 10 months. elsewhere. These metanarratives often overlook This conflict was not unique in turn of the the details of particular events and how these century Indonesia; similar conflicts had erupted in events were experienced and understood by Central Sulawesi (Aragon 2001), West perpetrators and victims and how these Kalimantan (Davidson 2003), Maluku (Klinken understandings changed over time. 2001) and elsewhere. These outbreaks of communal violence have become a favorite topic Anthropologists who study communal conflict of academics interested in Indonesia (cf. Wemmer have tried to move beyond this purely and Wimhöfer 2001; Colombijn and Linbald instrumentalist approach to understanding 2002; Bertrand 2004; Coppel 2004; Klinken violence and to include non-political aspects of 2007; Sidel 2007). Much of this academic violence in their examinations of communal discussion concerns the causes of the violence conflict. Some of these anthropological and scholars have put forth numerous theoretical approaches have examined the symbolic and explanations. They argue the relative merits of ritual dimensions of violence (Feldman 1991; instrumentalist approaches that highlight the role Tambiah 1996; Zulaika 1988). Some have tried to of elites or culturalist approaches that attempt to combine larger cultural models with microlevel place the violence within the larger cultural and psychological factors to understand large-scale historical context of a particular society (cf. violence (cf. Hinton 1998). Others have Bubandt 2000; Aragon 2001; Davidson 2003). attempted to understand outbreaks of communal For example, they have debated the importance violence through the analysis of how people talk of a rising middle class (Klinken 2005) as opposed about it. For example, Mironko’s (2004) work on to the millenarian tendencies of North Moluccans the genocide in Rwanda provides a discourse (Bubandt 2000) as mitigating causes for the analysis of how Hutu participants in the genocide violence in North Maluku. Others have put forth talk about their motivations for taking part. From conspiracy theories that attempt to explain the this nuanced examination of ways of speaking, various outbreaks of violence as efforts by the Mironko is able to identify the cultural former President Suharto or his cronies to hold perceptions and ideologies embedded in these onto power or to discredit the reform movement accounts and find insights about popular (cf. Aditjondro 2001). participation in the Rwandan violence. Although not undertaking a discourse analysis as Mironko One shortcoming of these various approaches, has done, in this paper I seek to examine how particularly instrumentalist ones, is that they fail North Moluccans discuss the violence and how to grasp how the violence was understood and the details of these ways of speaking affected experienced on the ground. What caused people people’s motivations for taking part. 4 The Devil is in the Details One way to better understand the role of those A brief review of the conflict in directly involved is to examine how they talk North Maluku about the violence amongst themselves or with The Southeast Asian nation of Indonesia is no others. How do people who took part in the stranger to violence. President Suharto, who fighting, either as victims or as perpetrators, ruled the archipelago from 1967 until 1998, describe the violence? Although a number of came to power in an anti-communist bloodbath scholars have examined how the media (cf. Spyer that claimed over half a million lives (Cribb 2001, 2002, 2003; Aragon 2005; Fox 2005) or 1990). Once in power he was never reluctant to internet users (cf. Hill and Sen 2002; Bräuchler use violence to achieve his goals whether putting 2003, 2004) discuss conflict in Indonesia, very down separatists or enforcing government few have actually explored in detail how forestry policy. Some would argue that it was his participants talk about, or take part in, violence willingness to use violence and the strength of (see Timmer 2002 for a rare exception). Although his military and police that enabled him to hold one could argue that this omission stems from a together such a diverse nation: home to five of lack of access to conflict regions, there were at the world’s major religions, over 300 hundred various points hundreds of thousands of ethnic groups, speaking just as many languages, displaced people throughout in Indonesia who spread across 13,000 islands. However, the Asian had fled conflict zones and could have been financial crisis of 1997, the subsequent interviewed or surveyed in relative safety. devaluation of the Indonesian Rupiah, and Scholars, however, appear to be averse to the increasing evidence of the first families’ investigating communal violence at this level of corruption, loosened Suharto’s grip on detail, opting rather for analysis from afar or a power and eventually forced him to resign reliance on bland metanarratives to understand (cf. Dijk 2000). outbreaks of communal violence. In what follows I contrast the reluctance of scholars to discuss the With Suharto’s fall from power (and in some details of violent conflict with how victims and cases before that) violence broke out in various perpetrators discuss these acts. I argue that places across the archipelago, including anti- scholars’ avoidance of detail out of a concern for Chinese riots in several major cities, renewed the sensitivity of others (more often their own calls for separatism in Aceh and West Papua, colleagues than the people under discussion) and and outbreaks of communal violence in their focus on chronologies and causal models of Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan) and Central conflict limit the explanatory power of their Sulawesi (see map p.5). One of the longest arguments (cf. Das 1984; Avruch 2001).1 running conflicts began in the Moluccan capital In contrast, victims and participants are quite of Ambon in January 1999.