UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Caged in on the Outside: Identity, Morality, and Self in an Indonesian Islamic Community A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology by Gregory Mark Simon Committee in charge: Professor Steven Parish, Chair Professor Suzanne Brenner Professor Roy D’Andrade Professor Douglas Hollan Professor Richard Madsen Professor Dana Nelkin 2007 Copyright Gregory Mark Simon, 2007 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Gregory Mark Simon is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm: _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ Chair University of California, San Diego 2007 iii DEDICATION To Jenny. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page………………………………………………………………………… iii Dedication…………………………………………………………………………….. iv Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………... v Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………… vi Vita……………………………………………………………………………………. viii Abstract……………………………………………………………………………….. xi Introduction to the Dissertation……………………………………………………….. 1 Chapter 1, The Village and the Marketplace…………………………………….…… 10 Chapter 2, Adat and Autonomy: Dimensions of Minangkabau Identity……………... 65 Chapter 3, Social Selves in Everyday Interaction…………………………………...... 151 Chapter 4, Moral Selves in an Immoral World……………………………………...... 244 Chapter 5, Public Interactions and “Personal” Identities……………………………... 381 Chapter 6, Islam, Integration, and Autonomy………………………………………… 514 Conclusion to the Dissertation………………………………...……………………… 601 Glossary………………………………………………………………………………. 622 References…………………………………………………………………………….. 629 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I owe many thanks to all of those people who provided support and assistance for the research in Indonesia: Karl Heider for providing valuable advice on living and working in Bukittinggi; Susan Stengel for her incredible hospitality in Jakarta; Professor Imran Manan for his sponsorship and support; the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Andalas University in Padang for sponsorship and support, with special thanks to Alfan Miko, Damsar, Nursyirwan Effendi, Syahrizal, and Zulkarian Harun; LIPI (the Indonesian Institute for the Sciences); Amirwan and everyone at Brilliant English Training Centre for friendship and linguistic assistance, with very special thanks also to Rizal and much appreciation to Ril; Hanafi and Dewi for friendship and innumerable forms of support; Yessi Asiswanti and Ridwan for invaluable assistance in the research; and to all of those people in Indonesia and especially in Bukittinggi – some of whom appear on the following pages, but whom I cannot identify individually – who provided their time, friendship, and guidance, and without whom this project would have been both meaningless as well as impossible. I am particularly grateful to Inyiak Datuak, Wati, Meri, Malin, Arief, and Shelvy for their extraordinary generosity and kindness in sharing their home and their family with us. I wish to acknowledge the kind assistance of my doctoral committee, with special thanks to Steven Parish for invaluable encouragement, feedback, and conversations through every stage of the dissertation process. I am also very thankful vi for the help and encouragement of Margaret Rance and Christina Augsburger, who read portions of this dissertation in previous drafts and provided indispensable insight in helping me to improve it. I owe many thanks as well to Pat and Cathy Dunn who made my trips to San Diego during the writing stage so much easier. I would also like to gratefully acknowledge the financial support for the research in Indonesia provided by: the Anthropology Department at the University of California, San Diego; the United States—Indonesia Society; and the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0130317. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this dissertation are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or any other person or institution that provided support or advice to the author. Finally, I wish to thank my family for their continued support and, above all, to express my appreciation for my wife, Jenny Simon, whose tremendous level of love and support in every possible way at every stage of research, writing, and beyond cannot be overstated. Thank you. vii VITA EDUCATION Ph.D., Anthropology, 2007 University of California, San Diego M.A., Anthropology, 1999 University of California, San Diego B.A., Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies, 1994 University of California, Santa Cruz ACADEMIC TEACHING POSITIONS Part-Time Faculty, 2007 Department of Anthropology, California State University, Northridge Visiting Lecturer, 2002 Department of Social and Political Sciences, Andalas University, Padang, Indonesia Instructor, 1999-2001 Muir College Writing Program, University of California, San Diego Teaching Assistant, 1997-1999 Department of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego Teaching Assistant, 1994 Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz PUBLICATIONS Anger Management: Working Through Identity and Objectification in Indonesia, in Dispatches from the Field: Neophyte Ethnographers in a Changing World, Andrew Gardner and David M. Hoffman, eds. Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press. 2006. Shame, Knowing, and Anthropology: On Robert I. Levy and the Study of Emotion. Ethos 33(4): 493-498. 2005. Minangkabau, in Encyclopedia of the World’s Minorities. New York: Routledge. 2005. viii CONFERENCE PAPERS and LECTURES “Islamic Prayer and Multiple Sources of Moral Personhood in Minangkabau, Indonesia,” Meetings of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion, Phoenix, April 2007. “Articulation and Erasure: Embodying Public and Personal Identities in Minangkabau,” Biennial Meeting of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, Manhattan Beach, March 2007. “Mystical Attack, Depersonalization, and the Work of Self: A Case Study from Islamic Indonesia,” Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Jose, November 2006. “Arrogance and the Dislocation of the Moral Self: An Islamic Conception of Evil in West Sumatra, Indonesia,” Annual Meeting of the Canadian Anthropology Society, Montreal, May 2006. “Arrogance, Evil, and Moral Personhood in West Sumatra, Indonesia,” Biennial Meeting of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, San Diego, April 2005. “Pengantar Singkat: ‘Person-Centered Research’ dalam Bidang Antropologi,” (“A Short Introduction: ‘Person-Centered Research’ in the Field of Anthropology”), colloquium presented to the Department of Social and Political Sciences, Andalas University, Padang, Indonesia, May 2002; and to the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, May 2002. Guest lecture on Eric Santner’s My Own Private Germany, presented to University of California, San Diego undergraduate course, “The Anthropology of Fantasy,” June 2001. “Shame, Knowing, and Anthropology,” Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, November 2000. “Shame Selves in Theory and Ethnography,” colloquium presented to the UCSD Department of Anthropology, June 1999. DISTINCTIONS • First Prize, Student Abstract Competition, Society for the Anthropology of Religion Spring Meeting, 2007. • NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, National Science Foundation, 2002-2003. ix • Alternate Candidate, Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, US Department of Education, 2002. • USINDO Travel Grant, The United States – Indonesia Society, 2001. • F.G. Bailey Fellowship, UCSD Department of Anthropology, 2001. • Brython P. Davis Scholarship, University of California, San Diego, 1999-2002. • SEASSI Tuition Scholarship, Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute, 1999. • NSF Graduate Fellowship Honorable Mention, National Science Foundation, 1998. • Regents Fellowship, University of California, San Diego, 1997-1999. • Phi Beta Kappa, 1994. RESEARCH and TEACHING INTERESTS • Cultural Anthropology • Psychological Anthropology • Islam and the Anthropology of Religion • Person and Self • Indonesia and Southeast Asia • Morality • Emotions • Person-Centered Methods and Ethnography • Men and Masculinity • Modernity and Identity x ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Caged in on the Outside: Identity, Morality, and Self in an Indonesian Islamic Community by Gregory Mark Simon Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, San Diego, 2007 Professor Steven Parish, Chair This is an ethnographic study of moral personhood among Minangkabau people in the city of Bukittinggi, West Sumatra, Indonesia. The ethnography is based on field research carried out between January 2002 and November 2003. Data was gathered through participant-observation and through recorded and transcribed xi interviews, most of which employed a person-centered approach: a small number of respondents were interviewed repeatedly over a period of months, using a loosely- structured interview schedule that allowed their answers to shape the direction of the conversation. Thirteen people – nine men and four women, of varying ages