Logo Master File for Indonesian Scholarship & Research Support Foundation ISRSF Scholars Research Scholarship (R)65 (G)0 (B)170 (C)88 (M)97 (Y)0 (K)0 ISRSF Rockwell W100 H90 Scholars, Research and Scholarship Rockwell Light Best Essays of 2015 ISRSF Best Essays of 2015 Copyright © 2016 by ISRSF (Indonesian Scholarship and Research Support Foundation) All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Jakarta, February 2016 www.ISRSF.org Cover artwork: Designed by freepik.com and visualryan Table of Contents PREFACE 2 I. WOMEN’S ESSAYS 5 Introduction – by Dr. Dewi Candraningrum 6 Getting the ‘Post-Secular’ Right: Reading the Aceh Singkil Tragedy with Charles Taylor – by Lailatul Fitriyah 9 Deconstructing Stigma in Amurwani Dwi Lestariningsih’s GERWANI: The Story of Women as Political Prisoners in Plantungan Camp (1969-1979) – by Isyfi Afiani 19 The Impact of Women’s Representation in Politics and Society Towards Cultural and Religion Perspectives – by Juniar Laraswanda Umagapi 27 The Case of West Java: Behind The Popularity of Indonesian Coffee, Does This Popularity Show Farmers’ Empowerment? – by Resna Ria Asmara 39 The Influences of Culture and Stigma on Health Condition in Communities – by Mustika Yundari 49 The Reinterpretation of Gender: Inspiring Women in Modern Life – by Lenni Lestari 59 II. HISTORY ESSAYS 67 Introduction – by Dr. Baskara T. Wardaya, S.J. 68 Years of Living Experimentally: Big Science Failure during Indonesia’s Guided Democracy, 1959-1967 – by Rahadian Rundjan 71 Reading Raden Saleh in Postcolonial Perspective – by Zakiyah Derajat 81 Women Slaves Lament Under The Chain of Oppresion: A Struggle to Break Social Stratification and Listen to The Crying of Women Slaves in East Sumba – by Suryaningsih Mila 93 History of “The Pioneer” Raden Mas Tirto Adhi Soerjo – by Husnul Aqib 105 The Position of Farming in Indonesia from Colonialism to the Post-Colonial era (1806-2015) – by Fitrilya Anjarsari 115 III. SOCIAL SCIENCES ESSAYS 123 Introduction – by Dr. Robertus Robet 124 Sarcasm and Satire: Contesting Sharia Law in Aceh – by Reza Idria 125 Violence as Commitment: The Symbolic Significance of Communist Purging and Reproduction of Indonesian Identity – by Geger Riyanto 135 Advancing Indonesian Social Science: A Proposal – by Anton Novenanto 145 Empower Local Citizen through Law to Develop Sustainable Ecotourism of Wakatobi in the Globalization Era – by Qur’ani Dewi Kusumawardani 153 Rethinking Populist-Developmentalism in Indonesia – by Hestu Prahara 169 Forgetting the Past: The (Il)Legality of Amnesty for Gross Violation of Human Rights – by Harison Citrawan 179 ISRSF Best Essays of 2015 1 PREFACE ISRSF conducted three national essay competitions in 2015. One focused on the writings of women authors on any topic. The other two were open to men and and women and focused on Indonesian history and social sciences issues. This book contains the top prize winning essays in each category as well as the honorable mention essays that also displayed excellence. The centerpiece of ISRSF’s current work is the Arryman Fellows program, which sends talented young Indonesians to Northwestern University in Chicago, USA, to pursue doctoral studies in the social sciences and humanities. ISRSF sponsors essay competitions as a recruiting instrument to attract the attention of bright Indonesians who may not have heard of the Arryman program. Our Foundation wants to find the most promising, talented, and committed young students who are inclined to pursue a life-long devotion to teaching, research, and scholarship. What better way than a national essay competition to find some of Indonesia’s best writers and analysts? The top essays in each category receive a cash prize. But one of the greatest benefits of winning these competitions is a guaranteed interview in the Arryman Fellows selection process if the winners decide to apply. The Essay Competition for Indonesian Women represents ISRSF’s endeavor to make sure Indonesia’s most serious young intellectual women come forward and walk through the door we have opened to do their doctorate at Northwestern, one of the leading universities in the U.S. and the world. We believe higher education and the cultivation of new scholars is an important part of the struggle to give women a fair and equal voice in education and public life across Indonesia. We are happy to announce that this essay competition for women authors attracted an even larger number of brilliant contestants than last year. The Indonesian History Essay Competition and the Social Science Essay Competition proved to be an effective tool for finding Indonesians dedicated to studying history and becoming world-class scholars in that field and the social sciences more generally. In previous years, the Arryman program has attracted many political scientists and sociologists. But it is much harder to find young students dedicated to history. This year’s essay competition found a strong crop of such students, and we are delighted most of them applied to become Arryman Fellows. We are delighted that nearly all of the authors contained in this book decided to apply for the 2016 Arryman Fellows program. And although the interviews and 2 ISRSF Best Essays of 2015 selection process are not yet finished, we are confident that several of them will be strong candidates for the doctoral program. On behalf of ISRSF, I would like to thank the three Panels of Judges who carefully read and assessed all the essays we received. The judges for the Women’s Essay Competition were Dr. Dewi Chandraningrum, Dr. Chusnul Mariyah, and Dr. Mildred Wagemann. The judges for the History Essay Competition were Dr. Baskara Wardaya, Dr. Ignas Kleden, M.A, and Didi Kwartanada. The judges for the Social Sciences Essays were Dr. Robertus Robet, Toenggoel P. Siagian, and Dr. Yosef Jakababa. Our sincere thanks to everyone who wrote essays and participated in all aspects of these essay competitions. We hope you enjoy reading these short writings, and perhaps they will inspire some of you to join the essay competition later in 2016 and become an Arryman Fellow as well! Dewi Puspasari ISRSF Director of Operations ISRSF Best Essays of 2015 3 WOMEN’S ESSAYS INTRODUCTION Working in collaboration with two other judges, Dr. Chusnul Mariyah and Ibu Milly Wagemann, the 2015 Women’s Essay Competition by ISRSF has been an engaging experience, with six winners focusing on array of feminist analyses of contemporary Indonesia. Feminism has reached a stage in its debates on how it views the relationship between women’s identity, agency, and representation which goes beyond essentialism. Feminism also faces the basic problem of existentialism that links women to the power of language. Julia Kristeva and other feminists discuss how problems in narrating her-story has hindered the feminists’ movement in the case where women are not connected to systems of representation that employ language as its basic tool. Therefore, the starting point of women’s narrative is to begin by writing women’s own experiences. Feminism provides a new privileged status for the narrative of women — especially minority women — because of its exemplary staging of the current human condition and the insights it offers into the evolving new value systems of the ethical turn of the language of equality, which is also the language of LGBT and other vulnerable groups. This is an important experience in celebrating diversity as well as in defeating monolithic narratives. It opens a more critical and interrogative awareness of the writing process, an influence that operates against the grain. It teaches generations of modern Indonesians the multiple arrays of voices that has long inhabited spaces at the margins. The 2015 competition starts with the discussion of the recent fear of secularism. “Getting the ‘Post-Secular’ Right: Reading the Aceh Singkil Tragedy with Charles Taylor” by Lailatul Fitri as the first prize winner. She writes that the burning of a church in Aceh’s Singkil region represents the presence of religious discourse in the public sphere that turned into a triumphalistic endeavor for the majority to systematically oppress the minority. In her essay she brilliantly advocates for a stronger government tole to make a room for the plurality of voices in the public sphere without elevating one over the other to the level of independent ethics. If that plurality of voices is not safeguarded, orthodox doctrines will reign over other religious traditions and create a systemic oppression in the process. The impressive essay, “Deconstructing Stigma in Amurwani Dwi Lestariningsih” by Isyfi Afiani was the second prize winner. She challenges the reader to grasp that the return of the repressed voices of the women of 1965 does not suggest that women’s writing is a symptom of a historical disease.Rather, she proposes a hermeneutic recovery of women’s voices. As a return of the repressed, this narrative serves as a textual and political unconsciousness of the dominant phallocentric narrative of contemporary Indonesia that can be deciphered in relation to honesty and sincerity in establishing “her-story.” 6 ISRSF Indonesian Women’s Essays Competition The third prize winner is the essay “The Impact of Women’s Representation in Politics and Society: Towards Cultural and Religion Perspectives” by Juniar Laraswanda Umagapi. She argues that democracy without the participation of women is not a real democracy. Her essay shows that governments of many countries have reserved seats especially for women to contest elections and be present in the movement of politics. She pointed to the trend that more and more women are getting active in politics in order to make their presence more effective in the world of politics. The Panel of Judges also nominated three amazing essays for honorable mention.