Veils and ecstasy: negotiating shame in the Indonesian Borderlands

Abstract

‘Malu’, meaning approximately shame or embarrassment, is a key emotional trope for contemporary Indonesian migrants. This paper discusses the position of ‘malu’ in the lives of young female migrants who work as factory workers or prostitutes on the rapidly developing Indonesian island of Batam, located on the border with Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore. It shows how veiling and the drug ‘ecstasy’ have both become techniques for migrants to negotiate ‘malu’ in the context of the demands of migration and the contradictions of everyday life on Batam.

Keywords:

• Emotion
• migration
• gender
• drugs
• religion
• Indonesia

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Matthew Amster, Tom Boellstorff, Shelly Errington, Ken George, Jörgen Hellman, Alan Klima, Galina Lindquist, Jennifer Mack, Wilhelm Östberg, and the three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

The rantau is the area outside of the ethnic home region, and also the root word for merantau (cf. Rodgers 1995:5).

This is of course a generalization that deserves modification. However, in rural areas and smaller towns around Indonesia, local or regional languages tend to dominate in everyday conversation.

A high-school degree is based on 12 years of education.

Malu is closely linked with sexuality. Most notably, the Indonesian word for genitals is kemaluan.

For a history of economic development on Batam, see Smith (1996).

On ‘national-cultural,’ see Ivy (1995:3–4).

As of 2002 the maximum age for new hires had been lowered to 23. The use of young women in electronics factories has become a global corporate form. For an early review, see Ong (1991).

The use of the jilbab became increasingly common during the 1990s in the last years of the New Order as President Suharto turned towards Islam. For instance, there was a lifting of the previous ban on veiling in schools (Hefner 2000:18–19).

For one case, see Sijori Pos, March 10, 1998.

Collins and Bahar (2000:46) heard the same kinds of response when interviewing women in the South Sumatran city of Palembang.

Lontong, which literally is a kind of inexpensive pressed rice, is the local slang for prostitute.

For instance, see the articles in Sijori Pos, August 6, 1998, and November 24, 1998. One was entitled ‘From Hollywood Hill to Free Lancer.’ ‘Free lancer’ refers to women who work as prostitutes.

This also highlights an important gendered contrast on Batam: for men, engaging in religion is not as legitimate a model of kemajuan as it is for women.

Many of the terms used in relation to drug use are English; tripping and on are only two examples.

See Day's (1990) study of prostitutes in London for strikingly similar distinctions.

Naim (1976:149 –150) defines merantau as ‘leaving one's cultural territory voluntarily, whether for a short or long time, with the aim of earning a living or seeking further knowledge or experience, normally with the intention of returning home.’ Merantau has traditionally been associated with groups such as the Baweanese (Vredenbregt 1964) and the matrilineal Minangkabau of West Sumatra (e.g. Kato 1982), but has more recently become widely used among most ethnic groups in Indonesia (e.g. Ali 1996; Waterson 1997:230–231).

I am not claiming that the desire for economic success is a modernist form in itself, but rather that it is tied to new patterns of consumption and the expansion of an economy based on wage labor.

Kulick (1998: 9 –10) elaborates on this position in relation to Brazilian trans-gendered prostitutes.