Tunggu tubang and the extended family property inheritance system in Semende community, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

The main issue to be discussed in this article is the takeover of women’s authority by men in the inheritance system of the extended family’s property in the Semende community (Indonesia). This departs from the idea that, according to the custom, the authority to manage the extended family’s inheritance in the form of houses and agricultural land is handed over to the eldest daughter in the family, who is known as tunggu tubang. However, the current practice is that the authority to manage the agricultural land is taken over by men, while the tunggu tubang is only given the authority over the house. This shows that the authority of the tunggu tubang begins to erode, even creating pseudo-authority, deception, and hyperreality. This article aims at describing the system of inheritance of the extended family’s property that is practiced by the Semende community today, by understanding the position of women (tunggu tubang) and men in this inheritance system, and the implications for the social structure of the Semende community as a whole.

KEYWORDS:

• Tunggu tubang
• property inheritance
• women's authority
• male power
• Semende Indonesia

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Andalas University Research and Community Service Institute and the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences of Andalas University for the research grant support provided so that researchers could collect data for this article. I am also grateful to the editorial team of Social Identities for the opportunity to write in this journal.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The administrative territory of marga consists of several hamlets (villages) led by a pembarab or krio.

2 One of the privileges of a pesirah is that the house where he lives resembles a house of Palembang Palace, which is different from ordinary people’s houses (Arifin et al., 2021).

3 In a matrilineal system, the inheritance of ancestral property is passed on to all women in the matrilineal lineage (Parkin & Stone, 2004). In the Minangkabau matrilineal case, all women in the matrilineal family have the same rights to the family's inheritance (Arifin, 2018).

4 In the Semende community, the affirmation that men are leaders for women departs from their understanding of the Qur’an (4:34). While the assertion that men are the head of the family, they understand from the Marriage Law No.1 of 1974.

5 Islamic scholars (ulama) from Indonesia do not always agree with the view that men have the right to be leaders. Indonesian ulama like Quraish Shihab emphasized that the leaders referred to in this Qur’an (4:34) place more emphasis on husbands, not on all men (Erviena, 2021). In line with that, other Indonesian ulama such as Hamka emphasized that the word leader here is only for the domestic (household) sphere, not the public domain (Syawqibik, 2020).

6 Ngangkit means ‘to revive’ so a ngangkit marriage can be interpreted as a process of returning the tunggu tubang’s position to a woman, namely to his wife.

7 For the Semende migrant community in Lampung, this woman who takes care of her helpless parents and siblings is still often referred to as a tunggu tubang.

8 According to Semende’s ustadz, the division of inheritance according to the provisions of Islamic teachings is emphasized in the Qur’an (4: 11,12, and 176).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Andalas University Research and Community Service Institute under grant 05/UN.16.17/PP.Hikom/LPPM/2017; and the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences of Andalas University under grant T/6/UN.16.08/PT.01.03/RPGB-FISIP/2022.