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The Asia Pacific Journal of

Anthropology
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Kampung, Islam and State in Urban

Java
Michelle Ann Miller

Asia Research Institute , National University of Singapore

Published online: 31 Jan 2012.

To cite this article: Michelle Ann Miller (2012) Kampung, Islam and State in Urban Java, The Asia
Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 13:1, 95-97, DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2012.645793
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2012.645793

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The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 95

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which geographical and subjective borderlessness emerge together (p. 105). Although
the author notes that his respondents were reluctant to talk about their lives in
Singapore, greater exploration of these issues is essential if we are to accept the claims
made about the central role that Batam plays in the lives of Singaporean Malay
working-class men.
Overall, I was disappointed that Lindquist was unable to move beyond the narrow
focus of his doctoral work and situate this study in its historical and ethnographic
context. As a study of one group of marginalised working-class migrants in
Indonesia, the book is insightful and well-written. As a study of migration and
tourism in the Indonesian borderlands it lacks sufficient attention to the complex
interplay of local and global forces that shape life in the Riau Islands.
LENORE LYONS
University of Western Australia
# 2012, Lenore Lyons
Kampung, Islam and State in Urban Java
PATRICK GUINNESS
Singapore, NUS Press, 2009
vii, 275pp., ill., bibliography, index, ISBN: 978-9971-69-470-8, S$38.00 (paperback)
There are many strands to this curiously titled book, which would be more aptly
named Community and State in Urban Kampung Java. Focusing on the lived
realities and changing built environment of an off-street neighbourhood called Ledok
in the central Javanese city of Yogyakarta, it is firmly located in the urban rather than
in traditional understandings of kampung (villages) in rural areas. Yet distinctions
between urban, peri-urban and rural kampung are not explored in any depth in
Kampung, Islam and the State in Urban Java. Islam, too, is only given cursory
treatment, being mainly discussed in relation to youth and the importance of the
Javanese Muslim ritual feast of kendhuren to Ledok community life.
Notwithstanding its somewhat misleading title, the book provides rich insights
into everyday life in urban kampung Java. Patrick Guinness draws from
ethnographic observation and historical research conducted since 1975 to provide
an intricately detailed account of urban and generational transformation spanning
three decades. Departing from the plethora of alternately romanticised and
disparaging accounts of kampung*which tend to portray kampung life as either
utopian or uncivilised, poor, uneducated, backward, and lacking initiative
(p. 225)*Guinness avoids such narrow absolutisms. Instead, he offers a nuanced
and grounded representation of various dimensions of urban kampung vis-a`-vis the
Indonesian state and through the eyes of their residents who struggle to
accommodate the formal within alternative informal mechanisms and strategies
to make their lives possible (p. 85).

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96

Reviews

Refreshingly, Guinness refuses to reify kampung community as inviolable, despite

the sense of nostalgia that such social bonds invariably invoke across the Malay world
the more the processes of urbanisation erode traditional societal networks and forms
of association. Rather than treating kampung community as sacrosanct, Guinness
explores the issues that test, strain and transform social relations. These include
external factors such as state interventions under President Suhartos authoritarian
New Order regime, which dissipated community strength and undermined residents
capacity to initiate action themselves (p. 202). Factors internal to urban kampung
communities, too, have threatened social harmony and cohesion. For instance,
disaffected youth in Ledok who see themselves as struggling to make a mark on the
wider city and conscious of their disadvantages position have dealt with their
circumstances by constructing their own self-expression and identity in a space
discrete from both mainstream society and culture and their parents kampung
society and culture (pp. 233, 149).
Paradoxically, the same conditions that threaten to tear communities apart can,
and often do, bring people together. The sense of community in Ledok has been
strengthened, for example, when kampung residents have exercised their ability to
collectively engage with state institutions and possibly seek benefits from the state,
even in opposition to the design of state projects (p. 249). Such affirmative action
has further empowered the community when Indonesian state contributions to local
development, health and education facilities, employment creation programs and
credit schemes have become more effectively managed as a result. In a different vein,
just as kampung youth have eroded the social fabric of urban communities, many
have equally made constructive contributions through their dynamism, creativity
and resistance to neighbourhood programs and initiatives (p. 150).
Structurally, the ten chapters in this book explore the complexity of urban
kampung society through examination of various dimensions of community. Given
his thirty years of field research in Ledok, Guinness could easily have composed this
book as a chronological narrative, but has instead skillfully accomplished the more
difficult task of slipping seamlessly between decades to compare, contrast and map
the processes of change in the lives and livelihoods of kampung residents through
thematically organised chapters. These chapters focus on local leadership, formal and
informal development strategies and trajectories, kampung youth and modern
consumer lifestyles, the role of kendhuren (ritual feast) in strengthening religious
community, the influence of national elections on kampung residents, community
and state violence, and empowerment in development practice. In this, Guinness
impressive attention to detail captures the multilayered negotiations of urban
kampung people in their daily encounters with financial difficulties, state interference
and neglect, and the complicated familial hierarchies and wider social interactions
that shape and redefine community.
It is a shame this book did not benefit from tighter editorial control. For this
reader at least, the non-standardised italicisation of Indonesian words, nondifferentiation between many Javanese and Indonesian language terms, unnecessary

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The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 97

replacement of English terms with untranslated Indonesian terms, and lack of

currency conversion rates from Indonesian rupiah effected some frustration. Most
disappointing, however, is the index, which for many practical purposes is useless,
omitting as it does major keywords (such as development; economy/economics;
education; Java; Islam; Muslim(s); religion) while including numerous redundant
and incomplete index entries for authors whose work is cited in the text and
bibliography.
If readers are willing to persevere and read Kampung, Islam and State in Urban Java
in its entirety they will be rewarded with important insights about the practices and
processes of making and unmaking community in urban Java. This is a valuable
resource book for anyone with an interest in community development, urban society
and state-societal relations in modern Indonesia. More broadly, it will appeal to those
interested in the changing phenomenon of the kampung across a rapidly urbanising
Malay world.
MICHELLE ANN MILLER
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
# 2012, Michelle Ann Miller
Tourism in Southeast Asia: Challenges and New Directions
MICHAEL HITCHCOCK, VICTOR T. KING, & MICHAEL PARNWELL (Eds)
Copenhagen, NIAS Press, 2009
x358 pp., ill., bibliography, index, ISBN 978 87 7694 034 8, 18.99 (paperback)
Surpassing a previous work which has become a classic is always a difficult endeavour
for any author. The editors of the 2009 volume, Tourism in Southeast Asia: Challenges
and New Directions, had a huge challenge at hand when their earlier work, Tourism in
South-East Asia (1993, Routledge), inevitably presents itself as a comparison to their
most recent collection of essays on tourism in the region. The main themes of the
1993 volume include tourism and culture, tourism images, development, economic
planning, and sustainability. It was a groundbreaking piece of work that stimulated
tourism research in the region. In fact, some of the contributors were, or have since
become eminent scholars in the field. This reflects the importance of the Southeast
Asian region to the theoretical advancement in tourism studies in general.
Despite what might be suggested in the two titles, many chapters in both volumes
have focused more narrowly on the social and cultural aspects of tourism. One
wonders if this could be due to the disciplinary training of the contributors, who are
predominantly anthropologists and sociologists with extensive fieldwork experience
in the region. Indonesia seems to have become the paradigm case for the study of
tourism in Southeast Asia, such that the latest instalment is dominated by case studies
from that country, on topics ranging from ecotourism, sustainability, and island
tourism, to material culture, cultural identity, tourism images, and gender relations.