Table Of ContentActivists in Transition
Activists in Transition
Progressive Politics
in Democratic Indonesia
Edited by Thushara Dibley and Michele Ford
Southeast Asia Program Publications
an imprint of
Cornell University Press
Ithaca and London
Southeast Asia Program Publications Editorial Board
Mahinder Kingra (ex offi cio)
Thak Chaloemtiarana
Chiara Formichi
Tamara Loos
Kaja McGowan
Copyright © 2019 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the
publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East
State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.
First published 2019 by Cornell University Press
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dibley, Thushara, editor. | Ford, Michele, editor. | Sastramidjaja,
Yatun L. M. Student movements and Indonesia’s democratic transition.
Title: Activists in transition : progressive politics in democratic
Indonesia / edited by Thushara Dibley and Michele Ford.
Description: Ithaca : Southeast Asia Program Publications, an imprint of C ornell
University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and i ndex.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2019016193 (print) | LCCN 2019018069 (ebook) |
ISBN 9 781501742491 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501748301 (epub/mobi) |
ISBN 9781501742477 | ISBN 9781501742477 (cloth) |
ISBN 9781501742484 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Democratization—Indonesia. | Indonesia—Politics and
government—1998– | Social movements—Indonesia. | Protest m ovements—
Indonesia. | Political activists—Indonesia.
Classifi cation: LCC DS644.5 (ebook) | LCC DS644.5 .A287 2019 (print) |
DDC 3 22.409598—dc23
LC record available at h ttps://lccn.loc.gov/2019016193
Cover photograph: A demonstrator marking the International Day Against
Homophobia in Jakarta, 2008. Jewel Samad/Agence France-Presse.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Abbreviations and Terms ix
Introduction: Social Movements and Democratization in Indonesia 1
THUSHARA DIBLEY AND MICHELE FORD
Chapter 1
Student Movements and Indonesia’s Democratic Transition 23
YATUN SASTRAMIDJAJA
Chapter 2
Democratization and Indonesia’s Anticorruption Movement 41
ELISABETH KRAMER
Chapter 3
Indonesia’s Labor Movement and Democratization 61
TERI CARAWAY AND MICHELE FORD
Chapter 4
Movements for Land Rights in Democratic Indonesia 79
IQRA ANUGRAH
Chapter 5
Urban Poor Activism and Political Agency in Post–New Order Jakarta 99
IAN WILSON
Chapter 6
Reformasi and the Decline of Liberal Islam 117
GREG FEALY
Chapter 7
The Women’s Movement and Indonesia’s Transition to Democracy 135
RACHEL RINALDO
vi Contents
Chapter 8
The Unfulfi lled Promise of Democracy: Lesbian and
Gay Activism in Indonesia 153
HENDRI WIJAYA AND SHARYN GRAHAM DAVIES
Chapter 9
Democratization and Disability Activism in Indonesia 171
THUSHARA DIBLEY
Conclusion: Social Movements, Patronage Democracy, and
Populist Backlash in Indonesia 187
EDWARD ASPINALL
List of Contributors 203
Index 205
Acknowledgments
This volume would not have been possible without the support of the Univer-
sity of Sydney’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, which funded the workshop at
which the initial drafts of the chapters were presented. It would also not have been
possible without logistical support from our team at the Sydney Southeast Asia Cen-
tre (SSEAC). Michele’s participation in this project was supported by an Australian
Research Council Future Fellowship (FT120100778).
Putting a volume like this together is a challenging task. Beside the general ques-
tion of selection, the community of scholars working on social movements in Indone-
sia is quite small—and, as a result, some obvious topics for inclusion (most notably,
the environment movement) have fallen out because of the lack of author availability.
In addition, we have challenged many of our contributors to broaden their focus in
order to capture the changes over time in the different social movements featured in
the book.
We would like to thank all our authors not only for committing to the project,
but for their patience in working and reworking their chapters to ensure a high level
of comparability in focus and time frame across the volume. We would also like to
acknowledge the efforts of our discussants—Edward Aspinall, Vedi Hadiz, Elizabeth
Hill, Jeff Neilson, and Sonja van Wichelen—who provided valuable input at the work-
shop. A special thanks to Edward Aspinall, who also commented on later drafts of a
number of chapters. Finally, we are grateful to the other members of the multidis-
ciplinary social sciences group of Indonesia specialists at the University of Sydney,
whose stimulating discussions inspired us to put this volume together.
Introduction: S ocial
Movements and
Democratization in
Indonesia
T hushara Dibley and Michele Ford
In 1998, thousands of students occupied the Indonesian parliament, sleeping
rough at night, chanting slogans and singing songs demanding the resignation of the
man who had led Indonesia for more than three decades. Their elation at President
Suharto’s announcement of his resignation on May 21 was echoed in the headlines of
newspapers around the world. The activists who staged protests at this critical moment
precipitated one of the most significant shifts in Indonesia’s political landscape since
independence. The ensuing transition was tumultuous, with race riots, threats of sep-
aratism, and destruction of public and private property. But before long the country
had settled into a period of democratic consolidation, which continued without major
incident until Prabowo Subianto, a retired general accused of human rights abuses
and Suharto’s former son-in-law, threatened a return to a more authoritarian form
of government in his campaign for president in the 2014 election. The immediate
threat to the country’s formal commitment to democracy was averted when Prabowo
accepted his narrow defeat to Joko Widodo (Jokowi), the serving governor of Jakarta.
Along the way, however, Indonesia’s political culture had shifted considerably—with
the progressive voices that had been so influential in 1998 increasingly displaced by
reactionary social movements and, in particular, conservative Islamic forces.
Activists in Transition responds to Della Porta’s (2014, 363) call “to single out the
effects of democratic transformations on social movements [and] the effects of social
movements on those transformations.” It focuses on social movements with progres-
sive agendas because these, and not their conservative counterparts, have imagined
and articulated a democratic vision for Indonesia. Studies of regime change have
shown that progressive social movements disseminate ideas about democracy among
the wider population and mobilize opposition to undemocratic regimes (Adler and
Webster 1995; Collier and Mahoney 1997; Tilly 2001). Less attention has been paid to
the fate of social movements once that regime change occurs. In Grodsky’s (2012, 12)
words, “Scholars and policymakers who focus on democratization have accumulated
a wealth of information on how social movements arise [but the] question of ‘what
next?’ has . . . been largely pushed to the side.”
This collection explores what went before a nd the “what next,” tracking the tra-
jectory of social movements’ engagement in the political sphere from the short-lived
period of openness (k eterbukaan ) in the late 1980s–early 1990s and the twenty-year
