Table Of ContentCONTESTATIONS IN
CONTEMPORARY SOUTHEAST ASIA
State of Disorder
Privatised Violence and the
State in Indonesia
Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir
Contestations in Contemporary Southeast Asia
Series Editors
Vedi Hadiz, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC,
Australia
Jamie S. Davidson, Department of Political Science, National University
of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
Caroline Hughes, Kroc Institute for Int’l Peace Studies, University of
Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA
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Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir
State of Disorder
Privatised Violence and the State in Indonesia
Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir
Asia Institute
University of Melbourne
Parkville, VIC, Australia
ISSN 2661-8354 ISSN 2661-8362 (electronic)
Contestations in Contemporary Southeast Asia
ISBN 978-981-16-3662-2 ISBN 978-981-16-3663-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3663-9
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For Rafiqa, Aqil and Nabil
Acknowledgements
I am greatly indebted to numerous institutions and individuals in
conducting the research for and writing this book. I would like to thank
the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne for its support in
completing the Ph.D. on which this book is based. Sincere gratitude
must be conveyed to its director, Professor Vedi Hadiz, who super-
vised my work and assisted me in settling into this school after moving
from the Asia Research Centre (ARC) at Murdoch University. I also
wish to thank the ARC, where I began my studies, for its supportive
academicenvironment.Ilearntmuchatthisinstitution,particularlyfrom
then director Professor Kevin Hewison and founder Emeritus Professor
Richard Robison, who developed a school of thought on Asian studies
that deeply influenced the critical politico-economy approach that I used
inthisbook.Sadly,thisinstitutionhasnowbeenreconstituted.Mythanks
alsogototheDepartmentofSociologyattheStateUniversityofJakarta,
which allowed me to take a four-year leave of absence to undertake my
Ph.D. studies. I am also grateful for the financial support received from
the Australia Awards Scholarship, the Faculty of Arts at the University of
Melbourne for fieldwork funding and the Hadi Soesastro Prize for the
additional funds provided for post-doctoral studies. I rewrote my Ph.D.
thesis into a book during this post-doctoral opportunity. It was while
writing this book that I was awarded The Dean’s Prize for Excellence
in the PhD Thesis, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, for which I
am also grateful.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In particular, this book would not have come about without the
support of my academic supervisors, Vedi and Dr. Ken Setiawan. Their
patience in reading my chapter drafts and valuable feedback were helpful
in crafting the arguments of this book. My relationship with them has
gone beyond that of supervisor–student. Many friendly discussions have
shaped not only the way I have presented my research but also how I
viewtheworkofaccomplishedscholars.Dr.IanWilson,myco-supervisor
at ARC, has also been highly supportive. His inputs were not only crit-
ical for my research proposal but helped me to organise my ideas and
identify the existing studies on privatised violence in Indonesia. I thor-
oughly enjoyed our discussions and, at times, harsh debates during my
studiesatARC.Thisbookisalsoaresponsetomanyofourdisagreements
in exploring how privatised violence works and thrives in Indonesia’s
democratic context. I am also grateful to A/Prof. Paul K. Gellert and
A/Prof. Joshua Barker as well as three anonymous reviewers for their
careful reading and constructive comments of the manuscript that help
strengthen arguments of the book.
I should also acknowledge all of my informants in Jakarta and
surrounding areas, Solo and North Sumatra, who are too numerous to
mention individually.
Finally, my deepest appreciation is extended to my family: my mother,
mysistersandmylatebrotheraswellastomyparents-in-law,allofwhom
have been very supportive and to my late father and my uncle Lek Afif
whohaveintroducedmeearliertointellectualpathways.Specialthanksgo
to Rafiqa Qurrata A’yun for her enduring support and valuable input to
this book and to our sons Aqil and Nabil who were separated from each
other during my Ph.D. studies. Our reunion in Melbourne in the last
couple of months of my study was a crucial moment in making possible
thecompletionofmyPh.D.thesisthathasnowturnedintoabook.This
book is dedicated to them.
Melbourne, Australia Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir
November 2021
Abstract
The book examines the prevalence of privatised violence in social, polit-
ical and economic arenas in many countries despite different political
settings, by focussing on the Indonesian case. By employing a critical
political economy approach, this book offers a new interpretation of the
phenomenamadebyextendingtheinvestigationnotonlyintothenature
ofthestatebutalsothenatureofcapital.Predominantstudieseitherfrom
‘state weakness’ idea derived from Weberian theory or the ‘fragmented
state’ thesis developed from Migdalian state-in-society approach pay too
much attention to the nature of the modern state in understanding the
phenomenon of privatised violence. Such analyses cannot be discarded,
butbysuggestingthatprivatisedviolenceisaresultofacertainfeatureof
the state, they have placed the primacy of analysis on institutions, in the
process inadvertently falling into an orientalist tendency. As a response,
this book argues that the persistence of privatised violence is not solely
related to the historical formation of the state, power and authority; it
is also intricately related to predatory forms of capitalist development in
the way understood by Marx as primitive accumulation. This form of
capitalismischaracterisedbytheprevalentuseofextra-economicmeans—
fusing political and economic forces—in the accumulation of power and
wealth. Within this context, privatised violence is not an obstruction,
but instrumental for the accumulation process, constituting the state
of disorder. As another form of order found in the predatory capitalist
ix
x ABSTRACT
context,thisdisorderhasitsownlogicsandisshapedasaresultofhistor-
icalconflictsoverpowerandresources.Thepracticeofprivatisedviolence
tends to be reproduced when predatory social relationships, a state of
disorder, are prevalent in the workings of capitalism. As such, this book
contributestounderstandingnotonlyIndonesia’sprivatisedviolencebut
also the nature of Indonesian politics and the state. It reinforces critical
political economy arguments that Indonesian politics is ruled by a state
of disorder.
