Love, sex and marrying early in Lombok, Indonesia
Researching young people’s agency and the influence of social media
Renske Roos Termeulen student number: 12264016 MSc Medical Anthropology and Sociology
University of Amsterdam supervisor: Dr. Trudie Gerrits second reader: Dr. Erica van der Sijpt
in collaboration with Rutgers International ‘Yes I Do’ project supervisor: Dr. Jonna Both
Photo of a njongkolan (wedding procession) on title page obtained by persons on the photo themselves and used with their consent.
Abstract
This thesis explores the question: In what ways does social media influence young people’s
understandings and experiences of their agency in the field of love, sex and early marriage in Lombok, Indonesia? By doing ethnographic fieldwork in Lombok – getting to know people closely, ‘deep hanging out’, having ‘small-talk’, as well as open interviews and focus group discussions – I was able to explore this question, especially among young people from lower socio-economic classes. This thesis argues that social media is making the social environment in Lombok stricter, and at the same time has a liberalising effect on young people in Lombok when fulfilling romantic aspirations.
Social media changes the way young people in Lombok navigate because they have more resources – as for example Facebook – to – secretly or not – practice and act out their ‘projects’ (being in love, looking for boy- and girlfriends online, marrying, ‘living a simple life’). Because of this social media is changing these ‘projects’ and the meaning of love in Lombok. Marriage is often desired by this group of young people, consciously making use of the local rule of kawin lari or elopement in Lombok.
On the other hand, a group of ‘good boys and girls’, are strictly trying to follow Lombok’s religious, cultural and social norms, while being influenced by conservative Islamic profiles online. In this case, social media is reinforcing the existing norms, and making them even more strict. Also this group is trying to fulfil their ‘projects’: becoming ‘successful’. Young marrying people navigate within these changing norms, that are getting stricter. Furthermore, through the socially constructed changing norms and dominant discourses relating to sex, love and marriage in Lombok, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Indonesian citizens and are constructed.
Acknowledgements
First of all, a big thank you to all my wonderful, welcoming and open informants, colleagues, friends and neighbours in Lombok for telling me your stories, taking me into your lives and making my stay on the island so special and rewarding. Without you I could have never written this thesis. Terima kasih banyak to all of you. I also want to thank Rutgers International and PKBI Indonesia for giving me the opportunity to work with you. Dr. Jonna Both, thank you for making sure this collaboration went smoothly and thank you for your feedback. Dr. Erica van der Sijpt, thank you for taking up the role as second reader. And of course, Dr. Trudie Gerrits, thank you for all your support during the whole process, your constructive feedback and your enthusiasm.
Content
Chapter 1 Introduction 4
Chapter 2 Theoretical lens 7
- Structure 7
- Agency 8
- Different ways of looking at agency 9
- Social navigation 12
- Love and marriage 12
- The construction of love, marriage and sex in Indonesia 13
- Agency, marrying early and adat in Indonesia 14
- Social media 16
- Social media in Indonesia 17
Chapter 3 Context and methods 18
- Indonesia and Lombok 18
- Deep hanging out 19
- Interviews 20
- Reflexivity 21
- Ethics 21
Chapter 4 Changing norms: ‘I used to have a boyfriend but now I don’t want it anymore’ 22
- Fatimah: the case of an Indonesian ‘good girl’ 22
- Always having the future in mind while pursuing her ‘project’ 24
- Indonesia Tanpa Pacaran – Indonesia without dating 26
- Existing norms are getting stricter 28
- Maya: the case of an Indonesian ‘bad girl’ 29
- Marrying again: Kawin lari 33
- Maya’s agency: Resistance? 34
Chapter 5 Navigating with the help of social media: ‘I wanted to marry’ 37
- Jodoh: the meaning of love in Lombok. The case of Dewi and Atet 37
- Social media influences the meaning of love 39
- Marrying early in Lombok 40
- Agency, marrying early and social media 41
- How do you see your ‘horizon’? 42
- The case of Iqbal: social media facilitates secrecy 44
- Working abroad: a big phenomenon in Lombok 46
- ‘I can improve myself through marriage’: changing agency 47
Chapter 6 Conclusion: Social Media as ‘game-changer’? 49
Chapter 7 Discussion, recommendations and implications 52 Annexes:
- Emic terms and abbreviations - Literature
Chapter 1 Introduction
***
During my first week in the field, on the 24th of February, Nyale ‘the festival of love’ was celebrated at the
Southern beaches of the island Lombok. This festival is based on the legend of a Sasak princess, called Mandalika, who lived in Lombok during the 16th century. When Mandalika’s father, the king Tonjang Beru,
decided that Mandalika was old enough to marry, he told the men of Lombok to fight for her hand. When Mandalika understood that men where killing each other for her love, she stepped on a big cliff near Seger beach. There, she exclaimed as loud as she could that, if a bloodbath was going on for the sake of marrying her, she did not want to marry at all. After this, she jumped into the sea and dispersed into millions of colourful lighting sea worms: the Nyale. (Another version of the legend states that Mandalika’s father arranged a marriage for her and that she drowned herself to be able to refuse the marriage.)
Every year Mandalika reappears in the form of millions and millions of Nyale. At this night, thousands of young people come to the southern coastline of Lombok to gather, camp, party, catch the sea worms and to commemorate the story of the powerful princess and wait until the magical moment when the worms show themselves in the lighting colours green, pink and blue – the colours of Mandalika’s dress. Since my research is dealing with love and marrying in Lombok, this seemed the place to be for me. I went there with Kemal, a friend from the PKBI office. When we had arrived and set up our tent on a cliff, we got to know our neighbours: a group of young boys from Central Lombok, all very busy with their smartphones. Also Kemal was chatting online with a girl het met at Facebook from North Lombok, and asking me advice about what he should say. I expected that this was the place where young people were going to meet each other in real life, but instead, they were using their phones to find and chat with girls online. Actually, I could also see why it was a big challenge to approach girls on the cliff where we were camping: There were hardly any. Sometimes, girls were passing by, but they were all surrounded by big groups of male friends and family. Our neighbours, Kemal and me talked all night about love and marrying, sex and phones in Lombok. At first, they seemed a bit shy about the topics, but after a while the neighbours and Kemal got very open and explained me about the difficulties of love and marrying in Lombok. They for example told me that an unmarried boy and girl are not allowed to go outside together alone. Maybe that was why, when me and Kemal went to our tent, he asked me: ‘Do you want to teach me how to be a man?’ This was probably the only time he was sleeping in one tent with an unmarried girl (me) as an unmarried man.
***
This story shows that love, sex and marrying in Lombok do not exist in a social vacuum, but that these experiences are embedded in a specific cultural, social and religious context. To be able to understand how young people in Lombok deal with these topics – which is the aim of this thesis – it is important to understand what is considered normal regarding these topics and experiences. Therefore I intend to find out what the dominant discourse is regarding sex, love and marrying and how my young
informants deal with the social, cultural and religious norms, communicated through the dominant discourse (Wijaya Mulya 2018): I want to know how they navigate in different ways within the existing structure (Van der Sijpt 2014).
My research is linked to the ‘Yes I do’ project1. Perkumpulan Keluarga Berencana Indonesia (PKBI): The Indonesian organisation for family planning, the organisation carrying out this project in Lombok, aims to reduce early marriages2, which are common in Lombok: 25% of the girls3 are married before their 18th birthday (Hidayana et al 2016). Former research found that early marriage in Lombok is generally seen as a way to avoid premarital sex, as a solution to teenage pregnancy or as a way to alleviate the economic burden of the family (Hidayana et al 2016; Bennett 2014; Grijns & Horii 2018; Platt 2012). In existing research, little attention has been given to the agency of the young people when marrying early. Archembault (2011: 638) in a different context, warns for these non-agentive notions of culture. She states that this obscures the complicated context giving rise to early marriage, and that early marriage should be contextualised in a subjective way. In Lombok, only Platt (2012) suggested that marrying early can be seen as a way for young people to flee the dominant patriarchal family structures, to secure their status and future, or as the only possible way to have sex.
In this thesis therefore, I aim to research the agency of the young marrying people in Lombok. To be able to do this, I have to understand how love, sex and early marriage are generally understood, because young people’s agency is socially embedded in a local context consisting of social, cultural and religious norms (Bennett 2002; Platt et al 2018, Hidayana et al 2016).
As I have shown in the opening vignette, social media and the use of phones have become prevalent in Indonesia and Lombok in recent years. Everywhere I came in Lombok, I saw young people staring at their smart phones. In 2006, it became possible to access the wireless mobile internet via 3G in Indonesia. Nowadays, 98% of the Indonesian population owns a smart phone with mobile internet, with 282 million mobile phone internet subscriptions4. The most popular activity is
exchanging private messages through social media channels (Puspitasari 2016). Research by Miller (2016) suggests that social media – ‘the online’ – can transform real life – ‘the offline’. In this thesis therefore, I am interested how this new medium – social media at smart phones – is changing existing structures as well as agency of young people regarding love, sex and marrying early.
The main question that guided my research is: In what ways does social media influence young people’s understandings and experiences of their agency in the field of love, sex and early marriage in Lombok, Indonesia? I aim to answer this question by four sub-questions: 1. What do love, sex and marrying mean to young people in Lombok? What are their ideas and experiences around love, sex and marrying early? 2. What structures, norms and dominant discourses do they experience regarding these topics? 3. How do they navigate their agency within this context? And lastly, 4. How
1 This project, in which Rutgers international is working together with Plan Nederland, Amref, KIT and Choice, is
implemented in seven countries worldwide, among which Indonesia (in Java and Lombok). This project aims to reduce early marriages, teenage pregnancies and female genital mutilation/cutting.
https://www.rutgers.nl/wat-wij-doen/internationaal/projecten-internationaal/yes-i-do
2 Some authors and projects use the term ‘child marriages’, others ‘early marriage’. I think what ‘child’ or ‘early’ entails is
culturally constructed as is the transitional age of 18. I decided to use the term ‘early marriage’ in this thesis.
3 In my research I focus on all young people in Lombok, but in practice, most people who marry under the age of 18 are girls. 4 Indonesia has 269,537,476 inhabitants based on United Nations estimates in 2019. Which means, if Puspitasari’s (2016)
does social media influence structure as well as agency in the field of love, sex and early marriage in Lombok?
I first describe the theoretical overview of anthropological conceptualisations of structure, agency, social navigation, love and social media in chapter 2. In this chapter, I also connect these conceptualisations with existing research regarding these topics in the Indonesian context. In chapter 3, I present my fieldwork site and the methods I used. By using two different cases, I explain the dominant discourse and different ways of dealing with this discourse in chapter 4. In chapter 5 I dive deeper into experiences of and reasons for love, sex and marrying early in Lombok and show how social media is interrelated with these topics. Also, in this chapter I show that agency is not static, but changing. Finally, I will come back to my main question and theoretical implications of this research in the conclusion in chapter 6. Then, I provide a discussion, including recommendations and
implications of this research in chapter 7. In this last chapter I will also come back to the ‘Yes I Do’ project, and other projects aiming to address early marriage. I hope this study contributes to these projects by providing an understanding of the complex local context in Lombok.
Chapter 2 Theoretical lens
‘Attempting to interweave theory and ethnography in mutually illuminating ways.’ - Laura Ahearn (2001)
The concepts: structure, agency, social navigation, love and social media – that I present and explain in this chapter – together provide the theoretical lens that gives ‘hands and feet’, as well as a ‘starting point’ to this ethnography.
Structure
‘Social systems – hegemonies, structures, cultures, or whatever we call them – are created and re-created, reinforced, reshaped and reconfigured by actions and words of particular individuals, groups
and institutions acting in socio-culturally conditioned ways.’ - Mannheim and Tedloch (1995:9)
I draw upon poststructuralists to understand ‘the social system’ or ‘the structure’. Structure is
generally understood by anthropologists as ‘the constraining forces upon individual action (Barnard & Spencer 2012: 755; Appelrouth & Edles 2012: 611)’, and this is the definition that I will use. I follow the book ‘The history of sexuality’ (1990 [1976]) by the poststructuralist Foucault to understand how the structure of society influences and forms lives. Structure is seen as a relational phenomenon working within social interaction (Samuelsen & Steffen 2004: 3), and not – as structuralists have explained structure earlier – as an abstract force that was already there (Appelrouth & Edles 2012: 611).
Foucault argues that through institutions – that can be for example medical, educational, penal, or religious – the structure can exist (Vintges 2012: 3; Samuelsen & Steffen 2004: 7) and categorise people (Power 2011: 42). Whether Foucault also meant ‘the state’ by ‘institutions’ is a point of discussion (Power 2011; Vintges 2012). However Adams & Pigg (2005: 1) name the state – through politics, nation building and health and development programs – as an important institution in the construction of people.
From a Foucauldian perspective, people internalise and incorporate the structure through the dominant discourse. People transform themselves to a certain way of being (Samuelsen & Steffen 2004: 8) Foucault calls this biopower (1990 [1976]: 137): the internal will to be normal, determined by social and cultural norms, explained by dominant discourses. Producing normalised individuals has a second effect: creating a normalised population.
Within this theory, Foucault argues that sex – in the 19th and 20th century in West-Europe – is a tool to create the normal individual and the normal population (1990 [1976]: 6). Also in other – postcolonial – contexts scholars describe this role of sex. By talking about sex in a certain way – ‘putting sex into discourse (Foucault (1990 [1976]: 9)’ – and by linking sexual behaviour to morality, citizens can be categorized in ‘normal and moral’ or ‘deviant and immoral’ (Power 2011: 40; Adams & Pigg 2005: 2; Cooper & Stoler 1989: 609). Furthermore, these authors state that nations use this divide to be able to (re)produce ‘normal, good and moral’ citizens. In this thesis I will use this theory to analyse the division in Lombok between moral sex (sex in the marriage) and liberated sex
(premarital sex), and how this dominant discourse on sex influences ways of life.
It is often argued that Foucault’s theory leaves no space for agency, because the agent is defined and categorised by the structure through the dominant discourse (Power 2011: 39). Indeed, it is true that in Foucault’s theory agency is historically and culturally produced and not intentional, since Foucault is interested in how agents are constructed (Power 2011: 49). However, Vintges (2012: 13) – inspired by Mahmood (2005) whom I explain below – states that from a Foucauldian
perspective, agency can exist. Agency should then be understood as determined through the
discourses, institutions and norms. Also Spronk (2012: 8) states that within Foucault’s theory (1990 [1976]), the discourse allows different positions for agents. Power (2011: 48) therefore argues that Foucault’s theory is best understood when combined with conceptualisations of agency. In the next section I will show different conceptualisations of agency, because it will allow me to analyse my respondent’s accounts in more complex ways.
Agency
‘How to understand the social shaping of the inner world when individual agents are so different from each other?’ - Luhrmann (2006: 348)
During my fieldwork in Lombok, I got to know different young people, and with them different ways of dealing with the dominant discourse – the structures – they live in. To understand their stories, I use notions of agency. Classical and traditional scholars researching notions of agency do not deny structures, but do not agree with the poststructuralist view that agents are defined by their structure through discourses, and that agents only reconstruct the structure in society by which they were already pre-determined (Foucault 1990 [1976]). As outlined above, other scholars have found space for a particular kind of agency within the poststructuralist way of thinking (Mahmood 2005; Vintges 2012), and this is the line of thought that I will follow and explain in the next section. However, Giddens, one of the most famous and first thinkers in the structure/agency debate, does not agree with the poststructuralist perspective on agency and states that structure is not only constraining, but also
enabling agents to act. Giddens acknowledges that structure puts limitations on action, but he also emphasizes that by using agency, one is able to affect her surroundings. Giddens further argues that individuals are ‘purposeful’ and that they ‘know what they are doing’. Agency, to Giddens, means that people can make a difference and intervene in their worlds as conscious and knowledgeable actors (Giddens [1979] in Appelrouth & Edges 2012: 717-719). Ahearn (2001) defines agency in a short and clear way as the culturally constraint capacity to act, which for me is the working definition of agency. Giddens and Ahearn emphasize the individual and intentional decisions, that are embedded in social structures nonetheless. A part of structure consists of rules in Giddens’ view: ‘Rules are
common-sense social recipes that allow us to make sense of the world as well as to form our own words and behaviour.’ In chapter 4 I show that rules are considered indicators of the structure in Lombok.
Different ways of looking at agency
‘Decisions are embedded in social structures and power relations that both constrained and enabled their scope of action’ - Murphy-Graham & Leah (2014: 4)
Two feminist anthropologist, who both did research on women’s agency in Muslim societies in the Middle-East, Mahmood (2005; 2001) and Abu-Lughod (2002), have critiqued classical ideas around agency – like explained above (Giddens 1979; Ahearn 2001) – arguing that this model of agency limits the understanding of the lives of women. Abu-Lughod (2002: 786) states: ‘By describing women not as agents but as objects controlled, their accounts are simplified’. They therefore do not agree with Giddens, who states that agency is intentional and a way to intervene in the world, and look at agency from a Foucauldian perspective (Vintges 2012): people act from within ‘socially shared standards, religious beliefs and moral ideals (Abu-Lughod 2002: 785)’. Furthermore, Mahmood argues that ‘the desire for freedom which is often emphasized by western liberal discourses should not be used as an universal standard (2001: 203)’. Abu-Lughod questions what freedom means when we accept that humans are social beings, raised in certain contexts, belonging to particular communities that shape their desires and understandings. Agency is, according to Mahmood, defined by cultural and historical conditions. When agency is viewed in this way, a particular action may appear passive and docile to an outsider. But actually, Mahmood argues, this act is a form of agency, that can be understood only from within the discourse and structures of subordination (2001: 212). Abu Lughod (2002: 785) illustrates Mahmood’s statement with the example of the burqa, using the anthropologist Papanek (1982) from Pakistan:
‘She described the burqa as a portable seclusion, that many saw as a liberating invention because it enabled women to move out of segregated living spaces while still observing the basic moral
requirements of separating and protecting women from unrelated men. Since I came across her phrase ‘portable seclusion’ I have thought of these enveloping robes as ‘mobile homes’. Such veiling signifies belonging to a particular community and participating in a moral way of life in which families are paramount in the organization of communities and the home is associated with the sanctity of women.’
Wearing a burqa might appear as a docile act, following the dominant discourse. Papenek (1982), however, found that wearing a burqa gives women the possibility to move within the public sphere. Furthermore, Abu-Lughod (2002: 788) argues, the burqa is associated with local status: It is meant to be worn by respectable and educated women, and not for example female street vendors. Wearing a burqa might thus also depend on the future women see for themselves. Johnson-Hanks (2006) has called this socially constructed ‘horizons’, which I explain below.
Mahmood (2001: 219) illustrates the notion of agency that she and Abu-Lughod use with a case from her fieldwork in Egypt. One of her respondents, Iman, considers marrying a married man, to become his second wife. At first, Mahmood does not understand why Iman considers this and advices her to reject the offer. Later, another friend, Nadia, explains to Mahmood that as a single women in your late twenties, you are discriminated within your family and community. Therefore, Nadia advices Iman to marry the man, so she can live a happy life without stigmatisation. The act to marry might seem docile at first, but is a way within the structure to live a happy life (Mahmood 2001: 224).
Abu-Lughod adds that saying about women that they do not have agency would be a violation of their own understanding of their lives. Their desires and decisions might be more meaningful for them than outsiders can see and understand (Abu Lughod 2002: 787-788). Agency, from Mahmood and Abu-Lughod’s point of view, should be understood within the structure – the social and cultural norms and dominant discourse – without the assumption that individual autonomy is a precondition to agency (Mahmood 2001: 203). Mahmood and Abu-Lughod thus have conceptualised agency from a Foucauldian, poststructuralist perspective (Vintges 2012; Foucault 1990 [1976]): to understand agency within a particular cultural context, we should look at different ways in which people live their moral codes.
I interpret my respondent’s accounts in this way: I explore how they deal with the dominant discourse in different ways – as I show using two cases in chapter 4 – and argue how agency can take on different forms. Ortner’s (2006) notion of ‘agency of projects’ allows for such an interpretation. Ortner (2006: 129) agrees with Abu-Lughod (2002) and Mahood (2005) that social agents are always embedded in – and can never act outside of – social relations and power relations: the structure. The culturally established ‘projects’ that individuals try to fulfil define personal desires or goals and the ‘serious game’ that one is playing. The ‘projects’ or ‘games’ give meaning and purpose to their lives. The things that they try to accomplish are culturally constructed and therefore valued within an
existing framework of categories (2006: 144). The projects are thus not ‘free’, but subjective and situated in the structure. Often, Ortner (2006: 145) adds, on the margins of power relations. By analysing one’s personal ‘project’, one can also reveal the ideological underpinning of these projects and therefore understand the larger structures in society.
The ‘agency of projects’ appears in many forms: It can be intentional, although intention is not always equal to the outcome and not always conscious. Agency can be resistance too, but also
subordination (Ortner 2006: 130). Cense (2019) emphasizes that although agents are not docile, but acting out certain projects, agents can still suffer.
Ortner further argues that agency in the form of projects reproduce the existing structures, unless there is a ‘game-changer’ (2006: 145). Literacy, for example, is a ‘game-changer’ in Ahearn’s (2001) ethnography. She shows how being able to read and write in Nepal changed marriage and love behaviour through the writing of love letters. This new medium ‘changed the game’: it changed the projects and therefore changed existing structures (Ahearn 2001; Ortner 2006).
In my research, I use the notion of ‘agency of projects’ to understand the different ways in which people act in relation to the existing structure. However, as I will show, although the ‘projects’ illuminate the game one is playing and one’s ideological underpinnings (Ortner 2006), this does not completely elucidate why social agents differ. This difference might have something to do with how people envision their future lives, or, as Johnson-Hanks (2006: 23) calls it: how they see their
horizons. Via the concept of ‘vital conjunctures’ she explains the ‘horizons’: the borders of possibility and the futures that social actors and informants envision, hope for and fear.
‘Vital conjunctures’ are the ‘socially structured zones of possibility that emerge around specific periods of potential transformation in life (Johnson-Hanks 2006: 22)’. Van der Sijpt (2010: 1779) depicts that ‘vital conjunctures’ are specific, crucial moments of possible transformation and uncertainty at which a decision is made. Van der Sijpt (2010) applies ‘vital conjunctures’ to reproductive trajectories and emphasizes that so-called ‘decisions’ are not ‘chosen’ but highly
complex ‘vital turning points’, situated in life histories and communities. These decisions are not free, autonomous and rational, but socially embedded and located. These decisions are thus influenced by social relations, which are situated in specific socio-economic environments.
According to Johnson-Hanks (2006: 22) imagined futures influence behaviour. Or, as Van der Sijpt (2010: 1775) states: ‘Which steps are finally taken at a juncture depends on many specific conditions and surrounding social networks and is situated within the structures, constraints and possibilities that people encounter.’ An action is taken because it is related to a particular, temporary manifestation of social structure, that influence the envisioned horizons. In this period, the individual – the agent – suddenly sees its future and this determines the pathway that is taken (Johnshon-Hanks 2006: 23). The concept ‘vital conjunctures’ can illuminate and analyse the ‘vital turning point’ of marriage among young people in Lombok from lower socio-economic classes.
Social navigation
Van der Sijpt explains social navigation as ‘the constant interplay between a person's actions and complex social forces, both of which are in continuous motion (2014: 279)’. This concept can help to understand how young people in Lombok act out their ever-changing agency within the ever-changing structures. Social navigation is ‘evaluating the movement of the social environment, the possibilities for moving through it and its effects on the planned and actual movement (Vigh 2006: 13)’.
Van der Sijpt (2014: 278) applies navigation to understand the ways in which people give direction to their reproductive trajectories. She states that international attention to sex and reproduction is ‘a universalist, western celebration of individual rights, autonomous action and rational choice’, in which the idea dominates that individuals should be ‘free to act’. This leads to a misrepresentation of ‘dynamics on the ground, because individual decisions are not the result of a rational calculation and do not exist in a social vacuum (ibid.).’
Van der Sijpt (2014) has the same vision on agency as Mahmood (2005; 2001), Abu-Lughod (2002), Ortner (2006) and Johnson-Hanks (2006). To be able to analyse agency, the changing structure and social embeddedness of the respondents should be understood. Furthermore, decisions, human behaviour and agency are complex, fluid, multiple, creative and changing. Mahmood (2005) and Abu-Lughod’s (2002) poststructuralist perspective on agency allows for these complexities to be analysed, even as Ortner’s (2006) ‘projects’ and Johnson-Hanks (2006) ‘vital conjunctures’. The concept navigation brings these conceptualisations of agency together and allows me to move away from a universalist approach and to situate and analyse the agency and decisions of young people in Lombok at crucial points in their life within the changing context (Van der Sijpt 2014).
Love and marriage
‘Does romantic love exist elsewhere? If so, what forms does it take and how can it be understood?’ - Lindholm (2006: 4)
‘Love is a neglected topic in anthropology’, state Van der Geest and Vandamme (2008: 5), ‘love always resisted scientific definition and research.’ In the anthropological discipline, two famous researches regarding love exist. Malinowski researched ‘The sexual life of savages’ in 1929, in which he noted differences and similarities between love among the Trobrianders and Europeans. In 1949, Mead researched love at Samoa and compared it to love among the American youth. She found significant differences in the perspectives on love between the two groups. In the little literature on love, the anthropological debate questions if love is universal or a western construct.
The first position states that love does not exist and that it is a western invention that has spread over the world. Gadlin (1977) states that this idea of love emerged during industrialisation.
Love provided what the industrialized society took away: a feeling of belonging and importance. Without capitalism, there would be no love (Gadlin 1977 in Lindholm 2006: 10). This invention portrays love as blind, romantic and overwhelming (Lindholm 2006: 5). ‘This desire – love – might be nothing but a commodified illusion and an outcome of capitalism (Linton 1936: 175 in Lindholm 2006: 7)’
The second position states that love is universal. Jankowiak and Fischer (1992) argue – based on their cross-cultural study – that love is a universal feeling in every human being, but that its manifestations are affected by particular cultures and contexts.
The third position states that romantic love is neither universal, nor a western invention. Love is socially and culturally constructed by a particular culture (Lindholm 2006: 16). Beatty (2012: 224) states: ‘Whether a combination of expansiveness and physical attraction between sexual partners becomes ‘love’ depends on there being such a concept in a culture. We fall in love to a cultural script.’ Lutz (1986) further argues that words influence feelings like ‘love’. The label ‘love’ becomes the feeling ‘love’, instead of the other way around. The psychobiological state becomes the word, and this word is socially constructed. ‘Instead of seeing emotion-words as context-free labels, anthropologists emphasize that culturally specific conceptions of emotion are connected with the part emotion plays in social life. Naming and framing change the subjective experience and the state of play (Beatty 2012: 225).’
Marriage is defined (RAI 1951) as ‘the union of man and woman such that the children born from the woman are recognized as legitimate by the parents’. Historically, marriage is seen as a strong economic and political bond based on exchange. However, it is also a fragile institution, prone to divorce and problems. Several functions are ascribed to marriage: sharing of income, solidarity, division of labour and raising of children (Zonabend 2012: 446). Hirsch & Wardlow (2006: 2) notice the idea that love should be the basis for a marriage. This idea influences young people everywhere, who refuse ‘arranged marriages’ and look for ‘passionate love’. From this perspective, a marriage should be between soulmates.
Zonablend (2012: 446) emphasizes that the form of the institution – marriage – is an essential element of a particular social system. Love and marriage are not stable, but their meaning and form depend on the local context. In my research, I use these ideas to explore what love and marrying mean to young people in Lombok, how the dominant discourse defines the institution of marriage and how young people navigate in relation to this institution.
The construction of marriage, love and sex in Indonesia
In Indonesia, marriage, love and sex are historically and culturally located and constructed. ‘Arranged marriages’ were the norm in Indonesia until the mid-20th century. Nowadays, most people in Indonesia want to marry on the basis of love (Bennett 2002: 100). Bennett further argues that this change does
not mean that young people have autonomy over their love life: marriage is still seen as a business of the whole family in Indonesia.
Love, sex and (early) marriage cannot be isolated as personal experiences in Indonesia, because they are shaped by history, power relations and the cultural context (Platt et al 2018;
Boellstorff 2007: 35). This ‘bio-order’ – the nation’s control over bodies and moralities (Davies 2018: 69) – has taken place in different ways in Indonesia’s history, using discourses relating to marriage, sex and love.
Platt et al (2018: 1) describe that the ideal of the nuclear family became central to nation building and (economic) development, after Indonesia became independent in 1945. The Suharto regime5 relied on ideologies of the family and morality. This discourse – that is focussing on morality and that puts the heterosexual monogamous marriage at the centre of this morality – shaped and still shapes identities in Indonesia (Platt et al 2018: 1-5; Brenner 2011: 480).
Not only the nuclear family, but also religion has been exploited to regulate the population along moral lines.During the Reformasi era6, after 1998, Indonesian citizens gained more freedom. This meant more space for progressive voices, however, also religious voices – that were forbidden during the New Order regime – gained more popularity. Religious morality and piety became
foundational in shaping citizens and the nation (Platt et al 2018: 4). ‘Marriage, gender and sex are non-negotiable attributes of national identity’ Dwyer (2000: 27) summarizes.
In recent years, the influence of the conservative Islam became stronger, and spread moral discourses about sex, love and marriage in Indonesia. ‘Moral deviance’, such as any sexual activity outside the heterosexual marriage were condemned. The influence of the conservative Islam makes it difficult to negotiate contestations and expressions of gender, sex and morality (Wijaya Mulya 2018: 54; Platt et al 2018: 7). These Islamic moral dominant discourses shape life, love, sex and marriage (Wijaya Mulya 2018: 54). Davies (2018: 69) for example identified how female sexuality and premarital sex are constructed as ‘a dangerous moral treat’.
Agency, marrying early and Adat in Indonesia
Wijaya Mulya (2018: 53) researched the constitution of sexual subjectivities through the dominant discourse of sexual morality. He follows Foucault (1976) in how the structure categorises individuals and disciplines young people into abstinent, heterosexual moral subjects. These subjects can be ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’. He states that the dominant discourse in Indonesia society does not have any
5 Suharto seized power from Sukarno in 1966, governing Indonesia as a dictator until 1998 with his widely feared ‘New
Order regime’, trying to build and construct an Indonesian nation. This regime kept political order with the use of the military, tried to achieve economic development and oppressed and controlled the population with violence. See Vatikiotis (1998) ‘Indonesian Politics under Suharto – the rise and fall of the New Order’.
6 In The Reformasi era, or Post-Suharto era, President Habibie came into power. A stronger democracy came into place, as
well as freedom of speech. Religious groups that were not allowed before, also started to play a bigger role in the Indonesian society. See: Bruinessen (2002) ‘Genealogies of Islamic radicalism in post-Suharto Indonesia’.
effect until they are taken up by individuals, emphasizing that the Indonesian youth are not docile subjects. They have different ways in dealing with the dominant moral discourse, that divides young people in moral/immoral and ‘limits the possibilities for giving meaning to their sexual selves beyond this binary (Wijaya Mulya 2018: 58)’.
Within the historically and culturally constructed norms, Indonesians live and internalize these morality discourses. The form of their agency is culturally constructed, which can be understood as acting their own moral subjectivities within these norms and discourses (Platt et al 2018: 11; Kang 2003; Mahmood 2005, 2001; Abu-Lughod 2002).
Former research found a general acceptance of early marriage in Lombok. It was seen as a way to avoid premarital sex, as a solution to teenage pregnancy or as a way to alleviate the economic burden of the family (Hidayana et al 2016; Bennett 2014; Grijns & Horrii 2018; Platt 2012). ‘Yes I do’ (2016) research relates this to sexual and cultural norms and traditions, gender inequality, religious interpretation, poverty, and lack of SRHR information and services.
A part of the structure in Lombok consists of the traditional Adat. ‘Adat are local ethnicity-based laws and customs (Buttenheim & Nobles 2009: 277)’. An adat rule that is called kawin lari in Bahasa Indonesia and merariq kode in Bahasa Sasak, meaning ‘runaway marriage’, states that when a boy and a girl stay out until the next morning, they have to marry. Platt (2012: 76): ‘Kawin lari is a form of socially sanctioned elopement whereby a young woman is ‘stolen’ from her natal home by a man who wishes to become her husband. It remains a popular method for entering marriage in Lombok. Typically, the marriage is later formalised under Islam.’ Once the bride gets stolen from her family, there is no way back for the young bride (Platt 2012). Platt (2012), who researched kawin lari in Lombok, described this practice as ‘It has already gone too far’. The girls she interviewed feel they could not stop it anymore, or that they had to marry to make sure everyone still believed she was a gadis (virgin). Platt (2012) states that the girls in Lombok are not completely forced, but not completely free in the decision to marry either.
In Indonesia, the legal age for marrying is sixteen years old for a girl and eighteen years old for a boy. When they both reached this legal age, they can marry and formalise their marriage under the Indonesian law. However, often, young couples in Lombok do not marry under Indonesian law, but only under the Islamic law in the masjid (mosque). These marriages are thus not registered by the Indonesian government. This is called nikah siri (illegal marriage) by Indonesians and my
respondents, and still considered official within local communities (Grijns & Horii 2018; Ritter 2017). Normally, after the marriage is formalised in the mosque, there is a ceremony called njongkolan. The married couple walks around in traditional clothing through the men’s neighbourhood followed by family and friends, forming a big procession. The picture on the title page was made during a njongkolan. After njongkolan, the girl moves into the boy’s family house. Sometimes, the boy’s family is poor or absent. Then, the boy moves into the girls house. When one of the families is able to buy or build a small house for the newly married couple, this also happens sometimes.
Social Media
‘The world changed social media and social media changed the world.’ - Miller (2016: 12)
Social media is a relatively new object within anthropology. Madianou & Miller (2013) argue that most lower and middle class people worldwide seem to use it nowadays, since it is affordable to have a phone with mobile internet. Existing studies focus mainly on the relationship between social media and ‘the social’ (Miller 2016: 4). At first, social media was studied as a new phenomenon, separated from ‘the real world’. By now, anthropologists say that there is no distinction: the online is as real as the offline (ibid.), just like a telephone conversation is part of life, social media is also part of the real world. Social media has changed social life, because it enables communication and interaction. Miller (2016: 8) further argues, that it is more relevant to study the content than the platform itself, to understand how it is locally used and adjusted to the particular culture.
Anthropological research shows different understandings of social media in local contexts. A recent example is the ethnography by McDonald (2018: 77) who researched the use of social media in a rural town in China. In this local context, he found that social media is used to meet strangers online. Therefore, according to McDonald (2018: 79), social media blurs existing social boundaries.
Furthermore, using social media to meet new people offered an alternative to the ‘everybody knows each other’- dynamics. This changed existing frameworks and structures – such as marriages –
especially across strict gender boundaries. McDonald’s (2018) research shows that social media in this town changes ‘the real social life’ and with that existing structures. Miller’s (2016: 112) argument – based on ethnographic research in an English village – juxtaposes this research. He states that offline and online relationships always overlap, and according to him, online relationships are also present in offline life, and the other way around.
Costa’s (2016) ethnography on social media use in Turkey has found that social media has different effects regarding existing structures. Social media such as Facebook may share conservatism and give conservative online representations of offline life. At the same time through private channels – such as WhatsApp and Facebook – social media can have a liberalising effect on the lives of young people in the same Islamic local context: it creates possibilities for cross-gender contact and the fulfilment of romantic aspirations. Social media thus strengthens existing and dominant ideas, while it also leads to transformations in existing practices.
Different anthropologists look at (social) media from a Foucauldian perspective. They agree with Costa (2016) and state that the institution social media can be seen as ‘opening up’ the structures or as reinforcing and strengthening norms, that are part of the structure (Salzman 2012). Further, they argue that media is a tool to do politics of religious identities and create the ‘good citizens’ in a nation by for example telling moral messages or by popularizing a certain narrative (Abu-Lughod 2002: 129;
Hamilton 2002: 153; Mankekar 2002: 146). In the anthropological literature on Indonesia, I found the same debate.
Social Media in Indonesia
Harding (2008) states that media influences youngsters in Indonesia with ‘Western’ and ‘liberal’ ideas regarding love, sex and marriage. Kooij (2016) agrees, stating that social media makes young people more liberal because it can serve as a space to have relationships without parental interference. Platt et al (2018: 13), however, juxtapose this, by stating that the ‘machinery of moralisation’ – influenced by the conservative Islam – have become more pervasive in people’s lives through social media. Hartono (2018: 39) agrees and illustrates this with his research on Facebook in Semarang. There, it did not ‘liberalise’ the inhabitants of Semarang. It rather was a site to publicly express religious piety and to control, stigmatize and gossip about other’s religious behaviour. Also Slama (2017 : 94) researched social media and the Islam in Indonesia. He states that the conservative Islam – coming from other parts of the world like Saoedi-Arabia – is increasingly introduced to Indonesia, giving rise to new conservative Islamic organizations and networks. Social media is thus used for religious purposes and new possibilities on conservative religious terrains. Utomo (2008) combines the two opinions and state that young people are subject to ‘two powerful, opposing influences’ through social media at the same time in shaping their sexuality.
In my research, I want to illuminate how social media is interwoven with the structure and with agency in the fields of love, sex and marrying early. From the literature cited above and
following Costa (2016) I will explore how social media could be a ‘game-changer’ in the ‘agency of projects’ and in the existing structure (Ortner 2006). Just as literacy led to changed behaviour around love and marriage in Nepal (Ahearn 2001), social media is an institution that, according to Miller (2016), seems to be able to change the world.
Chapter 3 Research context and methods
Indonesia and Lombok
Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago, consisting of 17.504 islands stretching over 5000 kilometres. The republic inhabits almost 270 million people7 and is the 4th most populous country in the world, as well as the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world. Indonesia’s motto Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity) fits the area with more than 300 ethnic groups and 742 different languages. Lombok – the island in between the islands Bali and Sumbawa – is part of the West Nusa Tenggara province. Lombok is 4725 square kilometres and has 2,4 million inhabitants. The capital, Mataram – where I lived – lies in the North-West with 365.000 inhabitants. The biggest ethnic group is Sasak (85%).
The progressive and secular president of Indonesia is Joko Widodo. As governor of Jakarta and later as president, he became famous for helping the poorest people in the country, by for example trying to stop floods in the slums and building roads in remote areas. In April 2019 – when I was in Lombok – he won the elections for the second time. His conservative rival and son-in-law of Suharto, Prabowo Subianto, was popular among my respondents and friends in Lombok. Prabowo works together with conservative mosques and organisations and among minorities in Indonesia he is feared. A Christian colleague in PKBI said: ‘If Prabowo wins, I will have a though life.’ When Prabowo lost the elections in April 2019, he did not acknowledge this and summoned Islamic groups and citizens to start a violent protest in the capital Jakarta.
Prabowo’s popularity all-over Muslim Indonesia, reflects the current rise of the conservative Islam. Bruinessen (2011: 3) states that ‘the smiling face’ of the tolerant Islam in Indonesia started to disappear since 1998 and made place for a more conservative Islam: ‘The conservative turn’, that – according to Bruinessen (2011: 5) – had definitively taken place by the end of 2005. With the fall of Suharto in 1998, Indonesia became a democracy and more open to the international world. Citizens were free to practice their religion and to establish religious organisations. At the same time, countries like Saudi-Arabia started to influence Indonesia. Through Saudi scholars, imams, educational
institutions, mosques, translations of fundamentalist texts and funding, the conservative Islam became prevalent in daily life. As explained in chapter 2, the conservative Islam changes the dominant
discourse in Indonesia using morality regarding love, sex and marriage (Davies 2018; Platt et al 2018). This ‘conservative turn’ (Bruinessen 2011: 5) was also visible during my stay in Lombok.
Deep hanging out
From the 12th of February until the end of April, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Lombok. This was my third time in Indonesia. After high school, I went for volunteering and travelling. Three years later I lived in Jakarta as an intern. During these visits I took language classes and I practiced
speaking. Also in my bachelor Anthropology I took language courses. Just before I went to Lombok, I took a course at a language school in Yogyakarta. Thanks to the teachers there, who helped me finding words for my research and who brought articles about early marriage, social media and love in
Indonesia, my Bahasa Indonesia got a ‘boost’. Bahasa Indonesia is the national language in Indonesia, and it is widely spoken and understood. In Lombok, however, most people speak Bahasa Sasak at home. Since I visited Lombok before, I already knew some people. Building on previous visits and being able to speak the language helped me to gain access and to get to know people.
The starting point of my fieldwork was the organisation PKBI in Mataram. I lived a short ojek (motorbike-taxi) ride away. Through this organisation I got to know people, of whom many became my friends. They all helped me, introduced me to their family and friends and took me all over the island. Through PKBI I also met my best friend during my stay in Lombok. Mbak Ratna studies Public Health. For her study she did qualitative research about health problems around having premarital sex in Lombok.8 Therefore, we could sometimes ‘share’ respondents and we have spent quite some days together ‘in the field’. Besides this, we also went on camping trips with groups of friends, we had dinner and coffee in town and we went to the beach. Other friends I met were Mbak Dian, living on the outskirts of Mataram with her family, and Mbak Fatimah, living in a village in West Lombok. During this ‘deep hanging out’, I had a lot of small-talk with everyone, and it became ‘the engine of my ethnographic fieldwork (Driessen & Jansen 2013: 249)’.
On the scarce moments I was alone, I knew my ways in Mataram. I went to the coffee-shop Acibara to use WiFi and to write reports and e-mails. I got to know the youngsters working there, of whom some spoke English so they could help me with my language through more ‘small-talk’. The family running the laundry shop in the back of my Kos (student-house) were always open for a chat too. The warung (simple restaurant) in front of my Kos, sold fresh coconuts and the owner Ibu Nisa was very helpful. Wherever I went, I was having conversations. Besides Ratna and some older PKBI-colleagues, most people I got to know where from a lower socio-economic class. The majority did not speak English, they lived in simple houses in the city or in the many villages I visited, together with their big, extended families and shared their matrass on the floor with other family members. Attending university was rare among my respondents, although some continued education or
university after high school. First, I focussed on meeting married young girls. Later, I also interviewed young married boys and unmarried boys and girls.
Interviews
I conducted 28 interviews and 3 focus groups with 43 respondents (32 girls and 11 boys; 13 to 24 years old). Among these, 21 girls and 5 boys were married. During the interviews, I often did not only interview, but I had dinner with my respondents and their families and stayed overnight, which gave me more insights. I recorded the interviews with permission and the interviews lasted 30 minutes to one hour. Since I often did not merely interview my respondents, but got to know them better first, a comfortable and friendly atmosphere existed. I felt most of my respondents were very open, and not as ashamed and shy as many of them seemed at first sight. The further we got into the conversation and the better we got to know each other, the more secrets and details they shared. I think, as Green & Thorogood (2004: 62) state: ‘Interviewees are encouraged to tell personal and detailed stories if a sense of rapport is built.’ Often, informants said: ‘Thank you for listening to my story.’
Sometimes it was difficult to understand my respondents, and then I had to find someone – random or via PKBI – to translate. One time, a respondent was not confident using Bahasa Indonesia. She spoke Bahasa Sasak and one of my friends translated it into Bahasa Indonesia. I always discussed with the participant if it was okay for him or her to use a translator. However, I conducted most of the interviews alone. When me and my informant were confused, we used google translate to translate the word that caused miscommunication.
The ‘deep hanging out’, interviews and focus groups complemented each other. Focus groups were useful to see how structures and norms in Lombok play out, how participants interact, how social knowledge is produced and to ‘check’ information I got to know (Green & Thorogood 2004: 107). I collected and understood personal stories with the interviews. My daily life: ‘deep hanging out’ and ‘small-talk’ provided the deeper understanding of the local context needed to situate and understand the interviews and focus groups.
It was hard to be alone in Lombok. This is reflected in the Indonesian language: two words for ‘we’ exist: kita and kami. Kita is the original ‘we’, kami is introduced by the Dutch9. In Lombok, Kita (everybody around) is used. Kami means ‘only you and me’. This reflects life in Lombok. It is hard to be alone or say ‘we’ and mean ‘only you and me’, since kami is not common to say. I always said I preferred to be alone with the respondent. Often, I saw upset faces or curious people joining: ‘This is normal for us.’ Sometimes I went to a bedroom or backyard with a respondent, but sometimes being alone with them failed, given this social pressure. This might have influenced the information they provided, because they wanted to be socially desirable.
To analyse, I transcribed the interviews and focus groups and I typed all my handwritten observations and notes into one document. I printed it and coded this data-set by hand. Then, I selected ‘pearls’: Cases and people of whom I got to know and hanged out with a lot. I analysed their
9 The first Dutch people arrived to the islands that are now called Indonesia in 1595 and colonised the area from 1816 until
stories and used them as a base for my empirical chapters. Subsequently, I compared and complemented the ‘pearls’ with my coded observations, interviews and focus groups.
Reflexivity
‘Reflexivity is the recognition that the researcher is part of the process of producing data and their meanings (Green & Thorogood 2004: 194)’. I was the main research instrument of the research: my background, ideas and personality have affected the outcomes. The people in Lombok were not used to a female foreigner talking about sex and love. This might have affected what they did an did not want to share with me. Green & Thorogood (2004: 195) further state that how the social role of the researcher is constructed during the research shapes the study. When interacting with my respondents, their families and other people, I was constructed as the ‘free foreigner’. People said things like: ‘Oh, you are 25 and not married, but that is normal in Europe.’ Or ‘Oh, you can have sex and a boyfriend, but you are a foreigner.’ This had, as far as I know, a few effects. The people I interacted with did not feel shy to ask me anything they wanted to know about Europe or about my personal life. Also, when interacting with men, they often tried to flirt and where not shy to send me messages afterwards. I had the feeling my constructed role as free foreigner also encouraged them to share their personal stories. Friends and family told each other for example: ‘Just tell her, she is a bule (foreigner) anyway.’
Ethics
I was always honest about my research. When talking to my respondents, I intended to avoid doing them any harm (AAA Code of Ethics 1998: 2). Sometimes, I noticed the interview was causing emotional hardship (Green & Thorogood 2004: 61), one time a respondent started crying. I stopped questioning immediately, tried to calm her down and let her alone with her family. The next day I went back with medicines and snacks for the young mother and her baby. Clearly, she did not want to finish the interview. Other times, respondents said: ‘It is hard for me to talk about this’, or ‘I never talk about this’. I always said that they did not have to continue if they did not want to, but they always wanted to finish their stories. I always asked for their ‘informed consent’, before and after the interview, and asked them if I could record their voices. I am still in touch with many of my
respondents, and I asked them again if I could use their stories: I thus treated ‘informed consent’ as an ‘ongoing concern’ (Green & Thorogood 2004: 58; Sarti et al 2018). I decided to be confidential by anonymising and giving synonyms to everybody I mention, since my research is about sensitive topics. I am still in touch with friends and respondents and some choose their own synonym. I also do not mention names of specific villages or places (Green & Thorogood 2004). Furthermore, I tried to be confidential by creating a non-judgemental space based on mutual respect and sincere curiosity that was open for dialogue.
Chapter 4 Changing norms: ‘I used to have a boyfriend but now I do not want it anymore’
‘Machinery of moralisation’ as we might call them, have become all the more complex and pervasive in people’s lives via social media.’ – Platt, Davies & Bennett (2018: 12).
Fatimah – the case of an Indonesian ‘good girl’
***
Somewhere halfway through my fieldwork, I met Fatimah in a village in West-Lombok. She is a 19 year old Muslim girl, always wearing the latest Islamic fashion: The long dress covering everything from her ankles till her wrists matching her colourful headscarf and flat ballet shoes. Fatimah was born in a big family house in one of the many backstreets. She has been living the village all her life and she knows a lot of people there. We have spent quite some days together looking for respondents, whom we jokingly used to call the anak gaul, the ‘naughty kids’. Fatimah, on the contrary, describes herself as a ‘good girl’. She says: ‘There are two kinds of people, good and bad. It depends on your own choice. We choose what we want to be. Do you want to be a good girl or a bad girl? I choose good girl.’
***
Fatimah makes a clear division between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ boys and girls in Lombok. She calls herself a ‘good girl’, and the others are melenceng (lost). But what does it mean to be a ‘good girl’ in Lombok? The anak gaul have curiosity and lust, she says. ‘They already want to know the body of the girl, and the body of the boy, they want to try everything, sex, everything.’ Of course, she admits, she is also already curious. ‘All people have curiosity, but I do not want to try, I do not want action, because I know it is sangat (very) forbidden before we are married.’ Fatimah uses the word rules (aturan) to explain what is forbidden.
In this chapter, I will show and argue how the dominant discourse affects young people’s lives regarding love and marriage. I use the case studies of two girls that I met, Fatimah and Maya, to show how this dominant discourse – the structure – prescribes different social roles (Spronk 2012): how young people navigate differently within the context and existing structures (Van der Sijpt 2014).
‘We have rules’, continues Fatimah, ‘In our religion, in my book the Al Quran, we have rules, what we can do and what we cannot do.’ In Lombok, it is generally known that it is not okay to have sex before you marry. It is also not allowed to go outside as a girl and a boy alone, called jalan-jalan. This term means everything which includes being outside of the house, like hanging out, walking around, going to a warung (small restaurant), or to the beach. It is allowed to have a boy- or girlfriend, but they can only visit each other in their family houses. Agus, a 17-year old boy explains me: ‘With our girlfriends we just chat, update each other. We cannot jalan-jalan, we have never done that because it is not given to us by our parents. Nggak boleh (It is not allowed). We are allowed to have a girlfriend, and the girlfriend can come to our house. Omar, also 17 years old, helps his friend
explaining: ‘When we go outside together, our parents will be scared, it is not desired, those things are forbidden by our religion. Hugging, kissing, it is not allowed. Our parents are scared we do that outside, so we can only stay inside the house.’ As (grand)mothers and (grand)fathers told me, the main reason for forbidding girls and boys to go outside alone, is that they are scared the girl will get an unwanted pregnancy. If young people have ‘free sex’, they do risk this, because contraception for unmarried people is forbidden by the Indonesian state, as is abortion.
These norms, stating what is and what is not allowed regarding love, sex and marriage in Lombok, play out in Fatimah’s life: She wants to follow the religious, cultural and social norms, so she can be a ‘good girl’. Platt et al (2018: 3) have called this ‘the machinery of moralisation’: the morality projects that defines and disciplines gender sex. This morality project, or the dominant discourse (Wijaya Mulya 2018: 53), is lived and internalized by many young people in Lombok. ‘I almost wanted to have sex, but I have to be conscious and patient’, says Arif (17), a friend of Agus and Omar. Menjaga diri, ‘to hold yourself’, it is often called. Many of the good boys and girls I spoke with do accept that curiosity and feelings of lust are normal and part of sifat manusia (human nature). However, they feel that they should hold themselves back and refrain from following any feeling.
***
Fatimah: ‘To my naughty friends, my friends who practice free sex, I say: What do you think? Why do you do that? Are you crazy? Because in Indonesia we cannot do that’. They say: ‘I want to do this because it is just for fun. I also have a friend who is always drunk on Saturday night. He drinks a lot of alcohol, I know that. And then he calls me very late, and I say, are you crazy? He says, I am just having fun it is Saturday night. He asked do you want to company me? Now, my phone is always ringing, but I leave it.’
***
When young people are dating, it is only allowed to hold hands as a boy and a girl, and this is made clear to them by, firstly, their parents, but also by their religion – through mosques, imams, Muslim education, social media – and their wider community. This is related to the ‘sex is dangerous’ dominant discourse in Lombok. Premarital sex is referred to as ‘Seks bebas (free sex) or pergaulan bebas (promiscuity)’. This is seen as something very wrong that can have negative consequences, as my friend Ratna explained me: ‘When young people do Zina [having sex before marriage – a sin within the Islamic discourse in Lombok], they can get sick [she means sexually transmitted diseases], or pregnant. When I was in Fatimah’s family house, her mother told me Fatimah’s younger sister was looking at ‘naked people’ on her phone. Fatimah’s mother was shocked and said it is dangerous for young people to do. From a Foucauldian perspective (1990 [1976]) this dominant ‘sex is dangerous’ discourse in Lombok represses sex. This way of talking about sex makes sex into a case of morality, to control the population. This discourse divides citizens into ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’ (Adams & Pigg 2005): a ‘good girl’ like Fatimah is not having premarital sex, and therefore ‘normal and moral’. The
‘bad boys and girls’ who engage in ‘free sex’ are ‘deviant and immoral’. Davies (2018: 70) explains: ‘Morality is a mechanism to produce compliant, responsible and productive Indonesian citizens.’
Fatimah’s account illustrates – just like the boys who want ‘to hold’ themselves – how they are shaped into moral citizens not wanting to have premarital sex, because of the ‘sex is dangerous’ discourse. Also, in the way Fatimah talks about her naughty friend – ‘In Indonesia, we cannot do that’ – reflects how the Indonesian nation, its moral citizens and the discourse on sex are interrelated. Dwyer argues that Indonesia creates sexual moral citizens, in order to reproduce ‘Indonesianness’ (Dwyer 2002: 27). Being a ‘good girl’, by following the morality discourse on sexuality, makes you a ‘good Indonesian’. Davies further states that within the moral discourse, we should understand how women in Indonesia draw on this discourse to pursue their own ends and to shape their own futures (2018: 84). Via Johnson-Hanks’ (2006: 23) notion of ‘vital conjunctures’ I aim to understand these futures: what kind of futures are imagined, hoped or feared and how do they influence action?
Always having the future in mind while pursuing her ‘project’
***
Fatimah: ‘I want to be a lecturer and I must be a good example for my students. Education is the most important in life. I want to marry when I am 25 years old maybe. I must graduate first. I must reach my dream. They [the other kids] do not think about the future. Young people who marry cannot study or continue their education, because if you marry you cannot continue school. If you marry, this is not for one week, but until we die. It is our whole life!’ Me: And if you fall in love? Fatimah: ‘I have fallen in love before, and I have a statement with my friends: we will not have a relationship, but if I find a jodoh (soulmate), he has to wait, until I have reached my dream. Then we can marry. I will wait till I graduate. Until I reach my dream, you can wait! If you do not want to wait you can find someone else! All good girls think like that. Important in our life is education, career and our religion of course, it is so important. Our religion Islam says that, if it is already a cocok (match, fit), suka sama suka (‘like’ with ‘like’), you can marry, also very young people. But I know, if I marry young, my dream will not come true. Maybe the girls who marry young do not have big dreams.’
***
From these quotes becomes clear that Fatimah is concerned with her future. And she knows, that if she falls in love, if she marries, or if she ‘does the things that are not allowed’, that she will not fulfil her dreams. For me, at first, it seemed like Fatimah was docilely following and reproducing the existing norms and the dominant structure in Lombok and in the village where she lives. However – inspired by Mahmood’s (2005; 2001) and Abu-Lughod’s (2002) perspectives on agency – I figured that Fatimah’s way of living and her opinions might seem docile and subordinate, but that I can understand her from within the discourse and structure she is living in. As Ortner (2006) suggests, she is pursuing her own project, within the social relations and context she is embedded in. She is pursuing her goals: continuing her education, graduating, becoming a lecturer and a good mother. Fatimah very well knows that, if you marry in Indonesia, you cannot continue high school, although it is allowed by the Islam to marry young. The way Fatimah sees her future and ‘horizon’ (Johnson-Hanks 2006)
influences her ‘project’ (Ortner 2006). Fatimah emphasized that she lives a sederhana (simple) life. She is living with her grandparents in a spare room in their small house, because there is not enough space for Fatimah in her family house, and ‘otherwise they will be too lonely’. Fatimah is a caring and responsible girl, she is always making sure everybody (also me) is happy. As the eldest daughter, she is taking care of her younger siblings. Her father died when she was two years old, and when she was six years old her mother married a new man, working in the Indonesian army as a soldier. ‘He is a very good man’, says Fatimah, ‘and he wants to pay for my education.’ This is thus influencing her opportunities to be a ‘good girl’. Her horizon is not autonomous and rational, but socially embedded and located (Van der Sijpt 2010). Fatimah brings up another reason that influences her ‘horizon’ and ‘project’: ‘I am open and honest with my family. Every night we come together and talk about our lives and our day. This is very important for us.’ Indeed, whenever I visited Fatimah at her
grandparents or in her family house, I could feel the open, warm and welcome way in which they interacted. Also Suni describes herself as a ‘good girl’:
***
I had dinner with Ratna in the last week of my fieldwork at our favourite place, when Ratna (who can be direct) said: ‘I am going to call my friend Suni if she wants to join us. She is a ‘very good girl’ so it is interesting for you to talk to her.’ ‘Yes’, starts Suni, ‘I want to make my parents happy.’ Me: But why are you friends with Ratna, who is a little bit naughty? [Ratna told me she secretly did Zina] ‘I can be friends with anyone, but I cannot join them. But I care about Ratna, and sometimes I also warn and reprimand her: be careful! I always think about my god Allah and about my parents. I do not want to make them shy with my behaviour.’
***
Just like Fatimah, Suni is aware of the advantages of being a ‘good girl’ and following the dominant discourse in Lombok. Suni wants to make her parents happy, she has graduated and is now a primary school teacher.
There are different ways to deal with the dominant discourse (Wiljaya Mulya 2018: 58). Why do Fatimah and Suni do it this way? They are both ‘good girls’, within the existing framework of categories in Lombok (Ortner 2006). They follow the discourse, so they can reach their dreams, future plans and continue their education. They pursue their own projects, situated within the existing power structures. The project of the ‘good girls’ is becoming ‘successful’: completing their education and making their parents happy (Ortner 2006). That is how they see their horizon (Johnson-Hanks 2006), and why they ‘hold themselves’. The way they imagine their future, within the existing possibilities and categories (‘good girl’ and ‘bad girl’) shapes what they do right now.
Fatimah and Suni are – by navigating in this way in the context and pursuing their projects – not only reproducing the existing structures (Ortner 2006), but also living them in a stricter way. For example, although it is allowed to have a boyfriend in Lombok, Fatimah and Suni do not want this. They do not even want to look at boys. They have internalised the norms – the dominant discourse –
