Freedom and Democracy: Sundanese as Cultural Capital
Freedom and Democracy: Sundanese as Cultural Capital
escrito por Dini Harmita
Abstract
This paper is written for revisiting my bachelor thesis I wrote in 2005 about Sundanese women in poverty. The thesis itself was called a doctoral thesis during a VIVA by at least one of the examiners. I wrote in its conclusion that in order to conquer the universe we don’t need to accumulate capitals as suggested by Bourdieu in his Forms of Capitals. I mentioned that it’s implied also to other cultural capitals, not only Sundanese. I didn’t explain why but my theoretical and research result framework indicates it. Because a human being no matter in which culture we are born we are the results of interactions between systems. In freedom and democracy where stability is essential the interactions become important even more.
Key words: Freedom, Democracy, Sundanese, Cultural Capital, Poverty
The interactions I explained in the abstract tend to be unseen because it’s between things as superstructures as systems and capitals. Thus to argue and explain Bourdieu we need other theories that discuss micro and meso levels. This paper is aimed at elaborating and summarising it.
Sundanese is one of the main tribes in one of the main islands in Indonesia. They are native in West Java but they are also migrants everywhere; though according to my respondents their women are too proud to be migrant workers but it’s a tendency. At least one of my aunties became a migrant worker around 35 years ago and another one around 5 years ago. They are from Bandung the capital of West Java and their destination was Saudi Arabia.
What differs Sundanese from other tribes in Indonesia is represented in their decision to choose not surrender upon Majapahit occupation centuries ago. The Majapahit kingdom needed to lie and create a war eventually to make the Sundanese kingdom part of their ‘United Kingdom of Indonesia’ at that time. The Majapahit kingdom comprises Javanese. It has a similar case with the dominant Catalonian in Spain and Tories in England indeed. It resembles most of the Sundanese until now because we don’t like conflicts.
Jenkins (1997) mentioned several propositions concerning ethnicity including ethnicity is defined as cultural differentiation, it’s related with rooted culture and is a result of social interactions, it has produced and reproduced components or situations , and it has collective actions. For Javanese Yogyakarta and Solo are their cultural centers but Sundanese doesn’t have any particular centers. For example, Cianjur District is the center for Sundanese songs, Bandung District is the center for Sundanese language, but none of certain places have accumulated cultures of Sundanese.
Bourdieu (1986) mentioned that cultural capital is institutionalised in the forms of education. Since he didn’t classify it I used the most comprehensive classification by Saini (2004) comprising formal, informal, and non-formal education. Formal education is represented by legal nursery-kindergarten-primary-high school-university education. Informal education is institutionalised in the forms of courses. Non-formal education is gained through families and neighborhoods.
Holil (2020) mentioned one of the practices of Sundanese as cultural capital in the form of environmental sustainability. Like Balinese with their God of Sea whom they worship during their work as seaweed farmers for example, Sundanese have the Goddess of Rice called Dewi or Devi Sri. Superstitious or not, it’s widely accepted even among the Sundanese themselves. None of them argue like Islamic groups in political parties. Such interactions resulted in other systems and capitals. Thus we don’t need to accumulate the capitals to conquer the universe. What we need to do is to understand our universe.
One of the important values in Sundanese as cultural capital is to care about each other called as silih asih, to share knowledge called as silih asah, and to take care of each other called as silih asuh. My bachelor thesis also mentioned that eventually technology as part of neoliberalism will ruin that and it is confirmed by Yulia, Suryani, and Wahyuningsih (2023). Neoliberalism changes the meaning of exchanges toward all of us. Now everything tends to need to be changed with money, sex, gold, or Bitcoin as currency.
My bachelor thesis also focused on Sundanese women as farmers with less than a hectare land. In the agrarian reform concept it’s called a peasant. Pine (1994) mentioned even in Poland where the agrarian reform was started the women peasants were parts of privatisation. Cabana Iglesia, Freire Paz, and López Fernández (2023) stated that Franco’s dictatorship has changed the role of Galician women as peasants into housewives.
Through my bachelor thesis I didn’t say that Sundanese peasants are poor. In fact it’s quite the contrary, I argued that the women survive poverty only by using their social capital because when they focus on their social capital they earn their other capitals including economic, cultural, and symbolic. Once again I will write this, they don’t need to accumulate all capitals because they already understand their universe.
For them it’s as simple as a kitchen. Like Japanese ladies of old time, they exchange their knowledge and acquisition as an essential part of social capital in the kitchen. I used collective cases including natural-based tourism and cultural-based tourism villages in national parks to explain it and at least both confirmed the hypothesis. The cultural-based tourism village somehow has a much larger kitchen because it’s the center for not only the families but also the villagers.
For Sundanese women at least in my bachelor thesis universe the kitchen is also their symbolic capital to make guests wait. That symbolic capital has made them able to start and maintain their relationships including kinships, whether they’re peasants or not. Few of my respondents and informants were also kiosk owners, not only farmers.
The interactions between cultural and social capital happened through the formation process of sejiwa serasa or one soul one feeling behaviour. In this context, the Sundanese women peasants form the behaviour in their kitchen using their traditional rice pounder called saung lisung. Sometimes they fall asleep in the kitchen. Nuryanto, Sri Rahaju, and Widiastuti (2020) confirmed that the function of the kitchen and saung lisung is still the same.
The interaction between social capital and economic capital exists in the access provision and ease. In the context of Sundanese women peasants it’s represented in the forms of their access toward their harvest results, not in the forms of credit nor technology. The women seem to be too busy to even have and touch any gadgets, even now and then.
The interaction between economic capital and social capital, symbolic capital and cultural capital is taking forms of the process in strengthening the relationship and kinship facilitated by a role model. In my bachelor thesis context, the women were facilitated by men from meso levels e. g. groups and communities.
The interaction between cultural capital and economic capital occurs through the time needed to gain income. This is applied for both men and women peasants. The farmers who have or manage less than a half hectare land in Indonesia require longer time to gain income than those with other occupations, especially if they work individually.
Sundanese language is mainly understood by the Sundanese women peasants as social practices. Only parents are able to upgrade it into cultural capital through their behavioural routinisation. Indrayani (2011) called Sundanese language as the surviving language following English language as the second language after Bahasa in Indonesia.
Politically, after the Sundanese kingdom fell into Majapahit kingdom no significant changes happened. The tricks done by politics through corruption, collusion, cartelisation, and nepotism have made even Paguyuban Pasundan fail in building better political parties in Indonesia (Ekadjati, 2003). Sounds like at least the Catalonian Case in Spanish politics indeed.
Our brain is so used to analyse freedom and democracy as part of politics by seeing the leaders. We tend to forget about the followers and voters. Sundanese women peasants are surely loyal to their leaders, at least their spouses. Nonetheless, something that we tend to forget even more, the spouses tend to decide based on their wives’ opinions.
Wessing (1974) levels up the Sundanese language even much higher as cultural capital. He analysed it semantically and in lexical ways. It makes at least the readers of Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland understand that the language has politeness levels. It makes us Sundanese women able to have a fierce look and still deliver soft language at the same time.
In representative democracy somehow it becomes a boomerang because less polite Sundanese want to lead impolite people. In deliberative democracy it is even proven that after Sunda Kingdom fell the Sundanese reign two times was also trapped by [first] a king who only liked intercourse-leisure and [second] a king who only liked to make his palace beautiful; despite many other humble officials especially now.
Participatory democracy is something else for Sundanese women peasants because it’s in the togetherness they survive their lives. When they have no chilies they could go to the neighbours and exchange their cabbages.
With capitalism, liberalism, globalisation, westernisation, dependency, and neoliberalism around the corner such exchange started to become extinct like endemic fishes. The kitchen sounds more individualistic because they are too busy fighting to be as beautiful as Secretary Kim in What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim.
Conclusion
Harmita (2022) mentioned the importance of behavioural routinisation as an essential part in party institutionalisation and party system institutionalisation. It is actually a reflection of her study including from the bachelor thesis. As also mentioned by Casal Bértoa (2016) in relating the party institutionalisation and democracy. When Bourdieu (1986) used ‘institutionalised’ to define the capitals it actually meant behavioural routinisation.
