Dissertation Research: Translocal Indentity In Indonesia

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This project involves the dissertation research of an anthropology student from Stanford University studying individuals and organizations in Indonesia who are defined as having minority social status. Indonesia is attempting to develop a national, capitalist, middle-class identity, while at the same time the individuals to be studied are influenced by a global movement concerned with issues of civil rights and disease. The western model of behavior stresses individual choice and responsibility, while the traditional Indonesian model stresses group values derived from families or religious communities. The project will assess how individuals of minority sexual orientation combine their local experiences with global concepts and issues in light of Indonesia's emerging national movement for legitimization and acceptance. The student will study in three cities, using ethnographic techniques and intensive interviews as well as observations. The sites will be a large, central Muslim industrial city with strong national and global connections, a Hindu city in a tourism and migration center, and a provincial city distant from the centers. Through volunteer work as a HIV educator in local HIV/AIDS centers in each place the student will study the history, structure and activities of minority sexual activist groups as well as their understanding of the disease. Focus groups of activist as well as non-activist persons will be conducted in each site to probe local conceptions of identity, civil society and disease. The Indonesian minority sexual behavior movement is emerging at the same time that a new national culture and middle-class identity are developing, in the context of global media forces and international aid activities. This project will show how Indonesians use these political and economic categories together with more traditionally cultural categories like gender, kinship and the family, to interpret their own identities and the notion of community. This study will advance our understanding of how marginal groups relate to dominant cultural categories emanating from both their traditional society and from international sources.