Act locally on social decay

Act locally on social decay

By Ignas Kleden

This is the second of two articles examining the issue of
poverty following the recent United Nations social summit in
Copenhagen.

JAKARTA (JP): If we may have recourse to the coverage in the
Jakarta newspapers, the question of social disintegration turned
out to become the least debated point during the meeting, or if
that is not the case, it was the least reported issue in the
newspapers. However, regardless of what was really happening
during the UN summit it is useful for us to make up our minds not
only to entertain the idea of social disintegration, but to look
into the issue and its relation to the other two.

Poverty, as described earlier, is a social issue which should
and can only be tackled at both international and national or
local levels, for the simple reason that poverty is not only a
direct result of what is happening in world economy but also
something which derives from what is going on within the economic
policy of a country.

Unemployment, in turn, becomes now an international issue
which can be solved as a common problem in both the south and
north. In this connection social disintegration has a rather
peculiar character, in that it becomes a problem which can be
adequately solved only within a country, though some of its
causes might come from outside. It tends to be a domestic problem
because it has to do with cultural values in terms of which
concrete social interaction and social integration take place.

Let me take a very obvious example in Jakarta. Needless to say
that the difference between social strata is a sociological
commonplace, which can be observed all over the world. What is
quite peculiar of the phenomenon in Jakarta is that it is so
emphasized and even publicly emphasized. Why on earth is it, that
in some parking places only private saloon cars are allowed to
come in, whereas jeeps are denied permission? If there happens to
be hurt feelings, which can lead to social disintegration, the
measures to overcome it cannot be taken over by another country
in which such strata differential is taken for granted and is not
so much emphasized.

To take another positive example, the success of Indonesia to
reduce its birth rate and enhance family planning, without
engendering many social conflicts, cannot be simply taken over by
another country whose cultural attitude towards sexual life and
privacy is different than that in ours.

To put it in a negative way, social disintegration is the
absence of social integration, in which the congruence of social
system and its cultural superstructure is lacking. The
incongruity, which might arise between both systems, will result
in a situation where the actual and concrete social action and
social interaction do not correspond to the existing cultural
values, which become the fabric of meaning in terms of which that
interaction is supposed to take place.

This means, if a big change is taking place at the level of
social institutions, the participants of a culture should be able
to adjust or to recast their cultural values in order to be able
to come to terms with the changing social realities. Otherwise
there will be a conflict or a discrepancy between the systems of
values and beliefs on the one hand and social action and
interaction on the other. If we look back to what has taken place
during the first 25 year-period of Indonesian development, there
are at least three big changes, whose effects can never be
exaggerated, and whose results will continue to impinge upon our
society.

First, there is a very obvious change at the material level,
due to rapid economic growth. Increasing monetization, the
relatively unlimited exposure to consumer goods, the set up of
entirely new infrastructure and the rising purchasing power,
which is not always accompanied by more intelligent economic
imagination, are some of those changes originating in the
changing material base of our society.

Second, there is also an equally obvious change at the social
base of our society due to increasing population, which is faced
with the problem of limited living space, limited resources as
well as limited living opportunities. In that regard we can
notice how the problem of housing becomes more urgent and
pressing from day to day. The same can be said of education and
employment, which are not always in a position to meet the rising
demand of more people.

Besides that, we cannot do away with the problem of
distribution or redistribution of income and assets, because
human dignity is a principle explicitly mentioned and recognized
in our state's philosophy and every citizen can legally claim his
or her right to have, and to lead, a properly human life
correspondingly.

Third, we can assume that there must be a deep-going change
taking place at the mental level of our society, due to the rapid
inflow of information made available by global communication.
This is still aggravated by the fact that the inflow of
information is not always within the span of national control.

The accessibility to global information is no more a matter of
technology, which is there, but simply a matter of money. Besides
that, the medium which brings in all the information does not
necessitate the formation of a reading habit but enhances a
listening culture, for radio, and a watching culture, for
television and the like.

There is a radical change in the formation of the learning
process; a wealth of information in only a few seconds and
minutes, without much time to work it out mentally and
intellectually. No wonder learning with books, which used to take
a lot of time, is overstepped by learning with radio or
television, which provides only a very short time span. In many
cases too short for the normal process of learning.

If there is a sort of process leading to a situation where
people are inclined to become intellectually lazy, it is not
because they do not want to learn, but rather because they cannot
afford to make it within such a short time provided by
communication technology.

Another thing is that the willingness to absorb information
about a life style is greater than the effort to obtain
information relating to work or thinking. Information about
consumption and even a consumptive life, is more quickly
accepted, simply because it does not need a long learning
process. Whereas information which is needed for productive
purposes presupposes a longer process of learning, which renders
many people disinclined, or even reluctant, to have it.

Professor Sartono Kartodirdjo, from the Gadjah Mada University
in Yogyakarta, once described this situation with a very apt
example. What is the difference between an Indonesia and a
Japanese student, who both have a motorcycle? According to him,
the first uses his motorcycle in his leisure time, to see his
friends or to go around the town. The latter uses his leisure
time to take apart the engine and re-assemble it in order to
learn about the mechanical system and the assembling process.
Needless to say the Japanese student undergoes a real learning
process whereas his Indonesian colleague does not.

To come back to the UN summit, we are confronted with the
sociological paradox as far as world problems are concerned. On
one level, there is a quite close relationship between internal
and external factors. Poverty, or underdevelopment if you will,
is a good case in point. Though many of the important causes can
be attributed to outside development in the world market, the
action program to reduce poverty cannot be delegated to an
international conference.

It should be tackled from within, for the simple reason that
those who are faced with the problem are most knowledgeable about
the conditions under which they are suffering and what should be
done in order to have the conditions improved.

Sociological theories, which try to underscore either external
factors only, such as the dependencia theory, or internal factors
only, such as the modernization theory, turned out to be
inadequate in their explanatory power.

On another level, global development can only have its
concrete significance if it is understood in terms of national
and local contexts. While the local problem can only be
adequately solved if it is treated as a local phenomenon of
international development.

Theoretically speaking, the world-system theory and thick-
description ethnography are nothing but two sides of the same
coin. Or, in the parlance of social activists, think globally and
act locally!

The writer is a Master of Arts in Philosophy from Hochschule
Fur Philosophie, Munich (1982) and Doctor of Sociology from
Bielefeld University, Germany (1995), now working with the
Jakarta-based SPES Foundation research center.