Reinventing Indonesian society

Reinventing Indonesian society

By Meuthia Ganie Rochman and Rochman Achwan

NIJMEGEN, the Netherlands (JP): The market economy's
undisputable lead over socialism and the rise of giant economies
in the Pacific have led social scientists to search for the
causes of the successes and failures of other countries'
economies.

They are faced with moving and inspiring issues: Can the
success story of industrialization in the West be repeated in
developing countries and East European societies? Should those
societies simultaneously undertake a double transition, namely
democratization and the introduction of a market economy? Is it
possible to argue that authoritarian regimes can exist together
with market economies in heading toward prosperity, a notion that
social scientists humorously refer to as "sleeping with the
enemy"?

Francis Fukuyama, a renowned sociologist, recently published
his new book titled Trust: the Social Virtues and the Creation of
Prosperity (1995).

Unlike neoclassical economists, who emphasize the importance
of economic rationality as a conditionality in reaching
prosperity, and in contrast to Samuel Huntington, who predicted
the "clash of civilizations", Fukuyama believes in the role of
culture in bringing about prosperity.

Differences that cultures within a nation encounter,
considering they have been equipped with a high level of social
trust among their members, will lead to the age of prosperity.
Therefore, preservation and accumulation of associations in which
social trust is the most important ingredient will be "the battle
cry" of every society and nation in the future.

Although his new book attempts to explain the importance of
cultural factors, Fukuyama is not an anti-neoclassical economist.
Instead, he argues that the neoclassical economic approach
undoubtedly contained 80 percent empirical truth in explaining
the essence of money and the market.

What he disagrees with is the approach assumes that economic
actors always act rationally in decision making. According to
Fukuyama, individual economic actions often rely on what he calls
"ethical habits" or "habits of the heart" which historically
exist in the society. Relations among individual economic actors
therefore are established by a combination of rational
calculation and morality.

Fukuyama's formulation of the importance of the issue of
associations in economic life is reminiscent of the great French
sociologist Emile Durkheim: Human beings need secondary
associations to organize a better social life. The state is often
abstract, distant and bureaucratic in facilitating society to
take collective action.

In an attempt to examine the functioning of associations in
the society, Fukuyama establishes several conceptual devices:
social trust, spontaneous sociability and social capital. By
social trust, he means that socioeconomic relations among
individual actors should rely on cooperation and trustworthiness.
Social trust can be directed and disseminated to members of
families, groups, professions and nations. Social capital emerges
out of social trust, and its levels depend on how communities
socialize shared values and norms which can be directed to form
mutual cooperation. Spontaneous sociability is considered to
evolve out of social capital in the form of new associations
whose members are able to simplify the complexity of economic
relations.

A world society can be divided into two types: societies with
the lowest and highest levels of trust. Societies with the lowest
level of trust are characterized by a limit of socioeconomic
relations to the family, while the other is marked by the growth
of associations which exist beyond family boundaries.

Societies in mainland China and Hong Kong represent the
societies with the lowest trust level, characterized by the
existence of limited generalized norms which make it difficult
for their members to form associations beyond the family sphere.
The cultural background of these societies is manifested in their
industrial structure, which is dominated by small and medium
industries. Conversely, Japanese and German societies are capable
of forming associations, as they are manifested in the existence
of large-scale industries successfully directing the world
market.

The low level of social trust, and therefore the limited
coverage of associations in the society, does not necessarily
lead to the domination of small and medium industries. The role
of the state, through a set of economic policies, enables it to
facilitate the shifting of these industries into large-scale
industries.

The involvement of the state, however, can bring dangerous
risks if it does not care about the substance of authority
relations within associations, which historically emerge and grow
in the society. The success story of South Korea is a case in
point. Under the late president Park Chung Hee, the state played
a vital role in economic life by behaving as head of household or
as patriarch, controlling financial institutions and providing
credits and large-scale economic projects to reputable
businessmen. Those businessmen -- bureaucrats and political
leaders who were involved in corruption or bribery -- were taken
to court and punished according to the laws which relied on the
moral justice of society.

The societies with high levels of trust do not always
necessarily become leaders of the world economy. As important
hurdles within and among associations need to be overcome in
order to achieve prosperity, associations could rupture and
finally tear apart the basic foundation of social trust within
the society.

America's society belongs to this category. America actually
is a society which historically possesses extraordinary richness
in developing associations.

At present, however, American society is losing the soul of
mutual cooperation and therefore is having difficulties
developing mutual trustworthiness among its members. The wave of
excessive individualism and liberalism has not only undermined
values of cooperation, but is also beginning to affect family
values.

All forms of American associations which previously inspired
prosperity have broken down, giving way to the birth of social
unrest. It is not surprising if one witnesses how American
leaders have attempted to cure dangerous social diseases by
salvaging and reinventing the defective associations.

Issues relating to the importance of family values -- which
have became the political platform of the Republican party during
the election campaign -- the emergence of the Christian Coalition
as an influential political lobby and the emergence of the Nation
of Islam, should all be understood as attempts to reinvent
associations capable of confronting the present uncertainty of
the world economy.

In his book, Fukuyama analyzes how seven countries with their
unique cultural backgrounds successfully piloted the "airways of
industrialization" to reach the final "airport of prosperity".
Those countries are Taiwan, Italy, France, South Korea, Japan,
Germany and the United States. Different local "cultural runways"
can be landed on smoothly by the "airplane" of modern
industrialization. Conversely, the "airplanes" can take off from
those "runways", heading toward the final destination:
prosperity. The local "runways" take different forms, ranging
from communitarianism (Japan and Germany), familism (Taiwan),
patrimonialism (South Korea) to benign individualism.

The book successfully reveals a new "battle cry" that has to
be subdued by any society and nation. This is a sort of battle
that requires members of societies and their leaders to construct
new associations, inspired and cherished by the "habit of the
hearts" as the soul of societal life, and directed to achieve
rational economic goals. The emergence of the construction of
associations is believed to reduce highly socioeconomic and
political transaction costs or the high-cost economy.

Economic growth and social order based on genuine associations
-- not political stability -- are believed to foster the birth of
prosperity. Concepts of political stability always favor the
powerful and elite groups in defining what is morally good and
evil. The "habit of the hearts" or ethical habits therefore are
often missing from the conception of political stability.

Take Indonesia as an example. Nono Anwar Makarim, one of
Indonesia's brightest intellectuals, lamented that in the midst
of achieving a certain level of prosperity which had never been
achieved throughout Indonesian economic history, he consciously
felt that he no longer had a hero -- even a single leader -- who
was competent to direct his future life (Kompas, June 23, 1996).

Indonesia does not have any visionary leader who is capable of
shedding new light on the process in the present age of
unexampled change. Political morality, economic morality and
intellectual morality are rare commodities and, sadly enough,
they are steadily approaching the brink of breakdown. The
achievement of a certain level of prosperity tends to be eclipsed
by societal demoralization. The "habit of the hearts" which
embryonically evolved out of Indonesian society in the early
period of post independence has already been torn apart.

Present Indonesian society, Makarim said, is trapped by the
dangerous disease of moral amnesia. It is therefore high time for
Indonesian social scientists to seriously and consciously define
our societal problems.

By defining them, social scientists give meaning and direction
to our society. By giving direction, they will become part of the
national leadership, together with political and business
leaders, to give vision to which destinations our society
pursues.

Reinventing Indonesian society should be put as the only grand
theme shouldered by Indonesian social scientists. It is, however,
very sad if Indonesian social scientists fail to address these
very difficult social problems. Should this happen, Indonesian
social science will be lame, tepid and stupid.

Finally, Indonesians will still have to continue to live in
the bleak house of personal uneasiness and moral disintegration
in the years to come.

Meuthia Ganie Rochman is writing a doctoral dissertation in
political sociology at the University of Nijmegen, the
Netherlands.

Rochman Achwan, a lecturer at the Department of Sociology, the
University of Indonesia, is completing a doctoral degree in
economic sociology at the University of Bielefeld, Germany.

Window: Indonesia does not have any visionary leader who is
capable of shedding new light on the process in the present age
of unexampled change.