The genius of civil society in cultural reform

The genius of civil society in cultural reform

The most popular slogan heard on the streets during the last
few weeks of Soeharto's regime was "Reformasi!" (Reform!). It was
the magic word that united people from all walks of life all over
Indonesia and eventually forced Soeharto to quit his presidency.

It has been more than three years now, with three consecutive
presidents, and that magic word seems to be running out of steam.
In reality, Soeharto's downfall has brought about many changes,
politically, socially, and economically. However, nagging
questions remain: do those changes reflect crucial reforms toward
a more humane, civil society in Indonesia? Does culture, or the
lack of it, have something to do with the elusiveness of real
reforms?

The Jakarta Post's panel of experts seems to agree that
cultural reform, at least, is lagging.

The 1998 political reform movement was a watershed in the
development of various aspects of Indonesian life, particularly
that of cultural development. The end of the New Order saw the
collapse of cultural regimentation. At the same time, it became a
new beginning for cultural liberation.

Consequently, the nature of cultural problems is now
undergoing significant changes. Indonesia is no longer faced with
the dilemma of cultural restrictions characterized by state
control from above and cultural inhibitions from below. Rather,
the nation has to deal with cultural liberation, meaning that
freedom is now no longer just an opportunity to be exploited but
also a new challenge to be overcome. Cultural resistance is
replaced by the demand for cultural initiative and creativity.

There were many cultural achievements during the New Order,
which resulted precisely from cultural resistance. The protest
poems and theater performances of Rendra, the short stories of
Putu Widjaja and Seno Gumira Ajidarma are just some examples of
the cultural resistance carried out during the New Order.

The most successful resistance was of course that mounted by
Pramoedya Ananta Toer, who succeeded in making use of his 14
years of exile on the island of Buru to write no less than six
great novels, one book on the genealogy of the Indonesian press,
one on the origins of modern Indonesian literature and two
volumes of a diary, all of which have appeared in the Indonesian
language and most of which have been translated into various
foreign languages.

This means that cultural creativity and cultural freedom can
never be identical. History shows that cultural creativity can
flourish during times of repression, while periods of unlimited
freedom can produce a total lack of cultural activity.

One has to differentiate between cultural freedom as a sort of
freedom "from", and creativity as a freedom "for". The present
dilemma is that not everybody is well prepared to cope with the
new freedoms brought about by the political reforms of 1998.

There are many parties and groups involved in the current
cultural renewal -- so many in fact that it is sometimes
difficult to identify them correctly. However, there are three
main groups involved in cultural reform that deserve particular
attention. They are the state, civil society, and communities,
each with its different cultural interests.

As a political entity, the state needs culture only insofar as
it can help legitimize the state's power and encourage citizens
to submit to that power. The attitude of the state toward
cultural reform is very much dependent upon whether such reform
will strengthen and maintain the establishment of the state and
its power, or rather undermine and subvert it.

At present, the Indonesian state is fairly indifferent towards
cultural reform, first of all because it is faced with the rising
demands of civil society and traditional communities. Besides
that, the state's loss of legitimacy due to ongoing KKN
(corruption, collusion and nepotism) practices puts it in an
increasingly shaky position vis a vis the civil society and
traditional communities.

In contrast, it is the local communities that are most
concerned with cultural development, simply because the members
of communities live and behave in their everyday lives according
to the values and norms of their own cultures. The outlook of
these communities depends on whether cultural reform constitutes
a break with the existing cultural norms and values, or rather a
modification and continuation of existing cultural patterns. In
the first case, they are inclined to reject cultural reform,
whereas in the latter case they are more willing to accept it.

Civil society assumes a position somewhere in the middle. It
is obliged to domesticate state power by transposing the rule of
power into the rule of law, while on the other hand it is
expected to transpose cultural values of particular local
communities into norms of a more general nature. This can be done
by removing the particularities of each cultural system while
maintaining its core values.

In that sense the dominant value of egalitarianism in Islam
for example can be universalized and applied to other social
groups if the underlying Islamic doctrines remain limited to
Muslim communities, whereas the public campaign for greater
equality should be made on the basis of a more universal
rationale. In a sense, every cultural system can become a source
of civic culture within the civil society, if they are
universalized so as to become acceptable to other cultural
systems.

In this sense, civil society is a social movement that aims to
change the whole society and not just to transform a political
system or to strengthen a particular, socially dominant class.
Accordingly, it is expected to comprise as many social classes as
possible and is by no means limited only to the middle class or
national bourgeoisie.

The genius of civil society is that it can become a domain in
which the struggle for justice and freedom is made possible by
uncovering unjust practices and turning them into public issues
that concern everybody in civil society. Domestic violence is
therefore no longer merely a private matter for individual
families and the minimum wage level is no longer simply a private
issue for each industrial enterprise.

Thus there evolves a paradigm shift, from government to
governance. Government refers to the institution, which is to
rule on the basis of a delegation of power, whereas governance
emphasizes the capability and spontaneity of every social group
to rule itself.

Governance turns the state-society relationship upside down.
It is the society that is imbued with primacy and the ability to
direct the state through social control. It calls for a wider and
more active involvement of the people in every stage of political
decision-making. The visibility of this process is called
transparency, while the condition in which the results of the
implementation of a political decision are made accessible and
contestable is called accountability. Accountability can be
improved if there is greater transparency.

However, the transition to governance is still hampered by the
strong attachment to the idea of government. Less attention is
given to issues of governance, such as people's participation,
social empowerment, the advocacy of the economic rights of the
poor, the integration of female workers in the labor force, the
protection of child workers and the rights of the disabled.