Consumption Communities

Few developments in the Tengger highlands have been more striking, or more symptomatic of the changing spirit of the age, than recent shifts in conspicuous consumption. Few are more revealing of the complex linkages between economic life and social identity. None, in particular, better reveals the truth that at the heart of economic life there is always a social community, characterized by its own structure of inclusion and exclusion, "a sense of shared identity, and commitment to values, a sense that 'We are members of one another'" (Etzioni 1988, 5).

Nineteenth-century visitors to the Tengger highlands regularly commented on the remarkable lack of differentiation among villagers in matters of food, dress, and housing (see Domis 1832, 331; van Lerwerden 1844). People of all social standings, they said, ate the same simple fare of maize meal, potatoes, cabbage, and salted fish. Administrators complained that even high-status villagers dressed themselves in the simplest of clothes and wore them until they were in tatters. One elderly gentleman who had worked as a forestry officer in the village of Wonokitri in the 1920s, with whom I spoke in 1985, recalled his first impression of upperslope fashions:

People in those villages weren't yet modern [moderen .] Even if they had lots of land or some gold back in their homes they wore the same clothes as other people; you couldn't tell rich from poor. Everyone spoke in the same way to everyone else too, no matter what their position. Children talked to their parents and even to the village chief using ordinary ngoko . No one bent down and bowed before others. But it wasn't that people

were impolite. That's the difference with the lowlands [ngare ]. It was more polite not to talk in high language, and better to dress simple so as not to draw attention to yourself. It wasn't like today. People didn't know that you're supposed to dress to show yourself off; they didn't know what it meant to be modern.

Dutchmen and Javanese alike were fascinated by this way of life, so contrary to the hierarchical etiquette of aristocratic Java. For some, the directness of speech and the simplicity of dress were indices of "childlike simplicity" (van Lerwerden 1844, 68) and high virtue. "Lucky residents of Tinger! How little do you know the privilege you enjoy" (Domis 1830, 330). For others, however, this unpretentious peasant culture was "tattered and unmannered" (Bodemeijer 1901, 314). One might be "sympathetic with their frankness and simplicity, and their lack of faults, but they are nonetheless in large measure dirty and undeveloped, and their religion is dearly beneath that of Muslim learning" (326-27). Highland culture must give way to that of the Muslim lowlands, one Dutch controleur concluded, because in all cultural development "the weaker must . . . dissolve into the stronger" (von Freijburg 1901, 334). Late-nineteenth-century Social Darwinism was creeping into European perceptions of a changing East Java.

These were, of course, stereotyped characterizations of upland society. Behind these simplistic observations, one caught occasional glimpses of the fading contours of a more differentiated social order, with hierarchies unrecognized because cast in unfamiliar molds. The earliest visitors to the area, for example, noted that the village chief (petinggi ) wielded such extraordinary influence that "all submit to him" (Domis 1832, 329). Similarly, although "undistinguished in dress," the non-Islamic priests of the upperslope region were said to be wealthier than their neighbors. They were the ones most likely, for example, to have two wives (Kreemer 1885, 347). Both roles were intimately related to this region's religious tradition, and both were restricted to people who could claim a relationship of descent (tis; titisan ) through maternal or paternal relatives back to some prior holder of the office (Hefner 1985, 82). Hence while villages were not divided into gogol landholding classes as in the wet-rice lowlands, status distinctions did exist, and they played an important role in village religion and government. The sacralized positions of chief and priest, in particular, were the shattered remnants of a broader system of status hierarchy dating back to pre-Islamic times (Hefner 1985, 270).

The migration of lowlanders into the highlands complicated these social arrangements. Most of the immigrants were Muslims. Though the variant of Islam they professed shared much with upperslope Tengger, by the beginning of the twentieth century there were pockets of Muslim or-

thodoxy where people refused to abide by mountain customs. Led by the immigrant merchant-farmers who rose to prominence in the early 1900s, these highlanders maintained economic and cultural ties with lowland society. Ultimately, as we have seen, they helped to introduce new forms of labor organization and more exclusive patterns of investment and consumption.

For most of the mountain population, however, consumption remained geared to a less conspicuously differentiated village tradition. Despite notable differences in income, its display in everyday costume or habit was considered improper. "You were ashamed to make others feel as if they had less than you," one elder uplander explained. "Even if you were a 'big man' [wong gedhe ] and were really wealthy, you still looked like a farmer and a mountain person like everyone else."

Ritual Giving and Festivity

There was, however, one exception to this undifferentiating pattern: the slametan or ritual festival. In a region where, until Indonesian independence, there were strong pressures against marked differentiation in dress, food, furniture, and housing, the ritual festival was the one arena in which conspicuous consumption was not only tolerated but enjoined. The exception was in part related to the fact that festivals were identified with popular religion. In giving food and worship to guardian spirits, these events could be justified as bringing benefit to the village as a whole. By inviting all neighbors to these events, the festivals also expressed the much-valued themes of inexclusivity and cooperative harmony (rukun ).

The appeal of these consumption events, however, was also related to the way in which they were embedded in village life.^[7] Though simple rituals can occur for a number of reasons (Hefner 1985)_,slametans with full entertainment and feasting are held on only a limited number of occasions. In the midslope region, these include circumcisions, weddings, and rites to bless a newborn child (among-among ). Smaller celebrations might also be held to bless the mother and child in her seventh month of pregnancy, in a rite known as the mitoni . In the upperslope region, the list of occasions also includes ceremonies to bless the souls of recently deceased family members, an especially lavish rite known as the entas-entas (Hefner 1985, 163-88). The midslope ceremony of similar intent (known as the nyewu or, more rarely, entas-entas ) might include meal taking, but it is usually celebrated without drinking or entertainment.

[7] Since my concern in the present hook is with the economic dimensions of household festivals, I do not here discuss festivals sponsored by the village as a whole. I have described the organization and significance of these elsewhere (Hefner 1985).

As these examples show, festivities are most commonly held during moments of passage in the life-cycle of a family. In part, of course, the festivals' appeal lies in just this fact, that they so effectively communicate basic changes in the status of a married couple. The cycle begins with the blessing of an infant in the womb. It culminates in the wedding of one's own child and, eventually, the blessing of one's dead parents and grandparents (Hefner 1985). In so doing, ritual consumption maps out the lifecycle, announcing and celebrating each change of life.

Whatever their general intent, however, the meaning of these festivals is anything but general and undifferentiated. The statuses they celebrate are conventional, but the prestige they convey is not. People of high social standing take great pains to ensure that their festivals are the largest and most lavish of all. Thus, while the rite for a newborn child proudly celebrates an event valued by all couples, the fact that it does so to differing degrees of elaboration means that it also makes a more particular, positional statement about its sponsors' standing in the village. Here, then, is an arena in which the mundane sameness of everyday life gives way to a blatant concern for prestige.

Historically, of course, the degree of festival elaboration has varied with general economic prosperity. During hard times, as between 1931 and 1950, and again in the early 1960s, festivities were scaled back and expenses reduced. During times of economic expansion, as during the 1920s, the mid 1950s, and the 1970s, the average cost of a festival increased. In the late 1970s, as farm income grew with the new agriculture, the real cost of the average festival skyrocketed to five or six times what it had been in the late 1960s. The largest festivals involved thousands of guests, and cost three to four thousand dollars each (Hefner 1985, 219; Hefner 1983b)—significantly more than the average family's annual income. Prestigious events were incomplete without the slaughter of several cattle, generators for light and taped music, and the gay presence of tayuban dancers (Hefner 1987c) and ludruk theater troupes (Peacock 1968) from the urban lowlands.

Although these events were sponsored by individual households, the manner of their financing vividly underscores the fact that here, as in all societies, private preference is shaped in the organization of social life. The capital for festivals was accumulated through a network of investment and exchange known as sumbangan ("contributions"), whose mediating role in social life was every bit as important for Tengger highlanders as the legendary kula among Melanesian Trobrianders (Malinowski 1922).

Sumbangan are donations of goods and cash given by neighbors and kin to the sponsors of a ritual festival. The sponsors may request these gifts directly, or the donor may provide them without prior solicitation. Once

given, however, their value must be remembered precisely; often it is recorded in a book (Hefner 1985, 223). The reason this is so important is that at a later date each gift must be repaid with something of equivalent or greater value. Equally important, the repayment can be made only when the initial donor himself or herself sponsors a ritual festival. Once placed in the sumbangan exchange network, in other words, wealth remains locked in a cycle of exchange with no possible use other than sponsorship of more festivals. The exchange system, a sort of collective savings and loan association, thus squeezes investment and consumption into a distinctive social mold.

The system is made all the more compulsory by the fact that all adults with any claim to social standing are obliged to make contributions to their kindred, neighbors, and acquaintances. Once given, each gift engenders another, creating a cycle of exchange that ends only in old age or, more rarely, with the severing of a social tie. Most individuals begin to establish these gift relationships just prior to or after marriage, anticipating the eventual birth of their own children and the need for ritual capital of their own. Giving sumbangan without prior solicitation enhances one's reputation in the village for being generous and sociable. In addition, even though the capital provided in such exchange cannot be invested in nonritual events, the goodwill that results is of broader benefit, reinforcing strategic ties. Not to exchange gifts, by contrast, invites severe censure, and condemns a person to social marginality.

As table 6.8 shows, most villagers today still have a large network of exchange partners. The figures also reveal that the burden of establishing partnerships falls most heavily upon people of higher economic class. Because of the greater frequency of requests, and their own interest in establishing a broad network of sumbangan partners (both as an index of rank and a means to sponsor large festivals in the future), wealthier villagers have more partners than the poor. They also give larger contributions to these partners, investing enormous sums of money in this socially mandated exchange.

In the midslope region, the average ritual contribution is only one-third to one-fourth the value of those given on average in the upperslope region. Hence, although the figures in table 6.8 show that midslope people have more partners, they nonetheless have less money invested in the exchange network. In 1980, for example, wealthy upperslope farmers had on average about Rp 455,000 (roughly U.S, $728, in 1980 rupiah) invested in the network. Even though they had more partners, the midslope wealthy had an average of only Rp 165,000 outstanding in theirs. By the standards of rural Java, one should emphasize, even this latter figure is substantial.

The picture of consumption that emerges from these data is striking. No area of social life rivaled ritual festivity in the volume of capital it con-

sumed. Through it, economic investment was linked to religion and social structure, serving to reproduce ritual institutions integral to an upland way of life. The example reminds us again that needs are shaped, not in the solipsistic introspection of an anonymous homo economicus , but in community, with patterns of power and hierarchy, and "socially organized forms of satisfaction" (Leiss 1976, 9).

Consumption Communities in Economic Change

In a changing social context, of course, this focus on local relations to the exclusion of other utilities may present a problem. Religious festivals create prestige and goodwill well enough. But in an open economy, where previous restrictions on consumption have been weakened, they may suddenly find themselves competing with other utilities for scarce capital. They run the risk of losing their allure if and when villagers become less concerned with—and less dependent on—the good regard of their neighbors. Whatever their benefits for one's local prestige, after all, festival contributions do not provide capital for general investment. Nor is their disposition left to the discretion of their owner. In addition, the prestige they create does not carry much weight in outside markets. In this sense, to call prestige a form of "symbolic capital" (Bourdieu 1977, 177) is misleading if, as the term suggests, it implies that the symbolic is directly translatable to the economic. As the literature on fiesta systems in Latin America shows so well (Cancian 1965; Smith 1977), this is often not the case. It cannot be if a local economy is to survive.

Old arrangements worked well, of course, as long as concern for one's village standing was a compelling interest and strong sanctions could be brought to bear on those who ignored local norms and misused their wealth. At a time when most villagers lived, worked, and married in just one or two upland villages, and when highlanders strongly distinguished themselves from lowlanders, the loss of esteem resulting from nonpartici-pation in the system was sufficient to keep most people in line.

Outsiders who migrated to the region with independent resources could, of course, better afford to ignore the ritual-status system, and

sometimes they did. Historical evidence indicates, for example, that in some lower-lying mountain communities the system was well on its way to collapse as early as the 1870s (Hefner 1985, 1987a). In most of the midslope mountain region, however, the process began several decades later and was extremely uneven at that. The Muslim merchant-farmers who rose to prominence in the early 1900s were virulent opponents of this Javanist custom. Fortunately for mountain traditions, however, their influence waned with the economic collapse of the 1930s. In most of the highlands, then, the sumbangan tradition survived. Indeed, the above figures on number of exchange partners show that it is still an important feature of village life today.

In the past few years, however, a new and more serious challenge to the festival system has emerged. This one comes from the very heart of highland society. For the first time, affluent villagers are speaking of the need to cut back on ritual exchange or abolish it entirely. They cite its expense, complaining that it contributes little to national development (pembangunan ). Quite correctly, they note that it diverts scarce resources from other economic projects. In the midslope region, Islamic critics speak belittlingly of the religious tradition of which it is part. Where such reformist appeals have taken hold (see ch. 7; Hefner 1987c), the economic and religious critiques converge, creating powerful pressures for the abolition of the ritual tradition as a whole.

There is, of course, a larger logic at work here, more complex than the simple rationalization of factors of production. Economy always assumes community. Today the way of life associated with the traditional economy of the highlands is on the wane.

Ritual festivals found their meaning in a small world of familiar others, where both status and welfare were directly dependent upon carefully nurtured social ties. Yet it is precisely this feature of village life that has suffered most in recent years. Those involved in extraregional commerce have come to realize that relations in the larger world are not lubricated by the ritualized largesse of sumbangan exchange. As the rural elite has shifted its attention outside the village, therefore, it has had to manage its resources in ways consonant with the political and economic demands of the surrounding society. This "rationalization" of production is not driven by the abstract logic of the market, but by aspirations to, and the political-economic machinery of, an outside world once kept at a distance. It is the boundaries of community that have changed, as villagers aspire, or are compelled, to be part of modem Indonesia.

Television and Economic Culture

The spread of television in the highlands provides another example of this challenge to received consumption norms. The first television sets

made their way into the mountain region in the mid to late 1970s. At that time, the government required every village to have at least one set as a source of news on national events and culture. As commercial agriculture expanded in the highlands, however, privately owned color television sets, which retailed in stores for the equivalent of U.S. $300-500, quickly became one of the most desired of luxury goods. In the village of Ngadiwono in 1980, there were twenty-nine private television sets in the central hamlet, or about one for every fifteen households. In more typical mountain villages, there was one set for every seventy households.

The way in which television sets were assimilated into village life showed the tension between earlier and emerging consumption norms. In the mid 1970s, everywhere one traveled televisions sets were still treated as a quasi-public good, on the model of slametan festivals. Owners positioned sets on the verandas of their houses, facing the street, so that villagers who might wish to watch could do so. Situating the set neither inside nor outside the house, the owners were able to fulfill the expectation that, as with the amusements during ritual festivals, neighbors would be able to enjoy the entertainment too. Positioned between domestic space and the outside yard, the television sets were balanced precariously between old and new consumption norms.

As if by proclamation, a different pattern had developed by 1985. Sets were now located securely behind windows, which were sometimes adorned with items previously unknown in upland homes—curtains and tinted glass. Now only guests to a home were allowed the privilege of watching television. When asked about the change, owners invariably said that they were embarrassed by all the people standing around their front doors, neither inside nor outside, neither guests nor passers-by. In a society where great value is placed on the proper reception of guests, this was an understandable source of tension. Though the dilemma, then, was real, its manner of resolution was typical of new trends. A more private ethic was emerging, one less responsive to the demand that wealth acknowledge neighbors. It is the constraining influence of this local tie that has weakened.

Ultimately, it is with consumer goods as it was with education and employment. Villagers, especially the affluent, wish to be viewed as modern members of the national community. To affect its styles and compete in its markets, they must pull away from the commitments of the past and invest their wealth in more deliberately productive capital goods. In practical terms, what this means is that investments like sumbangan exchange will continue to decline, while ownership of trucks and new types of consumer goods is bound to increase.

The nature of this economic change is not captured by characterizations of earlier ways as irrational or traditional, whereas new ones are in-

dividual, rational, and calculated, as some models of "modernization" might suggest. As the sumbangan example reveals, "traditional" consumption was highly calculated and thoroughly rational. But its rationality was defined relative to a local world, with its own patterns of value and need. New forms of investment look outward, not because the broader market is inherently more rational, but because it serves an expanded community of which well-placed villagers, in particular, wish to be part.

From a comparative perspective, of course, none of this is surprising. James Scott (1985, 173) has also remarked that ritual festivals in Malaysia have declined as villagers look to the outside and channel their wealth into capital goods. Indeed, changes of this sort are familiar from all parts of the developing world. It is the well-known story of a bounded, tightly knit community being integrated into a larger and more stratified national one. Whether by force or choice, the contours of identity change. Relations of rank and prestige previously based on local notions of distinction are suddenly harnessed to national markets. These have "absorbed the functions of cultural traditions in providing guideposts for personal and social identity" (Leiss, Kline, and Jhally 1986, 3). Here in mountain Java those who can afford stereos, motorbikes, urban-style homes, and "lowland" dress express their citizenship in a new consumption community. Their efforts have a ripple effect, as others, feeling obliged to keep up with the Joneses, adopt what they can of new lifestyles. Economic culture shows the standardized influence of nation and class more clearly, while regionalist symbols recede.

In a world shaken by the violence of 1965-66, and then suddenly opened to new commercial influences, it is not surprising that consumption events that celebrate the virtues of village and ancestors have given way to the national symbols of pembangunan dan kemajuan ("development and progress"). Upland tradition was never unchanging. Indeed, it has changed so rapidly over the past century that one could in a certain sense call it an "invented tradition"—to borrow a phrase from Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983)—perpetually adjusted to the challenge of the moment. Though fast changing, however, economic tradition has had a practical and moral significance that was neither crudely instrumental nor illusory. Its norms helped to define a local world by erecting political and moral barriers between inside and outside and placing limits on what happened within. Sumbangan exchange was at the heart of this social economy. It did not systematically level differences of class or wealth. But it did have a repressive effect on capital accumulation. Wealth brought prestige only when spent on certain kinds of luxury goods. There was a political economy of status and meaning operative here (Eickelman 1979),

in other words, one that looked to local ritual and social relations for its measures of distinction.

There are no such political or moral barriers with the ideas of "development and progress." Ubiquitous in the commentaries of village officials, these terms struck me as vague and meaningless during my first months in the field. I heard them through the filter of a Western, post-modernist irony that assumes that the very project of progress is flawed. But my hearing was naively ethnocentric. For villagers who have lived through economic misery and horrific political calamity, the appeal of these terms is real, however imprecise their meaning. They are instruments for revising cultural self-perception. Looking to the outside and the future, they deny the authority of village and tradition. The local world commands less attention, because, in practice and imagination, the better-off spend less of their lives there.

Quite unlike the situation in the industrialized West, however, the integration of this local economy into a national one is occurring in a context of widespread poverty. As in most of today's developing world, the technology of communications and the machinery of state have outstripped production. Politics and communications, not just production, drive this change. Poor villagers in the most remote communities have been made aware of new goods and needs. Unlike Western consumers, however, they observe these things with, as yet, little realistic chance that they will ever share in their pleasures. Hence, as the appeal of local community declines, the consequences of class become more apparent. The plate-glass windows and curtains of upland nouveaux riches are one response to this awkward fact.

Some poor people have responded to this dilemma by attempting to present themselves as the guardians of traditional ways. When they spoke with me of new styles of clothing, furniture, and cooking, they defended their dignity by insisting these goods were a betrayal of upland tradition. "I am just a farmer [wong tani ], a mountain person [wong gunung ]," I was told time and time again. Always it was with a directness that made clear the modest defiance those self-ascriptions implied. Even a few years ago these appeals to local allegiance and unhierarchical ways still carried great moral weight. Unfortunately for the poor, however, their arguments evoke no such consensus on community today. The barriers to the outside have been destroyed, and its goods and meanings have poured in. There is no going back to the upland village of old.

In another place or at another time, perhaps, this controversy might have given rise to a more overtly political contest. One of the ironies of contemporary Java, however, is that while there has been far-reaching social and economic change, public discussion of its form and meaning has

been vigorously suppressed. The memories of the 1965-66 violence are still powerfully present. So, too, are the mechanisms of state it helped to usher in. They form the unspoken background to everything happening in Java today.