Abstract
Ketut is a 32-year-old man who works as a hotel courier for alcoholic beverages. Like many other young Balinese men with tattoos, he is caught in a night life-related contractual job. Some such men work as security guards for various entertainment facilities, including pubs and clubs at Kuta Beach. Ketut is a member of one of Bali’s powerful youth organisations or, in Scott’s (2015) term, youth gangs that require tattoos for membership. It is this youth organisation that provides access to such lucrative entertainment jobs. Ketut’s junior high school diploma has not enabled him to find the decent and stable job in the army that his father desired; his opportunities were limited by the tattoos he has started inking on his body since his teenage years. Thus, in Ketut’s eyes, this youth organisation is an important source of survival, a means of sustaining his livelihood. However, having tattooed his body since junior high school, Ketut admits that the tattoos he made during his teenage years served a different function than more recent ones. His earlier tattoos were mainly acts of rebellion against his authoritarian father. The more recent ones, especially the tattoo crafted between his thumb and index finger as part of his organisation’s membership requirements, is not only about rebellion. It is also part of his social identity—a symbol of membership in a group in which he takes pride. Ketut tells a story of marginalisation and the strategies of the marginalised in claiming citizenship. Constructing an identity as a ‘son of a bitch’ in the eyes of the State not only shows his strong resentment towards the state, but also his feeling that the State denies his rights as a citizen to be a part of (State-related) formal labour markets.
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Notes
- 1.
Youth must be seen as important to understand how changes in the macro world impacts the behavior of a society in its daily mundane experience. Discourses of, and practices by, youth, from their choices of clothing to political mobilization, are critical sites through which people everywhere conceive of, produce, contest, and naturalise the new realm. See Cole and Durham (2008).
- 2.
Full account of this migration process during the mining period can be found in Heidhues (2003: 34).
- 3.
Aside from being civil servants, the older generation informants of this study are medical healers. Some participate in the business domain, but mainly in small scale trade (similar to the occupational domain of the Malays). Even when interviews seem to hint that occupational choice is an effort to become Indonesian, there is also the possibility that this has to do with limited access to large scale business, which is dominated by the Chinese.
- 4.
On 17 January 2000, President Abdurrahman Wahid made a monumental decision. He issued Presidential Instruction No. 6 of 2000, which revoked Presidential Instruction No. 14 of 1967. The new policy guaranteed the Chinese people’s freedom in carrying out their religious rituals, customs, and allowed the expression of Chinese culture in Indonesia.
- 5.
Tempo writers (2016).
- 6.
PITI’s influence has deteriorated, partially due to internal conflict within the organisation.
- 7.
The local term waria is used here (rather than transgender) to indicate the diversity of local meaning towards transgender identity.
- 8.
As explained above, after the fall of Soeharto, political and social conditions in Indonesia experienced a significant shift. This allowed various cultural practices that were previously forbidden to exist publicly, and created better conditions for citizens to openly express their identities, including through tattoos. Nevertheless, discrimination against persons with tattoos continues today.
- 9.
This statement is particularly appropriate for Indonesia’s condition today, in which the political and cultural history of the New Order, has created a common concept about people with tattoos. Between 1983 and 1985, tattoos were seen as a symbols of crime, and were narrated as such within State politics. Petrus is a term that refers to the “hidden” destruction which lasted from early 1983 to early 1985 and reportedly claimed more than 10,000 victims. People identified as thugs were generally tattooed. These people were captured and shot dead in what the government considered an “effort” to fight against crime. The Petrus incidents are a clear example of how State politics narrated the meaning of tattoos (see for instance, Barker, 1998).
- 10.
For example, Chapter 5, Article 5 of the Code of Conduct of SMA Negeri 1 Gianyar Bali forbids students from having tattoos.
- 11.
For example, prospective civil servants applying for positions in various government institutions are not allowed to have tattoos.
- 12.
- 13.
These community youth organisations for persons with tattoos can be seen as political involvement for young persons. It often encourages further political participation in the future (McFarland & Thomas, 2006).
- 14.
Bowman and Willis state that social media allows personal involvement in societal formation. Lim (2005) argues that the interest of social media is closely linked to political struggle, in that it provides an important space for political activism. See Veronica Hamid, 2014. “Angin harapan demokrasi digital, nostalgia demokrasi klasik, transformasi ruang publik, dan politisasi media sosial”. In A.E. Priyono and Usman Hamid (Eds.), Merancang arah baru demokrasi, p. 737.
- 15.
Compared to PDI-P and Golkar party, this party gained fewer votes during the 2009 and 2014 election. However, support for Mangku Pastika was obtained from a coalition of several smaller parties.
- 16.
Generational position (senior and junior) is related to the extent to which an individual is capable of exerting power within the group as determined through capital accumulation. However, it should be noted that cases in which young (by age) members have sufficient access and control over resources to be positioned as seniors are quite rare.
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Minza, W.M., Wahid, M., Zaky, M., Shabrina, Z.R.N. (2022). Youth Movements and the Politics of Recognition and Redistribution. In: Hiariej, E., Stokke, K. (eds) The Politics of Citizenship in Indonesia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7955-1_10
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