ジャワ農村における住民組織のインボリューション : スハルト政権下の「村落開発」の一側面

Abstract

One of the conspicuous features of "village development" (pembangunan masyarakat desa) under the New Order is the mushrooming of various types of groups and organizations at the village level. These groups were formed as intermediaries to promote villagers' "participation" in the government development programs. Rural Java is one of the most advanced areas in "village development" in Indonesia. In K village in central Java, where I conducted a year of fieldwork in 1994/95, more than 140 groups were identified inside the village of about 900 households, and more than 80 percent of the groups were those introduced by the government during the New Order. Especially since the late 1980s, the number of groups has rapidly increased. At the time of my fieldwork, the village was highly organized, showing a very different complexion from the Javanese village of the 1950s, which Clifford Geertz characterized as "formless, " "vague, " "loose, " and unable "to cooperate or to organize anything effectively." Based on the field data obtained in K village in 1994/95, this paper attempts to describe dynamic relations between the government and village community as reflected in the activities of the government-initiated village-based organizations, and to reveal the characteristics of the New Order's "village development" seen at the village level. First, I identify all the groups that existed in K village in 1994/95 and examine the degree of villagers' participation by taking one of the hamlets as a case. To put the situation in 1994/95 into perspective, the history of group activities in the village is reconstructed through oral histories. The following four points are discussed as remarkable features of group activities : 1) villagers' mobilization for political events, such as events for Golkar, the ruling party under the New Order, 2) unending elaboration and complication of organizational administrative technique, 3) patterned and routinized group meetings, and 4) development of rotating saving and credit activities (arisan etc.). Under strong pressure for continued realization of "development" under the New Order, the village has, I argue, fallen into a state that can be expressed as "organizational involution, " which is characterized by "increasing tenacity of basic pattern; internal elaboration and ornateness; technical hairsplitting, and unending virtuosity." For comparison, the rapid changes that have been taking place in the village since the fall of President Suharto are also described based on my field observation in 1998 and 1999.