Tembang Pilihan Arek Seri 1
Kampong as The Deployment of Arek Subculture
The kampong holds cultural wealth. Its presence is not just as a matter of urban settlement, but this environment also serves as the central locus for the dissemination and development of the Arek subculture during colonialism. They, as the peripheral society of colonial development, designed their cultural life within the kampong.
Unfortunately, the cultural wealth in the kampong is never seen by many people. This phenomenon is always positioned as a development issue. Eventually, it causes life in the kampong to be placed only as a matter of settlement and poverty. This logic, of course, folds the cultural reality occurring in the life of the kampong Arek.
This developmentalist logic is actually also a legacy from the colonial era. In the early days of the emergence of the Gemeente Surabaya, the colonial government also saw that the presence of the kampong was a settlement issue. The kampong Arek were considered to have crowded the settlements located between the elite residential complexes of the European group. This caused the colonial government to have to immediately take action to resolve the issue.
Kampong in Developmentalism Logic
The administrative change of the city of Surabaya in 1906 caused massive development for this city. The colonial government began to build a clean water irrigation system, electric tram transportation, modern ports, and so on. Surabaya turned into a modern city in the style of the Dutch colony (Frederick, 1989). This progress created a settlement issue for Arek Surabaya because their living space was replaced by colonial urban areas.
This indigenous community eventually chose to occupy the narrow space between the spaces of Geemente Surabaya. They occupied kampongs located in narrow alleys and streets not yet paved by the Gemeente government. Due to this housing issue, the colonial government built a residential complex in the Keputran area in 1929 because Arek Surabaya began to crowd the settlements in those kampongs.
The case of moving kampong communities to the residential area in Keputran, Gemeente Surabaya, shows that their settlement was seen by the colonial government as a development issue. Eventually, it led to the resolution of the issue through the relocation of kampong community settlements. It shows the colonial government’s viewpoint towards the indigenous people.
In the period after colonialism, the same approach was still used. Kampongs are always seen as a development issue. The area is always assumed to be a backward living environment and far from development because it harbors issues: slums; poverty, and backwardness. This was the government’s viewpoint afterward in viewing the kampong.
The New Order, known as the development regime, also colored the advancement of kampong life. Because the development program in the kampong was first carried out in 1969, and it was only in 1976 that it received assistance from the World Bank (Silas, 1992). The program had three types of assistance: People Self-help projects, W.R. Soepratman projects, and Urban Kampong Improvement Programme.
Furthermore, these programs encompassed the development of the kampong such as the construction of access roads, drains, health facilities, elementary schools, and garbage bins for cleanliness management. These activities, of course, refer back to the approach used by the colonial government in addressing the housing issues of the indigenous people, that is, through a developmental approach.
The development pattern, in the kampong, will, of course, have implications for how the government and researchers view this living environment. It leads them to see this phenomenon as one of the objects of development. Kampongs are always positioned as an entity that is left behind from the progress of modern life. Its presence must be saved and given certain advancements regarding modern life.
Further, this area is always seen as the settlement of marginal or peripheral groups. The inhabitants within the kampong are always positioned as lower-class society and marginal settlements. The categorization of marginal settlement differences is always based on aspects such as: security, permanent and temporal houses, cheap/expensive sale prices, and accessibility being easy or difficult (Silas, 1989).
On one side, the presence of the kampong is always attached to the logic of development, while on the other hand, its presence actually has a cultural dimension folded within that logic. This cultural dimension is never brought to the surface. However, if traced further, the presence of the Arek subculture is also a phenomenon of the kampong’s presence during colonialism.
Although the presence of this subculture is still debated regarding its tracing and origins, the definite period that can be marked to trace its existence is the colonial period (1900-1942), that is, the transition to becoming the Gemeente Surabaya. Because that period brought about the phenomenon of settlement and identity of the indigenous community, in this context, is the emergence of the Arek subculture.
Kampong as The Locus of Arek Subculture Deployment
The emergence of the Arek subculture is still debated among academics. Some researchers state that this subculture appeared during the 4th to 9th centuries AD. The eruption of Mount Kelud, which erupted 22 times, covered the river surrounding the delta in the Arek subculture area, turning it into a single island (Abdillah, 2007). This phenomenon later shaped the character of the Arek Surabaya.
Because the area of Surabaya, before the eruption of Kelud, was delta-shaped, it caused the Arek community to speak loudly. This habit underlies the tough character of the Arek community. Thus, the natural phenomenon of Mount Kelud led to the formation of the character of the Arek community. The term Arek itself is taken from the Old Javanese term meaning a call for a brother or sister.
Unfortunately, there is no strong historical evidence to prove this thesis. However, the presence of this subculture can be traced to the colonial period because, during that time, a phenomenon of identity for the indigenous people, especially the Arek subculture community, was created. As previously explained, the transition to Gemeente caused settlement issues for the indigenous people.
This phenomenon led to the creation of settlement boundaries between the European elite group and the Arek community. The boundary was between the kampong and the elite settlements. At that time, the Arek Surabaya, as the peripheral society from colonial development, seized urban space by occupying areas between urban areas, that is, the kampong.
Eventually, this led to the Arek community, who were essentially immigrants, forming their cultural identity within the kampong. Thus, the presence of the colonial city is the presence of the kampong that creates this subculture identity. The Arek community is not limited to any specific ethnic or social group. They are immigrants and settlers who share common values, namely Arek Surabaya.
This influences the values associated with Arek Surabaya, characterized by courage, realism, and material progress (Frederick, 1989). Because they are not a specific group or ethnicity but immigrants sharing the same life values, the Arek community further strengthens its cultural and social identity within the kampong. They build these cultural values within that environment.
Therefore, the kampong, in fact, preserves both the social and cultural cohesion of the Arek community. This environment forms the identity of being Arek because, as a community of immigrants and those displaced from their living spaces by colonialism, they build a form of social-cultural identity together. This also marks the emergence of the Arek subculture as a fragment of the parent Javanese culture.
In summary, the kampong is the central locus for the dissemination of Arek culture because the emergence of this subculture stems from the settlement phenomenon during colonialism. It is not just a matter of settlement but also this environment harbors the cultural life of this subculture.
Arek Surabaya Reclaim the Urban Sphere
At the beginning of the 20th century, many lands in the Surabaya region were owned by private individuals (Private sector). They rented the land to residents for housing. The prevailing relationship in this rental system was that workers had to submit agricultural produce and rent money that must be paid to the landlords. This condition has been occurring since the implementation of the Agrarische Wet in 1870. This regulation allowed private parties with large capital to obtain land ownership rights (Erfpacht) for up to 75 years.
Residents who had built houses on private land had to be evicted when the owner sold the land to the Gemeente (Municipal Government) of Surabaya. This case occurred frequently in the southern region of Surabaya as a target for urban development. Hageman (1859) wrote that since the mid-19th century, the southern region was largely controlled by private individuals utilizing residents as laborers to cultivate open land. According to him, many residents at that time were still rural, with the majority being farmers.
The focus of development carried out by the Gemeente Surabaya was to serve the increasing number of Europeans arriving. The purchase of private land began in the Keputran Lor area. Tillema, as quoted in the book “Merebut Ruang Kota: Aksi Rakyat Miskin Kota Surabaya 1900-1960” by Purnawan Basundoro, stated that the private land in the Keputran Lor area was sold by Tjhin Tjhik Kong Soe in 1888. The buyer was the housing developer company ‘Bouwmaatschappij Keputran’. The development process of the area began in the early 1900s.
As a result of the development, many residents who were evicted then occupied kampongs on the outskirts of elite European housing. They, unknowingly, formed the Arek subculture. One of their recorded movements was civil disobedience by several kampongs in Surabaya in 1915-1916. In relation to the phenomena of the twentieth century, this effort also cannot be separated from the national movement wagon. Even two figures recorded as the engines of this disobedience, namely: Mas Prawirodihardjo and Pak Siti, were members of Sarekat Islam (SI). SI is one of the political parties that consciously fought against the arbitrariness of landlords in the city of Surabaya.
Mas Prawirodihardjo was a resident of Kampung Ondomohen (One of the old settlements in the Genteng District, Surabaya) who worked as a construction supervisor. Meanwhile, Pak Siti alias Sadikin was a resident of Kampung Kedondong, Keputran Lor. He worked as a railroad foreman (Purnawan, 2009). Both believed that residents should not have to pay rent for private land that was actually theirs.
Specifically, in 1915 to 1916, the thoughts of Mas Prawirodihardjo and Pak Siti alias Sadikin spread widely in response to the evictions in the process of developing European settlements.
The form of civil disobedience at that time was the refusal of all obligations to private landlords. The refusal included not paying land rent and not giving a portion of agricultural produce. Residents also refused the village heads chosen by private individuals and appointed their own village heads. Some of them deliberately cut down trees and used the vacant private land as if it was their own.
Besides the residents of Keputran Lor, who directly felt the impact of eviction, unrest also spread to many kampongs in Surabaya occupying private lands. Purnawan recorded that in 1916, many occupants of private lands, which had not yet been sold or developed, filed lawsuits against the landlords at the Landraad. At that time, the court’s decision was in favor of the landlords. They then appealed to a higher court, the Raad Van Justitie, which eventually decided that the occupants of private lands had proprietary rights (zakelijke rechten) on those lands. Moreover, on September 12, 1917, the Raad Van Justitie court issued a decision granting land ownership rights to the occupants of private lands, provided they fulfilled certain obligations to the landlords.
The civil disobedience to reclaim rights to land and urban space shows that the solidarity of Arek Surabaya, built through kampongs, had an intellectual-organic nature. They realized that the more expensive European housing was built, the smaller their participation space in the city center would become. Not to mention the construction of industries that made certain skills or education a requirement for employment. The transition from rural to urban society experienced by Arek Surabaya turned out to be able to find its own form of solidarity from traditional to urban in the kampong community movement.
A Map of Arek Studies
Arek Studies, akin to an uncharted map, lacks a clear scholarly framework compared to other thematic studies. This is because there hasn’t been a study that specifically addresses this topic. It is merely seen as intersecting with other academic disciplines without being studied based on a fundamental and rooted scholarly structure.
Scientifically, Arek Studies has yet to establish a foundation like other study topics. Unlike this study, Java Studies, for example, has been around since the imperialist era (Kuitenbrouwer, 2014:89-90). Its presence also followed the wave of academic groups during the Dutch imperialism in the Dutch East Indies. At that time, the Dutch were trying to expand into that territory.
Java Studies actually has a scientific foundation because it has been rooted since a certain period. Moreover, pioneers in its domain have already been mapped out. Unlike Arek Studies, researchers on Java have been investigating this topic since the 19th century, although those studies were conducted for colonial interests. The colonizers needed to understand the landscape and conditions of the society they intended to subdue.
On the other hand, Arek Studies is building its scientific foundation. This step is taken by mapping researchers who have conducted research on this topic. Some authoritative researchers have filled this study area. Among these researchers are Purnawan Basundoro (City Historian), Frederick H. William (City Historian), Freek Colombijn (Urban Anthropologist), Autar Abdillah (Social Researcher), and others.
Implicitly, the researchers mentioned have contributed to providing a research map for this study. They have intersected with this topic in their research results, but it is still very limited to intersecting with their respective academic disciplines. It has not been unified under a specific thematic study domain. However, these researchers have provided a considerable mapping of Arek Studies.
Broadly, their research results can be mapped into two main periodic lines of study. On one side, researchers like Frederick H. William, Purnawan Basundoro, and Freek Colombijn have a research range in the colonial period. Their research looks at the life of the Arek community and colonial society phenomena in Surabaya, the central distribution of the Arek subculture. This means that the emergence of this community is marked by phenomena that appeared during that period.
On the other hand, researchers like Autar Abdillah and Akhudiat place the formation of Arek culture as having occurred since the pre-colonial era. They see the presence of Arek culture as having been formed since this period. This is marked by various phenomena that shaped this culture, such as natural, social, and linguistic phenomena occurring within the Arek subculture environment (Abdillah, 2007) (Akhudiat, 2007).
Based on these studies, Arek Studies actually has a position as a scholarly construct. It shows that this study has intersected with many researchers. However, in terms of scientific basis, Arek Studies has not yet been fully and adequately mapped because the study is still limited to sporadic studies. This situation has led to an initiative to construct a framework for this study.
Through this initiative, Arek Studies can be mapped and developed, contributing to scholarly constructs and addressing issues within the Arek subculture’s life. There are many unresolved issues to this day, such as the cases of Ludruk art born from the Arek community, which also faces problems due to the passage of time.
Therefore, research and studies in this domain are crucial. It can help the Arek community and the academic public to reflect and advance life within this community. To support this work, Arek Studies requires a multi-perspective approach. This effort can be undertaken by building collective studies because it can open up this study map to have a broader horizon.
The spirit of collective study work can be achieved by building studies based on interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary work. This means that individuals from various backgrounds can collaborate to study phenomena within this subculture. This causes the study not only to be limited to a specific academic domain but also to develop itself to engage in dialogue, both academically and non-academically, from various perspectives.
In summary, Arek Studies, as a scholarly construct, has not yet established a deeply rooted and robust foundation. The study is still very sporadic. A significant effort is needed to tie the Arek phenomena into a scholarly domain because such an effort can provide a clear overview of the mapping of this study.
From Sustainability to Commodity
Colonialism significantly transformed the production and food consumption patterns of its colonized societies. This shift is evident from the phenomena during that period, notably the transition from the Cultivation System (cultuurstelsel) to the implementation of the Agrarische Wet and Suiker Wet in 1870. This change marked a shift in societal patterns from having a concept of food security to becoming consumeristic.
Indeed, this policy change had an impact on the life patterns of the colonized society due to a change in the production relations. This was indicated by the transformation in the ownership system established by the Cultivation System, which required farmers to plant production crops.
Originating from the development of the Cultivation System, it eventually undermined the position of native farmers who no longer had direct access to the land. The Cultivation System’s strategy, which prioritized government plantation commodities, resulted in a change in the work of native farmers to cultivate their land with disproportionate earnings.
Unfortunately, the issues of the Cultivation System cannot be generalized, as specific regions might not have experienced similar events. However, generally, this phenomenon was prevalent in various areas, with differences in the landscape horizon of community residence, such as rural or urban areas. For example, the Resident of Semarang experienced a famine in 1849-1850 (Retno; 2019), a consequence of the Cultivation System impoverishing the colonized population.
In line with these cases, the Cultivation System policy led to a change in land ownership since the land could no longer be cultivated, having been transformed into plantation ownership. The peak of this transformation was the implementation of the Agrarische Wet in 1870, emerging from the shift in the colonial political landscape now dominated by the liberal group.
This law extensively regulated land rights. Land in the colonial territories began to be controlled based on this policy. Land ownership was regulated through the Eigendom land rights for natives outlined in colonial laws, also addressing the abolition of the compulsory labor system or Corvee labour (Scott; 1989).
However, this colonial-style liberal politics still brought disaster, especially when private parties could freely lease land for up to 75 years – as regulated in the agrarian law of 1870. During this era of liberal politics, Dutch plantation entrepreneurs and other European countries gained enormous profits based on colonial super profits. European entrepreneurs benefited from labor working long hours with low wages.
On the other hand, capitalists were not burdened with infrastructure development costs as these were financed by tax levies on colonial subjects by the colonial government (Achdian; 2021). This situation led to a social transformation among the agrarian community, where fields that were initially used for food security were turned into commercial agriculture.
The Javanese adage “Mangan ora mangan, sing penting kumpul” (Eating or not eating, what’s important is being together) has lost its significance due to the social transformation among the colonized society, a consequence of Dutch East Indies’ political policies. The freedom promised by the liberals was not as sweet as expected. This policy led to a massive shift, both economically creating dependencies and turning the colonized farmers into landless individuals.
The loss of the ability to embody this adage was caused by the instability of the welfare of the colonized society under capitalism. This is a result of the liberal politics, where the community became landless due to the closure of resources in the village environment, shrinking additional income in traditional economic activities of farmers and others.
This situation led to a change in the priorities of society. Money became more important than food security because only with money could they meet their daily needs. Reluctantly, the farmers had to lease their lands to plantation companies—where the rent money was relatively small compared to the profits reaped by the plantation later, borrowing loans to work in factories or plantations. This impoverishment was severe, with rural or urban communities beginning to depend on credit, and many farmers also leasing their land. They had to extend the lease of land with the sugar industry before the lease period ended to get money.
This impoverishment also led to food shortages during the intense commercialization process in rural areas. Calculations in 1930 showed that around 8 million farmers in Java only cultivated land that increased by about 3 percent in size. This impoverishment eventually caused rural farmers to respond by shifting their dietary patterns (Rennet, 1974).
On the other hand, the commercialization process in rural areas resulted in many farmers being landless, eventually creating a social contradiction within it due to many factors such as population growth, narrowing side jobs, price fluctuations that strengthened the position of landlords (Vries; 1982).
Moreover, the needs of the colonized society had to be met, and the way to fulfill them was by going to factories, Chinese garden entrepreneurs, native land tenants, and borrowing money from banks, village barns, or pawnshops, where the farmers became landless because their land or rice fields were used as collateral for their loans. This problem was exacerbated when they could not repay the debt, and eventually, the cultivated land had to be handed over. This caused these farmers to become wage laborers on their formerly mortgaged land.
In other words, this phenomenon spread throughout Java, including Semarang and Surabaya. This phenomenon is a sign of the strengthening of a small group of farmers who developed within the colonial economic structure and engaged in global economic activities through the planting of export commodity crops. On the other hand, many farmers became landless, giving form to the process of differentiation in rural areas. In short, Indonesia, at that time as a colony, underwent a transition from the Cultivation System to the Agrarische Wet 1870, which had profound consequences and changed many things from life philosophy to the consumption patterns of the colonized society. In the end, the colonized society had to endure the bitterness of losing land, and as a result, they had to follow the colonial pattern to survive. This pattern was cheap labor work as factory workers to meet their living needs.