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Conflict, Continuity, and Change in Social Movements in Southeast Asia
Abdul Rohman
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eBook - ePub
Conflict, Continuity, and Change in Social Movements in Southeast Asia
Abdul Rohman
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About This Book
This book demonstrates how preserving ideology and relationships with other activists affords social movements to persist over time amid limited resources and political opportunities in Southeast Asia.
Examining two peace movements in Indonesia â the largest democratic country in Southeast Asia â to illuminate discontinuity, continuity, and change in social movements, the author uses a cultural approach to understanding why social movements persist. He argues that the activists' memory, relationship with others, collective identity, and emotion are reasons for social movements to ascend and peak. This is a direct response to the argument that the availability of resources and political opportunities is the main ingredient for any social movements to rise. While having different fates, the two movements studied arose in the midst of violence between Christian and Muslim communities in Ambon, Indonesia: The Kopi Badati movement and Filterinfo. The book extends the applicability of the cultural approach in explaining why social movements discontinue, continue, and change over time, without discounting the importance of available resources and political opportunities.
Addressing a gap in the existing social movement studies, the book explains why a social movement disbands and why the other manages to continue and change after achieving its immediate goal. It will be of interest to academics in the fields of Asian studies, (new)-media and communications, civil society, and international development.
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1 Introduction
DOI: 10.4324/9781003263692-1
This book offers reasons for continuity, discontinuity, and change in social movements after they manage to introduce behavioral, cultural, political, and economic changes in their ecosystems. The public often sees these movements as emerging suddenly; in fact, they are not independent from what has occurred in the past and from the complexity of the present and future problems. The recent Black Lives Matter movement is inseparable from previous protest movements fighting for racial justice in the United States.1 Various movements in the Arab world, Western Europe, and Asia convey a message that many people in different locations persistently articulate everything they believe needs changing.2 One movement comes, another goes, and more are brewing, as societal problems continue to arise. These movements manifest in protests, street demonstrations, campaigns, and other forms of activism intended to make a change in societies.3
Activists demand solutions for the problems they deem to be affecting their communities and ecosystems in general. The values and beliefs to which these activists subscribe determine what it is that they consider problematic, who they see as the perpetrators, and what actions they think are necessary to hold them accountable.4 In this light, the activists point out a common enemy, that is, they believe everyone needs to defeat together, such as tyrants, injustice, inequality, destructive behavior, corrupt systems, repression of certain groups, suppression of freedom, or limited access to and control of information. Regardless of the embodiment of the enemy, movements represent the ideology that the activists employ to define how the world should ideally operate, resulting in a sense of right and wrong that fuels their desire for change.5
Within the last two decades, a myriad of movements has arisen in the world. From 2011 to 2013 alone, at least 400 digitally enabled social movements have emerged across 100 countries. These movements have taken advantage of the ubiquitous spread of social media (primarily Facebook and Twitter) to voice their concerns and immediate goals.6 The number of the movements in that period can be considered higher if other movements with little-to-no mass media coverage are included in the count. In the Global South, where the digital divide is pervasive, many movements still rely on traditional tactics, such as marching from the village to the capital city and organizing community protests to pressurize authorities to fix the problems affecting the life of the poor, vulnerable, and marginalized.7
A rapid adoption of information and communication technologies has generally made organizing and supporting social movements just one tap away. Reaching out to a massive audience is faster and more affordable than ever before.8 Every user in whatever capacity or intention can hit the send, like, share, and retweet buttons in an attempt to amplify the movements that resonate with their individual predispositions.9 These technology-supported movements can quickly articulate their voices, make use of the hive mind, and produce and distribute content for mobilizing resources and creating opportunities aimed at leading the movements to efficiently accomplish their immediate goals.
Some movements manage to go viral, become part of public discussions, and receive mass media attention. These movements begin from a few highly connected activists. The technology provides the platforms on which the activists can interact directly with others who can help their movements succeed.10 The movements become more visible, allowing for more people to support them. As the movements reach a critical mass, they begin to take off. Individuals can donate, share stories about the movements with others, and persuade more people to join in the movement. The logic is that the more visible the movements, the more diverse will be the ways through which the public can engage with them. This way the movements become successful in influencing the public agenda, boosting their capacity to achieve immediate goals.
Many movements often utilize both online and offline platforms.11 A mesh of technology-enabled and face-to-face interactions frequently appear in different activities throughout different episodes of these movements. The activists might begin the movements as in-person communication at cafés, on streets, and in community centers, and then move these to online platforms, as face-to-face interactions become risky, inefficient, or ineffective. In a different setting, some movements might move in the opposite direction. They shift from intensive online chats and information exchanges to street demonstrations and endless offline meetings. In other cases, offline and online interactions take place simultaneously from the beginning to the very end of the movement. In any of these circumstances, the dichotomy between online and offline interactions facilitating the movements toward their immediate goals is thin, indicating that activists often utilize any platforms within reach that they deem fit to their need to interact with like-minded others.12
Some social movements can therefore be independent from the use of any new media platforms, while others make substantial use of these in their activism or combine the media platforms with offline platforms to achieve immediate goals. The decision of whether to use the platforms or not will depend on the ecosystem where these movements occur. In a hostile ecosystem where authorities use geolocation and social media posts to track and crack down on activists and their supporters, the online sphere is risky for coordinating and sharing information. In an ecosystem where online platforms are unaffordable because of low-quality infrastructure and costly access fees, activists rely on more traditional face-to-face meetings for organizing movements. In this sense, political and economic factors influence activistsâ decisions on whether to adopt different modes or platforms in organizing their movements.
The ascending and peak episodes of social movements have been widely investigated because pundits and the mass media are acutely interested in reporting on what is trending, and they tend to utilize what available information they can access during these two episodes. Reporting on recent protest movements by Hongkongers against the Chinese government, the street demonstrations by casual workers in France asking for better conditions, the massive gathering of Muslims demanding respect for Islamic values in Jakarta, and Americansâ rage at police brutality against African Americans is likely to capture the immediate interests of their audiences.
At their peak, such movements are considered newsworthy. Their outcomes can be intriguingly analyzed, or speculated on, depending on the agenda that the mass media intend to set. Perhaps similarly, researchers hoard copies of social media posts in order to later dissect their tone, structure, and the mechanism enabling these posts to spread and affect public discourse. Both popular and research endeavors are pertinent for documenting how the movements begin, what they attempt to achieve in the short term, and why they surge to prominence. Broadly speaking, there has been abundant attention given to the ascending and peak episodes of social movements because during these periods, the events and developments are exciting and compelling to the eye of the observers, promulgating a tendency to focus on successful, currently popular movements as case studies. What happens after such movements have faded is generally overlooked.
Discontinuity, continuity, and change in social movements after this point have so far received only modest attention. What happens after the movements are no longer in the spotlight? How do their activists proceed with their life after the movements become less active? How can the movementsâ successes, or failures, affect subsequent movements? What is it that leads a movement to disband? How do its activists manage their relationships with others over time, and how do such relationships potentially affect subsequent movements? In general, a focus on the lifecycle of social movements is scant in both popular and scholarly reporting, compared to the existing attention given to how and why the movements initially occur.
In response, I attempt in this book to showcase discontinuity, continuity, and change in social movements. They ascend, peak, descend, enter an abeyance, and then may resurge or evolve into different movements. In that vein, they do not die out after their activities or the public attention they received dissipate. The overall situation affecting the situation in which the movements take place has often changed. Their activists move on with their lives. Some movements manage to achieve their immediate goals. Others fail. While these developments gradually lead movements to become less active or to disappear, the relationships that the activists develop during the ascent and peak periods last over time, provided these activists manage to preserve that relationship amid changes in their lives that come after. This relationship is one of the ties that bind the activists together despite changes in the movements and their lives. The glow of the movements keeps alive, as reflected in the activistsâ post-movement mundane interactions. Their ongoing relationship smooths the emergence of subsequent movements, as new grievances crystalize into a collective goal to address together while harnessing the positive feelings that have resulted from everyday interactions in post-movement life.
This book consists of twelve chapters. Chapter 2 briefly lays out its scholarly foundation. The concept of social movement episodes13 is the buttress for probable reasons allowing any social movement to continue and change. The episodes highlight what happen when the movements ascend, peak, descend, and enter abeyance, as their activities dissipate and activists move on with their lives.14 In an abeyant episode, many of these activists remain connected, allowing for the memories and friendships they have developed during the ascending and peak episodes to last over time. This persistent connection gives the movements a latent potential for resurgence and subsequent movements when the activists confront new problems impacting their societies.15
Chapter 3 is about the cases I use to illuminate what leads social movements to discontinue, continue, and change: the Kopi Badati movement and the Filterinfo group. Both occurred during a time of Muslim and Christian violence in Ambon, Indonesia in 2011 and had contributed to bringing peace to the island. The Badati movement aimed at connecting different religious communities at border areas that were prone to violent events. The Filterinfo group intended to counteract misinformation that spread widely during the violence. Respectively, the two movements represent why one movement stopped and why the other managed to continue becoming a force for change after achieving its original goal.
What can lead a social movement to disband will be discussed in Chapter 4. In the case of the Badati movement, friction among its activists can be one cause for a movement to discontinue. This friction corroded the activistsâ camaraderie, as their interpersonal relationships frayed, resulting in interaction avoidance and withdrawal from the movement. Despite their desire to continuously be part of a force for change, the Badati activistsâ different views regarding the best way to continue the movement, primarily in relation to working with external entities and funders, had fractured their unity. The activists were unable to reconcile this friction. Consequently, the camaraderie that used to be the backbone of the movement loosened, and was eventually discontinued amid the continuity of violence in Ambon. Following that, in different capacities, the activists sporadically organized other movements they deemed aligned with their values and what they believed could bring peace back to Ambon.
In Chapters 5 and 6, the rise and peak episodes of a social movement are apparent through the case of the Filterinfo group. The fight against divisive content and misinformation circulating in the media, on social media, and in-person conversations were reasons for Filterinfo's rise. During its peak, Filterinfo was an information hub for activists to coordinate ways for checking misinformation on the ground and sharing their findings to a wider audience. These chapters demonstrate how a movement is ongoing and how its activists attempt to mobilize the necessary resources to achieve the movement's immediate goal. At its peak, the movement becomes more apparent to the public.
Chapter 7 conveys the dynamics surrounding a social movement in abeyance. It highlights the interactions its activists engage in with one another to keep the glow of the movement alive aft...