Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Pancasila'

Bibliography: leaves 96-100.
Pancasila, literally meaning "Five Principles", is the philosophical basis on which the modem Republic of Indonesia was established. It was devised in order to fulfil the goals and ends of independence. One such goal is the establishment of religious harmony and tolerance in national life. The aims of this thesis are, in the first place, to explore the importance of such a system as Pancasila, and to provide emphatic interpretation of Pancasila which in essence discloses the dynamics of religious interaction in Indonesia. This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part is dealing with the historical context out of which Pancasila was found. Here, it is ultimately concerned with the question of the genealogy of Pancasila. It is also dealing with the question of how Sukarno -the first Indonesian president and the father of Pancasila- laid its foundation. The second part is mainly concerned with the questions of, what the elements of Pancasila are, and through what mechanism Pancasila is maintained. Thus, while the first part is historical, the second is cultural, and examines Pancasila from the cultural point of view. Pancasila as a cultural system will be dealt with from two angles, namely Pancasila as an evaluative system, and Pancasila as a symbolic system.

The main objective of this study is to analyze three major Indonesian Muslim responses to the Pancasila, the state ideology of Indonesia. The first Muslim response occurred when the Secular Nationalists proposed, shortly before Indonesia's independence in 1945 and again later in the Constituent Assembly debates (1956-1959), that the Pancasila be the basis of state. The second Muslim response to the Pancasila took place in 1978 when the New Order government proposed that the P4 (Guidelines for Understanding and Practicing the Pancasila) be legalized. The Muslims at first objected to both the proposal of the Pancasila as the foundation of the state and that of the P4, but finally acquiesced. Each stage in this process was marked by debate over the role of Islam in Indonesian society and politics, which often led to antagonism between the government and the Muslim community. When the government proposed in 1982 that the Pancasila serve as the sole basis for all political and mass organizations, the third Muslim response occurred. The Muslims' acceptance of this policy marked the end of the government's application of severe policies towards them and has resulted in the former being allowed to play an even greater role in Indonesian politics than had previously been the case.

There has been an on-going debate in Indonesia about the implementation of the policy of Pers Pancasila between the press and the government. Therefore, this study will examine the extent to which both socio-cultural and sociopolitical factors influence the policy of Pers Pancasila as it actually operates. It aims to help understand why such a debate exists and why it is likely to continue. Using mainly a qualitative content analysis, this thesis examines reporting in the three Indonesian daily papers Kompas, Pelita, and The Jakarta Post between 1987- 1991. Four major news categories -news the press, religion, development, and Pancasila issues- are defined as being relevant to understanding the implementation of Pers Pancasila policies. Quantitative analysis is used by counting the frequency of the news as well as measuring the space of each news. In addition, qualitative analysis is applied by adopting the news-as-narrative approach used by scholars such as Entman, Ettema, and Glasser. Taking 180 editions of the three papers as a sample, this study finds that there were significant differences in the way the three papers reported the four selected news categories. Certain papers are found to be more critical in reporting certain news than the others. The affiliation of of each paper, to some extent, influences the attitudes of each paper. Pelita is affiliated to other Islamic papers, The Jakarta Post is affiliated to Christian papers which are in favour of the government, Kompas (the Christian based paper) sees itself as a neutral paper which represents the voice of the people. Although there have been disagreements on certain issues, such as in reporting news about development and Pancasila, the three papers were found to consistently apply the policy of Pars Panpasila. The papers are aware that although the government does not have direct means of controlling press reporting, it still has a range of control mechanisms which substantially determines the scope of Indonesian press freedom. Due to Indonesian cultural diversity, the government pursues a 'free responsible' press theory in that the press should have self-censorship. However, there has been different interpretations made by the press and the government about this policy which often cause misunderstandings.

Indonesia is home to 183 million people scattered through about 13 thousand islands. There are at least 583 dialects and also various religions and ethic groups exist in the country. Thus, the issue of unification is significant in Indonesia. To date, the state's ideology, Pancasila, has been considered as an effective device to bring the nation together. Pancasila is also used as a platform for Indonesia's developmental policy making. Media in Indonesia have long been seen as a means to support the development process. Indonesia has just completed its first Long Term Development Plan (1969 to 1994). The first Long Term Development Plan emphasized Indonesia's economy. Under the New Order administration, Indonesia has achieved both political stability and a continuing economic growth. Lately, there are some significant changes in the field of broadcasting infrastructure. On July 24th, 1990, the government issued the Decree of the Minister of Information (no. 111/Kep/Menpen/1990) which is unofficially known as the 'Open Skies Policy'. This policy allows the private sector to run private television stations and also gives permission to the public to own satellite dishes. The 'Open Skies Policy' can be seen as a breakthrough in Indonesian media infrastructure because from 1962 to 1989, Indonesia had only one, state owned, television station-TVRI. Now, there are five private stations and numerous foreign television stations beamed through at least 400 thousand satellite dishes in the country. The number of telephones, however, has not yet exceeded 1.7 million. This thesis recognizes that the 'Open Skies Policy' deserves thorough analysis because it reflects a series of significant changes in the Indonesian governments development strategies. This thesis sets itself the following objectives: to overview major development communication paradigms and to consider which development paradigm works most effectively in the Indonesian context; to explain how 'development' has been conceptualized in Indonesia and how this has manifested in media policy; to analyse the implications of the 'Open Skies Policy' and to consider whether it represents a new direction in Indonesia's developmental policy making.

This thesis explores the nature of the emancipation of Chinese Indonesians after the fall of Suharto in 1998. In contrast to the dominant scholarship, which has approached this subject in secular terms, the thesis foregrounds the historical role of religion in the process of political recognition of Chinese Indonesians during this period. This approach is substantiated by an exploration of the sites of Cheng Ho-related piety and Islamic devotion found across the archipelago. The ethnographic research into the Chinese sacred sites and temples where the spirit of the Ming Dynasty admiral, Cheng Ho, is worshipped is presented first. This exploration goes beyond the traditional focus on Javanese sites and uncovers a hitherto unstudied group of Chinese shrines in West Kalimantan. The discussion of the history of the formalisation of polymorphous Cheng Ho-related worshipping modalities is then linked to the history of the Chinese religion in Indonesia and its de-legitimisation. One of the main findings of this thesis is that the struggle for the recognition of Confucian Religion as an Indonesian religion is inextricable from the wider struggle for Chinese Indonesian emancipation. The ethnographies of the mosques devoted to Cheng Ho and—formally or informally—managed by the largest Chinese Muslim organisation in Indonesia offer new insights into the history behind the foundation of these mosques. The erection of the mosques is usually seen to have resulted from the successful outcome of the struggle to acknowledge Chinese as Muslim Indonesians after 2000, but it was, in fact, pioneered by Yunus Yahya in the 1980s and 90s. In addition to tracing the struggle for emancipation, this thesis also investigates the nature of anti-Chinese sentiment in Indonesian history. It establishes an organic connection between Dutch-nurtured anti-Chinese affective dispositions and the Cold War Sinophobia of the Western bloc. In doing so, it provides an insight into the analytical complicity of the Western bloc geopolitics of anti-Communist Area Studies with anti-Confucian politics in Indonesia. The political effect of Sinophobia as an emotional regime is studied here through Critical Race and Queer theory perspectives. Scholarship critically addressing the secular constraints on the liberal model of democracy, such as Poststructuralist theory, offers a framework for assessing piety in political terms. With the findings presented in this thesis, the study of democratic modalities alternative to those offered by liberalism can be deployed in scholarship on Indonesia.

The overarching characteristic of the 2009 legislative elections lay in the legislative candidates’ politics of image. It stemmed from the amendment to the election Law no. 10/2008 article 214 that ostensibly cut off the parties’ power in determining their candidates without the public’s “direct” consent. The public was then given a direct opportunity to choose and vote for their preferred candidates in the 2009 elections. This marked the emergence and proliferation of the candidates’ image construction, especially in the “outdoor” political arena. Billboards were chosen as the most effective outdoor advertising medium to introduce the candidates and propagate their slogans and platforms. However, at the same time, this mode of introducing and propagating reveals itself as an ideological map that demonstrates the contestation and synthesis of the two major ideological camps in the Indonesian political arena, i.e. the nationalist and Islamic. The candidates were coopted into and by this framework. They themselves could not escape as their political dispositions were unconsciously defined by this framework. Their billboards speak loudly the ideological contestation and synthesis. The investigation of the contestation and synthesis needs Bourdieuan analytical tools, such as capital, dispositions (habitus) and field. These are used not merely to show how the mechanism of the contestation and synthesis operated and was defined by the rules of political “game”, but also to show how this mechanism involves the intricate inter-relationships of various capitals, such as the political, social, economic, cultural and symbolic, that reflect the candidates’ (read also: the parties’) dispositions within the field of Pancasila discourse. Pancasila becomes not only an ideological basis for the state but also the bastion of the contestation and synthesis. The twin roles arguably derive from the dominant cultural root (Javanese) that highly values the concepts of harmony, tolerance and appropriateness as the essences that allow the ideological contestation and synthesis of the nationalist and Islamic strands as the dominant ideological markers in the Indonesian political arena. This thesis aims to demonstrate how the candidates’ billboards represent ideological contestation and synthesis as the billboards can also be perceived as the candidates’ visual “responses” which reflect their political dispositions and the process of taking stances amidst the contestation and synthesis. Therefore, this study was conducted in the form of a layered case study. Using a Bourdieuan lens, the first layer explores the historical background of the contestation and synthesis, their proliferation in the political arena and the mechanism of deploying these strands in the political parties’ branding. Using a social semiotic lens, the second layer investigates how the billboards as the products of the candidates’ political articulation represent not only these contestations and syntheses but also their dispositions. I found that the system of representation (on the candidates’ billboards) operates within the Javanese ideals of “equilibrium” in Pancasila discourse. These ideals frame the power relations between the nationalist and Islamic factions in an ostensible “consensus” in order to maintain the harmony and dilute ideological friction.

[Truncated abstract] As a developing country, Indonesia has been struggling with complex and contentious development issues since Independence in 1945. Despite remarkable economic achievement during the New Order period (1966-1998), poverty has persisted and the benefits of development have been unequally distributed. Social welfare — the system of social security to protect the well-being of the weaker members of society has received little attention in Indonesia, both from the state and from the scholarly community. The historical neglect of social welfare in Indonesia has begun to be addressed recently, with the Social Safety Net (SSN) initiative. SSN is a social welfare program that was launched by the government of Indonesia to mitigate the deleterious impacts of the economic crisis that hit the nation in 1997. This thesis aims to assess how the SSN accommodated the needs and aspirations of poor women, particularly those who live in rural areas. The rural poor deserve attention because poverty in rural areas is widespread and often intractable, and because poverty in rural areas tends to be more invisible than in urban areas. The urban poor are more visible, because they are “in the face” of the powerful every day, and they are more likely to be able to access agencies of power than the rural poor.

This thesis examines several dynamics of Islamic politics and Islamism in contemporary post-Soeharto Indonesia. Islamism in Indonesia is investigated both through the lens of a social movement and through its ability to effect political and social change for contemporary Indonesian society. Historical and post-independence contexts of Islamism are briefly covered, before a survey of Islam in contemporary Indonesian politics is presented. Ultimately, this thesis argues that Islamism has achieved some success and influence presently through its articulation of a religiously inspired agenda, but present divisions related to competing external strategies dealing with state, and its own internal fractures, will continue to hamper Indonesian Islamism as a fully effective realized social movement.