CONTESTATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTHEAST ASIA State of Disorder Privatised Violence and the State in Indonesia Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir Contestations in Contemporary Southeast Asia Series Editors Vedi Hadiz, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia Jamie S. Davidson, Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore Caroline Hughes, Kroc Institute for Int’l Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA This Palgrave Macmillan book series publishes research that displays strong interdisciplinary concerns to examine links between political conflict and broader socio-economic development and change. While the emphasis is on contemporary Southeast Asia, works included within the Series demonstrate an appreciation of how historical contexts help to shape present-day contested issues in political, economic, social and cultural spheres. The Series will be of interest to authors undertaking single country studies, multi-country comparisons in Southeast Asia or tackling political and socio-economic contestations that pertain to the regionasawhole.Ratheruniquely,theserieswelcomesworksthatseekto illuminateprominentissuesincontemporarySoutheastAsiabycomparing experiences in the region to those in other parts of the world as well. Volumes in the series engage closely with the relevant academic litera- tureonspecificdebates,andincludeacomparativedimensionwithineven singlecountrystudiessuchthattheworkcontributesinsightstoabroader literature. Researchers based in Southeast Asian focused institutions are encouraged to submit their work for consideration. More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/16279 Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir State of Disorder Privatised Violence and the State in Indonesia Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir Asia Institute University of Melbourne Parkville, VIC, Australia ISSN 2661-8354 ISSN 2661-8362 (electronic) Contestations in Contemporary Southeast Asia ISBN 978-981-16-3662-2 ISBN 978-981-16-3663-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3663-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. 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Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respecttothematerialcontainedhereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeen made.Thepublisherremainsneutralwithregardtojurisdictionalclaimsinpublishedmaps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Planet Observer Gettyimage This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:152BeachRoad,#21-01/04GatewayEast,Singapore 189721, Singapore For Rafiqa, Aqil and Nabil Acknowledgements I am greatly indebted to numerous institutions and individuals in conducting the research for and writing this book. I would like to thank the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne for its support in completing the Ph.D. on which this book is based. Sincere gratitude must be conveyed to its director, Professor Vedi Hadiz, who super- vised my work and assisted me in settling into this school after moving from the Asia Research Centre (ARC) at Murdoch University. I also wish to thank the ARC, where I began my studies, for its supportive academicenvironment.Ilearntmuchatthisinstitution,particularlyfrom then director Professor Kevin Hewison and founder Emeritus Professor Richard Robison, who developed a school of thought on Asian studies that deeply influenced the critical politico-economy approach that I used inthisbook.Sadly,thisinstitutionhasnowbeenreconstituted.Mythanks alsogototheDepartmentofSociologyattheStateUniversityofJakarta, which allowed me to take a four-year leave of absence to undertake my Ph.D. studies. I am also grateful for the financial support received from the Australia Awards Scholarship, the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne for fieldwork funding and the Hadi Soesastro Prize for the additional funds provided for post-doctoral studies. I rewrote my Ph.D. thesis into a book during this post-doctoral opportunity. It was while writing this book that I was awarded The Dean’s Prize for Excellence in the PhD Thesis, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, for which I am also grateful. vii viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In particular, this book would not have come about without the support of my academic supervisors, Vedi and Dr. Ken Setiawan. Their patience in reading my chapter drafts and valuable feedback were helpful in crafting the arguments of this book. My relationship with them has gone beyond that of supervisor–student. Many friendly discussions have shaped not only the way I have presented my research but also how I viewtheworkofaccomplishedscholars.Dr.IanWilson,myco-supervisor at ARC, has also been highly supportive. His inputs were not only crit- ical for my research proposal but helped me to organise my ideas and identify the existing studies on privatised violence in Indonesia. I thor- oughly enjoyed our discussions and, at times, harsh debates during my studiesatARC.Thisbookisalsoaresponsetomanyofourdisagreements in exploring how privatised violence works and thrives in Indonesia’s democratic context. I am also grateful to A/Prof. Paul K. Gellert and A/Prof. Joshua Barker as well as three anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and constructive comments of the manuscript that help strengthen arguments of the book. I should also acknowledge all of my informants in Jakarta and surrounding areas, Solo and North Sumatra, who are too numerous to mention individually. Finally, my deepest appreciation is extended to my family: my mother, mysistersandmylatebrotheraswellastomyparents-in-law,allofwhom have been very supportive and to my late father and my uncle Lek Afif whohaveintroducedmeearliertointellectualpathways.Specialthanksgo to Rafiqa Qurrata A’yun for her enduring support and valuable input to this book and to our sons Aqil and Nabil who were separated from each other during my Ph.D. studies. Our reunion in Melbourne in the last couple of months of my study was a crucial moment in making possible thecompletionofmyPh.D.thesisthathasnowturnedintoabook.This book is dedicated to them. Melbourne, Australia Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir November 2021 Abstract The book examines the prevalence of privatised violence in social, polit- ical and economic arenas in many countries despite different political settings, by focussing on the Indonesian case. By employing a critical political economy approach, this book offers a new interpretation of the phenomenamadebyextendingtheinvestigationnotonlyintothenature ofthestatebutalsothenatureofcapital.Predominantstudieseitherfrom ‘state weakness’ idea derived from Weberian theory or the ‘fragmented state’ thesis developed from Migdalian state-in-society approach pay too much attention to the nature of the modern state in understanding the phenomenon of privatised violence. Such analyses cannot be discarded, butbysuggestingthatprivatisedviolenceisaresultofacertainfeatureof the state, they have placed the primacy of analysis on institutions, in the process inadvertently falling into an orientalist tendency. As a response, this book argues that the persistence of privatised violence is not solely related to the historical formation of the state, power and authority; it is also intricately related to predatory forms of capitalist development in the way understood by Marx as primitive accumulation. This form of capitalismischaracterisedbytheprevalentuseofextra-economicmeans— fusing political and economic forces—in the accumulation of power and wealth. Within this context, privatised violence is not an obstruction, but instrumental for the accumulation process, constituting the state of disorder. As another form of order found in the predatory capitalist ix x ABSTRACT context,thisdisorderhasitsownlogicsandisshapedasaresultofhistor- icalconflictsoverpowerandresources.Thepracticeofprivatisedviolence tends to be reproduced when predatory social relationships, a state of disorder, are prevalent in the workings of capitalism. As such, this book contributestounderstandingnotonlyIndonesia’sprivatisedviolencebut also the nature of Indonesian politics and the state. It reinforces critical political economy arguments that Indonesian politics is ruled by a state of disorder.