Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T14:36:18.311Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Great Rumor Mill: Gossip, Mass Media, and the Ninja Fear

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2010

Nicholas Herriman
Get access

Abstract

Different methods of communication imply different social and political relations. Generally, mass media are distributed through centralized broadcast stations or presses and controlled by the elite. Face-to-face communications, which circulate through physically close contact between people, have more subversive potential. The author analyzes rumors spread in the press and by word of mouth during October and November 1998 in East Java, Indonesia. Conspirators and ninjas were suspected of killing many alleged sorcerers and persecuting the traditionalist Muslim majority. In response, local residents established guards against, attacked, and even killed suspected ninjas. Suspicion also was directed against the government, elites, and the armed forces. This subversive content is attributed to the interaction of two forms of communication: oral rumors became written rumors, and vice versa.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 69 , Issue 3 , August 2010 , pp. 723 - 748
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Aditjondro, George. 2000. “Ninjas, Manggalas, Monuments, and Mossad Manuals: An Anthropology of State Terror.” In Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror, ed. Sluka, Jeffrey A., 158–88. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beatty, Andrew. 1999. Varieties of Javanese Religion: An Anthropological Account. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bertrand, Romain. 2004. “‘Behave Like Enraged Lions’: Civil Militias, the Army and the Criminalisation of Politics in Indonesia.” Global Crime 6 (3–4): 325–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bohannan, Paul. 1958. “Extra-Processual Events in Tiv Political Institutions.” American Anthropologist 60 (1): 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bubandt, Nils. 2008. “Rumors, Pamphlets, and the Politics of Paranoia in Indonesia.” Journal of Asian Studies 67 (3): 789–817.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Paul A. 1997. History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Stanley. 1980. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Das, Veena. 2007. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Das, Veena, and Poole, Deborah. 2004. “State and Its Margins: Comparative Ethnographies.” In Anthropology in the Margins of the State, ed. Veena, Das and Deborah, Poole, 3–33. Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
George, Kenneth M. 2004. “Violence, Culture, and the Indonesian Public Sphere: Reworking the Geertzian Legacy.” In Violence, ed. Whitehead, N. L., 25–54. Oxford: James Curry.Google ScholarPubMed
Gluckman, Max. 1963. “Gossip and Scandal.” Current Anthropology 4 (3): 307–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, Henrietta. 2000. “Newspapers and Nationalism in Rural China 1890–1929.” Past and Present 166 (1): 181–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hefner, Robert W. 1987. “Islamizing Java? Religion and Politics in Rural East Java.” Journal of Asian Studies 46 (3): 533–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herriman, Nicholas. 2006. “Fear and Uncertainty: Local Perceptions of the Sorcerer and the State in an Indonesian Witch-Hunt.” Asian Journal of Social Sciences 34 (3): 360–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herriman, Nicholas. 2007. “‘Sorcerer’ Killings in Banyuwangi: A Re-Examination of State Responsibility for Violence.” Asian Studies Review 31 (1): 61–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herriman, Nicholas. 2008a. “A Din of Whispers: Community, State Control, and Violence in Indonesia.” PhD diss., University of Western Australia.Google Scholar
Herriman, Nicholas. 2008b. “Sorcerer Killings in 1998 East Java: An Analysis of Press Reportage.” Paper presented at the 17th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, Melbourne. http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/mai/asaa/proceedings.php [accessed May 3, 2010].Google Scholar
Kammen, Douglas. 2001. “The Trouble with Normal: The Indonesian Military, Paramilitaries, and the Final Solution in East Timor.” In Violence and State in Suharto's Indonesia, ed. Benedict, R.O'G, Anderson, 156–88. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University, Southeast Asia Program.Google Scholar
Lakpesdam-NU. 1998. Hasil Penelitian: Pelanggaran Hak-Hak Manusia di Jawa Timur. Jombang: Lakpesdam-NU.Google Scholar
van Langenberg, Michael. 1990. “Gestapu and State Power in Indonesia.” In The Indonesian Killings of 1965–66: Studies from Java and Bali, ed. Robert, Cribb, 45–61. Clayton, Victoria, Australia: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University.Google Scholar
McVey, Ruth. n.d. The Great Fear in Indonesia. n.p.Google Scholar
Retsikas, Konstantinos. 2006. “The Semiotics of Violence: Ninja, Sorcerers, and State Terror in Post-Soeharto Indonesia.” Bijdragen, tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 162 (1): 56–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rude, George. 1981. The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730–1848. London: Lawrence & Wishart.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, Krishna, and Hill, David T.. 2000. Media, Culture and Politics in Indonesia. South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Siegel, James. 2001. “Suharto, Witches.” Indonesia 71:27–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siegel, James. 2002. “Some Views of East Javanese Sorcery.” Archipel 64:163–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siegel, James. 2006. Naming the Witch. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, S.A. 2006. “Talking Toads and Chinless Ghosts: The Politics of Superstitious Rumors in the People's Republic of China, 1961–1965.” American Historical Review 111 (2): 405–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spyer, Patricia. 2006. “Some Notes on Disorder in the Indonesian Postcolony.” In Law and Disorder in the Postcolony, ed. Jean, Comaroff and Comaroff, John L.188–218. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Tambiah, Stanley J. 1996. Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tay, Elaine. 2006. “Discursive Violence on the Internet and the May 1998 Riots.” In Violent Conflicts in Indonesia: Analysis, Representation, Resolution, ed. Coppel, Charles A.58–71. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Taylor, A. J. P. 1966. The First World War: An Illustrated History. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Thufail, Fadjar I. 2005. “Ninjas in Narratives of Local and National Violence in Post-Soeharto Indonesia.” In Beginning to Remember: The Past in the Indonesian Present, ed. Zurbuchen, Mary S.150–67. Singapore: Singapore University Press.Google Scholar
Tonkinson, Robert. 1974. The Jigalong Mob: Aboriginal Victors of the Desert Crusade. Menlo Park, Calif.: Cummings.Google Scholar