Ian Douglas Wilson

I followed Bang Cep on his nightly rounds of the food stalls surrounding the bus terminal. This was Bang Cep’s territory and he walked with an exaggerated swaggering confidence. Vendors he approached for their daily ‘protection’ fee greeted him politely, but with their eyes betraying an apprehension bordering on fear. At Pak Dede’s fried tofu stall Bang Cep loudly berated him for his lateness in paying his dues, slamming his ring encrusted hand on the flimsy wooden stall to emphasis the point. Eyes downcast, Pak Dede muttered an apology promising to pay in full, with interest, the next day. Perhaps due to my presence, Bang Cep didn’t follow up with the beatings and ‘bitch slaps’ he was infamous for. I returned to Pak Dede’s warung later that evening for dinner. Asking him about the encounter with Bang Cep, he let out a pained sigh, “Yeah, as you saw that’s what we have to deal with. We don’t like it, but what can we do? People say he is kebal (invulnerable), plus he is close to the police. Either way, if it weren’t him it would be someone else. For now at least he is the biggest cock (yang paling jago) around here, and unless we want to get bashed we do what he says.

Ethnic gang violence is often depicted as a clash between criminals pursuing instrumental advantage, and also as a clash of ideological fanatics pursuing collective nationalist, ethnolinguistic or ethnoreligious rights. However, there is an apparent tension between the conceptualization of such violence as the rational self-interest of deprived individuals, and as the irrational fanaticism of anomic communities. The examination of one particular ethnic gang, the Betawi Brotherhood Forum which operates in Jakarta, Indonesia, indicates how both dimensions of violence coexist and interweave. The apparent analytical tension between individualistic pragmatism and collectivist moral absolutism is resolved by showing how the gang responds to their disillusionment with the state by constructing for themselves a ‘state proxy’ role. This response is portrayed as based upon ‘ressentiment’ – the ‘faulty rationality’ which marginalized individuals adopt so as to translate their clashes of material self interests into the moral conflict between stereotyped communities- the virtuous ethnic Us against the demonized ethnic Other.