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Civis Vol. 2, No. 3, Dec 2010
The increase of internal conflicts related to ethnic and religious identity in the Reformation period makes us all ask about the meaning of diversity for our society today. Ethnic and religious diversity are not just meaningless attributes to characteristics of people. This diversity of ethnic groups and religions and their relation with each other also should be viewed as a product of the government’s public policies.
Government through its public policy plays three important roles in regulating the relations between groups in our society. First, normatively, the government has a role in unifying the diversity that exists by continuously socializing the values of unity. But what is the unity that is right for our society today? To answer we need to ask some fundamental questions. What kind of Nationhood that we want to build? Is it a nationhood which bases itself on a particularly dominant ethnic or religion, or is it a nationhood of that relies on universal values?
In the period of reformation and the democratic climate, it does not seem we can build a nation based on a nationhood that bases itself on a certain ethnicity or a particular religion only (ethnocultural nationhood). Taking a lesson from the New Order period, this approach led to unrest and even the strengthening of boundaries between ethnic or other religious groups that make up this nation. The more favorable option is an institution that recognizes the existence of ethnic groups or religions and their significant role in the administration of the country (multicultural nationhood) or one that does not use altogether any attribute that can be traced directly to a particular ethnic group or religion. Universal values then are used instead by states to formulate public policy, and every citizen is encouraged to have higher loyalty to the country compared to his own ethnic groups (civic nationhood).
Secondly, the government and its public policy need to functionally encourage the integration of society as a whole. The Government needs to create a pattern of mutual relations between ethnic or religious groups or other groups in the society. The question becomes is there still exists a lot of policies that discriminate against certain ethnic or religious group? Are there any policies regarding the sources of livelihood of the people that turned out to only benefit a particular ethnic group or religion? Are there any policies that do not take into account the economic disparities that occur in various areas between natives and immigrants? Do not let the current public policies to actually lead towards institutional discrimination that sharpens the differences between groups or lead to polarizations based on ethnic and religious groups.
Thirdly, the government also has a role to ensure security for all existing groups. This security is realized when the agents of law is firm and strong when cracking down on all forms of violations of law and the use of violence by anyone and from any group especially relating to the conflicts that are related to ethnicity or religion. Here the government through its legal devices should be consistent in assuming the position of neutrality and abstain from siding on the dominant side with a particular group. For if the impression of neutrality is lost it will cause the security dilemma for other groups and vigilantism may arise.
Public Policy and Cross-Cutting Cleavages
Seymor Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (1967), proposed the concept of cross-cutting cleavages that describes the differences or contradictions within a society to be related to at least two dimensions: territorial-cultural and functional.
Territorial-cultural dimension includes (1) clash of marginalized groups such as local communities, minority groups, or groups that are culturally threatened by pressures from the dominant national elites (usually governments and bureaucracies that lean to centralization, standardization, rationalization) and (2) conflicts among elites who compete to gain the upper hand in shaping the purpose, control mechanisms, organization, and public policies for the entire system.
Functional dimension ranges from (1) disputes involving competition over resources, products, and economic benefits between producers and buyers, between workers and owners, between lenders and borrowers, up to (2) conflicts related to social identity, mores, group conceptions of “us” against “them” (for example the existence of religious and ideological movements that conflicts with their communities). It is a matter of historical evidence that social conflicts that occur in history are the effect of these various tensions.
In the context of our society, it is attractive to consider that although most of the analysis showed the main problems of social conflict is linked to rampant economic inequality, it is not a the social class consciousness that has awakened, but rather the rallying towards of ethnic or religious groups. This shows that there are still polarizing problems among the various ethnic groups and religions. This also shows the prevailing identification of people towards their ethnic and religious groups rather than attachment to other groups outside the ethnic and religious groups.
Therefore, public policies that encourage cross-cutting affiliation become important. The emergence of social conflicts with ethnic and religion nuances can be reduced by not making ethnic and religious groups the only channel people’s aspirations. In a modern and democratic society a person’s ideological makeup usually becomes complex with the acquisition of various societal status and roles.
Similarly, the types and kinds of groups also increase. The more a person grows conscious of his part in various social groups within the society, themore open and tolerant he becomes of differences, so much so that the potential for social conflict can be reduced. This can happen because there come into existence meeting points in the fabric that makes up the different groups so that he pushed to have loyalty towards multiple groups at once.
An example will be an individual who is a Christian, follows nationalist community organizations, works in the Department of Religion, and interacts in a circle of friends that is predominantly Muslim. This person is more difficult to fall for ethnic or religious provocations. In addition, public policies that encourage social mobility is also crucial in building this cross-cutting affiliation. Examples include:1) improvements of education in local communities, and 2) availability of state or overseas university scholarship for territorially and economically marginalized groups.
Data-Based Public Policy
In addition to problems of economic inequality, struggles for power, or injustice, problems in our public policy can be seen from the disregard in usage of data on ethnicity and religion during the planning phase of public policy making. In managing a country with a burgeoning population and a vast territory, the government naturally is expected to have and make use of accurate data about the composition and variations of its population. In the context of ethnicity and religion, the policy of obscuring data under the excuse of “SARA” in the New Order has become a pieces of the proverbial simalakama fruit, because diversity, growth and spread of population based on ethnic or religious groups have not recorded properly as a result. Unfortunately, even in the most recent 2010 population census, the types of questions asked in regards to ethnicity and religion are inadequate to accommodate the diversity that exists in our society.
Closing
It is time that we open our eyes to acknowledge the importance of group consciousness that arise from ethnic and religion, and to consider its impact to be as significant as the impact of economic and technological developments. If this problem of economic inequality and injustice are not just felt by a handful of individuals (personal troubles of milieu) but are also felt by a larger number of people within ethnic or religious groups the same and even has become an issue in our society. (public issues of social structure), and systematically occur continuously, the awareness group would easily be engineered as an instrument of social conflict. The State through its instruments should act as a unifying agent to bridge the various interest groups and mold them to be fundamental building blocks of the nation. **
Auhor
Daisy Indira Yasmine, M.Soc.Sci. is a member of the Faculty of Social-Political Sciences (FISIP) of the University of Indonesia.