Subaltern Agency and Economic Resilience of Marginalized Community in Aceh
Abstract
This article examines the gender practices of a marginal community based on economic resilience among traditional women parking attendants in Aceh, Indonesia. It specifically aims to challenge the framing of prior scholarship, which generally states that the daily gender practice of the marginal Muslim community does not provide ample room for a woman’s autonomy. The data was collected using semi-structural interviews and non-participatory observations of ten traditional women parking attendants in Langsa, Aceh. Using the concepts of agency, the article shows the way the women of a marginal community formulate and redefine gender relations in their socio-cultural sphere. Finally, the finding shows the ambivalences and the contribution of the gender practice within the marginal community in Aceh over the enrichment of gender equality discourse in Muslim societies.
==========================================================================================================
ABSTRAK - Agensi Subaltern dan Resiliensi Ekonomi Kaum Marginal di Aceh. Artikel ini membahas praktik gender komunitas marjinal berdasarkan resiliensi ekonomi perempuan petugas parkirt radisional di Aceh, Indonesia. Secara spesifik, studi ini bertujuan menantang pembingkaian kesarjanaan terdahulu yang mayoritas menyatakan praktik gender sehari-hari komunitas Muslim marjinal tidak memberi ruang memadai terhadap otonomi perempuan. Data dikumpulkan melalui wawancara semi terstruktur dan observasi non-partisipatoris terhadap sepuluh petugas parkir perempuan tradisional di Langsa, Aceh. Hasil analisis dengan konsep agensi, tulisan ini memperlihatkan cara dimana perempuan pada komunitas marjinal memformulasi dan meredefinisirelasi gender dalam ruang sosio-kulturalnya. Temuan kajian juga memperlihatkan ambivalensi dan kontribusi praktik gender dalam komunitas marjinal di Aceh terhadap pengayaan wacana kesetaraan gender dalam masyarakat Muslim.
Keywords
Full Text:
DOWNLOAD PDFReferences
Ahmed, Sarah. 2019. “‘I Am My Own Person,’ Women’s Agency inside and Outside the Home in Rural Pakistan.” Gender, Place & Culture: 1–19. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0966369X.2019.1664420.
Al-Amin, Md., and Golam M. Mathbor. 2019. “Agency, Empowerment and Intra-Household Gender Relations in Bangladesh: Does Market-Oriented Microcredit Contribute?” Asian Journal of Women’s Studies 25(2): 258–84.
Aningsih, Indah Fitri. 2015. “Pekerja Parkir Perempuan Di Kota Dumai (Studi Tentang Proses Penetapan Lokasi Parkir).” JOM FISIP 2(1): 1–15.
Ansor, Muhammad. 2014a. “Being Woman in the Land of Shari’a: Politics of the Female Body, Piety and Resistance in Langsa, Aceh.” Al-Jami’ah 52(1): 59–83.
———. 2014b. “Berbagi Suami Atas Nama Tuhan: Pengalaman Keseharian Perempuan Dipoligami Di Langsa.” Ijtihad: Jurnal Wacana Hukum Islam dan Kemanusiaan 14(1): 41–63.
Ansor, Muhammad, and Yaser Amri. 2016. “Beyond Pious Critical Agency: Women, Interfaith Marriage and Religious Conversion In Aceh.” Analisa 1(2): 217–38.
———. 2020. “Being Christians in the Acehnese Way: Illiberal Citizenship and Women’s Agency in the Islamic Public Sphere.” Journal of Indonesian Islam 14(1): 77–112.
Appiah, K. Anthony. 1994. “Identity, Authenticity, Survival: Multicultural Societies and Social Reproduction.” In Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann. Princeton, New Jersey, 149–63.
Archer, Margaret S. 2017. Structure, Culture and Agency Selected Papers of Margaret Archer. eds. Tom Brock, Mark Carrigan, and Graham Scambler. London and New York: Routledge.
Ariff, Tun Nur Afizah Zainal. 2012. “Ethnographic Discourse Analysis: Conversion to Islam Ceremony.” Discourse & Communication 6(3): 295–322.
Aronson, Jodi. 1994. “A Pragmatic View of Thematic Analysis.” Qualitative Report 2(1): 1–3.
Barlas, Asma. 2002. ‘“Believing Women”’ in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Benhabib, Seyla. 1992. Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Berger, Peter L. 1969. The Social Reality of Religion. England: Pinguin Books.
Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London and New York: Pinguin Books.
Bernard, H Russell. 2006. Research Method in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. New York: Altamira Press.
Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge.
———. 1998. Culture’s in Between. ed. David Bennett. London: Routledge.
Bilge, Sirma. 2010. “Beyond Subordination vs. Resistance: An Intersectional Approach to the Agency of Veiled Muslim Women.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 31(1): 9–28.
Braun, Virginia, and Victoria Clarke. 2006. “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology.” Qualitative Research in Psychology 3(2): 77–101.
Briones, Leah. 2009. Empowering Migrant Women: Why Agency and Rights Are Not Enough. England: Ashgate.
Broch, Harald Beyer. 2011. “Comments on the World in Which They Live: A Narrative-Theory Approach to Meaning-Making among Young Girls on Timpaus Island, Indonesia.” Asian Anthropology 10(1): 19–43.
Butler, Judith. 1997. Exitable Speech: A Politics of Pervormative. New York: Routledge.
———. 2004. Undoing Gender. New York and London: Routledge.
Chapman, Madeleine. 2016. “Feminist Dilemmas and the Agency of Veiled Muslim Women Analysing Identities and Social Representations.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 23(3): 237–50.
Creswell, John W. 2007. Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches. London: Sage Publications.
Dawis, Amee. 2010. Orang Indonesia Tionghoa Mencari Identitas. Jakarta: Gramedia.
Emerson, Robert M., Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw. 2001. “Participant Observation and Fieldnotes.” In Handbook of Ethnography, eds. Paul Atkinson et al. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore: Sage Publications, 323–68.
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.
———. 1980. “Truth and Power.” In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writtings, ed. Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books, 109–33.
Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gillham, Bill. 2008. Observation Techniques: Structured to Unstructured. London: Continuum.
Hemmings, Clare, and Amal Treacher Kabesh. 2013. “The Feminist Subject of Agency: Recognition and Affect in Encounters with ‘the Other.’” In Gender, Agency, and Coercion, eds. Sumi Madhok, Anne Phillips, and Kalpana Wilson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 29–46.
Henrickson, Mark et al. 2013. “‘Just Talking About It Opens Your Heart’: Meaning-Making among Black African Migrants and Refugees Living with HIV.” Culture, Health & Sexuality: An International Journal for Research, Intervention and Care 15(8): 910–23.
Hoffman, Sarah J., Jessica Dockter Tierney, and Cheryl L. Robertson. 2017. “Counter-Narratives of Coping and Becoming: Karen Refugee Women’s Inside/Outside Figured Worlds.” Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 24(9): 1346–64.
Holland, Dorothy, William Lachicotte Jr., Debra Skinner, and Carole Cain. 1998. Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, Massachussets, London, and England: Harvad University Press.
Hutcheon, Emily, and Bonnie Lashewicz. 2014. “Theorizing Resilience: Critiquing and Unbounding a Marginalizing Concept.” Disability & Society 29(9): 1383–97.
Ibrahim, A. (2012). Gala dan Rahn: Analisis Korelasi dari Perpsektif Ekonomi Islam. SHARE Jurnal Ekonomi dan Keuangan Islam, 1(1), 41-49.
Johnstone, Leigh, Anil Bhagwanjee, and Shaida Bobat. 2016. “Women’s Narratives about Identity, Power and Agency within a Mining Organisation in South Africa.” Psychology and Developing Societies 28(2): 280–312.
Kamri, N. A., Ramlan, S. F., & Ibrahim, A. (2014). Qur’anic Work Ethics. Journal of Usuluddin, 40(-), 135-172.
Kabeer, Naila. 1999. “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment.” Development and Change 30(3): 435–64.
Kennelly, Jacqueline Joan. 2009. “Youth Cultures, Activism and Agency: Revisiting Feminist Debates.” Gender and Education 21(3): 259–72.
Korsgaard, Christine M. 2009. Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Listerborn, Carina. 2015. “Geographies of the Veil: Violent Encounters in Urban Public Spaces in Malmo, Sweden.” Social & Cultural Geography 16(1): 95–115.
Lucas, Sarah Drewes. 2018. “The Primacy of Narrative Agency: Re-Reading Seyla Benhabib on Narrativity.” Feminist Theory 19(2): 123–43.
Madhok, Sumi. 2013. “Action, Agency, Coercion: Reformatting Agency for Oppressive Contexts.” In Gender, Agency, and Coercion, eds. Sumi Madhok, Anne Phillips, and Kalpana Wilson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 102–21.
Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
———. 2006. “Feminist Theory, Agency, and the Liberatory Subject: Some Reflections on the Islamic Revival in Egypt.” The Finnish Society for the Study of Religion 42(1): 31–71.
Maykut, Pamela, and Richard Morehouse. 1994. Beginning Qualitative Research: A Philosophic and Practical Guide. London: The Palmer Press.
McHoul, Alec, and Wendy Grace. 1993. A Foucault Primer: Discourse, Power and the Subject. London and New York: Routledge.
McNay, Lois. 2000. Gender and Agency: Reconfiguring the Subject in Feminist and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.
———. 2004. “Agency and Experience: Gender as a Lived Relation.” In Feminism after Bourdieu, eds. Lisa Adkins and Baverley Skeggs. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 175–90.
———. 2008. “The Trouble with Recognition: Subjectivity, Suffering, and Agency.” Sociological Theory 26(3): 271–96.
Mir-Hosseini, Ziba. 2006. “Muslim Women’s Quest for Equality: Between Islamic Law and Feminism.” Critical Inquiry 32(4): 629–45.
Mishra, Nripendra Kishore, and Tulika Tripathi. 2011. “Conceptualising Women’s Agency, Autonomy and Empowerment.” Economic and Political Review 46(11): 58–65.
Misra, Joya, and Frances Akins. 1998. “The Welfare State and Women: Structure, Agency, and Diversity.” Social Politics 5(3): 259–285.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1984. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Boundary 12(3): 333–59.
Musa, A., Halim, H., Khalidin, B., & Ibrahim, A. (2021). What Determines Muslim-Friendly Tourism in Aceh? Iqtishadia, 14(1), 81-106.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2000. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge, New Yor, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo: Cambridge University Press.
Nystad, Kristine. 2014. “Community Resilience Factors among Indigenous Sámi Adolescents: A Qualitative Study in Northern Norway.” Transcultural Psychiatry 51(5): 651–72.
Okin, Susan Moller. 1998. “Feminism and Multiculturalism: Some Tensions.” Ethichs 108(4): 661–84.
———. 1999. “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?” In Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, eds. Joshua Cohen, Matthew Howard, and Martha C. Nussbaum. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 7–26.
Phillips, Deborah. 2015. “Claiming Spaces: British Muslim Negotiations of Urban Citizenship in an Era of New Migration.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 40(1): 62–74.
Rinaldo, Rachel. 2014. “Pious and Critical: Muslim Women Activists and the Question of Agency.” Gender & Society 20(10): 1–23.
Roulston, K. 2001. “Data Analysis and ‘Theorizing as Ideology.’” Qualitative Research 1: 279–302.
van der Schyff, Gerhard, and Adriaan Overbeeke. 2011. “Exercising Religious Freedom in the Public Space: A Comparative and European Convention Analysis of General Burqa Bans.” European Constitutional Law Review 7(3): 424–52.
Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Resistance. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
———. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Sewell Jr, William H. 1992. “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation.” American Journal of Sociology 98(1): 1–29.
Siapno, Jacqueline Aquino. 2000. “Gender, Nationalism, and the Ambiguity of Female Agency in Aceh, Indonesia, and East Timor.” In Frontline Feminisms. Women, War, and Resistance, London: Routledge, 275–95.
Smith, Vicki. 2001. “Ethnographies of Work and the Work of Ethnographers.” In Handbook of Ethnography, eds. Paul Atkinson et al. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore: Sage Publications, 220–33.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grosberg. Urbana: University Illionis Press, 271–313.
Spradley, James P. 1979. The Ethnographic Interview. Fort Worth, Philadelphia, San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.
Stacki, Sandra L. 2008. “Structure and Agency in India’s Teacher Education Policy: Women Teachers’ Progress through a Critical Feminist Lens.” In The Structure and Agency of Women’s Education, ed. Mary Ann Maslak. Albany: State University of New York Press, 49–66.
Usman, A. R., Aminullah, M., Rizha, F., Zulyadi, T., Julianto, Syam, H. M., . . . Salam, A. J. (2020). Corona in Culture: Tradition of Warding Off the Plague in Acehnese Society. PalArch's Journal of Archaeology of Egypt / Egyptology, 17(4), 314-327.
Uppalury, Suma, and Kumar Bhaskar Racherla. 2014. “Social Production in a Collectivist Culture: Exploring Structure and Agency in the Work-Life Balance of Indian Women Executives.” Gender in Management: An International Journal 29(6): 352–74.
Willemse, Karin. 2007. One Foot in Heaven: Narratives on Gender and Islam in Darfur, West-Sudan. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22373/share.v11i1.10362
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2022 Muhammad Suhaili Sufyan, Muhammad Ansor, Mawardi Mawardi, Syawaluddin Ismail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.