As an American living in an Indonesian city, I regularly find myself in situations where I am expected to pay someone who, in my estimation, has not provided me with any services warranting my payment. When I hand money to parking attendants or street performers (pengamens) in Yogyakarta, I often find myself questioning whether they deserve my money. But this begs a fundamental question: who deserves money, and from whom, and when, and on what grounds?
I (along with most Americans) am accustomed to a dominant economic mindset in which payment is only necessary (and hence, deserved) on two conditions:
- a transfer of labor for money, when the recipient of my payment provides me with a service or good, like when I pay for a sandwich or for a band to play at my birthday party; or
- a transfer of capital for money, when the recipient of my payment is the owner of capital that I use, such as when I pay for parking at the mall or rent a car.
In Indonesia, there is certainly an abundance of circumstances in which payment is accompanied by one of these conditions. (I regularly buy people's labor in the form of food, and I rent capital in the form of a room in a boarding house.) However, there are also numerous situations in which I find myself paying someone who—from an American capitalist perspective—doesn't deserve that money.
Street Performers and Parking Attendants
If I eat dinner at a small roadside restaurant in Yogyakarta, I usually have three expenses: the price of the food I purchase, token change for however many street performers happen to stop by my table that night (around $0.07 each), and the fee given to a motor bike parking attendant (either $0.07 or $0.15). While purchasing food makes complete economic sense to the American mind, the latter two expenses do not fit the above mentioned capitalist conditions necessitating payment. Obviously, there are parking fees and street performers in America as well, but the social norms and economics of these phenomena are remarkably different in Indonesia.
In Indonesian, someone who sings or performs in public for money is called a pengamen. In America, a street performer usually stays in one spot (like a sidewalk or a subway station) and receives money from those walking by. An Indonesian pengamen, on the other hand, roams around the city playing in a succession of restaurants and requesting money from customers. They most often perform in groups of around three or four, but a lone pengamen is not a rare sight either.
The most evident difference between pengamens and American street performers is that, in Indonesia, you are not actually paying for them to play music or even to show that you appreciate their music; you are, in fact, almost always paying for them to go away. This reality is understood by both the pengamens and those who pay them. When a pengamen stops by someone's table, they will wait as long as it takes for at least one person at that table to put some small bills or coins into their cup, and then they will immediately proceed to the next table. In all my time in Indonesia, I have only once witnesses a customer ask and pay for a performance to continue. This is partly because the music being performed often is neither enjoyable nor intended to be enjoyable. A pengamen can even be just a single person unenthusiastically shaking a tambourine.
In America, a street performer's income is usually related to their skill and the quality of their music, as their payment can essentially be viewed as an exchange for services. This is not at all the case in Indonesia. The more irritating a pengamen is, the quicker people generally are to pay them to leave, meaning they often make more than their highly skilled counterparts. This system of street performance in Indonesia is clearly not based on a transfer of payment for the provision of services.
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| A group of young men working as pengamens approach people eating at a roadside stall |
Payment for parking is similar. At almost any small retail or food venue in a city where someone dismounts from their motor bike, they will be expected to pay a parking attendant a fee of either one thousand or two thousand rupiahs, equivalent to $0.07 and $0.15 respectively. But a parking attendant is rarely affiliated with or employed by the establishments he works in front of, nor does he own the land that he charges people to park their bikes on. They are simply men (parking attendants are always men, and I have never seen an exception) who wear orang jackets and sit on stools watching over one or more parking areas. A common explanation is that these men are affiliated with a gangster (preman) who gives them the exclusive right to work their territory, but I have no ability to confirm this or to say how often this might be the case.
While these parking attendants clearly aren't the owners of the capital (parking space) that you are using, there is still the element (though often just the illusion) of a services-for-payment exchange. These attendants are responsible for people's helmets not getting stolen, although I've never heard of a friend having their helmet stolen after parking in a lot not guarded by an attendant. Also, when pulling out into the road, he will walk a few yards into the street, blow his whistle, and motion for cars and other bikes to slow down and give you room to pull into the street and merge into the flow of traffic. When traffic is heavy, this can be somewhat of a convenience, but merging one's bike onto a crowded street is something an Indonesian with a motor bike does countless times every day without any assistance. What's more telling is that even when the road is completely empty, the parking attendant will usually still go through the same motions of helping—or at least appearing to help—you pull out onto the street.
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| A man in a typical parking attendant outfit |
What's interesting about both street performers and parking attendants is that there is at least the facade of an adherence to capitalist standards of payment. A parking attendant goes through the motions of seeming like he is helping you pull onto the street even if that's actually no help at all. On the surface, this is a services-for-payment exchange, but in reality, the service is of little to no real value. Similarly, a pengamen who simply shakes a tambourine until you pay them has no intention of providing a desired service (i.e. enjoyable music) to a restaurant customer, but as long as they have an instrument in their hands, there is the illusion that those paying have somehow benefitted from the interaction.
Social Welfare and Indonesian Culture
But there are also social and cultural factors that seem to play an even larger role. I often ask my Indonesian friends why parking attendants and pengamens are entitled to their money. Most express frustration with having to pay them (the money may seem insignificant to an American, but when a quality meal can be found for around $0.50, paying $0.30 for parking and two rounds of pengamens can increase the cost of a meal by 60%), but they also mention that this is how parking attendants and pengamens make a living. Without these payments, most of my Indonesian friends remind me, they would be unable to support their families.
This sense of communal responsibility for the welfare of others is a sentiment held by plenty of people around the world, whether proponents of state-led socialism or the private charity system. However, there are certain elements of Indonesian culture promoting such an outlook that may partially help explain general attitudes towards parking attendants and pengamens.
In post-colonial Indonesia, political and social rhetoric emphasizes the corrupting influence of Dutch rule and the tranquil and symbiotic communality of the primordial Indonesian ethos. Regardless of whether or not this utopia ever existed, this communal spirit has become a prominent theme in Indonesian nationalist discourse. The concept of gotong royong (originally from the Javanese for "communal work," but possibly now better translated as "mutual assistance") is especially notable. When Indonesians engage in gotong royong, they gather within a community organization (whether a village, a school, or a neighborhood) and contribute labor to a common cause, whether cleaning a road or constructing a badminton court. While paying a parking attendant or pengamen seems to be the exact opposite of gotong royong (they profit without labor, rather than labor without ), it is representative of the ethics of the idea: fellow Indonesians are brothers and sisters (saudara) and share a duty to help one another.
It is also worth noting that Indonesians place especially high value on being ikhlas, which in Indonesian includes the meaning of being selfless and detached from whatever losses one suffers. It is likewise impolite to lament one's own misfortune. This ethic is held strongly in Indonesian culture and certainly affects attitudes towards paying a parking attendant or pengamen, but perhaps even more powerful is the social pressure that results from the expectation to be ikhlas. Payment to a pengamen always takes place on a social stage, when friends, families, or couples are eating out together, and this can result in social pressure to appear ikhlas and not stingy (pelit).
Between Capitalist Logic and Human Need
Indonesia's official unemployment rate is not high; it was calculated at 5.94% for 2014. However, an estimated 55 to 65 percent of Indonesian workers are employed in the informal sector. This means that there isn't necessarily an abundance of formal jobs, but that—as anyone who lives in the archipelago can attest to—Indonesians are extremely enterprising and manage to find a multitude of ways to profit off of whatever labor they can provide in whatever setting is available. But non-salaried workers can struggle to get by in the informal sector, with an estimated 11.2% of Indonesians still living below the poverty line (which hardly accounts for urban poverty by being set at around $22.60 per person per month).
In this kind of economic environment, where finding stable work is difficult for those without educational credentials, there are a significant amount of Indonesians who are in need of more money in order to live comfortably. Since labor for which actual demand exists seems to be limited, it makes sense that those trying to make money would move into fields of labor for which there is no real demand as long it can bring home income. Because of the cultural power of compassion and social pressure explained above, and since the Indonesian government has shown little ability to stop unofficial parking attendants from collecting fees (they have tried), these unhelpful industries can become profitable for those who get involved.
Ultimately, parking attendants and pengamens rarely provide needed or desired services to those who pay them, but this activity provides an income for those who need it. This approach does not protect or prioritize the needs of the consumer, but rather the needs of the laborer. This may be considered inefficient from a macroeconomic standpoint as it devotes resources to unproductive activity, but it would be hard to argue that parking attendants and street performers (and their families) would be better off without this source of income, at least in the short term.
From another perspective, these phenomena resemble an unofficial form of economic redistribution to the lower class. An Indonesian who frequently eats out and own a motor bike is not necessarily wealthy, but they probably have more economic stability than most parking attendant or pengamens. In a context where the state is fairly neoliberal, this represents somewhat of a (small) culturally enforced social welfare system. This is distinct from charity, in which one chooses to contribute money for no personal benefit; rather, it more closely resembles the tax system in which participation is mandatory, even though this tax is levied by social constructs rather than the state. (Parallels could be drawn to the Islamic zakat system, which is more tax than charity, although not run by a state.)
A similar struggle between the neoliberal state and a cultural system that promotes social welfare is currently on display in the debate over public transportation in Jakarta. Earlier this year, Jakarta governor Ahok proposed to eliminate small transport vans called angkots in an effort to decrease traffic and transition to the more modern TransJakarta bus system. This was met with praise by some for reducing economic and transportation inefficiency, but there has also been a strong backlash emphasizing that the policy would result in the unemployment of thousands of angkot drivers, leaving them and their families with no source of income.
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| Angkots in Jakarta |
Who Deserves Money?
In America, when a difficult economic environment creates a dire need that neither the government nor private charities can fill, people often have to resort to begging on city streets to stay alive. In Indonesia, it is remarkable that beggars consist almost entirely of the elderly, small children, and women with babies. Aside from the fact that these groups tend to evoke the most sympathy from passersby, this also suggests that anyone who is capable of doing something other than begging is expected to do so in order to earn money.
It is not abnormal to see people dressed up in costumes at intersections walking between stopped cars to ask for money. These people don't necessarily seem to intend to entertain people in the cars, but by wearing a costume they are doing something. By simply doing something, their activities can still be considered work, rather than begging, and this preserves the dignity of the person in need of money.
As we are currently in the midst of Dhu'l-Hijjah, this attitude is highly reminiscent of the actions of Hagar upon which many of the rituals involved in the Hajj pilgrimage are based. Thirsty and left in the desert with her infant child Ishmael, Hagar had faith that God would not abandon them. However, she still ran back and forth seven times between the mountains of Safa and Marwa searching for water, only to discover the Zamzam spring producing water right where she had left Ishmael. Hagar's actions in themselves did not directly result in her and Ishmael's salvation, but she knew that to be worthy of God's grace, she needed to at least do something.
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| An artistic depiction of Hagar and Ishmael. |
Likewise, contemporary Indonesian culture seems to dictate that in order to deserve something, one must do something (if physically able, as noted by the exceptions for the elders, mothers of infants, and children, for whom it is acceptable to beg). By maintaining the facade of providing a service such as entertainment or helping drivers pull into the street, Indonesian parking attendants and street performers deserve to be paid because they are doing something.
This system does not maximize value for consumers, but it does provide for the wellbeing of a fraction of the poor and their families while still maintaining their dignity. Parking attendants and pengamens may be resented by some Indonesians, but at least they are not seen as lazy. The same can't be said about neoliberal attitudes towards the poor in America.
