Jumat, 23 Maret 2012
Nowadays ethnical celebration is
happening in Indonesia. The trigger is the uncontrollable identity politics. In
west Kalimantan, for instance, a struggle for the identity politics has
succeeded in forming new governments in district levels. The
new district governments are always
based on the dominant ethnic groups in
the area. The political impact of the identity politics can whip up the
ethnical spirit by giving hegemony to ethnic monitory in the area. According to
the writer, this could become “ethnic nationalism”. Theoretically, identity
politics is actually a struggle of a group or marginal people (periphery)
politically, socially as well as culturally and economically. Based on the
writer’s study, various ethnic conflicts happening in west Kalimantan relate to the
identity politics and the resistance towards the hegemony of the
ruler. The conflict never stand alone;
the often rise before of after a political
occurrence in West Kalimantan. Various conflicts observed in Reformation
Order era, indicate that they have a
correlation with identity politics and a
fear towards a hegemony that might be
done by a ruling ethnic elite. It can be concluded that the ethnic conflicts in
west Kalimantan are the forms of effort of an ethnic group to show their existence, since its people have been threatened, or for a
long time they have been marginalized systematically, so that their spirit to
fight against hegemony rise. Identity politics appearing in the forms of
cultural institution such as ethnic
customary council could be explained as the ethnic systematic efforts to strengthen their identity which, at the
end, could become a prospective “ethnic nationalism”.
Key words : Politics, identity,
conflicts, nationalism, ethnic, hegemony.
