On Sunday, October 20, 2024, Dr. Sita Hidayah Ph.D as the representative in charge of the Independent Campus 2024 Competition Program conducted a half-time evaluation of the implementation of research in Pandansari Village, the discussion which was held in the PTPN IX Kaligua Agrotourism area was attended by ten PKKM research and village development scheme participants. The research scheme participants who had departed earlier on October 9 presented findings related to each topic studied ranging from agriculture, tourism, education, irrigation, and forestry, this progress according to Dr. Sita Hidayah is very interesting and can be further developed into research that has novelty.

As for the participants of the village development scheme, this opportunity will be used to realize a program entitled Waste Management Mapping in Pandansari Village: Solutions Based on the Use of Titen Application. This program will specifically be implemented in Dukuh Kalikidang and Embel, through this program it is hoped that the community can participate in mapping waste management problems in the surrounding environment with the “Titen” software application developed by the Anthropology Department.

Pandansari Village itself is not the first time to become a research locus for UGM anthropology students because of its complex and very interesting agricultural culture dynamics to be studied anthropologically, the results of the research that have been carried out are expected not only to fulfill writing assignments, but also to benefit the local community. By focusing on environmental, economic, and inequality issues, the research seeks to achieve sustainable goals in accordance with SDG 8, SDG 10, and SDG 15.

[HUMAS FIB UGM, Author: Novilatul Ananda Ramadhani, Editor: Sandya Kirani]

Thursday, October 10, 2024, Wonosobo Regency Bappeda Team held a meeting to explore research cooperation with UGM. The exploration targeted the Center for Rural and Regional Studies (PSPK) and the Department of Anthropology UGM for research programs related to SDG 1 (no poverty) and SDG 2 (zero hunger). The Bappeda team was received by the deputy head of PSPK and the staff of the UGM Anthropology Department represented by Dr. Atik Triratnawati, M.A. and Dr. Muh. Zamzam Fauzanafi, M.A.

The research was motivated by the high stunting rate in Wonosobo Regency, which is 29.2%. This is the highest rate in Central Java. In addition, the poverty rate in Wonosobo has not moved from 15.28% and remains above the average of Central Java Province. Seeing the concerns of the local community, Bappeda tried to partner with universities and study centers to overcome the stunting and poverty problems that plagued the community. Bappeda wanted the PSPK team to go to the field to reduce the poverty rate, while the Anthropology Department was expected to send its team to reduce the stunting rate.

From various stunting and poverty data presented by Bappeda Wonosobo, UGM (PSPK and Anthropology) agreed to conduct research in the area with an estimated time around the beginning of 2025. During the meeting, the Anthropology Department also explored sending student interns (independent research) in 2025. It is hoped that with these researches, new innovations will emerge to reduce stunting and poverty so that the Wonosobo Regency area can be free from them.

Author: Dr. Atik Triratnawati, M.A.
Editor: Sandya Kirani

The Women’s Crisis Center is a place for complaints of various cases of violence experienced by women. So far, public attention has centered on the development of legal cases, and places the victim as the sole subject who experiences the effects of trauma. In fact, the traumatic effect spreads to other actors who listen and fight for the case. On the occasion of the Caring for the Victim, Caring for the Self seminar (27/08/2024), the Anthropology Department of the Faculty of Arts UGM invited Mona Elisa Behnke to share the results of her months of research with the assistants at one of the Women’s Crisis Centers in Java, especially Yogyakarta.

Mona Behnke is a doctoral candidate in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Free University Berlin, Germany. Her Master’s thesis was on hyperreality, state rhetoric and collective memory in contemporary Indonesia, and combined her interest in psychological and visual anthropology with a philosophical approach. After graduation, Mona worked for some time as a business anthropologist in the field of user experience and the organization of work structures. In her PhD project, she focused on the emotional labor of social assistance workers in a women’s crisis center in Java, Indonesia, touching on issues of emotion, gender, and conflict management.

Working in the humanitarian field has the consequence of great challenges, not only in terms of legal assistance skills, but also the skills that must be possessed to work in the field. Basically, gender itself is labor, where the articulation of actions, behaviors and performance are socially constructed in harmony. Women are considered more flexible in absorbing emotions and navigating concerns. Being an advocate for cases of violence against children and women makes them have to be able to navigate themselves technically and emotionally. Caring is the main asset that must be possessed by the assistants. Mona’s research tries to answer how care is practiced in a neutral environment through emotional labor from psychological and legal assistants.

Plunging as a companion shows that they consciously decide to enter a non-profit institution ready to experience institutionalization in three fundamental aspects, namely emotional labor, order of feelings, and emotion repertoires. ‘Emotional Labor’ refers to the management of emotions carried out to fulfill work performance when faced with clients. Facilitators are required to be able to harmonize their emotions with a socially constructed hierarchy or order. They must understand what emotions are allowed to be shown and not when listening to client stories. Repeated mentoring experiences shape their knowledge and memory of the repertoire of emotions when assisting clients. Furthermore, the process of assisting cases of violence against women and children has a dynamic approach both feminist and gender.

Listening to the emotions released by the client makes the companion experience second traumatization. This opens up further discussion that the experience of trauma is not only experienced by subjects who are directly treated with violence, but those who absorb the emotions of victims will also experience ‘second traumatization’, such as assistants and sign language interpreters. Emotional and mental exhaustion becomes the point where the assistants have an experience with the victim, beyond their technical skills. Mona describes the emotional flow of the helper and the victim in an interesting diagram, how the helper has to empty their emotional glass between before and after entering the hot table (where the client tells about their case). They professionally process their emotions in order to maintain themselves mentally so that they can continue to assist victims. This discussion brings us to the fact that the advocates actually have the potential to experience unequal care, where they give their full care to others, but they do not get the same care because they are considered not victims even though they absorb trauma from clients every day and fight for them. Sometimes, both survivors and caregivers feel very grateful when they can forget a very painful traumatic experience. From this we can conclude that forgetting is not a passive thing, but an active process that is also selective in building individual and collective memory. The ability to forget is also a valuable skill in emotional labor, in addition to the ability to remember which has been widely applied.

This discussion ended with several stories of assistants who were carrying out their temporal agencies by caring for each other and strengthening the emotional conditions of fellow assistants. Activities such as watching movies, joking, walking, telling stories and laughing out loud are a form of temporal agencies for the assistants so that their mental state is maintained and they can return to caring for other victims.

Author: Nuzul Solekhah
Photo: Puspita Nindya Sari

Opening the new academic year, on August 14, 2024 the UGM Anthropology Department, The Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies, and the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies held an Anthropology of Religion Seminar entitled “Islam, Ambiguity, and (In)Tolerance: Perspectives from Southeast Asia” which was held at the Auditorium of Soegondo building, Faculty of Arts UGM. On this occasion, Professor Ismail Fajrie Alatas and Dr. Martin Slama as speakers presented their work-in-progress.

The seminar was opened by Professor Ismail Fajrie Alatas by reviewing the thoughts of previous scholars such as Ernest Gellner who reemphasized the distinctiveness of anthropological studies of religion in understanding Islam as a system of social institutions and that orthodoxy contains power relations that manifest certain opinions. Meanwhile, his colleague, Dr. Martin Slama in this presentation highlighted more about the views of Southeast Asian communities regarding the concept of tolerance and intolerance in Islam towards the concept of ambiguity, drawing on the thoughts of Shahab Ahmed and Thomas Bauer, both arguing that Islam’s inability to respond to ambiguity is now an implication of modernity so that Islam becomes more intolerant and seems rigid like an ideology.

Enriching the discourse of religious studies and anthropology of religion in a more specific research locus is very important for the development of contemporary studies and insights for the wider community, as Dr. Sita Hidayah in her commentary mentioned that this research provides broader insights because it shifts the focus of Islamic studies towards Southeast Asia. Through various seminars, workshops, and discussions like this, the Anthropology Department is committed to realizing the Sustainable Development Goals including SDGs 4 quality education and SDGs 17 partnerships to achieve common goals.

Author: Novilatul Ananda Ramadhani

Photo: Puspita Nindya Sari

Editor: Admin of FIB Public Relations

The Department of Anthropology at Universitas Gadjah Mada organized a departmental workshop for lecturers and departmental support staff. This activity was held on Thursday-Friday, August 8-9, 2024, at Sambi Resort, Pakembinangun, Pakem, Sleman. The purpose of this activity is to evaluate the work achievements and work plans of the department. This is the realization of the 4th SDG’s target, namely Quality Education.

This activity consists of several sessions which are divided into two days. The first session on the first day was the preparation of the 2024/2025 Odd Semester Course Schedule. This session was presented by Dr. Realisa D. Masardi. The preparation of this schedule is intended to synchronize the schedule and the division of the person in charge of the course. The next session was the 2025-2030 Curriculum Plan presented by Dr. Elan A. Lazuardi. In this session, anthropological issues that are relevant to current world conditions and forecasts of future world conditions were presented. This shows that the Department of Anthropology will produce graduates who are relevant to the times. The last session on the first day was the Empowerment Anthropology Curriculum and Final Project. This session was presented by Dr. Gaffari Rahmadian and Dr. Muhammad Zamzam Fauzanafi.

The second day of the event focused on upgrading the staff and faculty of the Department of Anthropology. It was divided into three sessions. The first session was on staff promotion strategies and staff rank presented by Prof. Pujo Semedi. The next session was the staff recruitment plan which was also presented by Prof. Pujo Semedi. And the last session on this activity was secretarial by Fajrul, Head of Staff of the Anthropology Department.