Capitalism and the Struggle of Marginalized Groups
Cultural expressions through fashion shows are an instrument to generate income to move up socio-economically. Many other young Indonesians who are looking for the same opportunity, but that moment never comes.
Angus Deaton, recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economics, in his book The Great Escape, Health, Wealth and the Origin of Inequality (2013) succeeds in describing today’s world as a much better place than the world lived by the generations before us.
People can live healthier, richer and longer. Deaton called the change “the Great Escape” wave.
Innovations of antibiotics, successful pest control, vaccinations, the initiation of clean water and the rapid development of modern education systems have succeeded in changing our standard of living to be much better, richer and healthier than previous generations. However, this is accompanied by a widening economic inequality, famine, epidemics and pandemics in some parts of the world.
In 2015, life expectancy in the United States fell for the first time. Then it dropped again in 2016 and it continued in 2017; the first this happened for three consecutive years.
In fact, outside of war or pandemics, life expectancy around the world has managed to increase consistently for nearly a century and has become a prominent feature of developed countries. The last time life expectancy in the US fell for three consecutive years occurred more than a century ago, during the 1918 flu pandemic.
Trapped in despair
What happened? In their latest book published in 2020 titled The Death of Despair and The Future of Capitalism, Angus Deaton and his colleague Anne Case presented another diagnosis, namely an increase in suicide rates, drug overdoses and alcohol-induced liver diseases, which they call “death of despair,” which happened on an unprecedented scale.
In 2017 alone, for example, there were 158,000 of such fatalities in the US, the equivalent of three fully loaded Boeing 737 MAX jets falling from the sky every day for an entire year.
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Death of despair, said Deaton and Case, although less visible and less prominent than the coronavirus, is actually equivalent to a catastrophic pandemic every year that preys on low-income and the less educated people. The difference is that there will never be a vaccine for this type of “pandemic.”
Deaton and Case try to answer a simple but profound question: why do uneducated caucasians die from drug overdoses, alcohol poisoning or suicide at unprecedented rates?
Citayam Fashion Week Phenomenon
While reading the two aforementioned books, I saw the Citayam Fashion Week phenomenon that made headlines months ago, and because of that I tried my best to appreciate it. Bonge, Roy, Kurma, maybe also Jeje, belong to the category of people who are likely to become victims of capitalism and in the end have the potential to fall into the category of death of despair.
Bonge and Roy quit school at a very young age. In other words, the door to Deaton's version of the Great Escape wave was about to close. However, they refused to walk on the path toward death of despair. They refused to give up, despite being marginalized by the lively wave of capitalism which, according to Deaton, succeeded in creating the Great Escape wave.
They were motivated to change their lives and their families’ lives, eager to provide a decent house for their parents, buy a vehicle, send their younger siblings to school and take their parents on a pilgrimage. They refused to fall into the pit of drug or alcohol addiction, let alone suicide. While they had no higher education, they believed that they would be able to enter the Great Escape wave by other means.
And they found it in social media. With the ability to choose photo-shoot locations, creative content creations, cameras, internet networks and social media platforms, which all do not require a high level of education, they express their economic motivation and talents.
In other words, they find unconventional ways to get away from the shadow of despair and try to catch up with people who have already entered the Great Escape wave.
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If there are flaws in their moral or educational standards, it is understandable given their level of education and the pressures of life they experience. At least they are doing much better than Doni Salmanan, who did not finish elementary school but wanted to make a great leap forward via shortcuts to enter the Great Escape wave.
In my opinion, there is no class conflict, which some parties have created with the term “created by the poor and stolen by the rich.” They did not finish school, let alone read
Marxism-Leninism books. They just wanted to climb the ladder of social class without having to face opposition. In fact, the issue of changing the terminology SCBD into their own (Sudirman, Citayam, Bojong, Depok) is only a trivial issue.
Anti-desperation spirit
Of course the two terms have different socio-economic backgrounds. I am certain they did not come to burn or destroy the symbols of capitalism in Sudirman or SCBD. Instead, they wanted to participate and enter Deaton's version of the Great Escape wave by other means.
In short, they did not come to Sudirman with diplomas from famous colleges to be submitted to the gedongan (high class) human resources department, but they brought their dreams and spirit of anti-desperation or a slebewnomic wave (slebew is a term coined by Jeje).
Subcultures or cultural expressions through fashion shows are an instrument to generate income to move up socio-economically.
Then why did the slebewnomic wave slowly fade? As I understood it at the beginning of this article, Citayam Fashion Week, which is perceived by cultural experts and sociologists as a subculture, had actually created an impact. Because we understand it as a momentary subcultural phenomenon, the effects were understood temporally. In fact, Citayam Fashion Week is not about a subculture, but the economy.
Subcultures or cultural expressions through fashion shows are an instrument to generate income to move up socio-economically.
After all, getting a spotlight on the national entertainment stage with managerial support of top celebrities, Citayam was finally cool. The ability to monetize on social media, receiving media coverage and orchestrate between movement and fashion finally paved the way for some to pursue their dreams after a long time due to failing to get a diploma from the education system.
So can everyone be like that? Not necessarily. There are so many young Indonesians who drop out of school because of economic factors.
Some struggle to make ends meet in the informal sector, some walk door to door as street musicians, some are lucky enough to own a motorcycle and can get recruited as part of an online motorcycle taxi service, while others share the uncertainty of time with their friends in a motorcycle gang community and many of them, consciously or not, are on their way to death of despair.
What is clear is that Bonge, Roy, Kurma and Jeje are only a small number of Indonesians who are caught between the waves of the Great Escape and death of despair.
Meanwhile, the government, and most of us, interpret it as a mere creation of subcultures, which gives the government justification not to intervene further or not to understand the problem more deeply. Whether or not there will be another moment like this in the future, which will open the door for some people in order not to get stuck on the path to death of despair, only God knows.
What is clear is that Bonge, Roy, Kurma and Jeje are only a small number of Indonesians who are caught between the waves of the Great Escape and death of despair.
Neglected
There are many other young Indonesians who are looking for the same opportunity, but that moment never comes. And after the Citayam Fashion Week lights had dimmed, the government returned to its normal activities. In fact, many others are still waiting for a helping hand so that they do not fall into death of despair.
They are waiting for and indirectly asking the government to change the perception that events like Citayam Fashion Week are not just a counter fashion show, but also a slebewnomic wave, namely a wave of economic struggle of people marginalized by the festive flash of capitalism so that they can climb up the ladder of social class without a diploma or certificate.
Because we fail to understand the economic substance behind Citayam Fashion Week, after the lights dimmed we forget the struggles of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of young people like Bonge and Roy, who want to have the chance to live a better life, away from the path to death of despair.
Ronny P Sasmita, Senior Analyst of the Indonesia Strategic and Economics Action Institution
This article was translated by Kurniawan Siswo.