NUSANTARAPAPERS

No. 3

Social Mobility and Social Change in Yogyakarta 1945 to 1995Hans-Dieter Evers and Solvay Gerke

AbstractTwo basic processes were central to the social changes in Yogyakarta; the demise of the Javanese nobility and the shift from “priyayi” to “pegawai”, i.e. the rather complicated process whereby the traditional courtiers were replaced by or transformed into civil servants employed by the provincial or the central government. In fact the latter process has captured the imagination of several scholars after Selosoemardjans major study “Social Changes in Yogyakarta”. The following basic question was asked: Was the old priyayi elite replaced by modern civil servants of Weberian persuasion or did the new civil servants permute into “neo-priyayi” by taking over the cultural values and behaviour patterns of their predecessors? An intensive social survey in Yogyakarta provided data to answer these questions.______________________________________________________________________________ISSN

Bonn: Nusantara Academic Publications 20161

Social Mobility and Social Change in Yogyakarta 1945 to 1995i

Hans-Dieter Evers and Solvay Gerke

Introduction: Revisiting “Social Changes in Yogyakarta”

Some 50 years ago the eminent Indonesian social scientist Professor Selosoemardjan published his doctoral thesis on “Social Changes in Yogyakarta” (Selosoemardjan 1962). In addition to historical flashbacks to the Dutch and pre-colonial periods he provides a vivid picture of the social changes occuring in Yogyakarta during his field research in 1958. The Sultan of Yogyakarta, it will be remembered, had sided with the republican forces during the Indonesian revolt against Dutch colonial rule and was conseqently rewarded with the governership of the Special Region of Yogyakarta. Many features of the Javanese principality survived the turbulent years of the Japanese occupation, the short period as the capital of the Republic of Indonesia, and the final integration intothe adminsitrative structure of the new republic under President Sukarnos leadership. The 1950s were, however, a time of rapid social change, which Professor Selosoemarjan investigated.

Two basic processes were central to the social changes in Yogyakarta; the demise of the Javanese nobility and the shift from “priyayi” to “pegawai”, i.e. the rather complicated process whereby the traditional courtiers were replaced by or transformed into civil servants employed by the provincial or the central government. In fact the latter process has captured the imagination of several scholars after Selosoemardjan (Sutherland 1979, Palmier 1969, Benda 1965, Evers 1987). The following basic question was asked: Was the old priyayi elite replaced by modern civil servants of Weberian persuasion or did the new civil servants permute into “neo-priyayi” by taking over the cultural values and behaviour patterns of their predecessors?

Most authors favour the latter position by pointing to the centralised structure of the Indonesian administration, the culture of “bapakism” (“father knows best”), the “top down approach” of the bureaucracy, the prevalence of Javanese in top positions and the generally typical Javanese way of running the administration.

The following paper will contribute to this debate by presenting some of the findings of our studies

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on social mobility in Yogyakarta. By using data on intergenerational mobility, that is the change of social status between parents and children, we will endeavor to draw some conclusions on the nature of social changes in Yogyakarta between the demise of colonial rule and the rise of General Suhartos “New Order” administration.

Social Changes after “Merdeka”

The Decline of the Nobility and the Rise of the Educated Middle ClassTraditionally Javanese society was divided into three classes, the nobility, the bureaucracy (priyayi) and commoners (wong cilik or “little people”). Selosoemardjan analyses the changes that have takenplace in Yogyakarta during the 1950s, when this traditional order began to crumble, including the above mentioned two important social changes, namely the decline of the nobility and the change ofthe civil servants from priyayi to pegawai negri (government official).

As the nobility lost its function as intermediary between the Sultan and his bureaucracy and the Sultan and the people, its prestige declined, “particularly in the city, where the intelligentia and the new group of pegawai negri were moving upward in the social hierarchy” (Selosoemardjan 1962:121). After the revolution the allowances of the nobility were not raised and were quickly eroded by rising rates of inflation, leading to their further decline in status and political importanceii.

The formation of a new middle class was intimately connected with the growth of the civil service. “The new middle class which grew up under Dutch aegis occupied a place parallel to that of the priyayi class. The members were Indonesians, for the greater part Javanese, who worked as officialsin the Dutch administration in Jogjakarta and were thus the colleagues of the priyayis. Most members of this new class had either primary or high school education” (Selosoemardjan 1962:37). The “intelligentia” usually emerged from priyayi circles (Sutherland 1979:56), but had divorced itself from its cultural heritage and the feudal civil service (Pangreh Praja).

According to Selosoemardjan this “educated class” replaced the nobility, and took over the leadership of new political and social institutions. “The rise of the intelligentia to the upper class was recognized by other classes, which tried to acquire the external symbols of this new class by wearing Western-style dress and walking around with a dispatch case in one hand and a fountain

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pen showing in the upper pocket of the jacket. But by far the most distinguishing symbol of the newupper class was the use of foreign languages, namely Dutch or English” (Selosoemardjan 1962:129). This process can be described as upward social mobility of members of the middle class and downward mobility of the aristocracy.

Priyayi and Pegawai

Less clearcut is the situation of the traditional bureaucracy of the Sultanate of Yogyakarta. Priyayi or abdidalem were the officers running the administration of the Sultanat of Yogyakarta before and during the colonial times, when Yogyakarta was one of the semi-autonomous princely states. The priyayi were “officials recruited from the class of commonersiii. The function was to carry out the Sultan’s orders which came to them through the nobility” (Selosoemardjan 1962:21). The prestige of priyayi was enhanced by imitating the patterns of behaviour of the nobility. Official names were given by the Sultan “to replace their original names at the moment they entered the Sultan’s service” (Selosoemardjan 1962:22). From 1952 to 1958 the Sultan still granted 12 first-class and 25second-class titles to officials. There were still 148 priyayi officials with titles by the end of 1958 (Selosoemardjan 1962:121). This practice continues inofficially up to now. In Central Java the granting of titles to provincial civil servants (bupati) by the Susuhanan of Solo created a stir in 1992, when the Governor of the Province requested that these titles be returned. In Yogyakarta evenup to now strong loyalties of the civil service towards the Sultan remained (Selosoemardjan 1962:162).

After independence the new government increased the number of civil servants. “This policy was inline with the high social value of government jobs, that was carried over from the Dutch colonial period” (Selosoemardjan 1962:106). This also holds true for DI Yogyakarta, were government officials were employed at an accelerated rate after 1950.

In 1943, under the Japanese administration, there were aproximately 1,500 government employess, in 1953 about 8,300 and some 10,000 in 1958. In additon, there were 3,600 officials of the central government and 4,300 government employed daily rated workers, which brought the number of govenment employees to 17,900 or 8.9 per 1000 populationiv (Selosoemardjan 1962:108), a figure considerably higher than the national average of about 4 at that time (Evers 1987). Furthermore there were village heads and their assistants and military personell, which have added to the government establishment. As a consequence Selosoemarjan estimates, that one person out of every

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60 residents was employed and paid by the government. In the city of Yogyakarta this proportion would have been much higher due to the concentration of government servants in urban areas. Entryinto the civil service was therefor a major avenue of upward social mobility.

Selosoemardjan’s analysis is important, as it can be taken as paradigmatic for the situation of post-colonial Java, if not Indonesia, as a whole. The new intelligentia, roughly corresponding to a new middle class, adopts a Western life-style and engages in politics, whereas the new bureaucracy patterns its behaviour on that of the traditional priyayi court officials. Cultural and social mobility, i.e. the transmission of life-styles and cultural values on one hand and social mobility, i.e. change ofsocial status and the movement of young people into new social positions do not necessarily correspondv.

As many other social scientists Selosoemarjan would probably have projected his findings into the future. In doing so he could not forsee the importance still attached to the Javanese nobility at the courts of Yogyakarta, including Paku Alaman, and Solo right up to the present time; nor could he judge at the time of his writing whether social changes and social mobility in Yogyakarta in the 1950s were “normal”, abnomally high or relatively insignificant in comparison with the times ahead. The theorists of modernisation and globalisation have anyhow constructed an image of accelerated change in contrast to a stabel “traditional” past. In line with this thinking growth and change appear to be “natural”, withdrawal from the path of “globalisation” unlikely and retardatin or cultural revival mere abbarations.

It will, therefore, be interesting to see how the 1950s fit into the course of Indonesian history from the point-of-view of social mobility and social transformationvi. Some data from our recent surveys in the 1990s, limited as they may be, could serve this purpose. They will allow us to test Selosoemardjan’s assertion of high social mobility and change during the 1950s and compare the post-independence situation with later periods of Indonesian history up to the present.

Changes of Inter-generational Mobility

Social Mobility and Social Change

As Selosoemardjan has shown, the study of social mobility is a useful tool to describe the dynamics

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of change in a society. The demise of pre-colonial and colonial status hierarchies, as analysed by Selosoemardjan and the more recent transformation from a predominantly agrarian to a modernisingand industrialising society with high economic growth rates lead us to expect high rates of social mobility as well. Whether this assumption is true or not remains to be seen, but in any case we propose to use rates of social mobility as an indicator for social changes much the same as economic growth rates are often interpreted as measurement of economic change - with all the caveats attached to the use of such indicators.

The following analysis is based on a survey, conducted in the city of Yogyakarta ("Yogya ESM Survey")vii. Interviews in three sample areas in the old quarters of the kraton (Sultan's palace), a densely settled inner-city slum and a semi-rural area on the urban fringe yielded data on 811 persons, related to 171 randomly selected respondents. A further sub-sample of government officialsyielded more detailed data on that group. These studies are occasionally supplemented by data fromour other studies in Central Java ("IST Survey")viii and West Sumatra ("Padang ESM Survey")ix.

The target group of the Yogyakarta survey were salaried employees of the private and public sectors, i.e. more or less the same strata or “classes” discussed by Selosoemardjan in his 1958 study.As our earlier analysis has shown (Evers 1994) this group has grown throughout Indonesia and gained in relative importance since about 1980. This holds true even more so for urban DI Yogyakarta, where in 1990 more than half (52%) of the working population belonged to the formal sector of the economy.

Table 1The Growth of Formal Employment, Indonesia 1980-1990

Year Employers and Employees as Percentage of Total EmploymentRural U

1980 19.22 11990 19.69 1

Source: Population Census 1980, 1990

In order to gain a more dynamic perspective on this transformation we focused our attention on this group, which has been neglected in studies on Indonesian society. The following data and conclusions refer therefore to wage earners in both the private and the public sector. For this paper

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we used an age-cohort analysis, i.e. we compared the intergenerational mobility rates of six age groups at the time they were likely to have entered the labour market. The age-cohorts are built on the assumption that during the ages 16 to 25 mobility chances are most likely to be realisedx. We have therefore taken this age group as the cohort on which our analysis is built. The occupational status and educational attainment is then compared with those of their parents’, yielding a rough measurement of inter-generational mobility. Furthermore we analysed selected life-histories to corrobate the statistical analysis.

Changing Patterns of Social Mobility

The periods, during which our study groups have entered the labour market and experienced social mobility are divided into significant periods in Indonesian history. The colonial period came to an end with the proclamation of independence in August 1945; during the late 1950s the economic ties with the Netherlands were severed and the period of 'guided democracy' and a highly regulated economy began; in 1965-67 the authoritarian 'New Order Government' was established under military leadership and economic reforms introduced; by the mid-1970s the re-integration into the world market was vigorously pursued and the first deregulation measures were introduced; the later 1980s and early 1990s showed high rates of economic growth, occasional world-market induced economic shocks, slow political liberalisation and increasing rates of unemployment (Evers 1995). The analysis of our survey data shows very diverse patterns of social stability and fluidity. Stability is measured by the percentage of the sample population that has not experienced any intergenerational change of social status. Fluidity is measured by the percentage of persons showinga either upward or downward intergenerational mobility (see figure 1).

Basically social fluidity was high during the post-independence Sukarno period and declined considerably during the 1980s and 90s.

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Figure 1Male Social Mobility, Indonesia before 1945 to 1993

Source: Yogya ESM Survey 1993, see table 2

Upward social mobility reached its peak during 1956-65 and has since then steadily declined. In general our findings can be interpreted in the light of Indonesian political history. First of all Selosoemardjan’s data on social changes and high mobility during the late 1950s are clearly confirmed. The late phase of the otherwise economically disastrous Sukarno area opened opportunities for the "small people" to advance their status. The government service and with it the new middle class expanded and opened up opportunities for upward social mobility, both for men and women.

In contrast the economically successful period after the military take-over in 1965-67 lead to rising incomes, but also a decline of upward social mobility. An increasing proportion of the sample population did not experience any mobility at all, i.e. they inherited the social status from their parents.

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Table 2Intergenerational Mobility by Sex, before 1945 to 1993

Male Femaledown none down none

1945 and before

15.1 73.6 34.8 56.5

1946-55 23.5 58.8 26.3 71.11956-65 10.3 57.5 15.5 70.71966-75 18.5 63.1 26.9 61.41976-85 22.1 62.3 8.1 82.81986 and later 5.7 91.4 10.8 86.5Total 17.2 64.6 18.0 73.0

Source: Yogya ESM Survey, n=811 (males=478,females=333)

Out of 85 intensive case studies we take Pak Sugeng as a typical example of that group. He was born in Yogya in 1964 with a father working in the Regional Planning Department. His grandfather and all great grandfathers were serving as abdi dalem in the kraton of Yogyakarta. His father is still doing service as abdi dalem (court official) for the sultan. He himself is working in the same regional planning department as his father, but in another section, being introduced and promoted by his uncle who is a high office holder at the Kabupaten. His two elder brothers are civil servants as well, working in different departments in Jakarta. His younger sister is a civil servant in the trade department in Solo, the same place where his father in law is the head of the trade division. Sugeng is married to Siti Romlah, a civil servant herself, with a father still working as the head of the trade department in Solo. Her older brother is also working as civil servant in the trade department in in Semarang. Her father’s father who is a pensionier was office holder at the Kabupaten. Her grandfather was working in the Dutch administration, whereas her grandfathers’ brother was abdi dalem in the Kraton of Solo.

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Diagram 1Social Mobility of a Javanese Family

Darmo (?)Abdi Dalem (court official)

= ? Sugeng (?)Dutch civil service(brother was Abdi Dalem in Solo)

= ?

Yako (1919)Abdi Dalem (court official)

= Rukia(father was Dutch civil servant)

Wasan (1924)regency office (bupati)

= ?

Darmo (1940)regional planning agency(abdi dalem)

= Sutiaprimary school teacher(government service)

Rosdianto (1938)head, department of trade in Solo

= Yani (?)

Sugeng (1964)regional planning agency (BAPPEDA)(1.brother,public works department; 2. brother, national oil company; sister, department of trade in Solo)

= Siti Romlah civil servant (BPN)

Source: sub-sample government officials, EMS Survey

Downward Mobility

The most remarkable finding of our study concerns the remarkably high degree of downward social mobility in certain periods of Indonesian history. Except for the period before the end of the Sukarno Aera 1956-1965, where male upward mobility in the 16-25 age group was exceptionally high, downward social mobility was usually experienced by more persons than upward mobility. Onthe other hand a large section of the population remained stable, experiencing neither upward nor downward mobility. This is connected with relatively low rates of urbanisation until the 1980s, when urbanisation accelerated.

The Decline of Mobility and Strategic Group FormationTo secure regular employment with the government has been the most commonly expressed aspiration for the average Indonesian. To provide access to a civil service position has also been a major source of patronage and a means to gain approval and support for government policies. As a consequence the Indonesian bureaucracy has expanded considerably over the past decades (Evers

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1987, 1994).

The importance of waged or salaried employment by the government cannot be overestimated. Though the importance of government employment has certainly increased, mobility into this groupfrom non-civil service families has become difficult. Most urbanised villages (kelurahan) are now administered by civil servants. Central and provincial government departments have established branch offices at the sub-district (kecamatan) and district (kabupaten) level. Primary and secondary schools and teachers are found even in remote areas and health services, infrastructure programmes and a multitude of government run or sponsored projects employ government servants or create employment through the disbursement of project funds (Evers 1995). The programme of decentralisation, started in 1994, will probably further increase the number of officials and enhance their power on the local level. Government officials are, even in rural areas, a growing class of salaried officials with a distinct life-style and consumption pattern (Gerke 1992:192-86).Table 3 Government Employees (Thousand and per 1000 population), Indonesia 1920-1990

Year Thousandgovernment employees

Government employeesper 1000 population

1920 81.5 1.61930 111.0 1.8 1940 82.0 1.1 1950 303.5 3.7 1960 393.0 4.11970 515.0 4.4 1980 2,047.0 13.91990 3,771.2 21.0

Source: Evers 1987, updated by using census and other official data.

Whereas one of the most important avenues of upward social mobility since independence must have been the procurement of a civil service position, over the years this avenue has, however, become narrower and narrower, as the bureaucracy has increasingly recruited new members from the descendants of bureaucrats' families. Currently occupational inheritance is high. 43.1% of all civil servants have fathers, who have also served the government. Only 3.4% of their grandfathers

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were civil servants, but 34.5% belonged to the group of traditional office holders (priyayi). This is clear evidence for the continuity between the premodern, feudal administration and the modern statebureaucracy. The term “neo-priyayi”, used often to describe Yogyakarta bureaucrats, is therefore justified not only as a description of attitudes and behaviour patterns, but also in terms of social origin and background. It is in Bourdieu’s term a truely bureaucratic habitus.

As observed by Selosoemardjan during his field research in 1958, the prestige of the traditional priyayi bureacracy declined together with the declining power of the nobility that had been their cultural reference group (Selosoemardjan 1962:121). Education rather than descent became important. Our data show, however, that by matching inherited status with education, the priyayi class became integrated into the strategic group of the pegawai negri. (Evers and Schiel 1992).

Table 4Mobility Rates and Percentage of Government Employment in Age Cohorts, Survey Data before 1945 to 1993

Age Cohorts: Year Entered Employment (age 16 to 25)

Government Servants as percent of Age Cohort

Upward Mobility Rate (m)

1945 and before 29.3 11.31946-1955 26.4 17.71956-1965 42.9 32.21965-1975 25.8 18.51976-1985 25.2 15.61986 and later 48.9 2.9Total 31.7 18.2n=1096

Up to 1985 the rate of upward social mobility positively correlates with the percentage of government employment in different age groups. In other words, mobility rates went up when more positions became available for civil servants. After 1985 the situation has, however, changed. Civil service employment rates are up, but mobility is declining. One likely explanation is, that the civil service has become an almost caste-like socially closed “strategic group” (Evers and Schiel 1992) with a high degree of self-recruitment despite rising numbers of government employees.

Similar processes of closure of strategic groups may be found elsewhere in Indonesian society. We will, however, leave strategic group analysis and turn to a more general analysis of the formation of

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a new middle class.

The Formation of a New Middle Class

Rising Incomes and Changing Consumption Patterns

Average incomes in Indonesia have risen steadily during the past decade, bringing about new patterns of consumption. Bicycles are replaced by motor bikes, television sets and parabola antennas are found in the remotest villages and newly constructed houses are embellished with Greek columns, double or triple roofs and equipped with modern, factory made furniture. Families enjoy a night out at the Pizza Hut or Kentucky Fried Chicken, shop in a department store instead at the neighbourhood toko and enjoy American films at one of the many new cinemas. In short, middleclass consumption patterns are visible every where and catch the eye more than the occasional Mercedes car or the villas of the upper class 'nouveau riche' hidden among the hills surrounding the big cities of Java.

Whereas during the 1970s the middle class was still judged to be "relatively few in number" (Crouch 1984), its size has apparently grown rapidly in recent years. Exact figures are, of course, not available and estimates depend very much on the definition of the term "middle class".

Defining the new Middle Class

Though there has been quite some debate about the rise of a new middle class in Indonesia, commentators and researchers have so far failed to define its membership. Our recent surveys give at least some indication on features of this new group in two typical Indonesian cities (Evers and Gerke 1993). The data for Yogyakarta are shown in the following table.

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Table 5Distribution of Middle Class* Occupations in percent. Yogyakarta

Occupation %Labourer 12.3Employee 29.2Gvt. officials 58.4Middle Class as % of total 38.5

n=169, wage earners only.

* Members of the "middle class" that day earned between Rp. 5,000 and Rp. 20.0000 per day and have completed high school (Gerke 1994).

To be on the safe side, we first look at the middle income group in Indonesian society. Our Yogyakarta data show a distinct group of people with an average per capita daily wage of between Rp.5,000 and Rp. 20,000. Following the self-definition or the social construction of reality we have counted only those with high educational attainment (high school or university graduates) as members of the middle class. “The ideology that education, personal engagement and responsibilityfor the own future is the key to economic success has lead to very high school attendance rates beyond primary school education" (Gerke 1993:5; Gerke 1992:72-76). The rapid expansion of secondary education during the past two decades has certainly contributed a lot to the growth of a middle class and the spread middle class values.

Another useful measure of a middle strata in terms of consumption is provided by data on the expenditure for food as percentage of total monthly household expenditure (Engel's curve). In Yogyakarta we can clearly separate two groups, namely those more than 50% food expenditure (Lower strata) and with 30 to 50% food expenditure (middle strata)xi. But to be a member of the middle class is not just a matter of levels of income, expenditure and education, it is also defined bysocial behaviour. The privatisation of consumption is one aspect as well as the growing refusal to share consumer goods with others. One of the clearly visible symbols of the growth of a middle class is the rising number of middle class housing estates (perumahan) which are now spreading in every Indonesian city. The social pressure to share is one reason that make middle class families move out of the kampung into housing estates shared by people with the same living standard who enjoy privacy and avoid too much contact with their neighbourhood.

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The new middle class, united by a particular life-style and consumption patterns is mainly made up of civil servants. 85.3% of the government employees in our sample fall into the middle strata of society. Or looking at the situation from the other side, 62.8% of the middle class (all generations) consists of government servants. These in turn are politically organised by GOLKAR, an organisation not necessarily known for its leanings towards liberal democracy.

This so-called “new middle class” of mainly civil servants and the intelligentsia did not emerge out of a growing rationalization and differentiation process but is created through government policies. As a result of the rapid expansion of the bureaucracy and the educational system the largest group inside the Indonesian middle class are civil servants who represent a distinct group within this class.They are a state-caste with a high degree of occupational inheritance, they share a decidedly non-political outlook and exhibit a strong aspiration to secure their position.

On the other hand most of the 3251 NGOs, said to be in existence in 1989, are organised by a middle class leadership (Sinaga 1993). To expect a push towards democratisation from the middle class misreads the social composition and political culture of this growing stratum of Indonesian society, dominated by bureaucrats.

If the Indonesian middle class is, indeed, growing, as most observers agree (Dick 1985:71; Lev 1990:44), the new strata should provide opportunities for upward social mobility. With increasing self-recruitment of the bureaucracy the chances of lower class persons to advance remains slim or might even get worth. The reduction of upward mobility chance is also shown by rising unemployment rates of high school and university graduates. According to estimates of the Department of Manpower more than half of the graduates do not find adequate employment. High educational attainment alone is no sufficient precondition for entry into the middle class any more. The social limits of economic growth become visible.

Conclusions

As Selosoemardjan has shown in his seminal study of social changes in Yogyakarta, the 1950s were a period of high upward social mobility and social transformation. The nobility receded to the backstage of history, the priyayi coutiers were replaced by civil servants of the Republic of

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Indonesia and the old Dutch educated middle class moved into important political and social positions. Sukarno and Hatta, the president and vice-president were members of this class who had reached the apex of power. But also Suharto, president von 1968 bis 1998, had risen from humble peasant background, where his parents lived in a small village of Kemasuk near Yogyakarta, into a respected middle-class position of Major-General in the Indonesian Army, when he was stationed inYogyakarta during revolutionary times.

In the 1980s and 90s the situation in Yogyakarta had dramatically changed. Upward social mobility rates declined, partly because the major route for social advancement, namely a civil service position, became closed by increasing self-recruitment within the bureaucracy: sons and daughters followed their fathers into the government service, leaving little opportunity for outsiders to move up into a civil service position. But probably also social erosion has left its imprint on Yogyakartan society: Upward social mobility leads to a move to Jakarta and downward social mobility to permanent residence in Yogyakarta.

Since then Indonesian society has undergone dramatic changes with increasing economic growth. For the first time in history employment in agriculture dropped below 50% of the labour force in theearly 1990s, whereas employment in industry was rising rapidly. The informal sector, though still important, stopped growing and started to recede (Evers 1992, Evers and Mehmet 1994). Consumption patterns and life-styles were changing rapidly with the growth of an Indonesian middle class (Gerke 1993, Evers 1994) and a democratisation of the authoritarian, military dominated state was put on the political agenda by non-government organizations. The World Bankrecommended structural adjustment policy of deregulation became a major factor in the ongoing social transformation of Indonesian society (Evers 1993).

Yogyakarta has to be seen in this context and it may be permissibble to speculate about the political dimensions of the changing mobility patterns in Yogyakarta and in Indonesia as a whole. When social mobility rates decline, social pressure mounts. The increase in social unrest, strikes and racialstrife has, indeed, pointed to the problems of a society undergoing rapid economic growth and market expansion without the appropriate mobility, democratization and evolution of civil rights. The down fall of the authoritarian Suharto regime in 1998 and increasing democratization led to increasing social mobility, but also to a concentartion of wealth in the Jakarta elite.

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Palmier, Leslie H., 1969: Social Status and Power in Java. London: Athlone PressSinaga, Kastorius, 1993,An Assessment of the Role and Development of NGOs. Ph.D. thesis, University of BielefeldSelosoemardjan, 1962,Social Changes in Yogyakarta, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University PressSutherland, Heather, 1979, 1979 The Making of a Breaucratic Elite: The Colonial Transformation ofthe Javanese Priyayi. Singapore: Heineman

AuthorsProf. Dr. Hans-Dieter Evers is emeritus Professor of Development Planning and Senior Fellow, Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn (on leave) and Visiting Professor, Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), Universiti Kebangsaan MalaysiaProf. Dr. Solvay Gerke is Professor and Director, Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn (on leave) and Professor, Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam

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i This paper is based on intensive field research by both authors in Yogyakrta between 1987-1994. Results of these studies were presented at staff seminars of the Sociology of Development Research Centre, University of Bielefeld, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore and the National University of Malaysia, where both authors served as visiting staff. This seminar paper has not been published so far.ii The difference between the nobility proper and the priyayi should be noted, though the borderline between the two is not easy to draw.iii This is contradicted by Heather Sutherland, who shows that most higher priyayi inherited their position from their fathers, at least before the 1930s (Sutherland 1979:130).iv The total population of the DI Yogyakarta was estimated to be 2 million in 1958.v It should be noted that this type of analysis differs somewhat from Geertz’ well known description of the partition of Javanese society into three “aliran” (vertical socio-cultural groups) of Priyayi, Santri and Abangan (Geertz 1963). The westernised intelligentia has no place in Geertz’ scheme.vi The 1950s have recently received increased attention, because they were the times of Indonesia’s attempt to establish a democratic multy-party state. See the proceedings of the 1995 conference at Monash University.viiThis survey on Labour Market Expansion, Segmentation and Mobility was carried out in September-October 1993 byHans-Dieter Evers, Solvay Gerke, Susi Eja Yuarsi, Heru Nugroho and Sukamtiningsih, under the auspices of the Population Studies Center, Gadjah Mada University and the Sociology of Development Research Centre, University of Bielefeld.viii This survey on Informal Sector Trade was carried out in August-September 1992 by Hans-Dieter Evers and Tadjuddin N.E.ixThis survey was carried out in April-May 1993 by Solvay Gerke and Hans-Dieter Evers with a team of researchers from Andalas University.xOf course also other age cohorts could have bee used, but our data show, that mobility aspirations are usually realised during an early age, as job-life expectancy was and still is low in Yogyakarta and elsewhere in Indonesia. A discussion on the methodology underlying our survey has to be carried out elsewhere in greater detail. xi Calculations based on unpublished SUSENAS data 1992 for Yogyakarta city.