Improper Distance

Introduction

Silverstone's essay, Proper Distance "attempts a critical engagement with a range of theories and positions that touch on community and identity, reciprocity and responsibility," (469) and deals with how communication between humans has become more intensified with the advent of the internet and telephone technologies, becoming somewhat transcendent and metaphysical. "It moves beyond, and no longer depends upon, the constraints of bodily communication and the limiting contiguities of the "face to face" interaction. In this internet based world, "distance is no barrier to contact." (486) In other words, these types of communication provide connection despite physical separation.

Drawing upon Silverstone's thesis which "argues that the possibility of a moral life is dependent upon our capacity to define and sustain a proper distance in the relationships we have between ourselves and others and that our media technologies can be seen to affect that." (470) I choose to address the anthropological issues raised by this notion, those "face to face" interactions that the internet seems to free the modern world of--not in relation to cyber space, but in relation to my personal experiences of living in a central Javanese farming village.

Much like Silverstone, I see the immense possibilities of experiencing new forms of social relationships, based on what social relationships are AND what they could be, through placing oneself face to face with others from a different cultural context, in, as David Bell likes to say, "RL" situations. Today I will discuss Silversone's concepts of proper distance and his stranger/neighbor dichotomy as well as touch upon the concept of "the other." Using those ideas, I will compare the cultural differences between the very concepts between being a Westerner, and a traditional Javanese, in the context of village life and the mosque, discussing what my personal experience was when these things overlapped. The notion of proper distance according to Silverstone can be understood to be defined as ethically appropriate spacial or social distance between individuals. This, I believe, is a very Western perspective of distance. It is not one I disagree with. I also agree with Silverstone in his statement that "we have to determine, case by case what that proper distance is when we are confronted with both familiar and novel representations of the other... neither can proper distance, like everything else that is meaningful in social life, be taken for granted, nor is it pre-given. it has to be worked for." (475-76) This was my experience living in a lovely pink house next to the local community center/kindergarden/mosque in Geneng, Sewon, Bantul, District Iistimewa Yogyakarta.

Community and Responsibility

The concept of community in rural Java, and in my case, the village of Geneng, is a very strong one. It is the sense of community that rules moral life in Java's farming villages. The average central Javanese villager adheres to a way of life that is a mixture of Kejawen , which addresses ethical and spiritual values as inspired by Javanese tradition (1), and the religion of Islam. Entire families live in very close proximity to each other, sometimes in the same house, or very nearby in the same group of houses in what is known as the desa, or "the village." One desa is comprised of many family groups living pretty much in the same way. Each desa has a "Kepala Desa," or village head, who keeps track of the well being of everyone in the village, settles disputes among the neighbors, and the like. This man and his immediate family form the backbone of the traditional Javanese village community. The concept of community responsibility is very strong in the village life, as, along with the position of Kepala Desa, there are also groups of village men that take turns staying up all night and "jaga malam," or do night watchman's duty for the entire village. It is customary for them to spend one or more evenings per month, in small groups, smoking, drinking coffee, and playing cards, in the village's centrally located night watchman's post/bamboo three walled hut. Their nightly rounds consist of checking periodically that each house is secure, all porch lights on, and no "strangers" are lurking about. In turn, the villagers leave small change outside on their houses next to the nightly rounds checklist the jaga would tick of upon completion of his routine. This small token is meant to keep he and his watch crew stocked up on the night's clove cigarettes, and feel appreciated. The Javanese community responsibilities extend much further than I detail here, but I will restrict my brief essay to this example.

Upon moving into the village, I had to introduce myself to the Kepala Desa, and sign a form saying that I would observe the village rules, thereby given admittance into the villager's "radius of physical proximity...as neighbour-to-be, in which case...( I was ) to be made like (a) neighbor, that is to behave as neighbors do." (Bauman, 477)

Silverstone cites Bauman when he states, "in pre-modern societies, the differences between neighbors and strangers or aliens were rigidly enforced and accepted....an alien could enter the radius of physical proximity only in one of three capacities: either as an enemy to be fought and expelled, or as an admittedly temporary guest to be confined to special quarters and rendered harmless by strict observance of the isolating ritual, or as neighbour-to-be." (ibid.). Now that I had gained acceptance into the community as a neighbor, I quite abruptly realized just how little an idea I had of what exactly that meant. At this point, I then became, as Simmel puts it, "the stranger who comes today and stays tomorrow," the stranger that is the neighbor, a very ambiguous, non-Javanese and non-Muslim new member of the local community. I was especially quite unavoidable, since I lived right next to the village main meeting hall, nor could my new neighbors be exactly sure of my status, as a Western woman living alone in a three bedroom home, something rather unusual in comparison to the average Javanese living situation I detail above. We were all neighbors, but still very much strangers, in practically all manners of the concept "stranger," or "the other."

Ambiguities, Ethics and Responsibility: Experiences as the Neighbor/Stranger

When thinking of the first time I moved into traditional village, of Geneng, I did not think of the social ambiguities that were involved, on all sides of the issue. All I could think of was the beautiful pink house I was going to live in with the goats and chickens and six varieties of fruit trees growing in the garden. I made sure I found a house large enough for my boyfriend, Anas, a painter from East Java who lives and works in Bali, to have a painting studio to use while he visited me. Little did I know at the time, that in traditional Javanese villages, that unmarried men and women from different families, no matter what their age, relationship type (i.e., platonic, non-platonic) religion, or nationality (meaning now that I was considered a member of the community) are NOT allowed to stay in the same house. EVER. Anas, on the other hand, was aware of the fact, but he, being a non traditional Javanese "stranger" in the village, did not think that staying at my home would be an issue. It did, in fact, turn out to be an issue with my landlord, and he informed me that by signing the agreement to live in the village, I had to obey its rules, (no mention was made by either of us about the fact that I do not speak or read Javanese) and to report the names of any visitors I had come to stay in my home to the Kepala Desa. Pak Hadiwinoto, my landlord, cautioned me to be especially careful in my observance of this, especially since I was living in one of the most high traffic areas of the village. WOW! This new piece of information put quite a restriction on Anas and my freedom within our own house complex when we were together, and also made it impossible for Anas to feel comfortable to paint in the house at all. This situation brought me to the conclusion that should a male friend/visitor from abroad come to stay with me, I definitely had to announce his arrival well in advance, and introduce him as my "cousin," or other male relative, for the purpose of removing any question in the villager's minds about my own personal set of morals. I later found out through speaking with other ex-patriots/Western and Indonesian students that they too had come up against this traditional/modern moral discrepancy, and in some instances, individuals were forced by groups of young men from the community to move from their homes, or put under surveillance during the jaga malam rounds. Stories were even circulating of homes visited by the local "morality police" in the middle of the night, or just before subuh, the pre dawn prayer session at the mosque, waking up unsuspecting "non-traditional" couples, both Indonesian and mixed Indonesian and foreigner.

However grim the situation may seem to the average Western reader, I decided to not stage a protest, nor seek other living arrangements. It is here in my experience that I see the parallels with Silverstone's argument about ethics and responsibility (480), in reference to the fact that the villagers recognized that they had an ethical responsibility to the moral life of the village as a whole and, for me as well, being their neighbor/stranger. As an "accepted" member of their local community, I was responsible for upholding the same ethics and morality as the villagers. and it was their responsibility to enforce it, in any case. Looking in retrospect, after being removed from the day to day reality of the situation, Auge's quote (488), "we ask of ethnology that it enable us to understand the "other's" culture, other cultures, both from within and without, that it be simultaneously participatory and distanced," (my emphasis) rings true in a very personal space inside of me.

Physical Distance, Social Distance, and the Evolution of the Loudspeaker: the Village as Stranger/Neighbor:

Longing for Ambiguity1

Silverstone's concept of ambiguity1, "the ambiguity that is inevitable when relationships with the other require the creation of manageable social distance under circumstances of physical closeness" (478) plays a major part in the next section of my essay. It is the question of the possibility of finding that manageable social distance from my local community while in the confines of my own house complex that I address in reference to the ambiguity of living next to the village mosque and school.

I was already aware of the imposition of living next to a mosque, with its five times a day call to prayer over a loudspeaker public announcement system, at regular daily intervals of 3.15 am, 12 noon, 3.30 p.m., sunset, and 7 p.m. I had already accepted that inevitable crossing of my very Western boundaries of personal space the with very physical proximity of the building in question. The reality of possibly being disturbed by the glaring loudspeaker was also an issue brought up by many of my western friends, but being an ethnomusicology student at the time, I really did appreciate the idea of hearing the call to prayer, and being able to have a front row seat to observe goings on at the otherwise very mystical mosque next door. Imagine my surprise however, the first Sunday morning in my new home to be awoke at 6.15 am by that same loudspeaker that had just mildly awoke me roughly three hours before, but this time, playing a pre-recorded cassette tape of Islamic music end to end (roughly two times per side) at an extremely loud volume for an hour to call the village children to the Muslim version of Sunday school. Okay, no problem, I could wear earplugs on Saturday nights. But what about the fact that the very same cassette tape was played every day for an entire month of fasting before Ramadan at 3.30 p.m. at that same glaring volume-- or, during my second year of living in the house, my surprise when that special Ramadan schedule of cassette playing was further augmented with another daily broadcast of readings from the Qur'an beginning at 4 am, just before people began their day's fasting.

The question here is how would one would actually address the issue of the neighborly boundaries crossed by the mosque community? Could there possibly be a manageable, intermediary distance reached in these types of situations? I felt too much of an outsider to ask. As a result, I felt that the village was my own unavoidable stranger, not only just outside my front garden's gates, but also invading my sleeping patterns, not to mention as illustrated above, my personal life with my friends and house guests.

Conclusion

Let us now return again to one of the Silverstone's ideas brought up very early in this presentation. That "neither can proper distance, like everything else that is meaningful in social life, be taken for granted, nor is it pre-given. It has to be worked for." Although I am certain that my experience living as a neighbor to the mosque caused no new revelations of the meaning of proper distance for the community at hand, it is my personal experience, living in such close proximity to a completely different ethical and moral reality, not as a complete alien, but as a permisioned neighbor that gave me an outstanding opportunity to experience firsthand what is being addressed in Silverstone's article. Being an "accepte" member of Geneng's local community, responsible for upholding the same ethics and morality as my neighbors defintely is not an undertaking that all non-religiously strict, individuals would appreciate, much less my Indonesian contemporaries in art school, had they the choice. I never thought that my experiences of joy, trial and frustration, tribulations, and even sexism that I met while day to day living in another culture would prove so relevant to something studied for my MFA in DANM. I really feel that my experience results in a deeper understanding of these types of relationships both in RL and in cyberspace.

no.e (Jennifer) Parker
DANM 202
Cultural Theory in Digital Arts and New Media
Instructor: David Crane
Presentation on: Roger Silverstone's Proper Distance Toward an Ethics for Cyberspace

January 25, 2006