Strategy against eviction and livelihoods of the Akuarium neighborhood in Jakarta's transformation

Abstract

Urban transformation of the Jakarta government evicted the urban community of Akuarium in 2016. The urban transformation created a new urban life in Jakarta with progression but marginalized a particular Akuarium people. Akuarium people, whose homes and lives are disrupted by development, have no choice but to navigate the new physical landscapes. The disruption of living areas and homes further caused resistance and identity besides material loss. In light of the background, the thesis research realized how urban eviction led to precarious urban life and could enact a survival strategy for the Akuarium people. The study has two research objectives in the Akuarium community. First, the study examines how the Akuarium people respond to the urban transformation. Second, it aims to identify how urban transformation changes the economy and identity of the community. The research method includes field and internet ethnography for around one year. Field ethnography has been conducted for approximately one month and a quarter, while internet ethnography for approximately eleven months. The first research finding illustrates an urban play is the last resort to managing urban space with informal strategies using art and tactics that differ from formal ones. Everyday tactics, from inscriptions to doorstop demand, underline how the Akuarium movement tries to manage the force of the Jakarta government about eviction with the ultimate objective of preserving their space. A "resist and play" emerged, which are complementary because one fills the other as a symbolic link to reach physical proximity in the urban space. The way of Akuarium people demanded their rights to the Jakarta government is not opportunistic but is a way of staying alive. Resistance thus means an undeniable and spontaneous way against ordered power. The urban play of chanting appliances, mobilizing small mobs, and unclothing their vaginas, among other everyday tactics of the Akurium neighborhood, show a deviation from the interaction between structure and agency. To resist is to survive profanely for keeping someone's or community's life beyond political characteristics.

The urban play also works in a selective political position that is pragmatic towards the political figure and media. There is a term balas jasa, or reciprocate deeds to someone who has done well to you, as in what happened between the Akuarium neighborhood and Prabowo during the eviction. Prabowo gave the Akuarium people military tents during the eviction. Besides, similar reciprocity happened with Labour Party, which acquitted UPC and Anies Baswedan for his presidential run. Apart from that, material benefits happened in such politics. Also, the Akuarium people see a wide range of media publications towards them as a strategy for reaching out public.

In the second finding, the economic mean makes an inadequate income that does not meet the daily necessities of the Akuarium neighborhood. It is insufficient between what people gain and spend. Unemployment becomes a permanent problem and presses the Akuarium people's livelihoods. The eviction erased people's income streams, leading to the destruction of the neighborhood's economic base. The space's constitutive role and proximity are fundamental to the economy's base. Indebtedness has been a daily livelihood tool for construction workers and common people, destabilizing the economic base and pushing people into poverty. The construction workers did not pay for food for seven months, with a debt of around 200 million rupiahs. The Akuarium cooperative compensated the food cost of construction workers.

Furthermore, the Akuarium people's identity signifies an urban revival and Islamism in low politics as the third finding. What people had achieved in rebuilding new vertical kampung is a form of urban revival. They had successfully strategized their sense of a victim. Such sense catapulted their social capital to demand fair treatment and their homes back which signifies a humanistic movement to fulfill the right to the city. The social capital exemplifies in the development of the vertical kampung as part of the gentrification policy by the Jakarta government that the Akuarium community channels some considerations of social relations, a similar location before the eviction, and specific physical construction bearing the old houses before eviction. In Islamism, the preacher utilized eviction as an animation of disaster so people do good deeds. More essentially, Akuarium people have harnessed Islam as a practical way to ease their hardship yet non-ideological Islamism due to lack of time, risk-taking, and money.