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Joshua Barker, “State of Fear: Controlling the Criminal Contagion in Suharto’s New Order”, Indonesia 66 (October 1998), pp. 7-42.

Artikel ini membahas proses perebutan kekuasaan territorial atas kriminal oleh Negara dalam bentuk siskamling dan petrus. Barker mengamati bentuk pengawasan ini pada masa orde baru di 80’an dan proses reteritorialisasi simbolik setelah kejatuhan Suharto. Dalam porsi yang minimalis dan tidak begitu spesifik, ia tak luput mendekatkan konteks ekonomi politik di jaman orde baru. Latar belakang historis diantaranya adalah: meredupnya oil boom, pemotongan subsidi energi dan makanan, demo mahasiswa, kekuasaan penting militer dan ancaman kemunculan PKI. Namun demikian, ia berpendapat bahwa momok kriminal dapat dipahami sebagai dua poin penting; gejala kelemahan Negara; dan alasan yang nyaman untuk mengatasi kelemahan tersebut.

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In keeping with the overt symbolism that marked political monuments in Suharto’s New Order, the Department of the Interior on Jakarta’s main square was ornamented with a giant kentongan. A kentongan is an instrument made from a hollowed branch that is struck to give off a sound. Kentongan have been used by neighborhood watches (rondo) in Java’s towns and villages for centuries as devices to keep thieves away, to call forth populations for territorial defense, and to keep people alert and ready toward off threats to community well-being. Hung by a mosque, in a guard house, or in front of the village head’s house, it is the quintessential technology for community policing. The kentongan at the Department of the Interior, by virtue of its size and location, would seem to represent a departure from the strictly local connotations of village kentongan. This grand kentongan was undoubtedly meant to provide the many thousands of kentongan in the nation’s villages and towns with a new center with which to resonate. Through a sort of crude symbolism, the installation of this kentongan signified the subordination of local security apparatuses to the overarching security framework provided by the state.

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