- Title
- Local modernities: young women socializing together
- Creator
- Nilan, Pam
- Relation
- Youth Identities and Social Transformations in Modern Indonesia p. 156-175
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004307445_009
- Publisher
- Brill
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2016
- Description
- This chapter reports on teenage girls socializing in Solo, Central Java in 2007. The locations are an internet cafe and a shopping mall. Although since then the internet has become widely available through cellular phones, it is gendered social interactions within these two spaces that remain of interest in 2014. The girls are pa1i of the new youth generation in Indonesia that participates in a prolonged and somewhat fractured transition to adulthood (see Naafs 2012; White, this volume; Robinson, this volume). It is probable that most will not complete their education or marry until they are in their mid-twenties (see White, this volume; Nilan et al., this volume). The data on socializing below shows young Indonesian women using information and communication technology to enrich and diversify modes of mixed-sex social interaction in urban spaces some seven years ago. They were, as Barendregt argues, "making themselves modern" (2008) through the use of communication technology. At the same time, they were socializing successfully within the constraints of religious and traditional discourses about girls' moral behavior that still prevail today ( see Parker, this volume). To achieve this socializing as a "safe" moral practice within the internet cafe and the shopping mall, the girls socialized in daylight hours surrounded by other people. They also relied on the dynamics of their friendship group to achieve both fun and propriety. I observed that while friends exercised moral surveillance over each other, the group itself seemed to facilitate confidence and playfulness for its members. Lyn Parker's chapter in this book offers a detailed discussion of girls' friendship groups in West Sumatra, finding them close and supportive.
- Subject
- teenage girls; socialising; Indonesia; internet use
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1328925
- Identifier
- uon:26021
- Identifier
- ISBN:9789004290464
- Language
- eng
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