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13.6. Commodity Supplies, Gift Exchange and War Memories among the Butonese in the Moluccas Province

Hatib Kadir (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Abstract

This paper explores how Butonese traders in the Moluccas restart to develop their business after the religious conflict that happened from 1999 to 2004? How the Butonese deal with disadvantage being outsiders in the Moluccans? In other words, how do they deal with the inequality that happens to them?And, how they recover themselves after the religious conflict. This paper is a part of the dissertation project at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The researcher has been living in the field of Ambon and Masohi since September 2015. The fieldwork project will be finished on the beginning of July 2016. During the first three months fieldwork, this research has interviewed more than 50 Butonese traders, which covers urban small-scale sellers to the big Butonese entrepreneurs located in both Ambon and Masohi town. The Butonese, who migrated from the rocky and barren areas of Southeast Sulawesi, had played important roles in the social economic relationships with the local Moluccans. In the Central Moluccas, Butonese mostly are petty merchants who have middle to large capital. They also own small shops(kios,toko)in the islands where trade may occasionally occur. Nevertheless, the Butonese were still disadvantaged by their ethnic identity. They were treated as second-class citizens in the Moluccas. Until 1980s onward, the Butonese  had no right to participate in traditional village head elections.They had been blocked from positions among the bureaucratic elite as well as from participating in local elections. Before the conflict in the 1999, the Butonese faced uncertainty because the adat law gave them a little space to improve their economic situations. Moreover,when the clove price increased, they had to deal with the local people who took the opportunity to exploit the shareholding of clove profit.Over the last thirty years, specifically before the conflict brokeout in1999, there have been many successful Butonese traders who expanded their business across the Moluccas Islands. There have been significant transformations of the Butonese’ profile. Nonetheless, theButonese migrant traders are considered threatening because most of the native Christian and Muslim Moluccas do not have a trader background and they do not have the skills to handle money. These local people do not dominate market and commoditysupply chains; instead they rather work in the bureaucracy and military (Chauvel, 1990, Knaap, 1995).When the conflict broke out, the local Moluccas pointed the Butonese as theobject of violence. The Butonese were kicked out from some kampongs, which they have been there for over hundred years.  After the religious conflict in2004,which killed more than ten thousand people, Butonese traders,began to return to the Moluccas. Despite their marginalized status after the conflict, they still returned toAmbon and Masohi to continue their businesses.TheButonese survive in the middle of mutual suspicion and anxiety at losing property.In the aftermath of the conflict, they are building their mutual affiliations under thestress and nervousness that characterizes post-traumatic experiences.

Keywords: Butonese traders, money and debt, kinship, cultural capital, inequality.