ABSTRACT
I suggested in the previous chapter that in Brassika it was in the arena identified as pembangunan, rather than that of ‘politics’, that citizens were allowed, indeed encouraged, to participate as citizens of the nation-state. We have seen that under the New Order ‘culture state’, village society became considerably detached from political parties, ideological commitment and formal political processes. The dramatic activation of traditional patron-client ties as the Tjokorda engineered a 180-degree swing in voting preferences in the 1992 election, the effacement of idealistic commitment to revolutionary (subversive) social causes, the ‘nipping in the bud’ of the incipient local messianic movement, and the absence of connection between local issues and national political issues demonstrate how Brassika society appeared as a depoliticized ‘floating mass’.
