Dwindling space and expanding worlds for youth in rural and Urban yogyakarta

In the rapidly changing worlds of urban and rural Java, youth are constantly challenged by the tensions between their home communities expectations and the alternate attractions of contemporary society. They are both the creations of existing structures and the creators and renewers of culture. White (this volume) refers to tensions between being young and growing up. In the pleas of their parents and their home communities there is often an espousal of tradition, and indeed in the parents appeal to the sanctity of certain ways of thinking and acting such traditions are constantly being processed into the social consciousness of the next generation. Yet, as Siegel points out in his portrayal of student youth in Solo, Central Java, it is still the case that students are seen to bear a special responsibility for the transformation of society (1986, 139). There is, therefore, a tension for many of them between forging new paths oriented to global trends and continuing in the old ways espoused by their parents and familiar to home communities. Yet I will indicate in this chapter that the home spaces so significant in youth choices in earlier generations are much less so in the 2000s. The dwindling spaces and opportunities of their home communities are set against the exploding possibilities of the worlds beyond. I will suggest that this has not always been a smooth process and was, at least during one decade, marked by a distinct morbidity of proliferating violence and drug use (White, this volume). The historical perspective offered in this study indicates that tensions, morbidity, and exploding opportunities are not the experience of all youth of all generations but are reflective of particular social, political, and economic environments in the wider society