Is the Past in Another Country? A Case Study of Rural-Urban Affinity on Mudik Lebaran in Middle Java

Abstract

Each year millions of Indonesians return to their anchestors and family homes to celebrate Lebaran, the end of Muslim fasthing month. Not only Muslims, but all Indonesians have adopted this as an annual ritual of reconnecting, remembering and recharging. This mass home coming is known as mudik Lebaran. The significance of mudik points to how important the ties with the village, region or province of origin continous to be but also clearly demonstrates that the rural-urban difference remains an important fault-line ‘dividing’ contemporary Indonesian society. The concern of this study is not to discuss the dichotomy between the two but to explore the association between the urban and rural in term of its social as much as its cultural significance. By paying attention to the social and cultural aspect, the paper will demonstrate how Indonesian people effectively engage in their rural and urban lives. In this context, the paper seeks to make a contribution to studies of regional migration as well as rural-urban interaction which has not been widely explored academically so far.