Indonesian Culture

Lecturer:
Ernita Daulay, M.Hum

Created By:
Syafiq Khairi (0304202139)
From TBI – 5/ 4th Semester

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF
NORTH SUMATERA
2022
 Chapter I
Introduction
1. Background

Indonesia has a long history of being an independent country. Indonesia has the famous slogan
uttered by Soekarno in his last speech on the Independence Day of the Republic of Indonesia on
August 17, 1966, namely "Never Leave History" or abbreviated "Jas Merah" become a country,
Indonesia through some era of colonization such as Colonization of Portuguese, Spanish, French,
England, Dutch, and Japan. And after being colonized for almost hundreds of years, Indonesia
announced Independence Day on 17th August 1945. After Independence Day, Indonesia was a
unitary state with a republican form of government led by the president.

Indonesia is one of the Multiethnic and Multicultural countries in the world, which has
characteristics for each Indonesian. These characteristics of Indonesian culture that come from
the minds of Indonesian society may contribute to the establishment of significant values to
develop consciousness about the substance of the culture of Indonesian pluralism and
multiculturalism. Baddley (1999) adds three basics components of culture, namely: What people
think, what they do, and the material products they produce. Each culture exhibits its unique
ways and values systems, that aid and affects individuals in their perception, and reaction to
different life circumstances. The culture of Indonesia produces language, population, tradition,
dialects, arts, styles, and traditional food, which becomes one word that is “Indonesian Culture”.

2. Problem Formulation

This paper written to find the answer:

 What is the Indonesian Culture?

 What are parts of characteristic of Indonesian culture?

3. Purposes

This paper has written to:

 To know about Indonesian Culture

 To know about part of characteristics of Indonesian culture
 Chapter II
Discussion
1. Indonesian Culture

Culture itself is something which has value by human being and comes from our heritage and for
our generation and can influence and development either has advantages and disadvantages.
According to (Kluckkhon, 1951) Culture consists in patterned ways of thinking, feeling, and
reacting, acquired and transmitted mainly by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of
human group, including their embodiments in artifacts: the essential core of culture consist
traditional, ideas, and specially their attached values. Culture can be the symbolic expressive of
social life. In other hand, culture s complex, abstract, and broad which is can develop from
generation to generation. William in Storey (2009:1) offers three definitions of culture. First, he
defines culture in three broad processes: intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development.
Second, he says that culture is a particular way of life; it refers to the tradition of people in
particular groups. Third, he delivers idea that culture is work or practice in intellectual or artistic
activity. UNESCO (2009) defines culture as “the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual
and emotional features of society and social groups that encompasses not only art and literature,
but also lifestyles, ways of living together, value system, tradition and belief.”

Indonesian culture is come from minds of Indonesian society with develop consciousness about
the substance of the culture of the Indonesian. Indonesia as an archipelago country has a lot of
cultural heritage that it is decently called as a multicultural country. The richness of Indonesian
culture is not only in tangible cultural heritage but also in intangible one. It includes artifacts,
inscriptions, traditional food, clothes, music instruments, oral traditions and expressions,
performing arts, rituals and festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the
universe, and traditional craftsmanship.

Indonesia can be categorized as one of the biggest countries in the world after Russia, Canada,
China, Brazil, America which is about 1.910.931,32 KM2 width (Badan Pusat Statistik/BPS).
Based on the statistic data of BPS 2014, Indonesia has more than seventeen thousand islands
including five biggest islands. Due to this facts, Indonesia is well-known for its cultural richness;
multi- cultural country. There is a lot of cultural heritage such as artifact and cultural sites found
in all over Indonesia from Sabang to Merauke. The diversity of tradition in every community
also proves the richness of the Indonesian culture. The misunderstanding in defining the concept
of culture, however, often happens. People define culture in a narrow concept; they perceive
culture as tradition only. However, culture has a broad concept which covers many things related
to human’s life.
 2. Characteristic of Indonesian Culture

The diverse of ethnics group in Indonesia divided into some cultural region and make up the vast
Indonesian territory, such as Western, Central, and Eastern. The ethnics in Indonesian
archipelago have created a regional culture or aeroculture with original patterns, characteristics,
language, values, and symbols that are unique and originated in the people’s culture. The process
of forming Indonesian culture has caused the culture’s elements to grow and evolve in the midst
of people daily live. Indonesians have been described as resilient, resourceful, tenacious and
courageous, putting up with life's difficulties with wry good humor. The Indonesian character
can loosely be generalized as a mix of Muslim, Southeast Asian and it own indigenous elements.

The characteristics of Indonesian culture such as:

A. Art.

The definition of art and culture is everything that has the characteristics of an area created by
humans that contains elements of aesthetics that are passed down from generation to generation.
Indonesia has a many art such as, Angklung is a musical instrument made out of two bamboo
tubes attached to a bamboo frame. Wayang or Shadow puppet is an imitation of a person made of
leather or wood carvings, which one of tradition in Indonesia especially in Java which
accompanied by Gamelan. Gamelan itself is a musical ensemble of Indonesia typically featuring
a variety of instruments such as Met allophones, Xylophones, Drums, and Gongs. Dangdut
music is also a genre of Indonesian popular music that is partly derived from Arabic, Indian, and
Malay folk music. And one of art in Indonesia is Ondel-Ondel. Ondel-ondel is a form of Betawi
folk performance that is often performed at folk parties in the form of giant dolls made of woven
bamboo, and decorated with human-like clothes and accessories. In the show, this doll is moved
from within by someone

B. Language

The official language of Indonesia is known Bahasa Indonesian. This language is a standardized
dialect of the Malay language and was created when Indonesia declared independence in 1945.
There are two to three languages spoken across Indonesia, so although Bahasa Indonesian is the
official language, most people speak their regional dialects first.

C. Population

Diversity Indonesia is hugely diverse nation which made up of over 17.500 island (6.000 of
which are inhabited) which are home to over 300 ethnic groups. With populations totaling
around 260 million individuals, Indonesia is the fourth largest country in terms of population
size. More than half of population can be classified as belonging to two main ethnic groups.
These group are Javanese (41% of the total population) and Sudanese (15% of the total
population) and both group originated from the island of Java which most populous island that
60% of the country’s total population, when the island of Sumatera is included, this figure rises
to approximately 80% of Indonesia total population. The most populous province is West Java
(with more than 43 million people) while the least populous province is West Papua in the far
eastern region of Indonesia (around 761.000 people)

D. Tradition

Tradition is the similarity of material objects and ideas that come from the past but still exist
today and have not been destroyed. Tradition can be interpreted as a rue inheritance or legacy of
the past. In Indonesia there are so many traditions. Each region has each tradition; the one of
most popular tradition in Indonesia is take a bath with flower water and grave pilgrimage before
entering Ramadhan. In other hand tradition in Indonesia is “Mudik” is abbreviated from
traditional language Java that “Mulih Dilik” which means people who migrated returned to their
each hometowns.

E. Dialects

Dialect is various an accents or commonly called a regional style of speaking that is owned by a
person or group. For example, Medan people tend to have a loud and firm accent, while different
with the dialect of Javanese who tend to be soft when speaking.

F. Styles

In Indonesia to show the world that Indonesia has own style and being a characteristic of
Indonesia and also being identity of Indonesian, is Batik. Batik is traditional clothing use by
technique of creating beautiful designs in cloth by covering parts of the material with wax and
then dying the material. It is from Indonesia and also considered as national clothes but has
known in the world. In other hand, Kebaya. Same as Batik, Kebaya is traditional clothing by
Indonesia. Furthermore, the style that is characteristic of Indonesia is the school uniform, which
for primary school uses a white shirt with a pocket on the right side with the “Tut Wuri
Handayani” symbol on it, and wearing red pants for boys and red skirts for girls. The same as
elementary school and high school levels, but only differ in the color of the skirt. Blue for
elementary school and gray for high school.

G. Traditional Food.

Indonesia’s cultural and geographic diversity is reflected in its food. Most Indonesian food is
prepared with contrasting flavors and textures. Hot and spicy dishes will often be served with
crunchy peanuts or krupuk (crispy crackers), or a contrasting flavor such as a creamy gravy,
palm sugar, or kecap manis, (a sweet soy sauce.) Nasi: (Rice), which accompanies every meal,
is Indonesia's most important food. Bumbu: (basic spice paste) accompanies rice, and various
meats such as chicken, goat, or beef. Food may be prepared through grilling, simmering,
steaming, and stewing using coconut milk.

Makan pagi: (breakfast) is normally a bowl of fried rice, noodles, or soto (soup) accompanied by
Java coffee or tea. Makan siang (lunch) is often the main meal of the day followed by makan
malam (dinner) after the workday has ended. When sharing meals, the dishes are placed in the
middle of a table for everyone to share.

Selamatan: a uniquely Indonesian tradition of praying to a God before a significant event is still
practiced by many Indonesian-born people. Following the prayer, tumpeng (a cone-shaped
mountain of steamed yellow rice) is sliced at the top and served.

Furthermore, the traditional food of Indonesia is Satay Originated in Java is a dish consisting of
chunks or slices of dice-sized meat that are grilled. And also Padang restaurant which very
popular in Indonesian with the special menu is Rendang that is a spicy meat stew.

H. Religion

Indonesia has six religion that recognized by the state that Islam, Christian, Catholic, Hindu,
Buddhist, Confucian with the largest Muslim-majority country in the world. The percentage of
Religious adherents in Indonesia are Islam 86,93% , Christian 7,47% , Catholic 3,08%, Hindu
1,71%, Buddhist 0,74%, Confucian 0,03% in Indonesian (Kementerian Dalam Negeri
(Kemendagri)).

I. Sport

The most popular sport in Indonesia are Badmintons and Soccer because they are both has
become widespread in Indonesia and often ply badminton and soccer anywhere; on the street or
in the house and it does not have to be in the badminton field.

J. Weather

Weather in Inndonesia consist of rainy and hot weather because Indonesia it belongs tropical
country, Indonesia only rainy and summer seasons, there is no winter, Autumn, and Spring.
References
Moffatt, Amanda. 2012. Indonesian Cultural profile. Diversicare.

Asfina, Risda. Ovilia, Ririn. 2016. Be Proud Of Indonesia Cultural Heritage, Richness, And Be
Alert Of Its Preservation Efforts In The Global World. Journal UNP. Vol.15 No. 2.

https://databoks.katadata.co.id/datapublish/2022/02/12/sebanyak-8693-penduduk-indonesia-
beragama-islam-pada-31-desember-2021