Synchronous Chanting in Indonesian Social Movement Repertoires: A Tool for Emoting and for Manipulating Emoters

Abstract

AbstractChanting has been in existence since time immemorial and is thought to emerge as a way to convey information about visceral and affective states. Chanting synchronously allows participants to synchronize their actions and affective states for it requires them to actively and coordinatively participate in it. This phenomenon can be observed in various social rituals across times and cultures all around the world, including in social movement repertoires, such as demonstrations and street protests. Since emotions play a pivotal role in social movements, gaining insights into how chanting can be used as a “tool” for emoting and evoking emotions in such contexts is useful. For this purpose, the lens of situated cognition and affectivity is used to analyze how activists' interactions during occurrences of synchronous chanting facilitate distributed emotions among the participating chanters. Looking at cases of social movements in Indonesia, a multi-ethnic nation-state, which has its own demonstration culture embedded in its sociocultural-historical context, it is argued that synchronous chanting as an emoting tool is coupled to Indonesian activists of various groups. Some of these chants even date back to more than two decades ago, beginning when Indonesian youth fought against the despotic regime of President Suharto and his New Order, to hundreds of years ago when the founding fathers fought against colonialism. Based on the said framework, the analysis concludes that synchronous chanting can be used as a tool for not only emoting but also manipulating people.