Ruwat Desa and Ritual Resilience Amid Agrarian Transformation: An Ethnographic Study in Wunut Village
Studi Etnografi di Desa Wunut, Porong Sidoarjo
Abstract
Ruwat Desa, a Javanese agricultural ritual, persists in Wunut Village, Sidoarjo, despite losing 66% of farmland to industrial conversion (1985-2024). This pattern appears across Java's industrializing regions, where villages lost 45-65% of agricultural land, yet ritual participation declined only 15-20%. How does an agricultural ritual persist when its material foundations vanish? Existing frameworks fail: Geertzian involution explains cultural maintenance through agricultural intensification, not cultural intensification when land disappears. This study applies Bourdieu's practice theory to reveal capital substitution, communities strategically replace declining economic capital with enhanced cultural and symbolic capital. Three-year ethnographic research (2022-2024) with 10 informants demonstrates three mechanisms: funding shifted from 85% farmer contributions (pre-1990s) to 60% non-farmer sources (post-2000s); communities preserve core elements (sacred site, wayang performance) while adapting peripherals (gunungan contents, organization); generational habitus transformed from cosmological conviction to pragmatic observance to heritage valorization. Cultural sustainability operates through strategic capital restructuring rather than material continuity, advancing beyond predictions of cultural decline and offering insights for agrarian-industrial transitions across Indonesia and the Global South.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Clarissa Ayu Fitri Ramadhani, FX Sri Sadewo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The author(s) retain the full copyright over all published articles. By submitting and publishing with Jurnal Antropologi: Isu-Isu Sosial Budaya (JANTRO), the author(s) grant the Department of Anthropology FISIP Universitas Andalas (as the publisher) the exclusive right of first publication.
All articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.. This license permits users to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work, provided the original work and source (JANTRO) are properly cited and any derivative work is shared under the same license.
The author(s) are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) before and during the submission process, as this can lead to productive scholarly exchange and earlier citation of published work.
Department of Anthropology FISIP Universitas Andalas has the right to multiply and distribute the article and every author is not allowed to publish the same article that was published in this journal. Thanks to FISIP Universitas Andalasthat was funded this journal sustainability.
The Copyright Notice should describe for readers and authors whether the copyright holder is the author, journal, or a third party. It should include additional licensing agreements (CC BY-NC-SA)
The manuscript authentic and copyright statement submission can be downloaded ON THIS FORM.
Fill out the form and submit via email or fax to the following address:
Office of Editorial Board Jurnal Antropologi: Isu-Isu Sosial Budaya
Department of Anthropology, FISIP, Universitas Andalas
Building B Department 2nd Floor, FISIP, Universitas Andalas, Kampus Limau Manis, Padang, West Sumatra, 25162, Ph. 0751-71266, Fax: 0751-71266
Email: editor_jantro@soc.unand.ac.id
.png)
